Sugar. It is all around us and over time, our addiction to it has grown tremendously. This is the same situation in the horse and over my 30 years of clinical practice, I have seen it and along with it, the tremendous growth of many health conditions in the horse, especially metabolic syndrome. Not unlike human medicine. Sugar is all around us and naturally present in many foods and herbs, but do all sugars truly ‘hurt’ us and our horses?
I remember years ago reading a case study on a person with metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. They had reached their point of poor health and obesity because of a ‘junk’ diet, creating ill effects over many years. They were advised to change their diet, which they tried to do, but in the act of changing it, they steered clear of many foods like green vegetables and many fruits, because they were told to avoid sugar. Now, this is a common conception among many people, not just with themselves but with their horses. This is especially true when it comes to the current management of metabolic syndrome horses, which has not changed in philosophy since my graduation many years ago.
There is ‘sugar’ in almost every food. Scratch that. Sugar is present in every food! Now, the thing here is that sugar comes in many forms, shapes, and sizes. To keep things simple, we have two main forms, being ‘simple’ or ‘complex’ sugars. If you eat a cookie, you are eating simple sugars, meaning that the glucose or sugar molecule present in that food is in its simplest form, thus readily absorbed by the body and quickly utilized, stirring up insulin levels. This is why in a diabetic crisis with low blood sugar, we would often feed the dog Karo syrup or pancake syrup. Simple sugars that are readily available and quickly absorbed. Great in a diabetic crisis, but not so great especially in higher quantities and frequency.
Continual intake of high levels of simple sugars, often in the form of glucose or fructose, lead to health problems on many levels. First, as mentioned, they are quickly absorbed and stimulate energy production, but the high levels of sugar also stimulate insulin release. Over time, the constant push for insulin may exhaust the system, OR, create a state where the insulin is no longer responsive. A ‘crying wolf’ situation. Second, these simple sugars alter the gut microbiome negatively, creating an overabundance of ‘bad’ or harmful bacteria in relation to the ‘good’ bacteria.
This is the bottom line crisis in both human and veterinary medicine. We are consuming too many blasted simple sugars from cookies to cereal, to sweeteners, soda pop, and enhanced coffee. In our horses, we have migrated to very poor quality hay, void of true nutrition all for the sake of believing we must feed low NSC forages. We are feeding grains when there is no need for a grain, and those grains are loaded with simple sugars or carbohydrates, in addition to the molasses or other flavoring added. Then, we are dumping vitamin-mineral supplements into them that are flavored artificially and usually loaded with sugars. Not much different than a fortified breakfast of Frosted Flakes in all honesty. Further, we add more of these synthetic supplements to our horses, maybe a coat condition, a hoof conditioner, or maybe even a ration balancer on top of what we are already giving them. All sugars! Plain and simple! Why? Because if you were to just taste those synthetic ingredients by themselves, it would make you pucker in more than one area of your body! They are very bitter in the synthetic form and thus, to sell you something your horse will eat, they have to add tons of flavoring and sugars in their simple form to ‘sweeten’ the deal. In truth, you are creating more harm in your horse than you are helping. This situation creates the metabolic problem and furthermore, disrupts the gut microbiome that I try to discuss constantly in the horse.
When we move away from these simple sugars to the more complex variety, funny things happen. First, that apple is not as sweet as a Snicker’s Bar. Why, because the sugar molecules are different. There are simple sugars in many fruits, but there are also complex sugars and many, many phytochemicals that alter the pathway of these sugars and benefit health. These complex sugars or carbohydrate molecules do not generally create harm in the gut, but more so aid in balancing it. They also do not create the spike in insulin. This is why I am so often perplexed by a person that claims they can’t eat an apple or a bowl of green spinach ‘because they contain sugar.’ A total misunderstanding.
As we move to more complex carbohydrates, we enter the world of polysaccharides, which are very complex chains of sugar or glucose molecules. These polysaccharides, being complex, are very slow to be absorbed and thus, have other tremendous benefits to the body and health of your horse. They can contribute to energy production, like simple sugars, but more so these complex beauties impact health from the gut microbiome to immune function, and even impact inflammation. They are incredible substances!
It is these polysaccharides or more complex carbohydrates that we are after, which boost health and can be utilized for energy production, albeit in a slower fashion. These are the substances we get when we utilize whole foods in our horse, versus packaged vitamin-mineral supplements. This is how we literally turn around a metabolic horse and reverse the symptoms. But first, one must STOP doing what they are doing. Stop the supplements you are feeding. Stop the junk hay. Stop the lazy lifestyle. It is amazing to me in many consultations, where owners claim they can’t stop the supplements they are using because either they have bought 6 months worth and need to use them up, OR, the barn manager refuses to stop because it is a regimen for ALL horses. Makes me shake my head sometimes.
So, here we have the sugar misconception and it creates a lot of confusion for some reason. Sugar in one form, being the simple form, can have very damaging effects on the body of your horse. However, sugar in the complex form, being polysaccharides, can have tremendous benefits! In fact, switching from one form to the other can actually reverse the damage created by the prior!
Almost every herb we utilize in our Secondvet and Cur-OST formulas contains polysaccharides and some are more concentrated than others. This is especially true for our tonic herbs, which can be found in our mushroom blends, like Cur-OST EQ Immune Full Spectrum and Secondvet EQ Mushroom Boost, but are also present in the Cur-OST EQ Adapt & Calm Ashwagandha and in the SV EQ Yin Blend and EQ Nourish blend. These are potent sugar molecules, often very sweet and some are actually sticky. But they can pack a punch for your horse when you have an understanding of what you are trying to achieve.
Author: Tom Schell, D.V.M, CVCH, CHN