Tag Archives: feeding the horse

Acute Health Issues, Consults, Equine Nutrition, Horse Health & Wellness, Uncategorized

Start feeding your horse this TODAY!

Fruit and Glycemic Load

Go ahead and feed your horses those apples, oranges, bananas, pears and other HEALTHY fruits!!! Along with fresh vegetables, nuts and seeds, your horse DESERVES a diet that is rich in vitamins and minerals AND fiber!!! FRESH fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds!

LEAVE THE PROCESSED, BAGGED FEEDS OUT!

If you feel your horse NEEDS grain, then feed WHOLE, NON-GMO, ORGNIC grain as an enhancement to FRESH forage.

BUT — you’ve been told not to feed fresh fruits or vegetables to your horse because of EMS, IR or Cushings because they are “too high on the glycemic index”… well, what about the GLYCEMIC LOAD!? “What is THAT?” you ask. Read on –

From [healthfully.com]
“The glycemic load is a value that expresses a food’s relative impact on blood glucose given the total carbohydrates available in a typical serving and how quickly these carbohydrates are assimilated into the bloodstream, according to the Linus Pauling Institute. Foods with Low-GL values range from 1 to 10 and have a small overall impact on blood glucose. Medium-GL values range from 11 to 19, while high-GL food values are 20 and above, so they have a more significant impact on blood sugar. Most fresh fruits fall in the low-GL range of 1 to 10 with one common exception: bananas, which are medium-GL, according to the Sydney University Glycemic Index Research Services. Factors such as the degree of ripeness and processing such as canning will increase glycemic load slightly, while drying fruits has a significant impact, yielding medium- to high-GL values depending on the type of dried fruit.

Glycemic Index of Fruits

Since fruits contain carbohydrates, most fruits will increase your blood sugar. However, some can affect it more than others. A good way to determine a food’s effect on your blood sugar is to know its glycemic index. The glycemic index is a rating given to food, indicating how quickly and drastically will increase your blood glucose 3. The scale ranges from zero to 100; the higher a food’s score on the glycemic index, the higher and faster it will raise your blood sugar 3. If a food is between 0 and 55, it is considered a low-glycemic food. From 56 to 69, it’s considered a moderate glycemic food, and from 70 to 100, it is a high-glycemic food. Glycemic load is another measure of a food’s impact on blood sugar that takes into account its glycemic index relative to its content of all forms of carbohydrate, including fiber. For example, watermelon has a high-glycemic index but a low glycemic load because it raises blood sugar slowly. Fruits that have a moderately high glycemic effect include bananas, pineapple and raisins. Low-glycemic fruits are apples, oranges, mangoes and grapefruit.

  • Since fruits contain carbohydrates, most fruits will increase your blood sugar.
  •  high glycemic index means a spike in blood glucose, while a low-glycemic index food results in a moderate rise over a prolonged time. Fiber slows the digestion of foods and also blocks the absorption of sugars all at once. These combined factors result in a moderate rise in blood sugar over a significant amount of time. In addition, fruit offers an array of vitamins and minerals“

So now, go here: FRESH DIET FOR HORSES (thepenzancehorse.com) to read a full listing of what horses CAN eat safely and healthfully! ,… BUT if your horse is already EMS, IR or has Cushings (PPID) please consult with PENZANCE for a full evaluation and specific diet and health evaluation. gwen.santagate@gmail.com 774-280-4227

Acute Health Issues, Consults, Educational, Equine Nutrition, Horse Care & Management, Horse Health & Wellness, Immunology

MICRO-WHAT?

MICROBIOMES

 

What a funny word. Puts me in mind of tiny little cartoon buggies running around our guts.

Actually, did you know that we are MORE “buggies” (bacterial cells) than we are human cells?

The same applies to our horses.

So what, you ask?

I’ll tell you what — those microbiome buggies are the little critters that keep us healthy!

Over 80% of the immune system lies in the gut … in these little gut buggies. And THAT is a HUGE deal!

Our bodies and our horses’ bodies are full of trillions of bacteria, viruses and fungi. They are collectively known as the microbiome.

Some of the bacteria is related to diseases while others are extremely important to the immune system and overall health.

In fact, there are more bacterial cells in your body than human cells. There are roughly 40 trillion bacterial cells in your body and only 30 trillion human cells. That means you are more bacteria than human (1, 2).

In fact, there are up to 1,000 species of bacteria in the human gut microbiome, and each of them plays a different role in your body. Most of them are extremely important for your health, while others can and do cause disease.

In the hindgut of a horse, changes in the bacteria levels through dietary disruption, seasonal changes, stress, or age can lead to colic and laminitis, causing lameness or even death in severe cases. In this study, we profiled bacterial communities from fecal samples collected and submitted by horse-owners participating in the Equine Microbiome Project (EMP) and correlated differences in community structure with feed type, specifically horses eating exclusively hay, pasture, a hay-concentrate mix, or a combination of pasture, hay, and concentrate as reported in EMP metadata surveys.  –https://www.j-evs.com/article/S0737-0806(17)30256-3/abstract

So, I ask you – which kind of bacteria are you feeding YOUR HORSE? (Well, and yourself, too — after all, our horses needs their humans to be healthy in order to take care of them, right?)

A very wise man once stated, “All disease begins in the gut.” — Hippocrates

Well, that doesn’t include genetic diseases but we’re talking metabolics here.

Think of Cushings, Insulin Resistance, EMS, Auto-immune, Leaky Gut, and so many more chronic nasties. THESE are the types of diseases with which our domestic horses are challenged more and more each day.

This has a lot to do with the different gut bacteria residing in the digestive tracts, as well as the integrity of the gut lining (1).

According to numerous studies, unwanted bacterial products called endotoxins can sometimes “leak” through and enter the bloodstream (2).

When this happens, the immune system recognizes these foreign molecules and mounts an attack against them, resulting in a chronic inflammatory response (3).

Inflammation is the response of the immune system to foreign invaders, toxins or cell injury.

Suffice to say,  diet-induced inflammation has been shown to trigger insulin resistance, leptin resistance (causing obesity), fatty liver disease, and has been strongly linked to many of the world’s most serious diseases (4, 5, 6)

Without going into much more detail and totally bogging down our minds, suffice to say that, once again, Hippocrates was right when he said,

“Let thy medicine be thy food and thy food be thy medicine.”

 

So now, you know what MICROBIOMES are, how they affect your horses’ overall health (and your own). I guess the question now arises as to … do you want to learn more?

The key questions being … What are you gonna do now that you know this?

Ask me about my WHOLE HEALTH for the WHOLE HORSE protocol.

Don’t be shy. Email to me: gwen.santagate@gmail.com or even call me on the phone +1 860.556.9199  Let’s set up some time to chat further.

 

PENZANCE – "God's Holy Headland. The place for spiritual growth."

Proudly powered by WordPress