From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2004-12-16 19:38:01 UTC
Subject: RE: dexamethesone dosing
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <8079764.1103225881218.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
> He has to have karo syrup in his soup
>to keep his blood sugars up. Please no
>one give me the NO sugar lecture. He
>has had insulinoma for almost two years
>and now is at end stage, the meds aren't
>cutting it anymore.
I don't know the answer to the questions, but I do know that this brings up an excellent point which confuses too many people.
First off, totally skipping dietary sugar and cutting starches during insulinoma is not right for all of the ferrets withinsulinoma, or with diseases that can simulate it like lymphoma/lymphosarcoma or carcinoma based in the pancreas. Soem simply turn out to do better with dietary sugars as well as meds even early on.
Are many helped until the end stages by reducing starches and eliminating sugars. They sure are! It well may even be that most are helped that way in those stages of the illness, but there aren't absolutes in the results seen among individuals so people have to realize that some flexibility is needed in relation to this.
In the end stage adding dietary sugars back in gives extra quality time. It can even amount at times to months more when the ferret otherwise would have already needed a mercy shot or would have died.
It's very important to not use absolutes in some things.
The difference with end stage insulinoma is that the insulinomae have taken over so much of the pancreas and have suppressed (through the high insulin levels they release) enough of the normal tissue that for functional purposes in relation to insulin the pancreas doesn't have normal tissue.
If you read back through past posts from Dr. Bruce Williams you will find, as the original poster did, that unlike normal panceratic tissue insulinomae are NOT responsive to blood sugar levels, so the fear of yo-yoing -- which is the hypothesis that has led to the dietary resistrictions being tried -- simply is not there.
Anyway, I wanted to get it across that there simply are not absolutes on this score. That doesn't mean that dietary restrictions aren't right for some in the pre-end-stage parts of insulinoma, perhaps even for most. What it means is simply that it is not an absolute and it doesn't apply to end stage for known reasons. There are individuals and there is a known stage of insulinoma (and its more rare imitators) when dietary sugars or starches along with meds can get a better result for some ferrets.