IBD help!! Multiple questions....probiotics...proteins...etc...any and all advice greatly appreciated!!

[tracy1213]

Hello again....new question/questions. Sorry in advance as this will probably be long and all over the place...like my mind right now!!

For anyone dealing with an IBD cat did you have good results from a regular probiotic or only a probiotic containing S. boulardii? I read somewhere that S. boulardii isn't recommended to take for more than 15 months....I'm not sure if anyone has heard anything like this? I'm trying to determine if I should get him on a regular probiotic or if only the S. boulardii are effective for ibd. He's not vomiting at all but the loose stool/diarrhea is constant. His appetite is also crazy and he's just starving all the time. This has only been going on for a few days (2 weeks ago it was a struggle to get him to eat) but I have no idea if I should just keep feeding him (he's underweight). The change happened almost overnight. He went from barely eating to now he just begs and cries for food.

I just started him on a trial of prednisolone this morning and a few hours after his first dose he had a very normal bowel movement...a couple hours later the constant diarrhea started.

I know that most likely I will need to switch his food but have not had any luck getting him to eat novel proteins but I have to keep working at it.

Does anyone know if probiotics with or without S. boulardii are recommended to take during a course of steroids as I'm again reading mixed things.

I'm overwhelmed to say the least. Losing sleep doing endless research. I just want him to feel better and actually get some nutrition from his food. I hated even having to start the steroids but I felt like nothing else was working. I'm also upset that I have to force him to drink a disgusting tasting liquid but didn't want to go the compounding route for just a trial dose.

His entire life (he's now 7) he's eaten a rotation of chicken, turkey, and duck. As his appetite got really bad he started only eating chicken. I tried beef, rabbit, and lamb to no avail and settled on turkey since he's eating that and it's not chicken. Is it always the protein source that causes the IBD or could it be another ingredient in the food? He only eats wet and eats cargeenan free food but it seems most food has multiple gums in them.

At this point I'd love any and all advice or tips that worked for you. Thank you!!

 

[silent meowlook]

I used Visbiome with my cat. I can't tell you about the S. Boulardii because I just don't know.

With the novel protein diet, you have to use a protein they have never had before. So, were looking at probably venison now since your cat has already had duck and rabbit and beef. Often it is the protein, but it could be any number of things. Once you start a novel protein diet you must only feed that. Make sure he is eating canned and not dry food. Of course, it is always important that they eat, so don't let him go without eating.

 

[tracy1213]

He never actually touched the beef or rabbit or lamb. So he's never actually eaten them. Thank you for the advice!!

 

[Ocean Planet]

I just went through a bad round of this in January (see my monster thread in the forum). My cat had liquid stool for 3 weeks. At one point he went to the box like 20 times per day.

It's kind of a blur now but we started him on prenisolone and I tried Visbiome probiotic. The Visbiome didn't seem to help much and so I read about people giving the S. Boulardii. I'll admit I was hesitant at first. Then I started getting desperate as I hated seeing him go to the bathroom 7 times per day.

I purchased the Jarrows S. Boulardii on Amazon and hit him hard with it one weekend. My vet had given me a prescription for Hills A/D wet food and what I did is wrap the powder up in little sandwiches. Thankfully he ate it. I gave him like 4 doses on Saturday and Sunday and by Tuesday he finally went to the bathroom normally! Granted the prednisolone may have helped too but it was slow going.

With my guys unfortunate diagnosis, he started Chlorambucil a month later and that probably helps as well. He is now back to going once per day (sometimes twice) and it all has been much more normal solids.

My 2nd cat has started to get soft stool so I just started him on the S. Bouldardii 2 days ago so I am in the middle of seeing if it helps him too. I'm giving a dose in the morning and a dose in the evening to both. About half a capsule per day. From this link, a maintenance dose should be able to be given as long as you need if I'm reading this correctly.

Probiotics – IBDKitties

www.ibdkitties.net

" Given its role in improving performance of bacterial probiotics and its anti-inflammatory properties, the use of S boulardii at maintenance levels can be continued indefinitely along with a bacterial probiotic. "

 

[tracy1213]

Thank you so so much for taking the time to write out your response!! I'm so sorry to hear about the trouble with your kitties as well!! I definitely will look into the brand you mentioned and have to reread the info in the link you provided. My head is all over the place and the dosing amounts are confusing me at the moment but I'll figure it out when I'm more rested! Thank you again for your help!!!

 

[daftcat75]

Bacterial probiotics aren't likely to contain enough of the good stuff or a broad enough diversity to move the needle. If they do help, go ahead and keep using them. If they don't, they probably won't.

There are two bacterial probiotics I can recommend:
Pet Flora from Vitality Science. My last cat, Krista had some success with this in the earlier years of her struggles. Plus you can get a sample pack of other supplements that you may find helpful. I recommend Luxolite and Lithothanium. But while lithothanium can definitely dry up his stools, too much can create the opposite problem. And it's only a stop-gap measure. It doesn't address the problem.
Finicky Cat Trial Pack

The other product I recommend is going to be considerably more expensive, but also considerably more thorough in the diversity and abundance of strains. That would be the Gut Restore Supplement from AnimalBiome (or KittyBiome, same company.)
Cat Products for Diarrhea

Third, while KittyBiome has their own s. boulardii product, I have found the Jarrow brand to be superior. I only have a sample size of one. But Betty ate more readily and eagerly with twice-daily administration of the Jarrow brand. I repack the human sized capsules into kitty-sized size four capsules using gelatin capsules I buy from Amazon and a size four capsule filling machine I bought from Etsy (seller: MYHERBAR.)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NW49TC7/?tag=thecatsite

Is it always the protein source that causes the IBD or could it be another ingredient in the food?

It is rarely the protein that causes the IBD. But it does get the blame. In an oversimplified way of putting it, it's usually the carbs that are disrupting the gut balance that causes the gut walls to become leaky and partially or undigested food proteins to leak out of the gut. The immune system is programmed to recognized proteins of invaders, not so much carbs or fat which are constantly being shuttled through the blood without issue. So you'll want to identify the problematic carbs in his diet and eliminate those. You'll want to suppress the immune system long enough for the gut to heal itself. That's the steroids. And you'll want to include s. boulardii which will help his gut heal. It will also act as a decoy gut to scavenge pathogenic bacteria that can thrive in imbalanced guts. It has similar enough structure to the gut wall that the strains that attack the gut wall like e. coli and clostridium will bind the s. boulardii instead and be flushed out with his poop. Administering it twice daily at a minimum will help keep a steady state of this helpful stuff in his gut rather than flushing through him once a day. Unlike bacterial probiotics, s. boulardii does not take up residence in the gut. It has to be given for as long as it is needed. But it can be given indefinitely for the rest of his life. The only concern with s. boulardii is that too much of it can make him constipated.

His ravenous appetite, did that start before steroids? If so, and other causes of increased appetite have been ruled out like hyper-thyroid, then he may have lymphoma. Cancer eats calories. Is he losing weight despite eating enough or more than enough food? Failure to gain or maintain weight is one indicator that it may not be simply IBD. The only way to know for sure is an endoscopy with biopsy. This may be more expensive than you're willing to spend. If that's the case, discuss with your vet an "A-B" treatment plan. You'll treat this like "A" (IBD, in this case) for an agreed upon time. And if the steroids alone (or ideally with modified diet and s. boulardii) don't produce the desired result, or if he continues to lose weight, then have the doctor agree to try "B" (chemotherapy) without requiring an endoscopy. Don't just settle for "pred and pray" where they simply throw pred and more pred at the problem hoping a high enough dose might finally work. It may. But not if it's already progressed to lymphoma.

Try a novel protein diet. It doesn't have to be novel to all cats, just him. It doesn't have to be something he's never had before. But it should not be something he's eaten on the regular in the last couple of years.

Look for low carb foods. That's going to rule out dry food. Dry food and IBD are pretty much incompatible. Rawz and Mouser are two of my favorite low-carb brands.

As long as he is taking steroids, use that to your advantage. He'll probably eat just about anything put in front of him if his dose is high enough. Try Rawz or Mouser in turkey or rabbit. Not every cat likes red meat. If he doesn't like lamb or beef, don't force it. You can buy individual cans of Mouser and Rawz from Incredible Pets making it easy to try a few foods without committing to whole cases.
Search: 9 results found for "mouser" - Incredible Pets

 

[tracy1213]

I can't thank you enough for taking the time to respond and you really gave me so much to go over!!

I did just order the Jarrow s. boulardii and just have to go back over someone else's comment that told me how to figure out the dosage.

His ravenous appetite began about 3 days prior to starting the pred. About a week before that the appetite was decent...and the week before that it was a miracle if I could get him to eat much of anything so it's just been a whirlwind of change in a super short span of time. He's consistently losing weight. His blood was checked in Jan and he had no signs of elevated white blood cells, diabetes, or hyperthyroidism. I don't know if any of that could change over the course of 2 months but I'm assuming it can. Problem with my cat is that he gets very aggressive at the vet so what is supposed to be a free vet appt is minimum 200.00 to drug him enough to take his blood. On top of this they want 600.00 for an ultrasound so I can only imagine how much a biopsy would be. Unfortunately I can't really afford those options so vet suggested we do a trial course of pred and go from there. He seems knowledgeable enough that he knows the risk with long term pred but at the same time I feel a bit lost in this entire process. I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle because all of a sudden I'm trying to figure out all these new things to try and I'm overwhelmed to say the least. Cats are my life....unfortunately they got stuck with an owner who doesn't have much money.

Thank you again for all of your help!!

 

[daftcat75]

An ultrasound would be something you might want to save up or borrow money or credit for. An ultrasound will tell you if you're in the right ballpark. It is true that an ultrasound cannot distinguish between IBD and small cell lymphoma. But it can detect large cell lymphoma or other tumors which can indicate a different course of treatment is needed and/or a poorer prognosis. However, with limited funds, there is nothing wrong with trying steroids first. But don't simply throw more steroids at it if it doesn't produce an improvement within xyz time frame. Get your vet to agree on what that timeframe is before he'll agree to try chemotherapy without an endoscopic confirmation. I did this for my last cat who was rapidly losing weight and not a stable cat. I didn't think putting her through an endoscopic procedure would be worth the stress on her. Her vet didn't want to prescribe chemo without confirmation. I went over her head to the owner and founder of the practice and said, "look, our options are: 1) do nothing 2) more pred 3) chemo without confirmation or 4) put an unstable cat through a procedure to get confirmation to proceed with chemo. Clearly the diagnosis is more risk to this cat than the drug." I gave him informed consent that we're trying chemo without having definitively diagnosed cancer. In her case, pred turned her liquid poops into mush with some formed bits. But it wasn't until we started chemo that it really started to firm up again. And she finally stopped losing weight. Unfortunately, to get her to take her pred, I kept wrapping it in one of her inflammation triggers, fish flakes. And so she never really got to remission until I finally cut those out and got her on transdermal pred. So yes, it's important to find the right meds for your cat. But it's also important to find and remove the trigger foods and that's where low carb/no carb novel protein diets come in. It's a lot to juggle. Keep a food, meds, and supplements journal so you can hopefully find ideas and guidance from good days for when he's having bad days. Healing doesn't happen in a straight line.

 

[tracy1213]

Thank you!!! The ultrasound does make sense now that you explained it that way!! I kept reading it wouldn't be too helpful in determining but now I see like you said it would rule out how large an issue I'm dealing with!!

I'm going to talk to the vet and see how we are going to go about this and what the plan will be since as of right now I'm clueless where I go after this step of trial steroids!!

Thank you again for all your wisdom!! It means a lot to me!!