In this informal dialogue, two speakers explore why dogs predominantly develop type 1 (immune‑mediated) diabetes while cats more often suffer from type 2 (insulin‑resistance) diabetes. They attribute canine type 1 to environmental stressors such as poor diet, over‑vaccination, neutering, exposure to volatile organic compounds, and a general propensity for autoimmune disease. They note an emerging “type 3” concept linking obesity and metabolic syndrome to diabetes in dogs. For feline diabetes, they describe a classic type 2 picture where the pancreas still produces insulin but peripheral tissues become resistant, leading to a cycle of increasing insulin doses. Both speakers argue that nutritional interventions—raw, low‑carbohydrate diets, weight loss, reduction of systemic inflammation, and oral exocrine pancreatic support—can reverse insulin dependence in dogs and even cure cats, with anecdotal evidence of complete remission when cats are placed on a carbohydrate‑free raw diet. The conversation challenges the notion that autoimmune destruction of islets is irreversible, suggesting that managing inflammation and metabolic health can restore pancreatic function.
Why is it that dogs mostly develop type 1 diabetes and cats diabetes type 2?
So in the latter case, so the type 1, which we see in dogs, we see so much more immune-mediated disease because of what we're feeding, what we've got as far as neutering, you know, so many crap environments, the VOCs and everything else that they're in. That actually I believe that the propensity is to type 1, but I would debate, is that the only type of diabetes that we see? Because actually there is a type 3 diabetes being talked about now, and I think that comes back to, you know, metabolic syndrome. And I do think that we're seeing some critically obese dogs that are falling into those traps, if you like, as far as—
diabetes.
Yeah, diabetes. I have actually experienced being able to convert dogs that are diabetic into not requiring the insulin by effectively helping them nutritionally, using remedies, using, you know, exocrine pancreas, you know, as orally as well, getting their digestion reducing inflammation, getting their obesity down, and actually that then requirement for insulin changes, which should be a type 2 diabetes. Okay, maybe what I've heard about with this type 3 thing that was mentioned in an article, and I'm not sure they've scientifically classified that, but they were just sort of like going down the route of a conversation that maybe we need to be thinking outside of just this thought destroying the islets of Langerhans means that, you know, with autoimmunity means that you've got to replace the insulin. They'll never heal ever. Okay. Versus type 2, that metabolically, if you can convert those cats back to processing the insulin and becoming sensitized to insulin again, that actually that's why they only temporarily need support, you know, and if you get them dietary sorted out and everything else, then they'll resolve.
My take is that dogs, because of the environment that we have them on, over-vaccination and overuse of pharmaceuticals and all these things, terrible food and what have you, they, as Brent says, a greater propensity to autoimmune disease. Dogs do the type 1 where your pancreas just gives up the ghost. Cats do the type 2, which is they're pumping out insulin and the tissues become more and more resistant to that insulin. So they had to pump out even more. And ironically, the treatment is to give them even more insulin. So if you've got type 1, you give insulin to make up for a deficit. That's pretty logical. Okay. But if you can get that general inflammatory syndrome down, maybe you can allow that pancreas to poke its head above the parapet and go, hello, I think I can do a bit of work now. But with type 2, The more insulin you give, the more insulin you're going to have to give. And Tom Farrington said to me, I have got no cats in my practice who have got diabetes because all we do is put them on a raw food diet, kill the carbohydrates completely, and we get them to lose weight and they will cure. They all self-cure.
