What Medications Are There To Treat Feline Diabetes
Kaitlyn asks what medications are there to treat feline diabetes? Well the first thing to realise is that diabetes in both humans and cats is medically treated using insulin. But insulin is not really a medication, it is a hormone. If your vet prescribes insulin then this will need to be given regularly at home. So you must learn how to inject insulin into your cat. This is not as daunting as it sounds and pretty soon it will be like second nature. Also you will need to to be able to test at home to ensure that the treatment is working and the amount of insulin is correct. There are various types of insulin and brands available. Your vet should be able to discuss the various options with you. If he doesn’t then please ask questions.
The Father of modern medicine is said to be an ancient Greek chap called Hipprocates. When doctors qualify they take an oath called the Hippocratic oath.
“Hippocrates held the belief that the body must be treated as a whole and not just a series of parts. He accurately described disease symptoms and was the first physician to accurately describe the symptoms of pneumonia, as well as epilepsy in children. He believed in the natural healing process of rest, a good diet, fresh air and cleanliness. He noted that there were individual differences in the severity of disease symptoms and that some individuals were better able to cope with their disease and illness than others. He was also the first physician that held the belief that thoughts, ideas, and feelings come from the brain and not the heart as others of him time believed.”
A saying attributed to Hippocrates is:-
“Let food be your medicine and let medicine be your food”
Modern medicine however appears to have forgotten about this in its preoccupation with developing drugs to treat individual conditions. So in addition to medication, it is very important that you change your cats diet. I have mentioned diet in numerous other posts and rate it as important and if not more important than anything else.
A reply to Kaitlyn’s question,what medications are there to treat feline diabetes, states that diet for the most part controlled their cats diabetes:-
“We used to have a cat with diabetes. And we used the same medications as are used for diabetes in humans. We eventually had to give her insulin injections (and yes, we picked up the insulin at the pharmacy). However, much of her diabetes was controlled by a regimented diet using food we bought at the vet — being fed a specific amount at specific times of day, with zero treats.
You’d be surprised how easy it is to give a cat a shot every day — it’s actually so much easier than giving them medicine any other way. We gave it to our cat just as she started eating and she didn’t even flinch lol. It doesn’t hurt them at all — it’s just a poke in the loose skin at the back of the neck.”
A low carbohydrate diet reduces the need for insulin. So in reply to Kaitlyn’s question, what medications are there to treat feline diabetes, the answer has to be insulin and food and correct food can over time reduce the need for insulin and in some cases eliminate it altogether.
