As always- Discuss any diet changes with your vet!

I wanted to discuss the topic of why you may need to, or would possibly want to add salt/sodium when starting a ketogenic diet.

In humans you may of heard this referred to as the “keto flu” and sometimes when pet owners start their dog on a Raw Ketogenic diet the dog may experience lack of energy, or just being sluggish and not acting like themselves. This can be a direct result of improper levels of sodium,potassium,magnesium that are often lacking in home prepared keto diets.

I had the opportunity to talk to Daniel Orrego (Formally from KetoPet Sanc.) about this topic and felt it could benefit anyone switching their dog to a ketogenic diet.

This topic may pertain more to a dog that is coming from a kibble fed diet and starting a new Ketogenic diet. Kibble fed dogs eat a diet high in carbohydrate. A sudden switch to a Ketogenic diet- high fat-moderate protein-very low carbs- can sometimes cause a loss of balance with the sodium level and electrolyte levels of the dog. This isn’t really a result of ketogenics but more so of the sudden reduction of carbohydrates from the body.

You can try to mitigate this issue by slowly transitioning over to a ketogenic diet over lets say, a 1-2 week period Or by starting out with a lower ratio ketogenic diet (lower fat) and gradually increasing to a higher ratio keto diet (higher fat).

But if you are dealing with an extreme case and switching the diet asap is your main concern due to cancer/tumors etc, than you may opt to make the diet switch much faster, thus possibly requiring the addition of salt/sodium to the dogs diet to compensate for this sudden change.

Depending on how much meat the dog consumes can have a deciding factor in how much salt you want to add to the meal. NRC/AAFCO standards say a dog can have 200mg of sodium per day. Steve brown says a dogs “ancestral raw diet” can consume up to 1gram of sodium per day per 1k kcal. but for a general example you can calculate that raw ground beef contains roughly .66 mg/sodium per 1 gram unit weight of the meat. so if you feed 400 grams of beef per day x .66 mg/sodium per 1 gram= 264mg of sodium daily which is right at the level of NRC/AAFCO standards. now if you wanted to add some salt/sodium and stay under the 1gram max limit, we can calculate that most sea salts contain 2,300 mg per teaspoon, so 1/4 teaspoon is approx 575mg of sodium. So if we combine our 575mg of sea salt with our 264mg of sodium in the ground beef, we are under our daily limit of 1gram. It is important to note, that the entire daily diet being fed needs to have every source of sodium calculated.

you should always pay close attention to any additional ingredients/foods/supplements you are using so you can account for any additional sodium those things may bring into the diet as well.

And if the dog has high blood pressure, we probably wouldn’t be wanting to increase sodium under those circumstances.

And it’s important to point out that potassium and magnesium can be severely lacking in the basic keto diets (1meat1veggie1fat) , the nutrient deficiencies in those diets I have outlined HERE

“ once keto adaptation takes place, electrolyte balance is normalized.“- Daniel Orrego

CUSTOM TAILORED RAW KETOGENIC MEAL PLANS FOR YOUR DOG!
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!

click here for Daniel Orrego’s 10/17′ interview with Dr.Judy Morgan

And for even more details about this topic click here for a great article