Detecting and Managing Food Allergies in Dogs and Cats: Veterinary Insights
Join Dr. Sugerman as he delves into the complexities of pet food allergies. Offering valuable insights and actionable advice for pet owners. Learn how to recognize potential triggers, conduct elimination diets, and tailor your pet's nutrition for optimal health. Empower yourself with essential knowledge to support your furry friend's journey towards relief.
What You’ll Learn:
Signs of food allergies in pets, including itching, ear infections, and gastrointestinal issues
The role of the immune system in food allergies and how it overreacts to certain proteins
The importance of diagnostic collaboration between veterinarians and pet owners
The process of elimination diets and food trials for identifying allergic triggers
Myths about grain-free diets and their efficacy in managing food allergies
Insights into the diversity of allergic reactions in pets and the need for personalized dietary approaches
Common allergens in pet foods and the challenges of finding suitable alternatives
How to empower pet owners with practical strategies for supporting their pet's long-term health and well-being
Ideas Worth Sharing:
"Food allergies are due to the immune system and just the way that they overreact to something in the diet." - Dr. Tyler Sugerman-McGiffin
"We have to really rely on you guys for this diagnostic... We can only do so much, because you guys are there with them all the time." - Dr. Tyler Sugerman-McGiffin
Resources From This Episode:
Balance It - Homemade Pet Diet Nutrition Website
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Read The Transcript:
Dr. Sugerman: Does your dog have a food allergy? You may not even realize what those signs are for food allergy in pets. So listen to this story. It's 3 a.m. and in walks Rupert. He is a two year old Frenchie and his dad brought him in because he had said that neither one of them could sleep. Rupert was non stop itching, shaking at his head, and his dad felt terrible for him. Even though his dad said that he was actually not a dog person. You could tell he was really worried about him.
So after talking to him for a while and examining Rupert, we determined that he has an ear infection. So I asked his dad about if he had ever had an ear infection before. And he said, yeah. One time it went away with medication and he was fine.
Okay, so then I asked him about what he was feeding Rupert. Seems like an odd question though, right? Like we're talking about an ear infection, and then I'm asking him about what kind of food he's eating. Listen in so you can find out more about food allergies and how those two things and many others are related.
Hi, and welcome to [00:01:00] Vetsplanation. I'm your veterinary host, Dr. Sugerman, and I'm going to teach you about veterinary medicine. In this podcast, we can dive deeper into the understanding of what our pets are going through and break down medical terms into easier to understand chunks of information. Just a quick disclaimer, this podcast is for informational purposes only.
This is not meant to be a diagnosis for your pet. If you have questions about diagnostics or treatment options, please talk to your veterinarian about those things. Remember, we are all practicing veterinary medicine and medicine is not an exact science. Your veterinarian may have different treatment options and different opinions.
The information I provide here is to help pet parents have a better understanding about their pets. If you like our podcast, please consider sharing this podcast with at least one friend or just somebody else who has pets as well. Now, let's jump into this week's episode.
Welcome back to Vetsplanation, everybody. I'm your host, Dr. Sugerman, and today we're talking about food allergies. So where we [00:02:00] left off was about our cute little Rupert who had an ear infection, it was itchy, and came in at 3 a.m. He was getting generic dog foods, like a bunch of different ones with lots of different types of proteins in them. His dad would add chicken on top of his food. He would give him all sorts of people food and new treats and stuff. Like he was constantly getting stuff. Rupert was also a bit on the chunky side, so we did have to talk about cutting back on his food a bit.
I did tell his dad, though, that I thought that Rupert has a food allergy. So what is a food allergy? Food allergies are due to the immune system and just the way that they overreact to something in the diet. Typically, the body's immune system is supposed to recognize something that's foreign and fight it off, and then also bring back a piece of it to tell everybody else; hey, we don't like this thing. It's an invader.
So essentially, if you had an army that went out and they find the bad guy, they get rid of the bad guy, but also have a picture of that bad guy to say; hey, more of these may come. So we need to be prepared for this in the future. [00:03:00] So that's what the normal immune system does.
But, instead of this being an actual invader that they're going after. This is something that he would normally just get. So being the food, typically it's the protein, but we'll discuss that later on. But it just means that that army again went out and it found this food. Let's say chicken. And it's like; hey, I don't like this chicken. We don't want this chicken anymore. We need to get rid of it.
So they build up this immune response to it. They build up the army, and they're like, get a picture of the chicken, and they're like, okay, anytime we see a chicken, we're gonna build up all this inflammation to tell the body it should not be here. We're gonna try to fight off this chicken. Even though it's just chicken. It shouldn't be a problem, right?
That's what the body does. It, for some reason, decides that particular protein, or that particular molecule, is something that it's going to start seeing as an invader rather than a normal part of the body.
So the most common places that we see this [00:04:00] reaction show up is usually like the skin, the intestines, the eyes, and even the respiratory system. Each pet is different though as to where they're affected and how. So my son has an allergy to pistachios. I know, random, right? And he gets swelling of the lips.
I essentially have an allergy to duck eggs. And yeah, again, really random, I know. But I get really severe migraines with them. So two very different ways that we are showing an allergy to our foods. Dogs and cats are the same way. One food allergy may show up as a skin problem, while the other dog, maybe even in the same litter, has intestinal problems instead, or doesn't have a food allergy to that particular protein, or that particular molecule at all.
So let's talk about the most common signs of food allergies. So the most common signs are like itchiness, it can be like licking at their paws or their limbs, biting somewhere on their body, or scratching at their face or their ears. A repeated ear infection is [00:05:00] another big sign that this is probably going to be a food allergy.
People think that their pet is just prone to ear infections, when in fact it ends up sometimes being a food allergy. Redness, dander, oiliness of the fur or skin, those can all be signs as well. Hot spots are another big one. This is where the pet chews or scratches at a spot, creating moisture and then creates this infection.
With the intestines, it could be that they have soft stools, diarrhea, excessive gas. I find that a lot when people talk about food allergies. Or even vomiting too. It could also be as simple as just like frequency of stools too. Like too little or too much stools. Like too little, too much during the day.
With the eyes, it can be like excessive tearing. I'll show you a picture of my dog. If you're listening on YouTube, I'll show you a picture of my dog and all of her tear staining around her eyes from her allergies. It could be that they have yellow discharge, watery eyes, redness of the [00:06:00] eyes, any of those things.
You could also see sneezing, reverse sneezing, which we've talked about previously. And even like swelling of the face, which is not as common of one, but definitely is a possibility. So now all these signs could be something else, right? Like I talked about biting the body. This could be fleas or flea allergy. You should listen to Dr. Z's episode on fleas for more information about that, it's very informative.
An ear infection could be just an ear infection, but I definitely question that after that first ear infection. When we get multiple ear infections then I start worrying it's more of a food allergy. Vomiting and diarrhea can be a whole sleuth of things.
There are multiple episodes on here that I talk about vomiting and diarrhea, like pancreatitis, gastrointestinal foreign bodies, and even Addison's disease. Facial swelling, that could be an allergic reaction. Or excessive tearing of the eyes, that could be an ulcer in the eyes. Or it could be an environmental allergy even, which I'll cover at a different time.[00:07:00]
There are many things that we as vets have to weed through in order to get that diagnosis. So there's so many differentials. What are we going to do to be able to diagnose a food allergy? This is the tricky part. So we have to really rely on you guys for this diagnostic. When I say that we have to partner with you, I really mean that.
We can only do so much, because you guys are there with them all the time. We only get to see them for 30 minutes every however many weeks. People want a simple answer, and there are blood tests for food allergies, but they're not accurate. So hear me out on this. First of all, you could have a false positive.
So that means that something comes up as positive on that food allergy test when it's really not for that food. It could be that that food had just been digested and so that body starts seeing this and starts reacting to it but it's not actually reacting to it in a bad way yet. It just hasn't been digested.
And so therefore, it could be that the body shows up as a food allergy [00:08:00] to that food. So for an example, if your dog ate fish for breakfast and you perform that test, maybe let's say in the evening, 6pm appointment with your regular vet, and then that fish protein has not been broken down completely yet, it can actually show that your pet has a fish allergy because it just hasn't been broken down. Even though your pet does not actually have a fish allergy.
The other reason for false positives is that the protein of one food may be just too similar to the protein of another. I know this sounds confusing, so here's like an example to help. So let's say your dog has an allergy to peanut butter.
That test may see other members of the legume family, which is what peanuts are under, a legume. It might see those other members as a problem and tell you your dog is also allergic to maybe green beans. Just because they're both in the legume family even though they're not actually allergic to green beans.
Now you might think that this is likely a small percentage of animals that have these false positives, right? So it really shouldn't be a big deal. But according to [00:09:00] foodallergy.org, even in people, the chances of a false positive is about 50 to 60 percent of all blood tests. That's a fairly high number.
Now, if you feel like this is really only in humans, how about this? It has never been proven that a positive test has actually corresponded to an actual clinical change in a pet. So in a study that was done using blood tests. They had drawn blood on all these dogs to determine what they thought that they were allergic to.
Then they had the pet parent give the dog a new food. They didn't tell them what was in it. Some of the ingredients were ones that were reported to have a very high positive that they were allergic to those ingredients. But when the owners reported back, or when those pet parents reported back as to whether the dog was doing better or not after a certain period of time. People in the group whose dogs were given the food that they were supposedly allergic to stated that they were doing better. They were doing so much better.
But they should have done worse, right? They should have been super itchy, they should have had all these other problems, [00:10:00] and they didn't. So we unfortunately have not been able to prove that these blood tests do work.
If food allergy testing via blood work is out, now what?
Do any of you have a food allergy? How did you find out that you had a food allergy? It's because you ate it, right? My son ate the pistachio. His lips swelled up. I was eating duck eggs and then had to finally figure out later on that I was getting very severe migraines every time I'd eat duck eggs.
You got to eat it to be able to find out and that's usually the same as what we have to do with our pets. We have to see what happens when they eat it. So we do something that's called a diet trial or an elimination diet trial. This means that we have to put them on a very strict diet for a couple of months.
We start out using this diet that has something called hydrolyzed proteins. This means that the protein is broken up into extremely tiny molecules so that the pet's body does not recognize that protein as something that's harmful. You know how that there's like these [00:11:00] hydrolyzed milk products that people can get, like people who have lactose intolerance they can drink it, or babies who have lactose intolerance can drink these?
It's the same thing. We're tricking the immune system into thinking that there's nothing in there that the pet is actually allergic to in that food. So if we go back to like our example with our army who's going after the chicken. So the army doesn't see that it's a chicken because it's like a Trojan horse, right?
Like it's able to go through and not be recognized as a chicken. So that army is not going to build up that response to it.
There are a couple other alternative ways that you can do this food trial. You can also give a novel protein. That means something your dog has never been exposed to. Something like rabbit or kangaroo with sweet potatoes. Something like that. You have to make sure though that there are no other ingredients that your pet can be exposed to.
Such as if they make a dog food that also has chicken in it. It's really hard to clean that protein off of every surface so the chicken can contaminate that rabbit diet [00:12:00] that you just bought and that diet trial is not going to work.
Or the third option that you can do is you can actually make a diet at home. There's a great website called BalanceIt.com, and I'll put the link in the show notes. But you can pick the ingredients that you want. You will pick the protein that you want, maybe you say pork or lamb or something, and it will tell you how to make that diet a balanced diet from them.
I get a lot of people who end up making just chicken and rice for their pet for the rest of their lives, but that's not a balanced diet. They're not going to have all the minerals and vitamins that they're supposed to have just in those two things. It's really important to make sure that we have a balanced diet for them.
Not just that we're trying to help their food allergies for right now, because we got to make sure that they're going to live a long life and have all those micronutrients. For all those people who are into nutrition, we talk about macronutrients, but also micronutrients being the minerals and vitamins that they need to get as well.
This is for cats and dogs [00:13:00] too, which is fantastic. I love this website for that because most places will only do dogs. This website has been made by a veterinary nutritionist to help pet parents safely feed their pets. So no matter which of the three routes you take, your pet will have to be on that food and only that food for two to three months.
This includes treats, no chewable medications that are flavored like some flea preventions. You can still use a topical or just give it to them right before you start the diet trial. And no people food, nothing. Once they have been on this strict diet, you might notice things clearing up, but this is when the actual trial begins.
Next, you want to challenge their immune system. This means that we give them one thing at a time that they may be allergic to. So let's say chicken is the problem, or thought to be the problem. You can add chicken into the diet that you've been giving for the past two to three months. Whichever one you choose, if you chose the hydrolyzed protein, or if you chose to make your own diet, or if you chose a [00:14:00] novel protein.
You're going to add chicken to that diet for about seven days for a cat or 14 days for a dog. Then you see if any of those symptoms occur again. Do they start itching? Do they get an ear infection? Do they get diarrhea? We're looking for all of those problems again. So then if they do have one of those problems, then they likely have a chicken allergy.
So then we take that chicken away, and then we're going to add something else. We're going to add in beef, or eggs, or whatever else, pork, lamb, something else. We're going to do that for one to two weeks, again, depending on if it's a dog or a cat you're doing this for. And then repeat the process over and over until you've compiled this list of things that your pet may be allergic to.
Now you might be wondering, what are the most common things that pets are allergic to? The most common allergens in dogs are chicken, including eggs, because you gotta remember that the chicken came from the egg, right? Beef, dairy, [00:15:00] lamb, pork, wheat, rice, and soy. For cats, the most common ones are fish, crazy, right? Chicken, again with the egg, beef, dairy, lamb, and wheat.
So now, if you go to the local pet store, or Costco, or wherever it is that you pick up your bag of food normally, if you pick up the first bag, most likely it's going to have one of those things that they're allergic to in it. Diets without these ingredients can be really hard to find and that's because they're just the most common ingredients in pet foods.
Some people have asked can't I just find a diet that doesn't have any of those things in it and a protein that they've never been exposed to and just feed that for the rest of their life. Sure, you'll just have to be very strict about no treats or anything else for the rest of their life as well. Which, if you have kids, is very hard to do.
The other question I'm commonly asked is, can we feed them venison or kangaroo right from the start? That way we don't have to worry about these food allergies, right? That would be a [00:16:00] great solution, right? It's not that cats and dogs are born with this food allergy, though, specifically to chicken.
So your pet can be allergic to the venison, just because that's the protein that they were exposed to when they had some weird response by the immune system. So the immune system just decided, hey, that time that you're feeding this venison, I'm not going to like the venison, and I'm going to create this allergic reaction to it, and we're not going to be able to have venison.
It just depends on whenever that immune system creates the problem. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that it's always chicken. It just happens to be that chicken is one of the most common products in dog foods. So on the flip side with Rupert remember the little Frenchie? So his dad had read about food allergies when he was a puppy and had decided to rotate a bunch of different proteins to ensure that he didn't have a food allergy.
That also doesn't work though. So they can still develop an allergy to whatever food was being fed at that time when [00:17:00] the immune system went a little haywire. Now we have a bigger problem because now we have to try to find a novel protein that Rupert had never been exposed to before. So really, when it came down to it, it was only Kangaroo that was left for him, which is not the easiest thing to get.
Now, the bigger question that I usually get asked is Rupert had always had been on a grain free diet, so isn't that the cause of food allergies? That's what I read. Did you notice that proteins were the most common thing that I read off for pets to be allergic to? Not the grains. It's actually fairly uncommon for pets to be allergic to grains.
They can be allergic to a specific grain, but they can also possibly be allergic to things like potatoes, or corn, or even carrots. It's not as likely, but it's still a possibility. Therefore, grain free diets are not likely going to treat a food allergy unless they actually have an allergy to a very specific grain in it.
So unless you found that there has been a very specific grain that they're [00:18:00] allergic to, grain free diets are not going to help with this. As for Rupert, his dad happened to come on a night when I wasn't crazy busy, luckily. So we were able to talk about all things food allergies. We got his ear infection all cleared up and his dad brought him back to see one of our general practitioner vets at my practice, who said he had been doing great for his last two months of his diet trial. And so they were ready to start doing his food challenges.
I do love to hear that. I love to hear when people like really listen to what I'm saying to try to help their pet Rupert is gonna be so much more comfortable now after they figure this all out and hopefully no more trips to see me at 3 a.m.
All right guys, that was our food allergy talk. So we're gonna talk about our animal fact next. So what do you think is the difference between a lizard and a snake? You're probably thinking that lizards have legs, right? And also are probably concerned that I'm a veterinarian that doesn't know that.
I'm about to blow your mind. What if I told you that there [00:19:00] is something called a European glass lizard, otherwise known as a legless lizard. Yeah, a lizard with no legs. So it looks very much like a snake or maybe like a large earthworm with its long body slithering and spitting and hissing here's what makes them a lizard though.
First of all, they do not have a flexible jaw. So if they tried to open their jaw to be able to get a wide prey like snakes do, they can't swallow something that's really large. They can only eat small things because they cannot unhinge their jaw. They also have holes on the side of their heads for their ears, which is something that snakes do not have. Plus, they have movable eyelids. Snakes, if you look at them, it just stays very flat.
They can also drop off their tail when they're feeling really threatened. Which some snakes can do but just not as many do. This is actually why they're called a glass snake.
So it's not because you can see through them, which is what I would have thought. It's actually because in the unlikely event that it does lose its [00:20:00] tail, it's said to look like it shatters like glass because it can break into multiple pieces. There's a variety of names for this lizard as well. So the scientific name is Pseudopus apodus.
Which is Greek and it translates for fake legged. And in Russian, I'm real sorry for anybody who's listening that's Russian I'm gonna mess this up, it's known as a Sheltopusik, which means yellow bellied. These lizards have some other interesting aspects about them too, like 50 percent of them will lay eggs, while the other 50 percent will actually give live birth.
They also are burrowers, which with their legless bodies seems like help because they can fit into the ground rather nicely. These lizards can also swim, and are most active after a rainfall, because that's when all like the worms are out. Because that's what they have to usually eat is insects, not giant prey like a snake does.
Lastly, people do keep them as pets, but they are really shy animals, and they're [00:21:00] unlikely to bite. This has actually made them very perfect for some movies, like Indiana Jones, and the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where there's like the pit of snakes, aka lizards, because they were actually not really gonna hurt the actors, right? We don't really want to get a snake that's actually gonna hurt the actors. So instead they used these legless lizards in order to be able to shoot that scene. So they're famous lizards, too.
All right, everybody. I hope that was very informative about our food allergies and also how to tell the difference between a snake and a lizard.
I'm going to say a shout out really quickly to Luna, my cat friend, also who has food allergies. Because we were able to figure out his food allergies by switching him to a really high quality diet as well. And he did really, really great on that. Good job Luna as well.
All right. So if you know anybody who loves animals, please don't forget to share this podcast with them. Hit like and subscribe for us, we really appreciate all of the support.
Until next week, please make sure to keep your pets happy, healthy, and safe. [00:22:00] Thank you, everybody.
Thank you guys for listening this week. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or you just want to say hi, you can email me at Suggs, S U G G S @ VetsplanationPodcast.com or visit the website at VetsplanationPodcast.com or find us on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok at Vetsplanation. Thank you all for listening and I'll see you back here next week.