The holidays are a magical time spent with friends and family. It’s also a time we tend to overindulge on food and treats because we’re “definitely” going to begin that new weight loss program starting January 1st. Once we’ve had our fill of Christmas cookies and eggnog it’s time to start that detox program we signed up for months ago. Detoxing your body is important because it cleanses your system and increases health/performance. Surprisingly, your dog could benefit from the same treatment after the holidays as well. Since it is difficult to keep an eye on our pups 24/7 they’re more likely to consume things they shouldn’t which can escalate into huge health concerns if left untreated. This is why the detox can be extremely beneficial. But how do you detox your dog? Canine Caviar has provided us with a step-by-step plan to detox your pup’s system, giving them the jump-start they need for the new year.
1. Detoxing Your Dog Begins With Fasting
Step one of the detox is fasting. We know this might cause some apprehension for some of our pet parents but putting your dog on a fast actually has several benefits. Since the body is constantly pushing energy and resources into digesting food, fasting gives your dog’s digestive system a much needed break. Additionally, because every body has a limit to the energy they can expend, some functions end up getting neglected. Fasting allows the body to refocus attention back to those functions (like the immune system), repairs organ systems, and allows your dog to rid their body of toxins (which is the whole point of a detox).
Give Plenty of Filtered Water
To achieve the maximal results it is best to avoid giving your dog little treats or chews during the fast. You do, however, want to ensure that your dog gets plenty of filtered water because fasting dehydrates the body and the organs won’t function properly if they’re dehydrated. Filtered water will also help revitalize the system’s organs by maintaining temperature and ensuring that the organ functions are working correctly.
Note: It’s important that the water is filtered because filtered water is free of toxins and metallic substances and will help flush out any residual toxins in the body.
2. Healing the System Through Nutrition
Once the fast is over it’s time to move onto the next step; healing the body through nutrition. This means that you’ll want to feed your dog a diet specifically designed to continue the cleansing process. Although fasting and filtered water helps to remove a majority of the toxins, there may be residual toxins leftover. Feeding a naturally cleansing food will help promote faster, healthier digestion thus removing future toxins more effectively. There are dog food formulas dedicated to helping this exact task including Canine Caviar’s Special Needs Dog Food. We’ll talk about this in more detail later but, first lets see which organs and systems you should focus on improving.
Gastrointestinal Tract
The Gastrointestinal Tract is the system that helps break down and decompose the food your dog eats which means a lot of toxins are taken in and released here. A healthy GI Tract will promptly take in the nutrients and release the toxins but the effectiveness of the GI Tract is lowered if your dog is unhealthy. A slow or irritated GI Tract give toxins more time to damage the body so in order to avoid this, the food you feed your dog should be made with the GI Tract in mind.
A Clean Liver
The liver is a powerhouse when it comes to detoxification so it is extremely important to keep the liver healthy. The liver will filter the blood in the body and remove whatever toxins are present. As your dog ages, the liver becomes less potent so you may need to use liver support supplements. If you have a younger dog, however, this won’t be as much of an issue and a healthy meal after the fast should be enough to boost the health of the liver.
Kidneys
The Kidneys are another vital organ that help detox your dog’s body. The job of kidneys is to filter out waste and toxins in fluids. You can help the kidneys during the detoxification process by giving your dog filtered water. The filtered water will collect toxins and transport them to the kidneys and at that point the kidneys will begin the filtration process.
Probiotics and Prebiotics
Probiotics and Prebiotics are very important for healthy digestion. Probiotics are the healthy bacteria associated with good digestion. They help keep the GI Tract healthy, improve the immune system, create antioxidants, and remove toxins. Prebiotics provide extra fuel for probiotics so that they can perform their job better. The combination of these two will give amazing results during detoxification so your choice of healthy food should contain both prebiotics and probiotics to enhance the cleanse.
3. Exercise the Toxins Away
The last step to detox is exercise! Exercising helps give that final push your dog’s body needs to finish the cleansing process because it forces the organs to work faster. For example, the GI Tract moves waste materials faster making it tougher for toxins to do any damage, the heart pumps the blood faster improving the elimination of toxic materials in the bloodstream, and the liver, lungs, and kidneys also go through their processes much faster resulting in faster detoxification. Just like humans, the combination of healthy nutrition and exercise work together to create the powerful cleanse your pup needs.
How Canine Caviar Helps Detox your Dog
As we mentioned previously, healthy nutrition is essential when detoxing. Canine Caviar’s dry food diets are designed with this in mind, specifically their Special Needs chicken and brown rice formula.
The Special Needs Holistic Entree supports the GI Tract thus promoting healthier digestion. Because limited ingredient diets are simple, the digestive system processes the food much more easily. It also helps support the liver and contains probiotics and prebiotics to improve digestion effectiveness. As a result, the food helps continue the removal of toxins still present within the body. This food is the perfect choice to help your canine companion start the new year right.
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