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Can Cooked Diets Cause Food Allergies In Dogs?

diet for dogs with allergies
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Could your dog’s cooked diet be causing his allergies? Most raw feeders have had this type of experience …

“My dog had terrible, gunky ears that we just couldn’t fix, even with expensive veterinary diets or “grain-free” kibble. But when we switched to raw food, the problem went away forever.”

That’s a pretty bold statement, even for raw feeders. Yet these success stories happen all the time.

So if your dog has allergy symptoms, joint pain or another inflammatory problem, read on to find out about the best diet for food allergies in dogs. You’ll discover how cooked foods can cause food allergies in dogs … and why switching to raw foods can help.

But before you learn about the benefits of feeding fresh raw foods, you need to understand your dog’s immune system.

What Are Antibodies And Why Are They Important?

Antibodies (also called immunoglobins or Ig) are an important part of your dog’s immune system. When your dog gets exposed to foreign invaders (antigens), like bacteria or viruses, the antibodies detect the invader. They then activate the immune system and try to attack and neutralize the enemy within.

Antibodies are all over your dog’s body and there are a few different types. But the ones you’ll learn about today are antibodies that can cause Type II and Type III hypersensitivity reactions.

What is a hypersensitivity reaction? It’s pretty much what it sounds like … an exaggerated immune response.

Symptoms Of Hypersensitivity

Classic food allergies are Type 1 hypersensitivities. Think of a child who eats a peanut and immediately can’t breathe … or someone who eats shellfish and suddenly gets a big, red rash.

Type II and Type III hypersensitivity reactions are food intolerances that can take days to develop. You won’t see an immediate reaction in your dog right after he eats the offending food. But over time a food intolerance can cause chronic allergy symptoms in your dog, including:

  • Dry, itchy skin and possibly hair loss
  • Irritable bowels and gas
  • Yeast infections and yeasty ears
  • Rashes, hives and hot spots
  • Licking and chewing at the feet or other body parts

It’s easy to mistake these symptoms for food allergies in dogs. But these problems are more often associated with an abnormal buildup of antibodies in your dog’s body … and can result in inflammation and disease.

It’s this chronic inflammation that can cause your dog’s allergy symptoms. It can even cause other inflammatory conditions including arthritis, diabetes, kidney failure and premature aging.

What Causes Hypersensitivities?

Type II and Type III hypersensitivity reactions occur when IgA and IgM antibodies form in the blood and in body tissues. They most often form in the skin, kidneys and joints. Once there, an immune response is triggered to eliminate foreign antigens. These special antibodies bind to the antigen and then spread throughout the body. This reaction can take hours to days to develop.

When the antigen-antibody complexes get stored in the skin, kidneys or joints, tissue damage follows as the body tries to destroy them … and inflammation results. The greater the number of antigen-antibody complexes, the more severe the inflammation …

… and this is probably a direct result of the food you’re feeding.

Cooked Diets Increase Food Sensitivities

A few years back, an interesting study was done in London.

Researcher Aristo Vojdani took blood samples from 40 humans after eating several foods divided into two categories: raw and cooked. Then he measured the antibodies in the blood.

What he found was that IgA and IgM antibody levels were much higher in the people eating cooked foods as opposed to raw.

Why Are Antibodies Higher With Cooked Food?

Heating and processing changes foods and their properties in many different ways. Proteins can be destroyed or parts of the proteins can form new proteins. Fats can also oxidize, forming new antigens. And these changes are so common, they have a name …

neoallergen formation.

That literally means new allergy. So cooking foods creates new allergens in that food.

The study found that IgA and IgM antibodies were significantly higher in the people eating those cooked foods, across the board. From eggs to beef to salmon, the cooked foods had higher IgA and IgM levels every time.

So the next question is, how do you know if your dog’s health issues are caused by food sensitivities?

How To Tell If Your Dog Has Food Sensitivity

If you suspect your dog has a food intolerance, you could try an elimination diet. But it’s a long process. By the time you eliminate every food on your dog’s menu for 12 weeks each, it could take years to identify which foods he might be sensitive to.

But recently, tests have been developed to determine if your dog has food intolerance or sensitivity. Saliva tests can measure the IgA and IgM antibodies in your dog or cat. Any foods that come back with elevated antibody levels indicate a food sensitivity … so you should remove that food from your dog’s diet.

If you keep feeding that food, the inflammation … and the allergy, joint or other health issues it causes, will remain.

What Foods Should Dogs With Allergies Avoid?

If your dog doesn’t have any health issues at all … then congratulations!

But if your dog has any symptoms of chronic disease (or if he’s eating a processed diet), then now might be the time to look at the food going into him and think about the harm it could be doing. This is even true of prescription hypoallergenic diets, which often contain ingredients that can make allergies worse.

If you’re not yet convinced, there are a lot of other compelling reasons to avoid cooked processed foods.

Toxins In Cooked Foods

Cooked meats and fish have been shown to contain cancer-causing substances (such as heterocyclic amines). They can also have acrylamides, which are a reaction between the amino acid asparagine and sugars found in foods.

A Swedish study showed that young animals fed a cooked, processed diet initially appeared to be healthy. But once they reached maturity, they began to rapidly age and develop degenerative disease symptoms. The control group raised on a raw diet didn’t age as fast and showed no degenerative disease symptoms.

Another study out of Belgium used data gathered from more than 500 domestic dogs over 5 years (1998-2002). The authors showed that dogs fed a homemade diet, made of high-quality foods lived longer. Their life expectancy was 32 months longer than dogs fed an industrial, commercial pet food diet … that’s almost 3 years!

Historically, you’ve learned to think that cooking food makes it safer. But research clearly shows there are real health risks with cooked processed foods.

RELATED: Easy raw food recipes to get you started …

What To Feed For Food Allergies In Dogs?

If your dog has any of the above issues, it might be a good idea to get him off cooked food and onto a raw food diet.

If you can’t or won’t feed raw, there are still better choices than highly heated kibbles. Look for freeze-dried foods or cook your own home diet using lower temperatures. This won’t eliminate the allergens in the food, but it can reduce them. Giving a supplement like colostrum can also help manage allergies.

What if your kibble fed dog doesn’t have any of these issues?

That’s probably a bit like playing roulette. Because of the higher IgA and IgM antibodies, food allergies in dogs are a common result of feeding kibble. And, as the Stockholm study showed … it’s just a matter of time before processed diets start to cause premature aging and degenerative diseases.

So what you choose to do with this information is up to you.

But the next time you hear somebody brag about the amazing health changes raw foods have created for their dogs … you’ll know the success story is real.

References

Vojdani A. Detection of IgE, IgG, IgA and IgM antibodies against raw and processed food antigensNutr Metab (Lond). 2009;6:22. Published 2009 May 12.

Lippert G et al. Relation between the domestic dog’s well-being and life expectancy statistical essay. Prince Laurent Foundation Price. 2003.

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