Thursday, December 1, 2011

Horse Supplements And The Battle Against Cushing Disease

By Ryan Ready


Horse Supplements are filled with vitamins and minerals which are good for your horse. Equine Cushing's disease is a primary problem of the pituitary gland, situated inside the brain. This gland is like a dispatch center, where hormones and other chemical mediators called POMC are made and then launched into the body to manage body functions. Horses having Cushing's disease have a breakdown of the management of the anterior pituitary gland. It literally doesn't shut down and continues to create POMC. The overactive pituitary gland of a Cushing's horse can develop in proportions and even produce benign pre-tumor and tumor tissues that push against the brain.

Within the advanced stages of the illness, this pressure could be severe and cause neurological problems if the gland gets sufficiently big. Cushing's disease has usually been described as a harmless tumor of the brain, but there is still debate whether it's a tumor or hypertrophy, which is tissue enlargement as a result of increased work which is similar to the way that muscles enlarge from exercise. Indeed, the anterior pituitary gland can develop tissues which grow to turn into a cancerous growth, but it's unknown which comes first, hypertrophy or the tumor. An overactive pituitary gland additionally affects the horse's adrenal glands found near the renal system.

Activated by elevated POMC production, the adrenals overproduce cortisol, which plays a role in a host of medical problems. Increased cortisol ranges have been the conventional marker for detecting and diagnosing equine Cushing's disease. Under regular conditions, the amount of cortisol inside the cell is adjusted by HSD within the cell itself. This ensures that the requirements of the cell at any time are met. It has been advised that Cushing's syndrome may sometimes be attributed to abnormal HSD activity inside the cells. People whose cellular cortisol level is increased because of unusual HSD activity, develop warning signs which are similar to Cushing's syndrome.

Elevated HSD activity within the cells results in elevated cortisol inside the cells. This increase is believed to give rise to medical signs of Cushing's affliction. To try to determine whether laminitis associated with being overweight can be a symbol of abnormal HSD activity in the peripheral tissues of afflicted horses, researchers developed a test for HSD in the flesh of horses. They then compared the amount of HSD in the tissues of the skin and hoof of normal healthy adult horses with the amount seen in horses having laminitis and were able to demonstrate that HSD could be determined both in the skin as well as hoof cells and that the level of HSD was substantially elevated in the cells of animals with laminitis.

Horse Supplements are great for the horse. Excessive thirst and abnormal urination are the initial symptoms often observed. Normal horses often consume from 6-10 gallons of water per day. A Cushing's afflicted horse might proceed through up to 21 gallons of water per day. As a result of muscle weakness as well as shrinking, Cushing's disease also leads to a swaybacked or potbellied appearance and a loss of muscle over the top line.




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