Curing Feline Inflammatory Bowel Disease

It has been argued by a well-known veterinarian, Dr Hodgkins,  that there is a cure for feline inflammatory bowel disease and it is to provide the cat with a high-quality raw food diet.  This means a raw food diet with an added all-in-one supplement which ensures that it is balanced.  The reason why this could be an excellent cure for a disease, which is normally simply managed (with immune suppressing drugs), is because the cause of feline IBD is said to be commercial cat food which contains ingredients and substances which are perceived as foreign invaders to the cat's immune system.

If you remove these foreign invaders - the unhealthy ingredients in typically dry cat food - then you take away the allergen which stimulates the unnecessary allergic reaction within the cat's gut. That is the, perhaps oversimplified, theory but it does work in practice as well.

There has to be a warning that goes with this suggested medical treatment for, what is as yet, a not completely understood cat health problem.  Raw food diets need to be prepared carefully in order to avoid contamination and cross contamination and to ensure that it is balanced because as we know the domestic cat needs certain essential ingredients such as taurine and arginine.

However, common sense dictates that if a cat has been suffering from chronic IBD for some time (diarrhea and vomiting) and various treatments have been tried without real success, resorting to a raw food diet is a simple choice. It is highly likely to prove successful.  Cat owners should not balk from trying it out despite the fact that many veterinarians believe that cat owners are unable to prepare a raw food diet is to a satisfactory standard.  There is an argument that many more cat owners should in fact routinely provide a raw food diet for their cat as a means to improve overall health and prevent diseases such as IBD in a cat who is sensitive to the ingredients of commercial cat food.

You may ask why not simply give your cat hypoallergenic cat food.  The truth is that this is product is not that successful, certainly in the dry cat food form because you are still feeding an unnatural food.  For mild feline IBD, wet hypoallergenic cat food may prove successful and second-generation versions of this cat food are better than earlier versions but it must be wet i.e. canned cat food.  A raw food diet goes to the next stage.  It is, of course, a wholly natural diet.

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