Does anyone know how insulin dysregulation impacts performance in the dressage horse? Leave out laminitis, assume the horse is otherwise sound.
No, but a very interesting question. I would think that, as in humans, when the glucose is not being taken up into the muscle cells it would cause them to have less strength and energy.
3 Likes
My layman’s pure guess is that each horse’s levels are specific to each individual and that optimum performance requires constant measuring and testing with supplements added or subtracted and feeds/grains given according to training load, grass quality, hay quality etc.
1 Like
I did a bit of Google. Very interesting question.
I think it’s going to depend on whether it’s treated or not.
The things that popped out in the literature were obesity, loss of muscle mass and perhaps loss of stamina. And also very low grade foot pain that would inhibit full performance. If you could manage through diet and perhaps meds to keep blood sugar at normal levels these presumably wouldn’t happen.
My personal feeling is that I would not take on a project horse with a known metabolic issue especially at a younger age. I would take on an older school master who needed dietary management. And obviously if I created the problem due to my own management I would move heaven and earth to get it stabilized.
I have care of 2 very easy keepers and this has been on my mind forever. I’ve seen what a huge hassle it is caring for horses after they develop issues. I also got diagnosed as pre-diabetic a few years ago. So no high sugar grazing for me!!!
7 Likes
It’s a very good question. Hard not to be confident anything disregulated like that wouldn’t have negative impacts on so much that matters to feel good. Energy, mood, hormones. Right?
On this topic, I thought it was VERY interesting to hear one of the vets who presented on “Leaky Gut Syndrome” talk about having leaky gut causing insulin dysregulation. He used the word glucose sink.
I’ve been meaning to start or revive a thread on leaky gut. A few weeks ago I started my IR/PPID mare on a supplement meant to possibly help w leaky gut to see if it helped her mood and hopefully more.
Research shows the tight junctions improved with butryic acid, bactillus subtillis 6, and some other things.
If you are interested their are several vets who presented on the subject and others and I found it all very intriguing and worthwhile. I have nothing to do with them just fyi. There are also other presentations on IR and many other topics. These are leading vets in the US. Pretty amazing. Maybe 15 different presentations.
You register and then have access to the past 3 years of presentations and summary pages of the events. I’ve never received a marketing email or anything else from the organization/company.
3 Likes
When I saw my 10 yr old Draft X stayed fat on air I sort of panicked. And having spent decades always seeking the lushest pasture for my OTTB, I had to decide to voluntarily put my guy in a more dry lot situation with minimal grazing.
It just seems way better to be proactive in this situation.
3 Likes
