Kelp (clean, science, stomach, teeth)

[oregonwoodsmoke]

At one of my other forums, the dog people are going on about how adding kelp to the diet keeps teeth clean.

For the life of me, I can't figure out how powdered kelp, bolted down without doing more than briefly touching he mouth while passing through, is going to remove tartar from teeth, but I'm willing to buy it for my dogs if it really is beneficial to them.

Can anyone explain why kelp helps prevent tartar build-up?

[Diana Holbrook]

I think you're looking at it as a mechanical effect - something that would actually clean the teeth like a brush - when the actual benefit reported is a chemical one. That it has minerals and elements and enzymes that are needed for good dental (and other) health. Feed it so the body can produce what's needed.

If you feed a good quality commercial feed, it's questionable whether you actually need more of it, because it would have these supplements added already, and they can get too much of some of them.

If you are making food from scratch, then you may well need to add something like this to make sure they're not missing something. Formulating your own pet food does requires a pretty deep knowledge of chemistry or bad things can happen or important things can be missed. OF course that fact always makes me wonder why we think we're qualified to feed ourselves, either.


Googling appears to provide many good articles you could browse to see if you think it's worth while to add this, or any other supplement.

[hiero2]

A search for SCIENCE (papers, published) gave me Dijken 2015 and Gawor 2018 in the pubmed libraries. They were both using a particular type of kelp - not your common varieties - not nori - etc. They used ascophyllum nodosum. Both looked at ingestion of the kelp (aka rockweed, Norwegian kelp, knotted kelp or knotted wrack) in the daily diet. Apparently both found some improvement in dental health.

I have tried other purported dietary supplements for dental health, and some that were applied in the mouth, with little to show for results. I remain skeptical. However, since papers do exist, I might try it, since my current two can no longer have bones to clean teeth.

[terracore]

This reminds me of the old 16mm films we saw as kids with all the wild canines out on the beaches scavenging kelp for the dental benefits.

Oh wait... that never happened. In the films we saw they were gnawing raw bones, sticks, basically anything but kelp.

In Alaska dogs eat seafood all the time. They even call the junk salmon they feed dogs "dogfish". But no kelp.

There very well could be some component in kelp that is good for a dog's teeth even though they would never naturally consume it in nature. Sort of like humans and the chemical fluorides they used to dump into municipal water (and still do in a lot of places). Though now there are studies suggesting maybe that isn't the best idea.

Maybe kelp is good for dog's teeth, but what studies are being done to find out if too much kelp is detrimental to a dog's health in other ways? "Grain free" dog foods were all the rage a few years ago but there is some concern that they may be linked to a heart condition called dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). DCM is a disease of the heart muscle that can cause the heart to become enlarged and weaken. In some cases, DCM can be fatal.

The FDA has been investigating the potential link between grain-free diets and DCM since 2018. In 2020, the FDA released a report that found a possible association between grain-free diets and DCM in dogs. The report found that dogs that ate grain-free diets were more likely to develop DCM than dogs that ate diets that contained grains.

The FDA is not yet sure why grain-free diets may be linked to DCM. Some experts believe that the lack of grains in grain-free diets may lead to a deficiency in taurine, an amino acid that is important for heart health. Others believe that the alternative ingredients that are used in grain-free diets, such as potatoes and legumes, may actually be harmful to dogs' hearts.

But you want to know the kicker? Wild canines don't have a grain-free diet, so it's ridiculous to think that dogs should either. Wild canines eat the stomach contents of the animals they kill and those stomach contents can contain things like grains. For the last several thousand years domesticated dogs have evolved to eat more grains than their ancestors did. The grain-free diet for dogs makes about as much sense as a meat-free diet.

Maybe kelp is good for their teeth. Maybe sugar free chocolate is too. It doesn't mean it's good for the dog.

I'm a big fan of sticking with nature as much as possible. As far as I know that doesn't mean feeding kelp to dogs.