Just Say No To Sugar: Why Dogs Should Never Eat Sugar (And Neither Should You) | Short

Hi, this is Rita Hogan and welcome to the Dogs Are Individuals podcast. I'm a clinical canine herbalist and I've been practicing for over 20 years. This podcast is all about your dog.

Through an herbal lens.

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Hey everyone, how are you? I'm recording this on the 16th of December, the morning of my little mama's birthday. We are gonna go hang out all day and I thought I commune with you guys before we did, so. So I checked and I couldn't believe that I never made a podcast about sugar and dogs. So I posted today on Facebook about sugar and dogs. No amount of sugar is good for dogs. I mean, I'm kind of surprised that people don't understand this. I mean, you might understand it of course, cause you listen to the pod, right? But yeah, sugar, I mean, I've had my sugar moments in my life. The demons of sugar have definitely invaded my body and ate an inordinate amount of sugar. And I think, you know, in general I'm probably still paying for that. But I try to keep my sugar at my sugar grams. Limited to fruit, organic fruit with fiber and a few servings a day. And then every now and then maybe once a week I'll have like a gluten free yum yum from my favorite coffee shop. Not every week, but I would say at least twice a month. And very small. But that's it. That's pretty much it. And you know, I probably could cut that out a little bit too, but it is a quality of life thing for me. But I. Yeah, when I comes to my dogs, it's. No, never. Nine. Nope. So let's talk about it real quick. Oh, by the way, welcome to another edition of Shorts. So sugar causes impaired immune function. A lot of people don't realize that and I saw that during the pandemic. A lot, a lot of people eating sugar, you know, and we have a season of sugar intake right now with Christmas and the holidays. And this is when everyone's getting sick and it's no, it's, it's a no brainer. Why? Because sugar tanks the immune system. Like between 50 and 75 milligrams of sugar or grams of sugar will tank the immune system for like four to five hours. That's only like a couple of Halloween sized candy bars. Yeah. Or one Mountain Dew. Or one. Well, no, not a bottle of Coke. Like a glass bottle of Coke is, I think like 36 grams, which is still crazy, right? But yeah, it doesn't take much and it just suppresses the immune system and it reduces the ability of your dog's white blood cells to fight infection. And we don't want that. I don't think our dogs need any more help in the chronic disease department. You know, one in two dogs will die of cancer. That's not okay. And the more processed foods we add to their food, the worse this situation is going to get. So another thing that sugar does is it competes for vitamin C, okay, In the white blood cells. We don't want that. So when sugar levels are elevated and with just plain sugar being added to some of these all natural foods, I was just taken aback so much at Super Zoo when sugar elevates. I mean, when sugar levels are elevated, the white blood cells don't utilize vitamin C like they should. And that is definitely makes them kind of less effective at fighting off invaders. You know, remember, a lot of these invaders are opportunistic. They're waiting for the immune system to decrease and turn off its hypervigilance. Right. So, and also sugar promotes inflammation. You know, if you did a little, like, diary and traced, you know, just tracked your sugar grams, not your calories or anything, just your sugar grams, you would notice most likely that your joints hurt more, that you have more systemic pain, that everything isn't working as well as it should the day, the day after. And like the week after you consume a large amount of processed sugar. This is added sugars. Added sugars. Not natural sugars, but added sugars. It weakens the immune system. It's linked to autoimmune disease, it's linked to chronic disease. It's linked to cancer. It messes with our microbiome. I'm on a big microbiome thing right now. I am trying, like, all different types of plants all day long, getting 40 to 30 to 40 to 50 different types of plants in my diet per week. And, yeah, I don't want to have high sugar that can lead to my gut being mad and weak. Okay. Because the gut is that. I mean, it's a critical immune barrier. And a compromised gut microbiome can make the body more susceptible to cancers, more susceptible to infections and chronic disease. And we don't want that. Right? We don't want that. We don't want that. Well, yeah, we don't want that. Let's say we don't want that. So no sugar, no sugar, no sugar. No sugar, no sugar. It definitely can impair cognitive function. Okay. Memory. Different types of illnesses in the veins are related to chronic sugar intake. You know, neurogenerative diseases, we don't like that. And it always makes the energy crash. Okay? And that can lead to like anxiety, restlessness, hyperactivity in your dogs and yourself, right? Most things that I talk about, I'm talking about you too. And if you're driving in the car, just take a wink at yourself in the mirror. It's you, I adore you, I care about you, and I want you to flourish. Chronic sugar consumption is, you know, has skyrocketed amongst women and, well, women and men, people in general, kids, due to our lovely addiction to things like Starbucks, right? There are so many sugars in Starbucks coffee drinks and other like Tarani syrups. And then you have the diet ones that have nasty neurotoxins in them. So I think we need to step away from the vehicle. I'm not saying not have any fun, right? But the day in, day out over consumption of sugar is causing so many problems. And you know, when anyone says to me, you know, I have ADD I or adhd, I immediately ask them how much sugar they consume every day. Because I know that if I consume sugar every day, but my attention span will be off the charts and a mess. I'll be doing squirrel, non stop squirrel, squirrel nonstop. Okay? So take a look at it. Go check your dog's food, go check their treats and don't get crazy with the companies because some of these small companies that I saw at Super Zoo, I didn't say anything because I've learned to shut my mouth. However, they don't know. So just send them a nice email. It's easy to find the research on this. Go ahead and find the research, just Google it or at ask the GPT or whatever that is and the, the AI to give you some research on the negative effects of sugar consumption. It'll let you know, right? It'll let you know sugar's addictive. It lights up the brain like cocaine and it's lighting up your dog's brain like cocaine. You don't eat a lot of sugar grams to light the brain up. It's definitely addictive. And then you have a dog that doesn't wanna eat anything but sugar. And then you have a dog that has high blood glucose levels. We don't want that. We don't want high blood sugar in our dogs. And we're starting to see it. I wonder why. Processed food, you know, processed corn, white rice, you know, those are what I would say food based sugars, but they're highly processed. It's not like corn on the cob, okay? And even that will spike your blood sugar. Need to eat it with some fat. That's probably why people ate it with butter, right? It's so good. Butter, salt, corn. Hello. But it's the corn that you find in dog foods is not the corn that you're eating on the cob. And I would pretty much stay away from any dog food that has wheat, corn, soy, any type of gluten meal, animal fat, all that nasty stuff. Don't do it. I cover in my book. Hey, if you haven't ordered my book yet, come on, man, get to it, get to it. The herbal dog. You can buy it@theherbaldog.com you can order it anywhere. You buy books on theherbaldog.com, it's a link. It's a link. But yeah, I talk about this in chapter two, Food is medicine. And I talk about sugar briefly, but not in the depth I'm doing now. But you know, I just think that we need to be mindful, right? Like for instance, one of our sponsors, our sponsor for the short is Green juju. Right. One of the things I love about Green juju's philosophy is there's no sugar in it. There's no highly processed carbs in it. Okay. There's no sugar in their foods. And I love, love, love that. Not even any food based sugars. So you're not gonna see any glucose and dextrose and all those OSes in their food. And their food helps stabilize blood sugar and they have lots of good supplements that help stabilize blood sugar, help liver function, help the immune system, help the microbiome. We all know that. I'm just giddy over the probiotic mushroom. Hello. They're fermented mushroom. You can order it on their site, green juju.com, they'll send it to you frozen. Amazing. And if you can't use it up in the time that it's gonna expire, just put it in ice cubes. Silicone or stainless steel ice cube trays. Yep, that's what I do. And then I melt it for the day and then I give it. But yeah, we have to be mindful.

We have to start looking at our.

Ingredients labels for ourselves and for our dogs. And when I went to super zoo, I was just appalled at all the sugar that was creeping in to our dog's food. And it's elusive, right? It's elusive. It comes in a lot of OSes, dextrose, glucose, fructose, sucrose. All the OSes get down with the osis. And then there's, you know, honey coated things, to my knowledge. Now, I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. But I could be for sure. You can't coat something with honey unless you melt the honey. And it only takes, I think it's a little over 110 degrees to make honey not raw anymore. Raw honey. Manuka honey. Raw Manuka honey. Raw honey. There's nothing wrong with that. With a teaspoon or a half a teaspoon or a quarter teaspoon per day or a few times a week, that's not a big deal. Honey is very, it's very beneficial. But not as soon as it's heated, it becomes processed in that it's been heat processed and it affects the sugar differently. Is it as bad as white sugar? No, but you should avoid it. And then just, I saw plain old sugar, just sugar and then agave. Right. It's got to be a good. If it's agave, no dextrose, fructose, molasses, rice syrup, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, raw sugar, and of course, cane sugar. Some people think sugar and cane sugar. Cane sugars. Oh, my God. Cane sugar. No, it's the same. So we just don't want those things. Don't be afraid to ask questions. And remember, be nice. Be nice. Don't be nasty. Okay? Don't be nasty. Some of these little companies just don't even understand sugar. So. But you can question it. Why are you putting this in there? Like, beef jerky is very popular right now. A lot of it has sugar in it. You know, human beef jerky has sugar in it. Most of it does, so. Oh, there's another one. Date sugar. Okay. Date sugar. Date sugar. Much better than normal sugars. But I wouldn't give it to my dog. If you want to give your dog, like a little whole date, that's fine. You know, I wouldn't do it often, but you could give them a little piece. But yeah. So watch the sugar and let me know your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Dogs Are Individuals.

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