What You Didn’t Know About Digestive Enzyme Supplements for Dogs

What are Digestive Enzyme Supplements for Dogs?

Pet Nutrition
2 min readOct 1, 2016

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Digestive enzymes are special proteins that speed up digestion. Their function is to break down food into simple nutrients which can then be easily absorbed by the body. These enzymes are naturally found in fruits, meat, vegetables and in the digestive tracts of animals as well as of humans.

A well-balanced diet which includes foods that are raw and unprocessed helps in providing the right enzymes required for healthy digestion.

The digestion process gets hampered when insufficient amount of enzymes are produced.

What are the Factors Which Lead to Digestive Enzyme Deficiency in Dogs?

A number of factors lead to enzyme imbalance in dogs. It usually begins when their diet contains over-processed and over-cooked foods. This significantly reduces the level of enzymes. As a result, the body of the animal is compelled to produce more enzymes which makes complete digestion of the food difficult.

The next reason happens to be that of age. Like humans, dogs too develop a number of health-related conditions with age. One of the effects of age happens to be a decrease in the digestive enzyme production because of which digestive enzyme supplements for dogs are needed.

The third reason is a medical condition wherein the pancreas fails to produce enough digestive enzymes. If a dog happens to suffer from such a medical condition, then it would require digestive enzyme supplements throughout its lifetime to maintain its health and digestion.

This brings us to the next question –

How to Figure Out if Your Dog has Digestive Enzyme Deficiency?

Deficiency of digestive enzymes in any pet leads to nutrients not getting fully absorbed by the body and the result is malnutrition. This results in low levels of energy, unhealthy fur coat and greater chances of falling ill. Lack of digestive enzymes also leads to the growth of unhealthy bacteria in the intestines which results in –

· Weight loss

· Coprophagia

· Persistent diarrhea

· Low levels of energy

· Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Benefits of Using Digestive Enzyme Supplements for Dogs

The advantages using these supplements is that they help in restoring proper digestion and a balanced diet which help in getting back their energy to the earlier levels. It also helps in mitigating the health risks which are usually associated with malnutrition.

Digestive enzyme supplements for dogs thus prove to be highly beneficial in keeping them healthy and in effect, lessen the number of trips made to the vet.

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