Pet Care the Natural Way

Our pets often mean as much to us as the human loved ones in our lives. Watching a dog or a cat become ill or grow old evokes some of the same emotions as watching a family member’s health decline. Consequently, ensuring that our littlest “best friends” are healthy is a top priority.

Yet, our pets are susceptible to many of the same degenerative diseases that we can develop. Just as cancer, heart, liver and kidney diseases are some of the major causes of death in humans, so too do they take the lives of many of our pets. In fact, one 1978 study investigated the prevalence and similarities between cancers in dogs, cats and humans. The researchers determined that the prevalence of certain cancers was similar between the animals and humans and that the cancers themselves were similar.1

New Pet Line
VRP recognizes that pets are often a member of the family, and as such, are as deserving of good health as any other member of the household. VRP has been committed to bringing human consumers high-quality, technically sophisticated, health-optimizing supplements for more than 25 years. Now, VRP is beginning a new supplement line for pets. Over the remainder of 2004, innovative pet supplements will be launched, primarily for dogs and cats. VRP is bringing out its first pet supplement this month: L-tryptophan.

Pet Food: Is It Enough?
VRP decided to launch its new pet care line of supplements to offer our furry friends the nutrition that they need—nutrition they’re not usually getting enough of in their food.

Dogs need a healthy balance of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and water just like humans do in order to stay healthy. Cats, on the other hand, are carnivores. Unfortunately, soy is often used in dry cat and dog foods, because it is high in protein and relatively cheap. But because cats are carnivores and their digestive tracts are unaccustomed to plant-based proteins such as soy, they do not thrive on pet food.

Furthermore, when your dog or cat sits down to a meal, he or she may be consuming pet food made from animal products unsuitable for human consumption. In commercial pet food, chicken beaks and feathers are often counted as a source of protein. VRP’s new pet care line of supplements is specially designed to replace the nutrients your pet is missing in his or her diet. The first product in the line gives your pets ample amounts of a crucial amino acid: L-Tryptophan.

L-Tryptophan for Pets
L-Tryptophan is the least plentiful amino acid in any diet, whether based on meat or grains. Furthermore, processing of pet food damages the digestibility of proteins,2 putting pets at additional risk for tryptophan deficiency.

This potential for tryptophan deficiency is particularly alarming considering tryptophan plays an important role in animals’ health. Tryptophan assists with the digestion of food, helping it move through animals’ intestinal tract.3 In addition, immature dogs fed diets devoid of tryptophan and other amino acids suffered severely depressed food intakes, accompanying weight loss, and a distinctly negative nitrogen balance.4 Partial or total removal of these amino acids also resulted in a marked increase in blood and urinary urea. Increased urea concentrations are usually an indication of uremia, a toxic condition associated with renal insufficiency that is caused by the retention in the blood of substances normally excreted by the kidney.

A recent report in the medical-biological literature found that, with regard to the diets fed pigs and chickens raised for food: “Results indicated a clear tryptophan deficiency of the basal [basic] diet. Graded doses of tryptophan to the basal diet resulted in improvements in weight gain, daily feed intake and feed conversion rate.... Protein deposition in [chicken] broilers was significantly improved with dietary supplementation of 0.3g/kg tryptophan…”5 It should be noted that AAFCO (the American Association of Feed Control Officials) sets the “minimum requirements” for all animal feeds, including that fed to the pigs and chickens in this experiment. Since supplementary L-tryptophan improved various measures of the chickens’ and pigs’ growth, obviously the AAFCO-approved “basal diet” was not optimal, or else adding L-tryptophan would have had no benefit.

Pets’ Well Being
Since tryptophan is the precursor to the important neurotransmitter serotonin, tryptophan may be useful for any pets suffering from “serotonin deficiency syndrome.”

Serotonin is the neurotransmitter that promotes peace, well-being and impulse control. Dr. Joel Robertson notes that “…violent behavior is linked to low serotonin in both humans and animals.”6 Pets that are violent, aggressive, angry, depressed, moody, withdrawn, or unfriendly may be suffering from inadequate brain serotonin due to inadequate dietary tryptophan.

In a study published in 2000, researchers investigated the effect of high- and low-protein diets with or without tryptophan supplementation on the behavior of dogs with dominance aggression, territorial aggression, and hyperactivity.7 The researchers divided the dogs into three groups of 11 animals: one group of animals with dominance aggression, 11 with territorial aggression, and 11 with hyperactivity.

In each group, researchers fed the animals four diets for one week each in random order with a transition period of at least three days between each diet. Two diets contained low protein (approximately 18 percent), and two diets contained high protein (approximately 30 percent). Two of the diets (one low-protein and one high-protein) were supplemented with tryptophan. Owners scored their dog’s behavior daily by use of customized behavioral score sheets. Mean weekly values of five behavioral measures and serum concentrations of serotonin and tryptophan were determined at the end of each dietary period.

The results indicated that dominance aggression was highest in dogs fed high-protein diets without tryptophan supplementation. Tryptophan-supplemented low-protein diets, however, were associated with a lower amount of territorial aggression compared to low-protein diets without tryptophan supplements.

Supplemental tryptophan may be worth trying in such cases. Instructions for use based on a pet’s weight are provided on the product label. In cats with spinal injuries, 5-HTP (5-Hydroxytryptophan), the metabolite of tryptophan, improved the cats’ ability to move by increasing regularity of hindlimb stepping and by increasing the step cycleduration.8

Conclusion
VRP’s first pet supplement, L-tryptophan, is offered in 500 mg capsules and 100 gram jars of powder. This tryptophan has been assayed by HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography), and it checks out as equivalent to pharmaceutical-grade tryptophan, with not a trace of the impurity that led the FDA to remove tryptophan from the market in 1989.

We believe that given the pig/chicken study previously mentioned, and the nutritionally poor quality of most pet foods, the addition of this essential amino acid should be useful to any pet’s diet. Even though this product is in effect pharmaceutical grade, of highest purity, FDA regulations allow us to offer this product only for use by pets, not for humans.

Throughout 2004, VRP customers can expect to see a special line of multivitamin/nutrient supplements for dogs and cats and a joint formula designed to help pets maintain healthy joints. VRP is also formulating a “metabolic optimizer” product with ingredients such as red wine polyphenols, carnitine, lipoic acid and resveratrol to provide dogs and cats with access to the “life extension” revolution.

There is also work being done on a “whole foods” concentrate with liver, spleen, omega-3 fish powder, etc. to supplement the less than optimal food most pets consume.

References
1. Hayes H.H. Jr. The comparative epidemiology of selected neoplasms between dogs, cats and humans. A review. Eur J Cancer 1978 Dec;14(12):1299-308.
2. Hendriks W., et al. Heat processing changes the protein quality of canned cat foods as measured with a rat bioassay. J Anim Sci 1999 77:669-76.
3. Bull J.S., Grundy D., Scratcherd T. The effect of intraluminal tryptophan and phenylalanine on small intestinal motility in the conscious dog. J Physiol 1985 Oct;367:353-62.
4. Milner J.A. Assessment of the essentiality of methionine, threonine, tryptophan, histidine and isoleucine in immature dogs. J Nutr. 1979 Aug;109(8):1351-7.
5. Peisker M. Efficiency of a lysine-tryptophan blend as a tryptophan source in animal nutrition. Adv Exp Med Biol 1999, 467:743-47.
6. Robertson J., Monte T. Natural Prozac. Harper San Francisco, 1997:35.
7. DeNapoli J.S., Dodman N.H., Shuster L., Rand W.M., Gross K.L. Effect of dietary protein content and tryptophan supplementation on dominance aggression, territorial aggression, and hyperactivity in dogs. J Am Vet Med Assoc 2000 Aug 15;217(4):504-8.
8. Brustein E., Rossignol S. Recovery of locomotion after ventral and ventrolateral spinal lesions in the cat. II. Effects of noradrenergic and serotoninergic drugs. J Neurophysiol 1999 Apr;81(4):1513-3.

The information in this article is not intended to provide personal medical advice, which should be obtained from a medical professional, and has not been approved by the U.S. FDA.

Copyright 2004 by Vitamin Research Products, Inc.