Can Your Dog Benefit From A Vitamin Supplement?
by Sandy Phillips Could your dog benefit from a vitamin? For most dogs, the answer is yes. I know, you're already feeding high-quality dog food, and you should have your dog covered, but is that really true? Let's talk about the vitamins in your dog's bag of kibble. Are they vitamins from whole food, or are they synthetic vitamins? How do you tell the difference? For most people, it's simple; if you cannot easily pronounce the ingredients, they are highly likely synthetic. Dog food manufacturers need to add all these vitamins to that kibble because the kibble itself is void of these vitamins or the vitamin component is so small that they don't meet US dog food standards. Take a moment to think about that. Is your dog genuinely eating "food?" Did you know that only a very few brands of dog food made in the US use natural or whole food vitamins in their food? Most use a vitamin pre-mix, and it's comprised of synthetics. The 80-dollar bag of kibble may differ from what you think you are buying. Expensive does not necessarily equate to quality where dog food is concerned. A better understanding of synthetic vitamins and how they work in the body will offer you more information when evaluating your next purchase of dog food. Via chemical structure, synthetic vitamins are "mirror images" of their natural counterpart. For example, vitamin C in its natural form, let's say, looks like a string of lights with all the bulbs facing to the right. Vitamin C, the synthetic form, looks precisely the same as the natural string of lights, but the bulbs all face the opposite direction, to the left. Mother Nature instructed our bodies and the dog's body to utilize those natural vitamins in a specific way. There are receptors in the cells that recognize that string of lights with the bulbs facing to the right, and they fit into the cells in our bodies just like the perfect puzzle piece. Once in place, the body knows how to benefit from the vitamin's presence. Now, when that string of lights with the bulbs all facing left enters the cell, and because they are not an exact fit, the cell rejects it as a foreign object, and our bodies eliminate it through the urine.