Hands down. The diet you choose to feed your horse WILL impact their long-term health, performance, and overall longevity. What you choose to feed your horse will also impact the incidence of injury and joint deterioration, including osteoarthritis and tendon or ligament injuries. Why is your horse’s diet so important and how do your choices impact them and their health? Let’s take a look.
When I graduated veterinary college many moons ago, diet was not perceived to be that important for the horse or at least it was not given much attention either by veterinarian or the owner. We were instructed to just feed ‘hay’ and give ‘grain’, but the details surrounding those two entities were rather vague. In fact, as students we were given no educational courses on nutrition and the horse. It was left up to us to pursue if we desired.
One key situation which I recall was regarding the metabolic horse and how to address care in those patients. The main thing we were instructed to do, which is still applied today unfortunately, is to confine these horses and feed them low quality forage along with grains. Now, those several decades ago we did not have the commercial feeds that we do now, so ‘low starch’ feeds were not available. Despite being available in current times, these feeds are trash and of no clinical value in the horse. More often than not, they create more problems.
Well, I applied this approach to my metabolic equine patients when I graduated, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that those horses quickly went downhill in their health, rather than improving. They stayed static in their health status with many losing body weight but also showing evidence of nutrient deficiencies and many times a loss of mentation, becoming depressed and increasingly unresponsive. Was their ‘metabolic’ condition resolved? Hardly.
Aging, Health, and Disease in the Horse
As I worked through my career, I began to make better choices for my equine patients. I worked for myself, so there was no pressure from a peer colleague. I began to explore these metabolic cases, expanding what I had learned to other situations including EPM, Lyme, tendon injuries, laminitis, COPD, and many other common ailments in the horse.
My training in alternative medicine, specifically Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), taught me one huge importance when it came to health in the horse and other species. That area of focus was the gut or digestive system, commonly referred to as ‘spleen’ in TCM. For centuries, many TCM masters focused on the digestive system when it came to managing patients with all sorts of health ailments. They believed that proper food would literally fuel and heal the body and they were correct, but the ‘why’ was not evident then. The answers would come eons later as our world of research began to explore.
Why is the gut or digestive system so tightly connected to health in the horse? One main reason outside of pure nutrition and that is oxidative stress. Every health condition and lameness that you can conjure up in your mind in the horse is linked back to this concept of oxidative stress. Even just the process of aging is associated with oxidative stress which includes many health ailments, joint issues, and the graying of a horse’s muzzle is connected with this process.
The concept of oxidative stress is outside of the purpose of this article, but in a nutshell it is the cellular process where damaging free radicals accumulate in the body and inflict severe damage on a cellular level. This process of oxidative stress is a natural part of living and even breathing, thus we all will age and eventually die, BUT there is a way to slow the process. The way that we slow that process or buffer it, is through our food choices and the diet we feed our horse. Why? Simply because real food not only contains purified nutrition to fuel and rebuild the body, but these real foods contain potent antioxidants and other phytochemicals that help to quench this oxidative stress situation in the horse.
Think of this scenario. You just paid $2,000 for a new iron table and chairs for your back porch. It weighs a ton but looks great and you can’t wait to entertain. Now, as the year goes by and into the next, you note there is rust accumulation. Then, after a couple of years, one of your guests sits in a chair but falls through due to breakage. Wait! What happened to your beautiful new table and chairs? Oxidative stress. That’s what happened. In this case, it is a natural reaction between the iron element and oxygen in the air. This is oxidation and is the same process that is happening in your horse and even YOU. Give it enough time and the consequences will become evident.
Wouldn’t it be neat if you had a way to curb that process or even reverse it??
The Impact of Diet and Your Horse
For the past 10 years I have focused our research on the digestive microbiome and oxidative stress markers in the horse. This is done through fecal cultures and REDOX testing, which is available to the public and their horses. Why these two areas? Simply because I follow research trends and what that is telling me when it comes to health. What has research taught us that most are ignoring?
Research tends to focus generally on ’cause and effect’ when it comes to many health ailments in all species, including the horse. Once the ’cause’ is determined, then there is the endless pursuit to find a ‘cure’, which rarely happens because most are focused upon a pharmaceutical.
The root cause to most health conditions in all species, including the horse, is oxidative stress damage and chronic inflammatory changes. The damage done on a cellular level can be enormous, creating a downward spiral to almost every health condition you can imagine. Given that oxidative stress is a fact of life, we should expect disease and injury in the horse, right? Well, yes and no. It is expected to a degree, especially as the years keep ticking by, but in truth, what we are seeing in the equine industry and even human population, is an increasing incidence of many conditions in younger and younger horses, and people. Why?
Our food choices and lifestyle are speeding the process of oxidative stress along, in us as humans and in our horses. Instead of our foods and lifestyles slowing the process, they are speeding it up. Essentially, everyone is aging much faster, including our horses.
For over 10 years now, I have seen the evidence not only clinically, but in the laboratory with evident oxidative stress markers in horses and also greatly imbalanced digestive microbiomes. In reality, this is where it starts, the gut. If you keep that digestive microbiome in your horse in balance, I can almost guarantee you a reduction in health and lameness conditions. Why? The population of bacteria in your horse’s gut dictates the level of inflammatory markers in their body. The more out of balance, the more chronic inflammation and oxidative stress.
When we feed our horses properly, implying very high quality forage, proper grain choices if even needed, and usage of whole foods along with a good lifestyle, we impact their digestive microbiomes and their health. That is as simple as I can put it.
It is a choice, but it is a situation where we, as horse owners, need to be aware and not just accept the dogma junk that is being spoon fed to us. When we don’t pay attention and just do what we are told or what another in the barn is doing, we will lose, or should I say your horse will lose in the long run.
Instead of making proper choices, for whatever reason, many horse owners are opting to supplement nutrition to their horse via ration balancers, vitamin-mineral blends, or even fortified grains. This will not work and is like literally comparing apples to oranges when it comes to nutrition as it was meant to be. Not only are these horses imbalanced when it comes to their digestive microbiome, but oxidative stress is a real factor.
What concerns me even more in the recent years is a trend of going from oxidative stress to reductive stress. This reductive stress is the opposite situation, but just as damaging. Reductive stress is a situation where antioxidant levels in the blood sample are very high, while free radical levels are below normal. This is becoming more and more evident in those horses on these ration balancers and vitamin-mineral blends. Why? Because these supplements are 100% synthetic in their nature and many times are either toxic to the gut microbiome or become highly absorbed, thus raising the antioxidant load significantly. Despite whole foods being rich in antioxidants and other phytochemicals, we do not see this response. The reason is that ‘food’ is treated differently by the body.
What’s wrong with reductive stress in the horse?
Think of having a small fire in your wood burning stove. You want to keep it under control, but not put it out. Someone comes into your house with a fire hose and completely obliterates the stove and that fire. Not only is the fire out, but everything is so wet that it is now hard to restart, you are growing cold, and you cannot cook any food. That’s the impact of these ration balancers and vitamin-mineral blends in the horse, at least from my research and clinical perspective.
The diet is the number one link with the prevalence of health and lameness conditions in the horse, at least in my equine consultations. It is also the first thing that I try to correct in my suggestions to the owner. Real food, meaning high quality whole foods and forages, are the key. They contain all the micro and macronutrients that we are seeking as well as pack a punch regarding natural prebiotic properties for the gut microbiome. Additionally, almost all of these foods contain natural antioxidants and phytochemicals that quench those free radicals and chronic inflammation.
Nothing is absolute, that is for sure. But given the massive rise in incidence of many conditions in the horse from tendon injuries to EPM and metabolic ailments, I can say that their diet is the first place to look for ’cause’ and possible resolution.
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Author: Tom Schell, D.V.M.