Caring for Senior Cats: Managing Kidney Disease Naturally and Effectively | The Feline Wellness Summit with Melissa Natanson

 Welcome to the cat dad show. My name is Scott Colby, and if you have a senior cat, you probably know that kidney disease is a pretty common challenge. My cat Mia, who passed away at 20, she actually had kidney disease. And I want to share with you a clip of my interview with Melissa Natanson. She's a certified.

Holistic pet health coach specializing in gut and kidney health. And this interview had a lot of meaning for me because we talked a lot about kidney disease, why it's so prevalent in senior cats and what are some things You can do as a pet parent. If your cat is diagnosed with kidney disease, Melissa was a guest for my feline wellness summit.

So I'm sharing with you a clip of my conversation with Melissa. If you want to hear the entire interview with her, as well as with 20 other feline wellness experts, just go to feline wellness summit. com and you can grab a free ticket. But for now, enjoy this clip with Melissa.

Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it because it's important that we talk about it because our kitties are living longer and longer and the longer they live, we're finding out that more problems they're having and a lot of them are age related.

One of the biggest ones is kidney disease, like we just talked about, and there's a lot of factors that go into. What starts the beginning of these renal issues as our kitty cats start to age. One of the first ones is the aging process itself. And as our kitties start to get older, their renal function starts to decrease.

And as they're getting up to that point where they're seniors, as we, as we call them, we really want to make sure that we are giving them the best options for renal function, liver function, Kidney function and also making sure that gut and intestinal health is really on par because now, more than ever, our kitties are just kind of being bombarded with things that their system may not have been equipped for.

I think it's been commonplace that we, you know, feed kibble diets, but we don't know what is involved with that and how that might, um, contribute to renal factors as they start to age. So as these kitty cats, there's four really important factors that we want to talk about when it comes to cats and kidney health.

And the number one, what I always talk about is diet. Diet is the number one most important factor because When we are giving these kitties the cellular energy they need via the food that they get, they've got the right amino acid profile. And let's remember our kitties are obligate carnivores, and so they are designed to eat meat and the amino acid profile that's found in meat.

And plus, kitties adaptations, they don't really have a high threshold. Thirst drive, so they get the majority of their moisture from meat. But what we are finding as kit, as kitties age, and we take a look at their renal function, a lot of our cats have been in kind of a chronic state of dehydration when they eat kibble, even if water's added to it.

That's going to go into my next thing. We may add water to it, but a lot of the kibble goes through something that we call high pressure processing. And the ingredients in that kibble may be good going in, but when they come out, after they've been through the high pressure processing, it can oxidize those ingredients.

It turns them into a synthetic form. So all this kind of builds up over the years, and it increases the impact on the kidneys. So that was the second thing, environmental factors. Number one diet, number two, environmental toxins and things that are going on. So we've got some of the toxins, high carbohydrate load, um, from high pressure processing and the kibble.

But in addition to, we don't really think about that. Our kitties are little and they have little naked paws that are going all over the place. Right. And so, you know, what are we having in the house? Are there plugins? What are we cleaning with? I don't know why it does that, but we just got, um, what are we cleaning with?

What are they getting on their pumps? You know, uh, I've had, I've had, um, a friend before that her kitty got up on the laundry machine and walk through some powdered laundry detergent. And you know, it's these kinds of things that they're just exposed to time and time again over their life. Before, you know, 20, 30 years ago, kitties were living to eight, nine, 10.

They weren't getting up there to these ages that they are now. And then all of a sudden the kitties are like, whoa, I've had a heck of a time my whole life. And now. I'm not doing so hot. So, you know, that's another thing. And then those two factors lead to my third one, which is chronic inflammation. And that's where we're talking once again, diet and what they're being exposed to can contribute to chronic inflammation.

And when these kitties are chronically inflamed. Most especially when it comes to IBD, which is irritable bowel disease, or irritable bowel syndrome, which can be common in cats. And if their gut isn't processing the things that it should be, like it should be, guess what takes on the burden? Of those extra toxins and the extra things that are flowing through their system.

It's the kidneys, the kidneys are responsible for clearing the blood. The kidneys are responsible for the electrolyte balance in cats. And so these are some of the things that we can see when they start to have renal issues is they start to drink more water. It's the kiddies way and their kidneys way of saying, Hey, I need to flush these toxins more because they're starting to build up.

And one of the last things is, is like I talked about before is obviously the aging process. These kiddie kiddie kidneys start to get smaller. The renal function can start to go down and also contributing to that of course is dental health. So when we were talking about inflammation, inflammation and infection.

If there is a kidney infection or low grade IBD, that just kind of sits around in smolders. In addition to if there is some kind of periodontal disease, something going on with their gums, we are now learning and we know that that bacteria in their mouth can enter the bloodstream And guess what filters that?

The kidneys. So, um, of course, you know, there are some kiddies that are genetically predisposed to having these, like Persians, Abyssinians, there's another one in there that I'm missing, um, can have some pre, uh, genetic predisposition to having some kidney issues. Um, but we found that by and large. When we are focusing on the top four factors that can contribute to chronic inflammation and kidney disease, we can really support these cats and help them through it.