From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2004-03-26 18:34:54 UTC
Subject: Re: carbohydrates
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <7755023.1080326094215.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
> I would think that for a healthy ferrets there is no danger in processing this small >amount of carbohydrates. But what of a ferret with a pancreas already exhausted >to the point of forming cancer - from all the carbohydrate processing? Would >more carbohydrates not add insult to injury?
In studies of insulinoma in ferrets the tumors themselves are NOT responsive to blood glucose levels. They simply pump out huge amounts of insulin no matter what. In doing so they not only replace healthy cells but they apparently can cause some atrophy of healthy cells. The result is that once the disease is very advanced dietary sugars might actually be useful -- especially if the meds no longer hold. Sometimes this approach gets a decent bit of extra good time when the ferret would otherwise be gone.
If the pancreas is very gone my suspicion is that starches would pass undigested, but that is only a guess.