Anyone have experience with giving Tumeric to their ailing fur babies?

Hi guys,

so my cat is having some health issues. Swollen spleen and mass on the side of her belly directly by the spleen. Not to mention dental disease, kidney issues, yeah she is in rough shape. But hanging in there! She is on buprenorphine for pain but it is not intended for long term use and shouldn't be given to elderly cats with kidney issues (which she is, and has). 

So we are looking at Tumeric. Mixing it in with her food. Wondering if anyone has any experience with giving this to their ailing pet? I have heard amazing things about it and it sounds promising. Anti - inflammatory, pain killer, cancer killer, etc. Hoping to get her on this Tumeric and off the pain meds, Who knows.

Interesting!  I use it every day for arthritis in my hands, and swear by it.  But I'd never heard of using it in cats. 

Oh gosh. TURMERIC! Cant believe i spelled it wrong every singly time! 

And yeah its definitely worth checking into. I put some in my cats food tonight and she turned up her nose to it at first sniff. Maybe she will have changed her mind by morning. 

littlefluffytab said:

 
Oh gosh. TURMERIC! Cant believe i spelled it wrong every singly time! 

Click to expand...

I knew what you meant.     I'll have to do some reading about it.

I do not use turmeric, I use a standardized curcumin supplement with peperine (BioPerene). There are also curcumin supplements with phosphatidylcholine.

The BioPerine or phosphatidylcholine are necessary, because the bioavailability of turmeric/curcumin is so poor, it has very unreliable results in combating inflammation without the addition of one of those two things to increase its bioavialability. (BioPerine is a black pepper extract). The usual ratio is a 500mg curcumin supplement with 5mg of BioPerine, or an 875mg curcumin supplement with 6mg of BioPerine - so it takes very little to provide a very large jump in bioavailability. I'm not as familiar with the use of phosphatidylcholine in curcumin supplements, but I do know it is safe for cats - it is a component of choline, and eggs are high in choline.

I control my asthmatic cat's asthma AND her arthritis with ONLY curcumin and krill oil. (Knock wood!)

The dose of curcumin for a cat is between 50mg and 120mg daily (not weight dependent). My vet looked this up when I told her I wanted to try curcumin before trying steroids.

I give Flowerbelle, a 7.25 pound cat, 90mg of curcumin daily in 30mg doses 3x a day. She also gets 500mg of krill oil once daily.

I use Doctor's Best 500mg curcumin + BioPerine.
I use NOW 500mg krill oil capsules.

She doesn't like either one on her food. My other cat with arthritis in his leg does, so I just sprinkle the curcumin on his food and puncture the krill oil capsule and squish it on his food.

Flowerbelle I have to pill with the NOW capsule (it's not that big). I take empty capsules (size 4 empty gel caps) and make her curcumin capsules. I do this by hand, because it takes so little. I bought Norpro mini-measuring spoons, used the smallest spoon (the "drop," which is 1/64th of a teaspoon), and I counted how many of these there are in one Doctor's Best 500mg curcumin capsule. I figured out that 1/64th teaspoon is about 30mg, so that's what I put in her capsule. It is a TEENEY amount of volume. I add powdered freeze dried liver just to fill it up, and so I'm sure the curcumin is given with food, because I don't like to pill her at meals.