Recommended Article #12June21
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This recommended article "Arthritis in Dogs, Cats & Horses: It’s About Far More than Just the Joints" is curated and sourced from Adored Beast Apothecary. If you loved this article, please do feel free to share it around.
A Bird's Eye View
- The body (both yours and your pet’s) is made up of a network of muscles, tissues, joints, and bones;
- Together, this network supports your furry friend's movement.
- All muscles contract to create movement.
- When the muscles are not healthy, there would be increase of wear and tear, leading to earlier deterioration, inflammation and arthritis of the joint.
When it comes to arthritis in dogs, or any animal, most people are looking for solutions to support joint health, inflammation, and pain. Fortunately, there are several natural supports out there to address joint health and disease.
How does the actual body support your animal’s joints, spine, and bones?
Every muscle has an interwoven connective tissue that attaches the muscle fibres and bundles together. The connective tissue, which looks like steak gristle in large bundles, is composed of collagen strands that give it a tremendous ability to withstand pulling or longitudinal strains. Its limited elasticity is what allows it to stretch while simultaneously holding the tissues together. Without the connective tissue holding the muscles together, your furry friend would lose the strength and the ability to move its bones or support its frame.
Skeletal Muscles and Movement
The joints, limbs, bone, and muscles are specialized body tissues that serve the primary purpose of movement through contraction. This is accomplished when muscle tissue employ the proteins actin and myosin, which slide past each other to create movement. Highly developed skeletal muscles are also associated with strength, and can be toned and improved through regular exercise.
All muscles in the body work to create movement by contracting. When we think of the muscular system, our first thoughts go primarily to the skeletal muscles, they are the actual reason the limbs can move at all! By working in pairs, muscles contract and relax in tandem to raise and lower limbs or to bend them at joints. Skeletal muscle contraction also help to maintain body posture and position.
In essence, besides controlling movement, the muscles play a major part in preventing all the weight from being solely supported by the joints and bones. Unhealthy muscle tissue leads to the increase of wear and tear, leading to earlier deterioration, inflammation and arthritis.
Did you know, aside from movement and pain, the skeletal muscles do far more?!?
Aside from moving body parts, skeletal muscles are also used for posture, swallowing, defecation, urination and homeostasis.
Skeletal Muscles Functions
Your pet’s skeletal muscles serve a variety of functions: the support and movement of the skeletal system, help with nutrition, even temperature regulation and homeostasis.
The energy from skeletal muscle contractions produces heat, which in turn helps to regulate body temperature.
The sphincter is a perfect example. The sphincter is a special type of skeletal muscle that regulates the opening of the digestive and urinary systems. A sphincter is an organ composed of muscle that surrounds a hollow organ, like a rubber band wrapped around a plastic tube. Intestines and blood vessels are examples of hollow organs. The sphincters at the ends of the digestive and urinary systems are composed of skeletal muscle and provide conscious control of swallowing, defecation and urination. For example, the anus contains a sphincter that, when contracted, prevents defecation, or, in the case of spay incontinence or age-related urinary leakage, it would be the reverse where there is a lack of sphincter tone of the urethra. Not only composed of skeletal muscles, sphincters also have smooth muscle sphincters that are under the influence of the autonomic system or involuntary nervous system.
Homeostasis
In addition to support and movement skeletal muscles are necessary for certain homeostatic functions. Homeostasis is the maintenance of a constant internal environment – that is, temperature regulation.
Skeletal muscle contraction requires energy. As energy is used to contract muscles, much of that energy is converted to heat, and heat helps to maintain a relatively constant body temperature. As much of the body is skeletal muscle, this provides an effective means of temperature regulation. In fact, shivering thermogenesis is the rapid contraction of muscles for the purpose of generating heat. Therefore, skeletal muscle helps with homeostatic regulation of body temperature.
Last but not least, while it is not a skeletal muscle, let us not forget the major muscle in the body, THE HEART, and the small amount of muscle that is part of the brain that actually stimulates the nervous system to trigger the muscle function for limb movement!
Muscle health, as can be seen, is rather vital, alongside joint health, for life and health in general. Therefore, it is important to try and keep them healthy. Jump for Joynts is a proprietary homeopathic blend that offers four way mobility support for healthy joints, ligaments, tendons, and muscles.
How to be a Support to Your Furry Friend’s Muscles
These are some of the best recommendations, and can be easily added into the daily diet, to support the muscles and prevent, even improve arthritis in dogs.
- Vitamin C – Unlike humans, dogs, cats and horses make their own Vitamin C. However, if your dog’s immune system is compromised from vaccinations, stress, injury, unhealthy gut flora, then there is a concern of a lack of Vitamin C. The good news is, there is Vitamin C in RAW MEAT!!! Things like Swiss chard and spinach are high in Vitamin C, so add those to your dog’s diet. With your cats, a FULL raw meat diet will easily provide the adequate amount needed.
- Vitamin B – Eggs, lean meats, legumes, nuts, and leafy greens are all high in Vitamin B.
- Vitamin D – Add beef liver, wild salmon, raw milk and egg yolks to your pup's diet, or have lots of playtime in the sun.
- Vitamin E – Foods high in Vitamin E include sunflower seeds, spinach, avocados, squash, trout, shrimp, olive oil, hemp seed oil, and broccoli. Raw soaked almonds could be fed to your pup as a treat!
- Omega 3s and Amino Acids – Feeding whole fish or phytoplankton, are easy ways to up the omega 3s in your pet’s diet. Phytoplankton are tiny, microscopic plants that form the base of the food chain in the ocean, and are one of the most valuable sources of nutrition on earth as they are chock full of essential amino acids.
These next two, calcium and magnesium, are really important because they work together in the supportive absorption of each other! Too much or too little of one can actually look like arthritis with your dog, but in fact is a deficiency of either of the two! - Calcium – Raw milk and digestible bone are two great sources of calcium. Chicken and turkey necks are awesome options just in case you were wondering.
- Magnesium – As mentioned before, Swiss chard, spinach and almonds!
- Quality Protein – In Chinese medicine, there is a strong belief in feeding what you are trying to support, so in this case muscle meat, heart, etc.
- Collagen – This supports the connective tissue! BONE BROTH, BONE BROTH, BONE BROTH!!!! It is easy and inexpensive to make!! Phytoplankton has a plant-based collagen as well. Just in case you were wondering, even cats LOVE it!
- N-Dimethylglycine (DMG) – This is great for helping to support muscle health, and helps alot for the furry friends already suffering from arthritis. This not only helps with the joint pain, but also muscle fatigue, muscle stiffness and the inability to restore the balance of lactic acid.
As with all of us, the body needs to MOVE! More importantly, the body needs rest to recover after exercise. Massage, chiropractics and acupuncture for support, homeopathic remedies like Arnica after heavy workouts, and Bio 12 tissue salts for electrolyte balance are all things that are highly recommended.
NOW GO HAVE PLAYTIME WITH YOUR FURRY FRIEND!
You can purchase Jump for Joynts from JJ E-Homez Holistic Pet today!
"Arthritis in Dogs, Cats & Horses: It’s About Far More than Just the Joints" curated and sourced from Adored Beast Apothecary is written by :
Julie Anne Lee, DCH, RcsHOM, has been the owner and practitioner of some of the busiest and long standing holistic veterinary hospitals and clinics in North America. This includes founding the first licensed strictly holistic veterinary clinic in Canada. She developed and taught a three year post-graduate program for veterinarians at the College of Animal Homeopathic Medicine. She also presented lectures for the American Homeopathic Veterinary Association on homeopathy and functional pathology, the British Homeopathic Veterinary Surgeons Association on treating chronic disease, the Canadian Society of Homeopaths on clinical comparisons of the treatment of human to animals, P.E.I Veterinary University on the gut microbiome, and many more over the last 20 years.
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JJ E-Homez Holistic Pet, a Singapore online pet store that focuses on the holistic well-being of your beloved furkid. Our recommended products aim to support and improve health, emotional and physical well-being, and help your pet have a better quality of life without compromise. Look out for Essential, Trendy and Premium quality pet products that are specially curated, with the pet parents concerns' as a priority.
This blog first appeared on the Adored Beast Apothecary website, where this article "Arthritis in Dogs, Cats & Horses: It’s About Far More than Just the Joints" was curated and sourced from.
Original source: https://blog.adoredbeast.com/arthritis-in-dogs/
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