Low Sodium Kibble?

[Yonjuro]

Hi all.

I need some help from the braintrust

A friend has asked me for some food, diet and supplement suggestions.

Before I outline the dogs condition it is important to say that my friend is in regular contact with their vet and will be seeing specialists. The info we can get will just be going into their "information gathering files' and will be discussed with the doctors. They are just trying to get as much info and ideas that they can to try and help their much loved boy.

He has been diagnosed with Nephrogenic diabetes insipidus (after months of lots of different tests)

Preliminary research seems to indicate that a low sodium diet is beneficial with this condition. So are there any suggestions of low sodium kibbles? Are there any other suggestions that I can pass on.

Hope to hear from some of you soon :)

[westiemum]

Yonjuro, without being an expert I immediately thought the best low sodium diet is probably a raw one - would they be willing to try that?  Failing that I suppose they could try some of the specialist cardiac foods -  for example I think Royal Canin does one. And <a href="http://http://vet.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/reduced_sodium_diet_for_dogs.pdf">here's</a>  a list from one of the U.S. Vet schools - but be careful as it might be out of date. And the sodium values still looked quite high to me.<br>Personally, I'd go raw assumimg that meets the dogs other health needs - but I'm a biased raw feeder anyway! <br>Hope the helps to get it sorted. <img src="http://www.dolforums.com.au/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif">

Edited March 18, 2016 by westiemum

[Yonjuro]

Yonjuro, without being an expert I immediately thought the best low sodium diet is probably a raw one - would they be willing to try that? Failing that I suppose they could try some of the specialist cardiac foods - for example I think Royal Canin does one. And here's a list from one of the U.S. Vet schools - but be careful as it might be out of date. And the sodium values still looked quite high to me.

Personally, I'd go raw assumimg that meets the dogs other health needs - but I'm a biased raw feeder anyway!

Hope the helps to get it sorted.

Thanks Westiemum,

I am also a raw feeder, I know this person is very dedicated, so I would imagine that nothing is out of the 'mix' at this stage. I think, and happy to be corrected on this, but meats do have reasonable levels of sodium, so I don't know what levels of sodium are acceptable. Again I am guessing here and just accumulating thoughts and ideas at this stage. Her initial question to me was "do I know any low sodium kibbles" most of friends know I am a food nutcase so I guess that is why they asked me ;-)

I do recall that with some of the 'big three' kibble brands I fed many years ago, some would definitely make my dogs drink far more than with other kibbles. A symptom I put down to higher sodium at the time???

Thanks again for your response :)

[JulesP]

The Prescription ones. Kidney or liver. Also need to watch any cookies/treats.

[Willem]

is there any study verifying the correlation between low sodium diet and diabetes for dogs?...I understand that for humans a low sodium diet is recommended due to the fact that a lot of our food is enriched with salts and it is easy to exceed the healthy thresholds; however, if you feed only quality dog food (and no left overs from the table!!!) and have a look at the salt content of the treats (some brands just add salt to make it more tastier for the dog) I assumed that this would be sufficient wrt maintaining the salt intake below the thresholds for dogs?

[*kirty*]

Diabetes insipidus is a totally different condition to diabetes mellitus (which is the one you are probably thinking of, where the dog/person/whatever needs insulin etc).

Edited March 17, 2016 by *kirty*

[Scottsmum]

Two very general questions...

1. What is considered low? (Westiemum - your link isn't working)

and

2. Surely "natural" salts occurring in raw (eg grass fed beef) would be better / preferable with other benefits that come from raw compared to a low sodium kibble? (not having a dig - just wondering? you know lke the human sugar debate - do you cut all sugar as much as possible or just added sugar...)

[Willem]

Diabetes insipidus is a totally different condition to diabetes mellitus (which is the one you are probably thinking of, where the dog/person/whatever needs insulin etc).

thanks for the heads-up...yes, the 'diabetis' got me, but after some reading I recognize that this is a total different issue - couldn't find any hint so that would verify the benefit of a low (low wrt below normal threshold) sodium diet.

[Scottsmum]

Diabetes insipidus is a totally different condition to diabetes mellitus (which is the one you are probably thinking of, where the dog/person/whatever needs insulin etc).

Oh - I assumed they were the same thing similar :) so thanks for that. I went and did a quick search - this access to the university database has to be useful for something ;)

I found this paper:

The Journal of small animal practice, December 1998, Vol.39(12), pp.592-4

Successful long-term treatment of congenital nephrogenic diabetes insipidus in a dog

Takemura, N

A two-year-old intact male shiba inu dog with excessive polyuria and polydipsia (PU-PD) was diagnosed as having congenital nephrogenic diabetes insipidus based on clinical findings, the results of urinalysis, blood examinations, a modified water deprivation test and a low dose dexamethasone suppression test. The owner was advised to provide adequate access to drinking water, and treatment with a low dose of hydrochlorothiazide (2 mg/kg, twice daily) together with a low sodium diet was initiated. As a result, the daily water intake decreased significantly from 6500 to 7500 ml/day (800 to 980 ml/kg/day) to 1400 to 1900 ml/day (170 to 230 ml/kg/day) and the clinical signs associated with the PU-PD and dehydration improved over the following two years.

They recommended the dog gets put on Hills H/D

http://www.hillspet.com/en/us/products/pd-canine-hd-dry

Edited March 17, 2016 by Scottsmum

[Willem]

...I found this paper:

The Journal of small animal practice, December 1998, Vol.39(12), pp.592-4

Successful long-term treatment of congenital nephrogenic diabetes insipidus in a dog

Takemura, N

A two-year-old intact male shiba inu dog with excessive polyuria and polydipsia (PU-PD) was diagnosed as having congenital nephrogenic diabetes insipidus based on clinical findings, the results of urinalysis, blood examinations, a modified water deprivation test and a low dose dexamethasone suppression test. The owner was advised to provide adequate access to drinking water, and treatment with a low dose of hydrochlorothiazide (2 mg/kg, twice daily) together with a low sodium diet was initiated. As a result, the daily water intake decreased significantly from 6500 to 7500 ml/day (800 to 980 ml/kg/day) to 1400 to 1900 ml/day (170 to 230 ml/kg/day) and the clinical signs associated with the PU-PD and dehydration improved over the following two years.

They recommended the dog gets put on Hills H/D

http://www.hillspet.com/en/us/products/pd-canine-hd-dry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrochlorothiazide...yeah, it is somehow linked to NaCl, see section 'Mechanism of action' in link...lower NaCl intake will require less water to be adsorbed into the blood via osmotic pressure and thus less 'thirst'.

[JulesP]

Fairly sure the question was what kibble is low in sodium not should the dog be fed a low sodium diet!

[Willem]

Fairly sure the question was what kibble is low in sodium not should the dog be fed a low sodium diet!

Thanks for the heads-up...your are right, there was no question mark at the end of the OP's..."Are there any other suggestions that I can pass on." :D

[Yonjuro]

Thanks for all of the suggestions so far. :)

Just to clarify a few things :)

Numerous tests finally uncovered NDI, they will be back at vet next week to discuss treatment plans and get a referral to a specialist

In the meantime my friend is trying to get as much info on the condition as possible - for their own understanding. During their own research they found that a low sodium diet can be beneficial, so they asked me the question of "do you know of any low sodium kibbles ?"

As we all know, nothing is ever simple with diet, so I asked them some questions so I could get better info, and this is when they told me about the NDI.

It is most likely that a Hills prescription diet will be recommended and it may well be the best food for him. But... if there are alternatives then we can put it in the mix for discussion. It may be that a raw or home cooked diet will be best but I don't know enough about the condition to make this recommendation though.

I imagine that all things are on the table right now, and will reassessed after discussions with the doctors. :)

@Scottsmum - thanks very much for those links.

PS. Too many posts to quote so thank you all for the input thus far :)

Edited March 18, 2016 by Yonjuro

[Scottsmum]

Fairly sure the question was what kibble is low in sodium not should the dog be fed a low sodium diet!

Hope I didn't sound like I was questioning it - I was just really interested.

[westiemum]

Any news Yonjuro? What did your friends discover and decide if anything? Its a very interesting discussion that since my current two westies are getting older, I'd like to tuck away for future reference!

[Scottsmum]

Glad you bumped this WM - I was wondering the same thing. Very interesting topic / thread :)

[Yonjuro]

Any news Yonjuro? What did your friends discover and decide if anything? Its a very interesting discussion that since my current two westies are getting older, I'd like to tuck away for future reference!

Glad you bumped this WM - I was wondering the same thing. Very interesting topic / thread :)

Thanks for your interest in this :)

We found some lower sodium kibbles.

Canidae, TOTW and Ziwipeak all run at around 0.3% sodium. Which is derived from the meat content.

The vet is going to try with a treatment of low dose of hydrochlorothiazide (2 mg/kg, twice daily) together with a low sodium diet.

I believe that the only prescription diets with lower sodium than the above were canned food, at around 0.21 - but if you take into consideration the water content and the fact that ZiwiPeak canned is 0.13% it still seems to indicate that the non-prescription foods come out better.

So that was the latest news, I will let you know if anything else comes up :)

Edited March 26, 2016 by Yonjuro

[JulesP]

Any news Yonjuro? What did your friends discover and decide if anything? Its a very interesting discussion that since my current two westies are getting older, I'd like to tuck away for future reference!

Glad you bumped this WM - I was wondering the same thing. Very interesting topic / thread :)

Thanks for your interest in this :)

We found some lower sodium kibbles.

Canidae, TOTW and Ziwipeak all run at around 0.3% sodium. Which is derived from the meat content.

The vet is going to try with a treatment of low dose of hydrochlorothiazide (2 mg/kg, twice daily) together with a low sodium diet.

I believe that the only prescription diets with lower sodium than the above were canned food, at around 0.21 - but if you take into consideration the water content and the fact that ZiwiPeak canned is 0.13% it still seems to indicate that the non-prescription foods come out better.

So that was the latest news, I will let you know if anything else comes up :)

Both l/d & k/d are low sodium. That is the dry. l/d is .21 and k/d is .18.