Questions About Supplements/Probiotics to Help Chronic GI Issues

[Ebsyn]

Hey ya'll,

I posted awhile back about a feral kitten I had taken in with GI issues and I'm trying to get some ideas about long term things that could help him.

Prior Symptoms: Chronic Diarrhea, occasionally would avoid food

Testing/Meds: PCR panel showed Giardia and then we took Panacur for it. He tested negative but kept having diarrhea. He would get to the point where he would avoid food and was losing weight. We did a GI test and that came back fine. We put him on a round of calvamox and got him on a prescription diet with a daily probiotic and he is stable now!

I have been looking at supplements that could help him long-term. But, I'm a little confused. Has anyone out there used Adored Beasts? There is a gut soothe and a gut health formula. It looks like the gut soothe is for inflammation flare ups but I am really curious if the l-glutamine could be helpful for him?

It's been really hard because I don't have a definitive answer on what's going on with him. So, any advice out there on things that could support his GI tract or heal - I would really appreciate. It's just be hard to know how to support him going forward or if there is more I should be doing for him.

 

[She's a witch]

If he’s still a kitten, I would just put him on a daily maintenance dose of regular pre and probiotics, like Adored Beast Love Bugs. Healthy Gut and Gut Soothe are excellent product for cats with chronic issues but I wouldn’t use them for a kitten I think. He’s young and in time his intestines will heal. Always start with the small amount of probiotics no matter what you choose and work up to the recommended dose.

if you’d like to change their food for something better than prescription food (they’re ok for short term but personally I’d avoid them long term, as usually they have pretty poor ingredients) you can also use sacharomyces boulardi probiotics in case his diarrhea comes back. That’s great probiotics to have in hand as it resolves diarrhea pretty quickly unless they are other issues.

edited to add: giardia can damage intestines and it takes time to heal.It took myguys two months for their poops to get back to normal. If only I knew about s.boulardi back then...

 

[Ebsyn]

If he’s still a kitten, I would just put him on a daily maintenance dose of regular pre and probiotics, like Adored Beast Love Bugs. Healthy Gut and Gut Soothe are excellent product for cats with chronic issues but I wouldn’t use them for a kitten I think. He’s young and in time his intestines will heal. Always start with the small amount of probiotics no matter what you choose and work up to the recommended dose.

if you’d like to change their food for something better than prescription food (they’re ok for short term but personally I’d avoid them long term, as usually they have pretty poor ingredients) you can also use sacharomyces boulardi probiotics in case his diarrhea comes back. That’s great probiotics to have in hand as it resolves diarrhea pretty quickly unless they are other issues.

edited to add: giardia can damage intestines and it takes time to heal.It took myguys two months for their poops to get back to normal. If only I knew about s.boulardi back then...

He is about 10-11 months now. We are using a Sacharomyes Boulardi probiotic daily right now. But, was just curious about the other adored beast supplements.

I’ve been repeatedly told about prescription diets. But, I’ve tried both limited ingredient diets and tried not even 3 weeks ago regular kibble again - instant diarrhea again. The probiotics make no difference, only the prescription kibble has really helped.

 

[stephanietx]

Have you tried raw? There are many good ones out there and a raw diet can work wonders.

 

[Ebsyn]

Have you tried raw? There are many good ones out there and a raw diet can work wonders.

No. Because I don't know exactly what's wrong with him and I honestly don't want to aggravate the little bit of progress that we've made with him. But, I am familiar with raw. My dog has been on a raw diet for 10 years.

 

[stephanietx]

I think it would be worth it to introduce it into his diet and see if it helps. What are you currently feeding him?

 

[Ebsyn]

I think it would be worth it to introduce it into his diet and see if it helps. What are you currently feeding him?

Royal Canin GI formula for the last 3-4 months now. Like I said, it's been the only thing that has worked for him. I wish I had some idea why.

 

[She's a witch]

Royal Canin GI formula for the last 3-4 months now. Like I said, it's been the only thing that has worked for him. I wish I had some idea why.

It could be as easy as antibiotics completely wiped out his flora, metronidazole does really great damage. I had to put my guys on RC GI diet after giardia too, for a month, and then very slowly transitioned to something else, adding their regular food into RC. If I added too much, they would have diarrhea. I think it took us two months to transition out of it. Although they were on wet, not dry.

But if you want to be sure there isn’t something more serious going on, ask for belly ultrasound and GI blood panel. Both will tell you if there’s anything wrong with with his GI organs.

How many capsules of s.boulardi hve you been using when he had diarrhea? Recently I had to give three a day to my girl to firm her stool. Also, Jarrow brand is the best as they combine it with prebiotics MOS.
But I couldn’t agree more that raw food is the best for kitties with GI issues.
And going back to Adored Beast, you can get both products, and use Healthy Gut for daily basis and Gut Soothe occasionally. These products are really great.

 

[stephanietx]

We also feed RC GI formula to one of my kitties. He's been on it for all his life, which is going on 11 years. We have learned to balance it with other grain-free food to keep his poops normal. Introducing food can be challenging. The last time we tried a new food, it landed him in the hospital for about 4 days because he developed gastroenteritis. I'd like to introduce raw/freeze dried to see if it helps him. We also give him s. boullardi to keep his poops firm. We have no known cause for the diarrhea. It just started when he was about 8 months old.

 

[kittenmittens84]

The “soothing” one has aloe vera in it which can cause stomach upset and diarrhea in cats so I definitely would not give that to my cat! Looks like some of the other ingredients are homeopathic preparations which are useless, the probiotics in there might help but since your cat is already on probiotics and seems to be stable you should stick with those. For a cat with a sensitive stomach I’d be wary of giving supplements that have a bunch of different herbs and other ingredients in general, just because it increases the chance that something in there could upset his stomach and you’d have a hard time teasing out which ingredient was bothering him.
Is he still having diarrhea now or is he doing well? Having had a cat with IBD, if he’s feeling better now I’d stick with what you’re doing and cross your fingers that it keeps working!

 

[Ebsyn]

It could be as easy as antibiotics completely wiped out his flora, metronidazole does really great damage. I had to put my guys on RC GI diet after giardia too, for a month, and then very slowly transitioned to something else, adding their regular food into RC. If I added too much, they would have diarrhea. I think it took us two months to transition out of it. Although they were on wet, not dry.

But if you want to be sure there isn’t something more serious going on, ask for belly ultrasound and GI blood panel. Both will tell you if there’s anything wrong with with his GI organs.

How many capsules of s.boulardi hve you been using when he had diarrhea? Recently I had to give three a day to my girl to firm her stool. Also, Jarrow brand is the best as they combine it with prebiotics MOS.
But I couldn’t agree more that raw food is the best for kitties with GI issues.
And going back to Adored Beast, you can get both products, and use Healthy Gut for daily basis and Gut Soothe occasionally. These products are really great.

To answer a couple of your questions - we have run a GI panel via Texas A&M and it was perfectly normal. The only thing that hasn't been done at this point is the Ultrasound.

Right now because he's not having diarrhea - he gets one a day.

 

[Ebsyn]

We also feed RC GI formula to one of my kitties. He's been on it for all his life, which is going on 11 years. We have learned to balance it with other grain-free food to keep his poops normal. Introducing food can be challenging. The last time we tried a new food, it landed him in the hospital for about 4 days because he developed gastroenteritis. I'd like to introduce raw/freeze dried to see if it helps him. We also give him s. boullardi to keep his poops firm. We have no known cause for the diarrhea. It just started when he was about 8 months old.

Yeah, RC is having a shortage and we had a winter storm here in Texas. So I tried normal kibble because I couldn't find his GI formula last month and he was pooping gray. As soon as I got him back on RC, he was fine. It's so weird. His GI panel said that everything is working properly. So it's a total mystery to me at this point.

 

[Ebsyn]

The “soothing” one has aloe vera in it which can cause stomach upset and diarrhea in cats so I definitely would not give that to my cat! Looks like some of the other ingredients are homeopathic preparations which are useless, the probiotics in there might help but since your cat is already on probiotics and seems to be stable you should stick with those. For a cat with a sensitive stomach I’d be wary of giving supplements that have a bunch of different herbs and other ingredients in general, just because it increases the chance that something in there could upset his stomach and you’d have a hard time teasing out which ingredient was bothering him.
Is he still having diarrhea now or is he doing well? Having had a cat with IBD, if he’s feeling better now I’d stick with what you’re doing and cross your fingers that it keeps working!

He's fine right now! That prescription diet works for him. So, that is the big reason why I am so reluctanct to switch him to anything else right now. Also, because we just don't have a name for whatever is wrong with him. His GI panel was totally fine.

But, if it was something like IBD then I didn't know if he would benefit from something like l-glutamine in his system. And I just don't know how to help him long term except to just continue what I'm doing now.

 

[She's a witch]

To answer a couple of your questions - we have run a GI panel via Texas A&M and it was perfectly normal. The only thing that hasn't been done at this point is the Ultrasound.

Right now because he's not having diarrhea - he gets one a day.

So if both diarrhea panel and GI blood panel came back clean, it might be as easy as bacterial flora needing lots of time to replenish.

when you said you changed his dry food, did you do this cold turkey or over some time? Because even healthiest of cats will end up with diarrhea when their dry food is suddenly changed. So it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still something wrong. Next time when you change, I’d do it very very slowly and up s.boulardi significantly during the transition. Most cats with sensitive GI do better on more biologically appropriate diet, meaning high protein, low carbs, moderate fat, high moisture. Raw or LID canned food may be a good idea to try if you’d like to or if you’re forced to try something else. But again, the transition would need to be very very slow.

Other products that I know lots of owners of IBD cats use (I’m in a IBD Facebook group) are Visbiome probiotics (very powerful and needs to be introduced very slowly as it has some minimal lactose) and fecal transplant pills, Animal Biome. With thelatter you can also test the microbial flora. But also all three of Adored Beast products are also highly effective for IBD cats, according to that group, and personally they would be first step for me (we’re using Love Bugs and it improved my cat’s poops significantly).

 

[Ebsyn]

So if both diarrhea panel and GI blood panel came back clean, it might be as easy as bacterial flora needing lots of time to replenish.

when you said you changed his dry food, did you do this cold turkey or over some time? Because even healthiest of cats will end up with diarrhea when their dry food is suddenly changed. So it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still something wrong. Next time when you change, I’d do it very very slowly and up s.boulardi significantly during the transition. Most cats with sensitive GI do better on more biologically appropriate diet, meaning high protein, low carbs, moderate fat, high moisture. Raw or LID canned food may be a good idea to try if you’d like to or if you’re forced to try something else. But again, the transition would need to be very very slow.

Other products that I know lots of owners of IBD cats use (I’m in a IBD Facebook group) are Visbiome probiotics (very powerful and needs to be introduced very slowly as it has some minimal lactose) and fecal transplant pills, Animal Biome. With thelatter you can also test the microbial flora. But also all three of Adored Beast products are also highly effective for IBD cats, according to that group, and personally they would be first step for me (we’re using Love Bugs and it improved my cat’s poops significantly).

I put in 1/3 of a cup in a huge bowl full of his GI formula to start. His stomach is just incredibly sensitive.

I hope it's as simple as gut flora. He was 4 months old when he came inside in September. Was diagnosed with Giardia around December/January. Part of me wonders about intestinal damage. I just hope whatever it is that he can heal. I'm reluctant to even give him treats that I give his siblings which makes me feel bad.

 

[stephanietx]

Sounds like my guy. We have no known cause for the chronic diarrhea/loose stools other than it's just him and his DNA. We continue with the RC GI rx food and Science Diet i/d wet food as that keeps it in check. I'm still on the fence about raw for him. I know one of my girls and the outdoor neighborhood cat we have come to claim would love it. Not sure about Tumbles (my GI guy) or my other girl.