There are lots of different treats and supplements available to boost your pet’s health and wellbeing. But which ingredients should be on your shopping list? Plasma and collagen might be ingredients you don’t know much about, but plasma treats for dogs and cats can have a huge range of benefits. These ingredients are making their way into foods, treats, and supplements for good reason, so let’s have a closer look at a few of the collagen and plasma health benefits for your pet.
Benefits of Collagen and Plasma Treats for Dogs and Cats
Highly Palatable and Digestible
Plasma and collagen are highly digestible for our pets, making them gentle on the tummy and easy for the body to absorb. This is because during the process of spray drying the plasma, it maintains its highly soluble properties.
Animal plasma has been used as a binder or emulsifier in wet pet foods for quite some years now, largely due to its ability to improve water retention and boost texture. Cats really love food containing plasma and studies have shown they prefer to eat these foods than those that don’t contain plasma. This makes plasma-containing treats a high-value reward suitable for training and treating both cats and dogs.
Anti-Inflammatory
In some studies, it has also been shown that animal plasma can reduce the overall inflammatory response of the body and may enhance the body’s immune response thanks to the immunoglobulins it contains. It has been shown that spray-dried plasma reduces the activation of leukocytes (inflammatory cells) and the effects on the gut microbiome reduces gut inflammation. Plasma treats for dogs or cats could be a really great way to boost your pet’s health, especially if they suffer from any inflammatory health conditions such as allergies or arthritis.
Boosts Gut Health and Immunity
Spray-dried animal plasma can have great benefits for the digestive system due to its ability to act as a prebiotic and influence immunity within the gut. The bioactive proteins and immunoglobulins that plasma products are packed full of remain functional all the way through the gut - from one end to the other! Plasma treats for dogs and cats could therefore have great benefits for your pet’s gut health.
By acting as a prebiotic, plasma helps to promote the growth of healthy gut bacteria. In mice, pigs, and fish, food containing spray-dried animal plasma has been shown to cause a significant increase in ‘good’ gut bacteria such as Lactobacillus, which reduce the growth of ‘bad’ gut bacteria. Through this effect, and the production of anti-inflammatory compounds in the gut, it’s thought that the benefits of animal plasma could even have the potential to improve the symptoms of IBD in dogs and cats, although this is yet to be studied.
Supports Healthy Joints
Collagen-containing supplements are all the rage in the human supplement sector, but what about our pets? Just like in humans, collagen supplements could have a whole range of positive effects on our pet’s health with joint support being one of the most desired benefits.
The soft tissues in a joint (muscle, tendon, and ligaments) are made up mostly of collagen, but as pets age this collagen becomes looser and the body is less able to repair it. This ageing effect is one of the contributing factors to joint disease such as arthritis. Collagen-containing treats and supplements are becoming a lot more popular and could be a great addition to your pet’s diet to help support healthy joint function, and reduce the visible effects of ageing on their day-to-day mobility.
Reduces the Effects of Ageing
Plasma dog and cat treats or supplements could be a great addition to your elderly pet’s daily routine. There’s some very convincing evidence that animal plasma may have benefits in reducing the effects of ageing, especially when it comes to cognitive function. As animals age, the body is less adaptive. The effects of oxidative damage, inflammation, and degeneration are often most noticeable when it comes to cognitive function as we see changes in our pet’s behaviour, senses, and habits.
Studies have shown that animal plasma has the potential to reduce the amount of inflammation and oxidative stress to cells, and might help to protect nerve cells from degeneration. It’s also thought that cognitive function could be connected to gut health, so the benefits of plasma products on the gut microflora could tie into improving your pet’s cognitive function as they age. So, plasma treats for dogs and cats could have the ability to reduce or slow down the effects of age on your pet, and could be an important supplement as your pet gets older.
Conclusion
Plasma treats could be a great addition to your pet’s diet, whether they are young or heading into their senior years. With so many great benefits from improving gut health to anti-ageing and immune boosting, there’s a whole list of reasons why plasma treats for dogs and cats should be on your pet’s shopping list.
Written by Dr Holly Anne Hill MRCVS
After graduating from the University of Nottingham, Dr Holly Anne Hills MRCVS spent two years working as a farm animal vet. She then spent some time travelling and volunteering in India, working at neutering clinics and with injured street dogs. Holly now works in small animal practice, and balances this with writing, volunteering with the comms team at Vet Sustain, and she is also a marine mammal medic! Her full bio can be found here.
DotDotPet's Multifit Supplements contain both Plasma and Collagen making them the perfect choice to keep you pet healtly.
References
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10252101/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377840116301316
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0377840105001136
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09540105.2020.1786669#d1e889
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