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Health & Fitness

A Common Holiday Illness: "Pancreatitis"

We are all looking forward to being with family at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hannukah in the coming weeks, and sharing sumptuous (read "fattening") meals with our loved ones. Yet when those loved ones with which we share our holiday food include our pets, we are "gambling against the medical house", and the house almost never loses.

Nutrition rich meals, especially those with high amounts of fat, and especially the drippings from preparation of those meals, pose a regular and predictable danger to our pets at holiday time. Giving our pets those high fat content foods, or preparation drippings may lead to serious illness, occasionally including fatal illness.

We (and our pets) food is chewed into slurry and swallowed. It travels down the esophagus to the stomach where it is ground up further and enzymes are added to break down the food into smaller particles. When the food particles are small enough, they are propelled into the small intestine for absorption of the nutrients.

There are two ducts (small tubes) that enter the first part of the small intestine. One is for bile, coming from the gall bladder. Bile serves to neutralize the acid that the stomach produces to break down fats. The other duct is the pancreatic duct, which conducts digestive enzymes from the pancreas to break down starches and proteins.

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The pancreas is tucked under the stomach and along the small intestine. It has two main jobs: the first is the secretion of digestive enzymes and the second is the secretion of hormones to control blood  sugar. The digestive enzymes are the part of the story that concerns us in pancreatitis.

In pancreatitis, inflammation disrupts the pancreas. Enzymes normally safely stored are released prematurely and in the wrong way, and they damage the pancreas itself and nearby organs. Toxins are released into circulation that cause severe systemic illness and pain. The pancreas' ability to produce hormones, insulin in particular, can also be disrupted and diabetes can result.

Other serious consequences may occur in organs as diverse as lungs, blood vessels, the blood clotting mechanisms and even the brain. Most commonly the inflammation is confined to the pancreas itself, but pancreatitis can be very painful and life-threatening.

Sometimes we never find out what caused a specific incident of pancreatitis but the most common cause is "dietary indiscretion" (eating bad stuff as previously described) and less commonly endocrine conditions, drugs or toxin exposure, physical trauma and tumors. By far "dietary indiscretion" is most common.

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So the take home message is: do not feed your pet the turkey, ham drippings, chicken fat, gravy or any other high fat foods likely to lead to pancreatitis.

Let's all of us, pets included, have wonderful holidays!





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