Dr. Chris Vanderhoof, DVM, MPH
There is a famous saying, often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, that goes: “in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
The man whose face graces the $100 bill was a sage and accomplished figure, but we could argue that there are many other additional certainties in life and I would argue that joint discomfort is one of them.
Just like us, our furry four-legged companions will suffer from joint discomfort and non-normal inflammatory response at some point during their lives.
Uncomfortable, achy joints cut down on our mobility and our quality of life. But at least we as humans can understand what’s happening. It’s especially difficult to watch our pets, who live day to day, and for who we want little except great quality of life and happiness, suffer from the same discomfort and immobility as us; without a clue as to why or how to fix it.
As a loving owner, you care about your dog’s health and only want the best for him. That’s why it is so essential that you give your canine an extra boost of nutrition when he needs it the most.
In this article, we are going to discuss six natural food and supplement ingredients that can be very beneficial for helping to decrease discomfort and non-normal inflammatory response and to restore some of that lost mobility in your furry four-legged family member. When consumed consistently, these foods can significantly improve your dog’s health and well-being.
But before we get to that, it’s important to have a general understanding of what joint discomfort and non-normal inflammatory response means for older dogs, and even more importantly, misconceptions that many pet parents can have.
Other than degeneration of healthy joints over time, we’ll discuss two major initiating causes that you can mitigate on your own, from home:
- Athletic injury
- Increasing weight and obesity in dogs
1. ATHLETIC INJURY
Many dogs are active. They play fetch, go for long walks, and maybe even go on jogs or runs with their owners. With the popularity of doggie daycare and dog parks, it’s more common now to see dogs racing around full-tilt playing games with each other, too.
High athletic activity is healthy in the right amounts, but dogs can overdo it, just like people. In veterinary medicine, “limping” is one of the most common presenting complaints requiring medical care.
But regardless of the type of injury, if it alters the well-oiled machine that is the biomechanics of a joint, you will see chronic non-normal inflammatory response, tissue damage, and discomfort develop.
Take a cruciate ligament tear for example, which is a very frequent injury in dogs. Commonly referred to as an “ACL” tear (an improper term, but referencing the similar injury in people), this injury can happen suddenly, without warning, and can have lifelong consequences. The cranial cruciate ligament in dogs is a small band of tissue that is responsible for keeping a dog’s knee joint stable. It prevents forward and sideways sliding of the femur over the tibia, and also prevents twisting motion.
When the cruciate ligament tears, the knee joint loses much of this stability. The constant sliding and twisting that occurs, on top of the non-normal inflammatory response that already resulted from the actual tear itself (sometimes with additional injury to the joint cartilage cushion, called the meniscus), leads to perpetual non-normal inflammatory response and damage.
3. WEIGHT
A final big consideration that has become more prevalent in recent years, is the relationship between obesity in dogs and joint health. According to the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention, nearly 60% of dogs were overweight as of their survey results last year.3
From a very simple perspective, excessive weight strain on joints is going to lead to further cartilage damage, non-normal inflammatory response, and discomfort. But excessive fat additionally puts the body into a pro-inflammatory state, and this also contributes.
Thus, we always see overweight and obese dogs develop canine joint problems and joint discomfort that much sooner, regardless of genetics. That’s why it is so important that you help your dog stay at a healthy weight by feeding them a wholesome and nutritious diet.
What do we do about it?
So now that we understand a little more about joint discomfort and non-normal inflammatory response and some causes of it in dogs, we arrive at the obvious question: what the heck can I do about it?
Well, as you guessed given the title of our article highlighting 5 natural ingredients that assist with discomfort and non-normal inflammatory response in joints, we’re going to focus most on how those ingredients are beneficial.
But before we do, it’s important to briefly discuss prescription medical therapy for joint discomfort.
The potential dangers of NSAIDs and conventional drugs for treating hip + joint issues
Treatment of joint issues with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAIDs) medication is very common. NSAIDs interfere with certain inflammatory pathways that perpetuate that vicious cycle, and as a result, many dogs can see relief from discomfort and subsequently increased mobility.
Medications, like tramadol and gabapentin, do nothing to address the underlying non-normal inflammatory response, but can sometimes alleviate some of the discomfort caused by the process.
But the reason we’re discussing natural ingredients further in this article is that there are problems with these conventional drugs that can really put a snag in our efforts to relieve discomfort and increase mobility.
The problem with NSAIDs is that they simply are not selective enough for joint discomfort, and we can see side effects ranging from:
- Vomiting
- Diarrhea
- Decreased appetite
- Damage to the liver and kidneys
Because dogs have such a high degree of sensitivity to NSAIDs, even the ones developed specifically for dogs, like carprofen, these drugs have such a narrow range of use.
If a pup starts having digestive upset or starts to develop liver value abnormalities on bloodwork, decreasing the NSAID dose could help with side effects, but may no longer be of benefit for helping with joint discomfort. Likewise, if we don’t see significant improvement in joint discomfort with NSAIDs, we can’t simply increase the dose, because the risk of side effects goes up.
In fact, there are times when we simply can’t continue NSAID therapy in some dogs, and then we are left with a few medication options.
Are conventional drugs even that effective?
The medications we use in dogs generally have a good safety threshold, but the problem is that they seem to be minimally effective as relievers of joint discomfort.
In fact, a 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medicine Association, found that a 10-day course of tramadol had no clinical benefit for joint problems in a population of 40 dogs.4
When you also consider that the opioid crisis in America has led to a stringent increase in regulatory rules for how a lot of medications are dispensed, there can be a lot of headaches involved in prescribing these medications.
This is why many pup parents are understandably wary of traditional medical therapy for joint discomfort and non-normal inflammatory response. They may also have found that their dog either can’t be on an NSAID, or they see no benefit with medication.
This has led to a lot of interest in alternative therapies for joint discomfort, including joint supplements.
Six Natural Ingredients That Can Help With Joint Discomfort
This now gets us into the meat of our article, where we will discuss the following five natural ingredients that can help with joint discomfort, non-normal inflammatory response, and decreased mobility.
IMPORTANT: First, we’ll tell you the compounds responsible for promoting our desired positive effects on our furry four-legged family members, and then we’ll tell you (scroll to the bottom if that is all your interested in) which anti-inflammatory foods you can add to your dog’s diet that contain these compounds!
1. GLUCOSAMINE
Glucosamine is a natural component of cartilage that helps to regulate the synthesis of collagen. Collagen is a protein that is, in turn, the main component of many connective tissues in the body, including cartilage in joints. Glucosamine also contributes to the synthesis of proteoglycans and glycosaminoglycans, which are big words for two types of building blocks for cartilage formation. Glucosamine has also been found to have mild anti-inflammatory effects.
There are several forms of glucosamine out there but glucosamine HCl, which is more concentrated than other forms, is the most often used in pet supplements.
The goal of supplementing glucosamine is to help stimulate collagen production, reinforcing cartilage in joints to provide extra cushion and even encourage some rebuilding with collagen and our two “glycans” friends.
The best, natural source to harvest this essential nutrient from are shells of shellfish!5
2. CHONDROITIN
Chondroitin and glucosamine essentially go hand in hand. Chondroitin is the major glycosaminoglycan found in cartilage. It promotes water retention and elasticity in the tissue, which like glucosamine, also helps with cushioning and shock absorption.
Chondroitin sulfate is the most common form and is often found paired up with glucosamine in supplements both for humans and pets.
An additional benefit for chondroitin is that it also helps to replenish the glycosaminoglycan layer that protects the mucosa of the intestinal tract. This means that for some dogs who are already on NSAIDs, chondroitin may help to protect the digestive tract against ulcerations, which is a side effect sometimes seen with those medications.
The most common source from which chondroitin is manufactured from is cow cartilage!6
3. MSM
When sulfur comes to mind, we often think about a rotting eggs smell or the toxic nature of hydrogen sulfide gas. But the truth is that there are many sulfur compounds in existence and naturally occurring organic sulfur is required by all living organisms.
Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) is one such naturally-occurring organic sulfur compound. It is created through the earth’s sulfur cycle when phytoplankton and algae in the ocean die and decompose, releasing sulfur compounds into the atmosphere. The simple sulfur compounds released are converted to another sulfur compound called DMS.
With some extra sun and ozone exposure, DMS becomes DMSO and MSM. These products eventually become part of the water cycle, wind up in vegetation, and are consumed by animals.
MSM in supplement form must be manufactured because MSM occurs naturally in amounts too small to be harvested and utilized on any kind of grand scale.
MSM has been touted for many health benefits for several years now, both in humans and in animals. We do know that it has the ability to act as an anti-inflammatory by blocking parts of some key inflammatory pathways, including the COX-2 pathway, which is commonly implicated with joint non-normal inflammatory response.
Through its actions in blocking some of these pathways and reducing non-normal inflammatory response and oxidative damage from free radicals, MSM also thereby acts as an antioxidant and modulator of the immune system.
4. TURMERIC
Our next ingredient may very well be one that you could find in your own spice cabinet at home. Turmeric, also called turmeric root, is a yellow-orange spice very closely related to ginger. It hails from India, Asia, and Central America.
Turmeric’s primary active ingredient, curcumin, is not only what gives the spice it’s telltale yellow-orange color, but is also responsible for most of turmeric’s purported benefits.
In the human arena, there is much evidence that turmeric and more specifically curcumin, has numerous health benefits. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), states several findings in preliminary studies.
These findings revealed the following:
- less frequent heart attacks
- reduced skin irritation after radiation treatments
- controlled knee discomfort from joint discomfort on a similar level with ibuprofen
5. VITAMIN C
You may be aware that most animals are able to make their own Vitamin C. This excludes guinea pigs, humans, and other primates. But dogs can certainly make their own. So why the heck would supplementing additional Vitamin C be beneficial and what does it have to do with joints?
Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, as you will also see it listed, is a water-soluble vitamin that dogs and most other mammals can synthesize from their own glucose utilizing a special enzyme the rest of us lack. Vitamin C acts as an antioxidant. Antioxidants help to eliminate from the body the dangerous free radicals that can cause damage to cells.
But during times of stress or in disease states, dogs can see decreased Vitamin C stores, just as with humans. We could, therefore, see an increased need by the body compared to its ability to produce Vitamin C.
Vitamin C is also involved in the formation of collagen, which is a component of cartilage. As a result, there has been a keen interest in whether or not supplementing Vitamin C in cases of joint problems could, just like glucosamine, help to rebuild cartilage in dog joints as well as reduce oxidative stress on joints from free radicals.
In addition, Vitamin C can be found in cranberry supplements in dogs, which is known to treat and reduce the occurrences of UTIs in dogs.
A 2018 review of 10 scientific study articles involving both humans and animals in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that:
Vitamin C had the potential to do the following with no reported adverse effects:
- accelerate bone healing after a fracture
- increase collagen formation
- reduce oxidative stress on tissues
While it’s a water-soluble vitamin and generally very safe, extremely high doses of Vitamin C given for long periods of time have led to diarrhea in dogs, making it important to utilize a dietary supplement formulated just for them.
6. FISH OIL
Fish oil is another important component in managing hip and joint discomfort, non-normal inflammatory response and improving mobility.
It’s important because of the omega-3 fatty acids present in fish oil - specifically acids Eicosapentatonic acid (EPA) and decoxahexaeonic acid (DHA).
These particular acids help reduce non-normal inflammatory response in joints and limit the production of certain negative proteins that exacerbate certain types of joint problems.
How to get these ingredients into your dog’s diet
Now that we have a baseline of ingredients and nutritional building blocks that your dog’s hip and joint health can really benefit from, the question becomes, “How do I get this stuff into my dog’s diet?”
Unfortunately, the majority of dog food (even stuff that poses as “wholesome”) is nutritionally empty of key nutrients your dog needs for overall health and to keep their joints healthy.
GLUCOSAMINE AND CHONDROITIN
While these two elements are essential structural components of good joint cartilage8 and performance, they’re nutrients that are hard to come by in foods. Supplementation is therefore usually the best way to get these crucial nutrients into your dog’s diet although if you can get your hands on bone gristle or meat cartilage (and are ok with handling it!) that’s also a good way to give your dog at least some minimal amounts of Glucosamine and Chondroitin.
PAPAYA
Papayas contain antioxidants that can help prevent cell damage including high levels of Vitamin C. An added benefit is that papayas are also lower in citric acid than other antioxidant containing fruits which makes them easier to digest and more gentle on your dog’s stomach!
BLUEBERRIES
Another tasty and great source of Vitamin C and antioxidants that help fight non-normal inflammatory response and free radicals.
SALMON
Though expensive, incorporating a good quality salmon into your dog’s diet is a good way to provide them with the fish oil and omegas they need to help reduce joint non-normal inflammatory response and increase mobility. Haddock and sardines are other more cost-effective ways to get fish oil into your dog’s diet.
TURMERIC
We’ve already talked about all the amazing properties and benefits of Turmeric in this article for hip and joint health, reducing non-normal inflammatory response and helping increase mobility! It really is a natural wonder ingredient!
Although it’s a common spice that you already probably have in your kitchen cupboard, it’s unfortunately not as simple than that. Turmeric is not easily absorbable by your dog’s body so sprinkling it on their food won’t do the trick. Instead, combining it with a healthy fat source will help increase nutrient uptake. To help administer Turmeric to your dog you can make a “paste” according to Dogs Naturally Magazine by combining the following ingredients
1/2 cup - Turmeric powder (make sure your powder is organic and filled with curcumin. Not any Turmeric powder will do the trick!)
1-1.5cups - Water
1.5 teaspoons - Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup - Organic coconut oil
Dogs Naturally Magazine also says “the recommended dose of turmeric for dogs is 1/8 to 1/4 tsp per day for every 10lbs of your dog’s weight.”9
If you’d like to learn more about what different fruits and vegetables you can feed your dog that will promote a healthier and more qualitable life, check out this great article: Fruits and Vegetables: The Best Ones to Feed Your Dog
The easiest way to deliver optimal hip and joint nutrition
When combined together, these ingredients have the potential to produce some really amazing results. With the cartilage-building and protective effects of glucosamine and chondroitin combined with the anti-inflammatory effects of turmeric and MSM, joined with the antioxidant and cartilage building potential of Vitamin C, you have one heck of a hip and joint protector and joint discomfort-busting combination.
You can find this combination of ingredients in PetHonesty’s Advanced Hip + Jointsoft chews for dogs that have removed all of the legwork and guesswork out of assembling these nutrient powerhouses together yourself.
Instead of having to buy separate sources and measure out the effective amounts of fish oil, glucosamine, turmeric, chondroitin, Vitamin C on a daily basis, Advanced Hip + Jointcombines all of the right ingredients, in the right amounts, into one easy to give treat!
You may be very eager to add these ingredients to your dog’s daily regimen after hearing about all of their amazing benefits, Though I’m a veterinarian with years of experience, I encourage you to speak with your dog’s veterinarian first (especially if they’re on medication) before adding a supplement to their daily health routine!
