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Food For Thought™ Technical Bulletin No. 42R
Innovative Research in Dog and Cat Nutrition™ |
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Diet and Performance
Diet plays an important role in the endurance potential of canine athletes. The Alaskan sled dog may be considered the ultimate canine athlete, sometimes pulling a sled over 1000 miles in subzero temperatures. Providing a well-balanced diet is essential to meet the special needs of dogs in such nutritional stress situations. Not only should the diet fed to these dogs be high in protein, but it should be high in fat as well, which serves as the major energy source for exercising muscles.
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High Nutrient Demands
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Dietary Effects On Performance
A high-fat diet can help muscles burn fat more efficiently. During sustained exercise, fatty acid oxidation is the primary source of energy for the muscles. Increasing the efficiency of fat metabolism spares the body’s use of carbohydrates, and since most dogs have in excess of 10 to 50 times more energy stored in fat than in muscle glycogen (carbohydrate), this may boost the animal’s exercise performance.
Iams studies1 have shown that in trained sled dogs as in ordinary dogs, exercise performance was enhanced by switching from a low-fat to a high-fat diet (from 25% to 65% of calories from fat), as indicated by increased:
- Mitochondrial volume- Increasing the volume of the muscle cell’s "power houses" increased the capacity for fatty acid oxidation.
- Aerobic capacity- Muscles were better equipped to utilize fatty acids for fuel because of increased ability to utilize oxygen.
- Fatty acid oxidation- By increasing fatty acid utilization during exercise, more energy was released for the muscles to use.
When dogs were switched back to a low-fat diet, all of these criteria decreased to their previous values.
These results indicated that by increasing the availability of fat stores and capacity to metabolize fat for energy, a high-fat diet promotes exercise endurance in canine athletes.
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Application
- Diet plays a vital role in the endurance and performance of canine athletes. It should be well-balanced with the proper nutrient and energy levels.
- Eukanuba® Premium Performance (45% of calories from fat) provides excellent nutrition for dogs involved in any strenuous physical activity.
- Eukanuba Veterinary Diets Nutritional Stress/Weight Gain Formula Maximum-Calorie/Canine (available only through veterinarians) is nutrient dense and makes an ideal diet for any dog in a nutritional stress situation (54% of calories from fat).
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1 Reynolds AJ, et al. The effect of diet on sled dog performance, oxidative capacity, skeletal muscle microstructure, and muscle glycogen metabolism. Recent Advances in Canine and Feline Nutritional Research: Proceedings of the 1996 Iams International Nutrition Symposium. Carey DP, Norton SA, Bolser SM, eds. Wilmington, OH. 1996. 181-198.
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