Pancreatitis Cases

I am very worried about my Rottie Xena who is 6 years old.

Xena suffered with entropia as a pup and had surgery but her eyes have never fully recovered and they flare up every few weeks. She constantly rubs her eyes and when wearing a buster collar, she uses her hind leg which is less accurate and causes more damage to the eye area. I don’t use any candles or air fresheners in the house. 

She was raw fed and I made sure she avoided chicken, duck, turkey but it still constantly flared up and then calmed down again. She has spent most of her life on antibiotics, steroids, antihistamines, etc. but they don’t work. 

Unfortunately, last year she was very poorly with pancreatitis, inflammatory bowel disease and aspirational pneumonia. This resulted in her eyes flaring up badly again, perhaps because she was so run down. She is now being fed Chappie (vet’s advice due to pancreatitis) and her eyes are terrible. I wonder if this is because both flavours, including original, contain chicken. 

Xena also has heart disease - leaking valve, irregular heart rate and slightly enlarged heart. 

I have recently started to add hemp oil to her food. 

She also seems to have hot spots on her legs and is constantly trying to lick/bite them. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Thank you

Dr. Steve's Advice - every condition your dog has - heart disease, pancreatitis, IBD, and pneumonia - is caused by a single Chinese medical problem, Shao Yang disharmony. That is good news, because it means that everything can potentially get better together, although you may need to cycle through a few herbal formulas to pick off all the problems.

For severe blepharitis like that, I would start with Halscion (https://goldstandardherbs.com/products/Original-Halscion-85g-p647327436) by Gold Standard Herbs. It's my go-to for that condition and should help the other conditions, too.

As for the diet, I guess if she is not any worse off on that food compared to the others, it's okay to continue for a while. Add in a probiotic, though, like Lactobacillus. Eventually, if we get her feeling good, a real food diet with fruits, vegetables, and a probiotic added (to make up 1/6 to 1/10) of the food in the dish is advisable for maximum enduring wellness). But for now, just add in the probiotics and the herbs. 

Hope that helps! You're looking for an obvious improvement within the first two or three weeks

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I have a ten year old maltese and she has had pancreatitis before, her last flare being about seven months ago. She has been on the Hills ID low fat prescription wet food for quite some time now, even before the pancreatitis diagnosis. I’m currently slowly transitioning her to a fresh food diet- My Perfect Pet chicken formula. My concern is, ever since maybe October or November, she has a gurgling stomach after pretty much every meal. The gurgling begins anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half after eating and the length and loudness vary everyday. I know what the symptoms of pancreatitis are, but she doesn’t have any of them. She has good energy, good appetite, no vomiting or diarrhea, no lethargy, etc. All she has is a gurgling stomach. Her vet doesn’t really seem concerned as she doesn’t have any other symptoms. Is there something I could give her? She isn’t bothered by it and doesn’t show any signs of abdominal pain but it just seems a bit odd to me to have gurgling after every single meal. Is this concerning? Thank you so much!

Dr. Steve's Advice - I'm glad you're moving to a real food diet for your dog. If the low fat processed canned diet was being fed even attacks occurred, then it certainly can't be looked at as a solution to the problem. My experience is that refined starches, which would be abundant in that canned food, are what predispose most animals to pancreatic inflammation. 

The gurgling is associated with peristaltic activity, so herbs that regulate intestinal muscle contractions can help resolve them. Western herbal medicine calls these 'carminatives'. An example of something you could give would be ground up Chamomile tea mixed into the fresh food. It will essentially steep in the digestive tract, releasing it's anti-inflammatory and smooth muscle contracting compounds right as they are being needed.

A formula that contains carminatives that can also help prevent pancreatitis from recurring is Three Seeds Combination by Kan Essentials. You can often find that on Amazon if you're in the US. 

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Please help. I have a 5.5 year old boxer with what appears to be pancreatitis. 

Started with no appetite so I started making her chicken and rice. She probably had diarrhea but is a private pooper and we live on a farm so I had no idea. 

The no appetite continued for a few days and she was losing weight rapidly, so I brought her into the clinic. After 2 days of testing, IV fluids, meds, etc. we come to the conclusion that it is probably pancreatitis. However, her amylase wasn’t elevated. Her LFTs were, as were her lipase. 

She still has diarrhea but seems to have slowed down. She looks a tiny bit more perky but truly looks like a skeleton. I got her to eat finally last night some GI low fat wet food and today she had a small jar of baby food after some enticing. I had her getting IVF @ home however she’s not wanting to lay down much and so it’s been more challenging.

Her mom died of pancreatitis so I’m extremely concerned. Any tips/tricks/thoughts as to what I may be missing?

Dr. Steve's Advice - Adoptrex from Gold Standard Herbs was designed for exactly this situation - to resolve pancreatitis tendencies and strengthen the GI. You may want to give it a try. (https://goldstandardherbs.com/products/Original-Adoptrex-85g-p647327433)

Continuing your real food diet will likely prevent pancreatitis tendencies in the future. After all, if we use "boiled chicken and rice diets" to get sick animals better, doesn't that imply they are a healthier choice? Shouldn't we just feed them all the time? Makes sense to me...

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I have come to a cross roads and would really appreciate your input.

Patient - Bellzie Mae 8 year old 52 lbs English Setter spayed at 6 months, vax'd for everything until 2017 when diagnosed with Anaplasmosis. Currently asymptomatic but she does flare typically twice a year. She was fed Diamond Naturals Lamb and Rice all her life and nothing else or it would result is very watery diarrhea. She is an active girl and bird hunts with me annually during the hunting season.

Feb 2022 she had a routine procedure done to remove a large lipoma that was under her front left leg. Pre surgical blood work confirmed Pancreatitis - see image. Prior to surgery she only displayed signs of discomfort once or twice a year beginning in 2020. She would curl up in a ball and her tummy would rumble loud, get up and dart to curl up again in another corner, and repeat. I found steeping ginger slices, allowing that to cool, and giving her 1 TBSP would resolve all symptoms. She did have two episodes of bloody gelatin like poo, once in late Jan 2022 after I caught her eating a black walnut shell and again in May 2022. Otherwise her stools are normal and formed. I never thought at the time it was something serious like pancreatitis.

After surgery we were instructed to "reduce her fat to 10% or less" so I started making my own DIY Raw diet for her. I boiled 93/7 organic grass fed burger to remove additional fat and mixed that with veggies and fruit as well as Small Batch Dehydrated Raw food. Our holistic vet gave us digestive enzymes and a multivitamin to add. Bell responded very well to that diet.

We continued to do monthly cPL enzyme testing until June 2022 when her numbers came down to 140. At our annual wellness exam September 2, 2022 I told our holistic vet I was no longer giving her digestive enzymes since she was showing no more symptoms. At that time he did not object or insist she needed to continue the digestive enzymes.

Six months after surgery, I submitted a hair test to look for nutritional deficiencies - results attached - which showed low Iron. After emailing back and forth Dr. Peter Dobias's team advised me to quickly sear her food in a cast iron pan. I'm not so sure high heat is a great idea and would rather cook her meat grind low and slow, but what do I know? Your thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Knowing I was missing things in my DIY Raw diet I bit the bullet and purchased a month's worth of fine grinds from Hare-Today which arrived this past Tuesday. Since beef was her norm we started with the beef grind. I added 1 tsp of Green Juju veggie mix to her food. Wed, Thurs, and Friday I woke up to her tummy grumbling and she was reluctant to eat breakfast each day but ate dinner with no problems. This morning (Friday) she was arching her back and coming to me needy like before. I added a bit of warm bone both and heated up her breakfast so that she would eat. I probably should have let her go without but I also had to go to work so I couldn't supervise her all day.

In reading through other's posts about pancreatitis I see you recommend Gold Standard Herbs Adoptrex often and Dr. Ian Billinghurst recommends Allegheny Nutrition Digestive Enzymes HP270V.  Would you please be kind enough to share if I could or should use both, how much to offer and for how long? I have both in my shopping cart but if I need more than 1 bottle I need to update that before checking out.

Besides adding raw goats milk, which I'm picking up today, and the above two supplements are there any other diet adjustments I should make or are there other supplements I should be adding to help her? I feel so bad for her but I honestly don't know what else I can do. Don't feed her for days and then go back to eating...what?

Thank you so much for taking the time to read all this and offer your help. 

Dr. Steve's Advice - There is a lot to unpack there, so let me open by saying that it's no problem to use the Adoptrex      (https://goldstandardherbs.com/products/Original-Adoptrex-85g-p647327433) with the digestive enzymes. Once you're through this illness episode, I'd go back to the last thing she seemed to feel great on. You might want to lightly cook it until she is fully recovered, then gradually transition back to raw, just to take the burden off her pancreas for now. The rest of this post is about why is your dog getting pancreatitis and why certain diets help for her and some don't, at least from my perspective.

A dog who has had a blood borne pathogen like Anaplasmosis and who was prone to twice yearly digestive upset (like pancreatitis and colitis) is prone to Shao Yang disharmony, from a Chinese medical perspective. I won't bore you by getting too into the weeds of what that is. Just know that it seems to correlate with a shift of the microbiome in response to seasonal weather changes, and the resultant impact of that shift on systemic immune and inflammatory responses. That might seem weird - to have the microbiome shift all by itself as the weather warms and cools - but it has been observed in huge studies on animal microbiomes and those shifts correlated with temperature and precipitation.

Anyway, the species that are the most involved in normalizing immune function are carbohydrate fermenters like Lactobacilli. The kibble you were using from Diamond happened to have added probiotics (including Lactobacilli), a high carb content, and a low fat content. All of these are perfect for a dog with pancreatitis occurring due to a fragile microbiome. Now if your dog had the "Damp Heat" type of pancreatitis, they would have done very poorly on that diet, so truly one size does not fit all when we are talking about dog food.

The other diet you fed with success was a raw diet. Normally, those diets starve out microbes that require carbs to survive, but then you added a bunch back in, so Lactobacilli and such could still successfully modulate your dog's immune system and prevent pancreatitis.

Ironically, you made that change to raw because you were trying to lower fat content, but your previous diet was already low in fat. For your dog, fat is likely less important than just the changing of the seasons in precipitating pancreatitis. The last supplement you added probably didn't aggravate things as much as you think. Your dog was already primed to have its seasonal attack, and shifting the diet just pushed the microbiome over the edge.

Given the apparent importance of the microbiome in your dog's pancreatitis, Adoptrex is a perfect fit for your pet, as that is a big part of how it works - fixing the microbiome and helping to smooth out seasonal fluctuations so that you don't get big sudden shifts that create GI signs. Meanwhile, the enzymes reduce some of the burden the pancreas has to shoulder.

Lastly, as for iron testing, blood counts are going to be the most meaningful indicators. Hair levels change slowly, because hair grows slowly. Blood counts change quickly. Thus, hair samples could show your dog as normal even as they suddenly acquired iron deficiency anemia, pointing out the flaw in using hair analysis to keep tabs on iron. Always monitor the thing that changes quickly if you want to be able to take meaningful action.

So, do you need to check red blood cell counts all the time? The chances of iron being low and anemia arising on a raw diet are next to non-existent, as long as the kidneys and bone marrow are functioning fine. The low iron was probably induced by the Diamond diet from six months or more before, showing how slowly the hair levels of iron were changing.

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My dog Wizard is a 17-year-old beagle mix. She has had a pretty unremarkable health history until August of 2021 when she started having infrequent myoclonus seizures. In March of 2022 she was diagnosed with Kidney disease. On top of those two things she also has suspected chronic pancreatitis (which was likely never diagnosed properly) and a grade 3 heart murmur. She’s currently Stage 3 with the Kidney Disease. 

The biggest issue for me is keeping the pancreas happy. Here’s what we are currently doing. Despite this we’re still a very picky eater with flares about 1X a month. Would love any suggestions you might have.

Pancreatitis: Bland diet, Cerenia 1X Daily, Pepcid 5mg 2X Daily, Gastro Elm 2X a day

Seizures: Stasis in Mansion of Mind 3X a day, Tian Ma Plus II 3X a day

Kidney: Rehimmana 11 2X a day, Azodyl Probiotic 1X Daily, 200ml fluids every day, 1ml b12 2X a week

Heart: Vetmedin 5mg 2X Daily

Dr. Steve's Advice - the central tenet of holistic medicine is that all things going on in the body are related, we can use what is going on in one organ to understand the other. To figure out the pancreas, we need to understand the kidneys. The easiest and fastest way I have found of doing that is to check the a urine protein:creatinine ratio. If it is less than 3, then a tonic approach is needed. If it is over 5, then a Shao Yang harmonizing approach is needed. The two strategies have somewhat opposite effects on the pancreas, so we really do need to do the test, so we don't make the pancreas worse.The seizures that began in the fall of 2021 are likely due to some combination of Yang rising due to Yin deficiency. Neither of your seizure formulas really addresses that, so a change may be needed there, too. The Kidney formula you're using is okay if the UPC is below 3. If it is above 5, then it may be deleterious.These are all just my impressions. I'm sure your holistic veterinarian would strongly disagree with them given the approach they are taking. They also have had the benefit of having examined your dog when I have not, so take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt. But if you're not satisfied that your dog's conditions are stable or improving despite these efforts, a change does seem called for. In my experience, the UPC ratio can tell us in what direction that should be. Hope that helps (and doesn't annoy anyone)!

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Back in November of 2021 my dog became very ill with Pancreatitis, Hepatitis, and Gastritis. We are not sure what caused all of this, other than she got into something very bad. I almost lost her, but thankfully the vet I had taken her to caught the issue with a last minute decision to run her bloodwork after she had stopped eating entirely. After an alarming amount of antibiotics and steroids for almost a year she mostly recovered. However, with all of this she developed a persistent cough (very early in), that we have been chasing ever since she got sick. It started as a small persistent cough with occasional mucus, and frequent sneezing with a lot of mucus discharge. 

Thinking this could be allergy related, I have had to put her on a strict diet of homemade food that has been a lot of experimentations. It seems to have helped get her on a more healthy track, but I still can't get her to kick this cough. It is now just a dry hacking cough that mostly occurs when she is laying down trying to sleep or gets worked up and excited. Toward the end of her cough fits she gags like she is trying to clear her throat. It has been many visits to the vet, and they have basically said that they have exhausted their resources with x-rays, blood work, etc. and that I can either just make her as comfortable and happy as I can, or to search out a vet or program that could do more diagnostics than they could. 

She is in good spirits and for the most part living well for nearly 13 years old. She still runs and plays, or tries before occasionally going into a coughing fit. Just wondering what might be out there for options, or if you have any idea what direction I can go from here?

Dr. Steve's Advice - if you're lucky, this could be resolved fairly quickly. From a Chinese medical perspective, we always have one constitutional tendency, and it just changes how it manifests. To successfully treat an animal in the present is also to treat both its past and its future. In other words, the cause of the pancreatitis and hepatitis two autumns ago is also the cause of the cough right now. 

Fall onset of severe pancreatitis and hepatitis is usually caused by Shao Yang disharmony. The treatment for that is Minor Bupleurum, which also is a major formula for chronic cough, including from collapsing trachea, laryngeal paralysis, pneumonia, pneumonitis, viral infections and a host of other causes. I think it will help here.

The formula comes in many forms. I would suggest Adoptrex (https://goldstandardherbs.com/products/Original-Adoptrex-85g-p647327433) by Gold Standard Herbs. It has a Minor Bupleurum core to soothe that irritated trachea, but also anti-Dampness herbs. The cough on lying down and also when she starts to get excited suggests phlegm accumulation (i.e., Dampness) is an aggravating factor.

Together with the healthy diet you're using, the herbs should hopefully make short work of the problem. Let us know how it goes!

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