Lower urinary tract disease is one of the most common conditions affecting felines. Ridding your cat of FLUTD can be as simple as switching them to a raw diet.
Most cats, at some point in their lives, develop lower urinary tract disease. From struvite crystals to urethral plugs, these issues are debilitating, expensive to treat, and can even be life-threatening. A range of conventional and holistic therapies can be used to treat and prevent FLUTD, but one of the most effective is switching your cat to a raw diet.
Evolutionary Nutrition
Feeding your cat a diet based on the principles of evolutionary nutrition (i.e. raw), means feeding it the way its species has evolved to eat over the past 30 million years or so. Unfortunately, during the 20e century, the “intelligence” of modern science began to turn many inappropriate ingredients into cat food. The result was that a host of health issues, including FLUTD, appeared in our cats.
Nutrition must match your cat’s genome
Modern industrial cat foods have one fundamental flaw: they don’t match the nutritional needs of your cat’s genome. One of the manifestations of this defect is the development of urinary crystals, especially in cats that eat only dry food.
Besides being cooked at high temperatures (which destroys nutrient integrity), grain-based, and providing too much low-quality vegetable protein, many commercial cat foods contain high levels of crystallized matter. Additionally, they generally produce alkaline urine, dehydrate (in dry form), and do not support the protective function of the bladder wall or the healthy development of your cat’s immune system. These nutritional issues, when combined with a genetic tendency to produce crystals, can lead to major problems, especially in male cats where urinary tract blockages are not uncommon.
In contrast, real, whole raw food is biologically appropriate for cats; it’s the diet that matches your cat’s genome and has learned to eat. A raw diet ensures optimal (i.e. as healthy as possible) functioning, including a healthy urinary tract. Even cats with a genetic predisposition to form crystals will rarely do so when fed a properly constructed diet based on evolutionary principles.
Even cats with a genetic predisposition to form crystals will rarely do so when fed a properly constructed diet based on evolutionary principles.
A nutrition program for FLUTDs
For many years we have successfully used biologically appropriate raw food diets for cats as part of a successful clinical program against FLUTD. Interestingly, this program is not restricted in phosphorus, magnesium or ammonium (protein); no properly formulated diet for cats should be. Such restrictions are unnecessary because it is improperly formulated, cooked, processed and grain-based industrial foods that are the source of the FLUTD problem. These (dry) foods produce a state of chronic dehydration, an unnecessarily high pH, a less efficient immune system and a less healthy lining (epithelium or mucous membrane) in the urinary tract.
How a raw diet prevents FLUTD
When a crystal-forming cat is switched to a properly formulated raw diet, we note the following:
- Because raw diets have a biologically appropriate level of moisture (cats are designed to get most if not all of their water from food), they do not contribute to subclinical dehydration. The cat eating raw food now consumes significantly more liquid than the cat eating commercial dry food. This ensures that the urine is not super concentrated. The resulting larger urine dilutes the stone-forming constituents, preventing crystalluria.
- Being grain-free, a raw diet has most of its minerals supplied in raw bone form (the biologically appropriate form for a cat), resulting in optimal absorption and excretion (actually a major reduction) of phosphorus and magnesium.
- Typically, this diet results in neutral to slightly acidic urine.
- Because a raw diet results in a huge improvement in a cat’s overall health – especially the immune system and urinary tract epithelium – urinary tract infections decrease or disappear, along with the stimulus for crystal formation.
- Finally, because this diet is based on fresh raw bones, meat and organs, it contains appreciable levels of:
- Cartilage – which contributes to the health of the bladder lining (mucosa)
- Supplemental Vitamin C (cats make their own vitamin C) – vital for immune system health, maintenance of bladder wall collagen, urinary acidification and antioxidant capacity
- Vitamin A — essential for healthy immune and mucous membranes
- Essential fatty acids – which provide anti-inflammatory and other health-promoting properties
- Vitamin E, B vitamins, zinc and all other protective nutrients – abundant and necessary for the health and well-being of the cat, including its immune and urinary systems.
In short, this raw whole food program is ideal for preventing crystal formation in most cats, including those that have suffered from serious, long-term problems with FLUTD.
I have received many letters and emails over the years from people whose cats were crystal growers. They all reported that switching their cats to a raw diet (commercially produced or homemade) eliminated the problem. This reflects my own experiences as a practicing veterinarian for over 40 years; meanwhile, I have rarely diagnosed or treated crystals in cats that were bred and maintained on a properly formulated raw diet.