Diabetes Mellitus In Dogs and Cats

Diabetes Mellitus In Dogs and Cats 

Today we're gonna talk about diabetes

 What is Diabetes Mellitus In Dogs and Cats ???

Causes of Diabetes ?

Essentially in the dog and cat diabetes refers to the inability to remove glucose or sugar out of the blood and into the tissues.

 This inability results from the lack of insulin.

 Insulin is normally produced by the pancreas but for whatever reason these dogs that become diabetic or these cats that become diabetic lose their ability to produce insulin without the ability to move glucose or sugar from the bloodstream into the tissues ...

Symptoms of  Diabetes Mellitus In Dogs and Cats ???

A variety of symptoms develop the most common symptom we see first off is an increased thirst and increased urination when the glucose gets to a certain level in the blood it'll spill over to the urine and glucose is a very large molecule it'll pull water with it and that's why you get increased urination.

To make up for that the dog has to drink more water and that's why you see that symptom .

The other symptom we see is weight loss a lot of these dogs and cats were overweight to begin with but then we start to see weight loss after that and the reason this happens is because without the ability to move glucose into the tissues we lose weight the body has to break down fats in order to make up for this lost energy .

As the diabetes progresses we'll see other symptoms develop like off-food and vomiting this can occur when the dog goes into what is called a keto-acetotic state during ketoacidosis the dog has completely shut down its sugar metabolism and is now digesting or metabolizing its fats.

Treatment of  Diabetes Mellitus In Dogs and Cats :

 If your dog or cat is already in the keto-acetotic state : then often they're hospitalized and put on IV fluids for 24 to 48 hours while the glucose is brought under control .

If your dog or cat is not in a keto-acetotic state : sometimes we can treat at home by instructing you to inject insulin and this will be done on a once a day or twice a day basis and teach you how to do that and go from there this is a long-term problem that your dog or cat has and they involve multiple visits to check glucose levels .

sometimes we even do a test that collectively analyzes whether we've been controlling the insulin and the glucose level properly .

Your pet will have potential problems develop but it is something we can try to control and give your dogs or cats some continued quality of life .