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Hyper Behaviour And Protein Percentages


cycas

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From time to time, I come across advice from rescues or from owners saying that feeding a kibble with a high protein percentage figure can produce very hyper behaviour in dogs, and that lower protein foods make for calmer dogs.

 

There's a slightly conflicting varient on this that says that if the protein is meatbased that's OK, but if it's a vegetable protein, that makes dogs hyper.

 

I can't find anything that explains why this recommendation is made, or what the science might be behind it. There must (??) be something in it as it's so widely repeated, but I've not been able to find anyone who has been able to give me a better reason for it than that they heard it from someone else and tried it.

 

I've met people who swear that switching a dog to a lower protein food has had a magical effect on his behaviour - but quite often this is in the context of bringing a dog into a new home, where all sorts of other things were also different, and the change in behaviour might also be attributable to more exercise, company, training, etc.

 

What's more, when I ask what, apart from the protein content is different about the food, they don't seem to know - and obviously, different foods are going to have a whole bunch of things that are different about them other than protein percentage: if it includes rice rather than maize or beef rather than chicken, how do they know what's made the difference is the protein percentage? And what about the impact of edible chews like tripe or rawhide that are mostly made of protein...?

 

I've read some studies about protein and liver and kidney function in dogs, and that's not what I'm asking about here, what I am hoping to find out about are the behavioural implications.

 

Do you think protein percentage figures are important in terms of the behaviour of your dog? If so, why?

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I'm not entirely convinced by arguments for protein levels in foods affecting hyperactivity. There is a case for it affecting aggression and even nervous/fear behaviours - mainly it seems through tryptophan the precursor to serotonin. However many of the cheaper foods use corn (maize) to up the protein levels, and this is deficient in tryptophan. Tryptophan also competes with other amino acids in proteins for uptake and conversion so ironically to increase tryptophan you need a low protein high carbohydrate diet as the carbohydrate causes a release of insulin which sort of clears the other amino acids away and leaves tryptophan available for uptake, so decreases competition. Or to use the Val strong diet where you feed a protein meal followed by a carbohydrate meal a few hours later, so getting the same effect. So there is the case that a low protein diet assuming it is a protein source with decent levels of tryptophan available (so animal based rather than maize) with higher carbohydrate would help aggression. However there are no studies that I've found that say that increasing tryptophan helps hyperactivity. For that I think it's more likely that people just start paying more attention to the ingredients in the food and end up using a food with fewer additives.

On another note very few dogs have true hyperactivity, more normally it may be over activity due to boredom or other factors, or even more common peoples expectations not meeting that of a dog's real behaviour. People often change food at the same time as doing other things like feeding from an activity toy etc. so it's not just the food causing the change.

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Oh excellent, someone who understands the chemistry.

 

OK, so have I got this straight ?

 

tryptophan could make dogs less fearful and possibly calmer because they use it to make serotonin, a happy hormone. If the dog is stressy, having more tryptophan in his system might help him to make serotonin more easily and therefore be more relaxed/ less fearful (though if he is bouncing off the ceiling for reasons not related to stress/fear, his serotonin levels probably aren't that important)

 

- a food with a high maize-derived protein percentage figure is deficient in tryptophan. It also has less carbohydrate to 'sog up' all the other amino acids that would otherwise get in the way, so it's harder to use the tryptophan that is available. Therefore, it's the worst sort of food if a dog is low on serotonin (but fine for a dog that just wants more walks).

 

- a food with protein from meat has more tryptophan in, so better for stress.

 

- food with lots of carbohydrate is good for making tryptophan as it creates a situation where the other amino acids get sogged up quickly so best use can be made of all the tryptophan.

 

- a high meat-protein food might not be the best for a stressy dog, as although it has lots of tryptophan in it, it wouldn't include enough carbohydrate to make best use of it.

 

 

. For that I think it's more likely that people just start paying more attention to the ingredients in the food and end up using a food with fewer additives.

On another note very few dogs have true hyperactivity, more normally it may be over activity due to boredom or other factors, or even more common peoples expectations not meeting that of a dog's real behaviour. People often change food at the same time as doing other things like feeding from an activity toy etc. so it's not just the food causing the change.

 

That was my suspicion. :unsure:

 

I also wonder if the tryptophan factor is the only thing here - reading around this I found an example of a dog recommended a low-carb, high protein diet because the carbohydrate was thought to be giving him something of a 'sugar rush'.

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higher tryptophan *uptake* will lead to higher serotonin levels and happier dogs (assuming they were deficient in the first place). The tricky thing is that tryptophan is in competition with the other fatty acids in protein so just having more of it available doesn't necessarily mean you'll get higher levels of serotonin, and even with meat based proteins different types have different amounts of the different fatty acids. However if you fed something with high tryptophan levels along with high level of carbohydrate, the high carbs will cause insulin to rise, which prevents the other fatty acids from being taken up leaving the way clear for tryptophan and so more serotonin is made ( the same effect you get a xmas meal, lots of turkey with lots of tryptophan in along with all the carbohydrate also eaten at the same time means you make more serotonin and feel all happy and snoozy afterwards).

Just because a food has no maize in it say it doesn't mean that you'll automatically get the increase in serotonin levels as it depends on the carbohydrate and the whole fatty acid uptake competition. Having said that I think you might be onto a loser with foods with maize as a main ingredient as I figure you must decrease the available tryptophan as maize is so low in it, unless of course it has a high carbohydrate content in which case it *might* be ok (although then you have to wonder if they'll be getting enough of the other fatty acids as well).

 

Just because a food has high protein it wouldn't' necessarily follow that it has too low carbs for the sopping up effect, although percentage wise it must have a lower carb content. But then I think we are often talking about changing from say 20% protein to 18%, is that really significant? Much of the research done is with more significant differences than this I think (I'll admit to not having figured out the percentages to know for certain as they dont' normally give % figures just weights for protein , but one considered high protein as 30% and low as 18% - in that study they had high and low protein diets supplemented and not with tryptophan, aggression was highest in the high protein unsupplemented group, lowest in the low protein supplemented group).

 

Some of the supplements you give dogs for stressy behaviour are based around increasing serotonin levels (normally through 5HTP, which is one stage before 5HT ie serotonin (if my biological chemistry is right!))

 

I believe that carbs makes my dog aggressive GSD way way worse, that's part of the reason I feed raw - he is so much better on it, when in theory he should be worse as I don't feed carbs in any volume at all. He was even noticeably worse on Orijen although not as bad as when on other commercial food, so I suspect very much that there are numerous factors at work.

 

I do know of some behaviourists who have had success with the Val strong diet - protein meal followed by carb meal later, but I just don't think it's a very easy way to feed a dog as you need to feed 2 meals within a couple of hours of each other which can be hard for lots of reasons especially for those that work away from the house.

 

There are also studies about the serotonin uptake sites - it seems some increase aggression, some decrease when serotonin binds with them, in aggressive dogs the increasing type are found in greater number, so the whole thing may just be a genetic predisposition......

 

I think it is far far more complicated than just, low protein = all your troubles are fixed, and while fascinating it's confusing and still not very well understood as far as how the sites work together etc. It is agreed that mammals and other animals with higher levels of serotonin in the brain show less aggression, it's just how that level is controlled and sustained

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Hmm OK, I think I have my head around that. Any resources online you'd recommend or is it all behind paywalls?

 

Good point about the percentage differences being small - I also wondered about the impact of treats and mixers : how many people only feed one sort of kibble and nothing else?

 

The kibble I buy is listed at 21% I think, but the amount of tripe and dried fish my hounds manage to get down their greedy faces probably means that their actual diet percentages are different.

 

In your dog's case, are you thinking that the absence of carbohydrate is affecting serotonin specifically, or is it more to do with blood sugar and insulin?

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If you use google scholar you'll find a fair few papers, you might not be able to read the whole paper but often the abstract will have an overview of the results/conclusions. I'm pretty sure that Lindsay's Handbook of Applied Dog behaviour and training has stuff in it I'm sure I've referenced it for essays on this type of topic, but I couldnt' tell you which volume - it normally comes up in a google books when you search for stuff, and there are some free electronic versions on the net somewhere but I dont' have the link.

 

I don't really know what it is about Khanu and his diet. He does get occasional supermarket treats that will have carbs in, and I use kibble in food toys and for training with them all (not exclusively and I try to use less with Khanu but he does still get it occasionally). My opinion on him being better on raw is only after a couple of experiments. Once when we moved and I had to run down the freezer etc. so they went on a CSJ kibble - he got very noticeably worse within a few days of being on it, he was pretty close to the worst he has ever been, reacting to dogs over 100m away, reactive in the house with Willow, however we were also packing up the house etc at the same time so he could have been more generally stressed, we also got Syd just before we moved (only a few weeks before) so that won't have helped either.

 

The second time was when I thought I'd try out Orijen, I just put Khanu on it everyone else got fed raw same as always. Khanu was a pain around meal times - trying to get to the others food, but that could of course have just been because they had better food as far as he was concerned, although khanu isn't particularly food motivated. His threshold distance seemed to increase, he would react when I really wasn't expecting him to, and as the month went on he got worse, however he also gets worse the more he reacts so because I was "off" in judging his safe distance he was probably put in more situations that he was uncomfortable with than he normally would be to begin with so that could have been a factor. I don't really know for definite that he is worse, it's just a feeling based on these couple of experiences. We went raw because Khanu wouldn't really eat his kibble when a puppy and I just felt it was a better way of feeding and suited us at the time. The two experiement just sort of happened, one because we were moving and moving a freezer full of food wasn't going to happen, and the other becasue orijen was new to the uk and was grain free and I wondered if that was the problem so thought I'd try it. That is what made me think it was possibly a carb thing, as although orijen doesn't have grain it does have the veg content and thus carbs.

 

I wonder with him whether it's the omega3. Cereals are low in it, not sure about veg. There's stuff about animals fed omega3&6 supplements having lower levels of aggression. With the raw diet he should be getting a fair amount of omega3&6 and I normally supplement their mince meals with salmon oil as well (I've just run out). So with him it could well be that. There's so many mechanisms that affect/control aggression, I wrote an essay on it not long ago. Many mechanisms intermingle, most end up having something to do with serotoninergic pathways eventually. High levels of brain serotonin are associated with high plasma levels of omega3.....

 

I think you're right about people not just feeding the kibble so the real diet percentages are skewed. Plus there's the leftovers the dog gets, his own supplementation of his diet with rotting carcasses etc. Whilst changing the diet can be effective in helping behaviour, personally for most dogs I think it's more to do with feeding a better quality food with fewer additives (so not bakers) rather than the exact percentage of protein. For aggressive dogs looking at trying to increase brain serotonin may be helpful.

 

I've never found anything that suggests that serotonin/protein levels etc effect hyperactive behaviour - it's all about depressive/aggressive behaviour.

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That gives me loads of stuff to google, thanks! And it definitely sounds as though I can dismiss the 'dog is bouncing off celing -> feed lower protein food' approach as unlikely to include the whole picture.

 

I think you're right about people not just feeding the kibble so the real diet percentages are skewed. Plus there's the leftovers the dog gets, his own supplementation of his diet with rotting carcasses etc.

 

Too true - I'm sure my mother's whippet's diet is something like 50% sheep poo... no idea what protein percentage is in sheep poo but it seems to be great for settling the stomach, have sometimes wondered about selling it packaged as a super-premium dietary supplement... :whistle: :laughingsmiley:

 

I've never found anything that suggests that serotonin/protein levels etc effect hyperactive behaviour - it's all about depressive/aggressive behaviour.

 

:thumbsup_still: that's very helpful to know. Thinking about it, I'm not sure how you define 'hyper' anyway though I guess we all know what we mean by it...

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I looked long and hard at protein levels affecting behaviour before I switched mine to raw feeding and Orijen, what I found was that it can affect SOME dogs, it hasn't made a bit of difference to Daisy who is easily stressed and dog aggressive, she's been on the Val Strong diet for a few months before with no change, and feeding raw has done the world of good for Spud and Ben.

I think a lot of the myths about protein were put about by food manufacturers to cover up the low meat protein levels and the poor quality, protein's an essential component for the health and repair of cells and all manner of other bodily functions, any excess is excreted which is where the belief that it's bad for kidney's and livers comes from, what they failed to mention was that high quality protein generates very little waste so puts no more strain on organs.

 

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