Addison’s Disease in Dogs – When the Adrenal Glands Don’t Work Properly
With this disease, the adrenal glands don’t produce enough hormones:
a) Cortisol – this is the stress hormone, provides alertness, strength, activity, maintains metabolism, helps the body cope with stress
b) Aldosterone – regulates sodium and potassium (important for metabolism, for the heart)
Symptoms
The animal may have symptoms that can easily be associated with other disease conditions, so all details need to be shared with the veterinarian so that proper diagnosis can be made.
Generally prolonged fatigue, lethargy, digestive problems, easily getting infections that become complicated, loss of appetite, there may be dehydration and weakness, even shock, tremors, drop in blood sugar.
Diagnosis
ACTH Stimulation Test
The first indicator in blood work is high potassium and low sodium (which is not normal)
The disease is definitively diagnosed through blood work and testing cortisol levels → ACTH stimulation test
The test looks like this
1. Blood is drawn and baseline cortisol level is measured
2. An injection of ACTH is given, a hormone that stimulates the adrenal glands to produce cortisol
3. Wait two hours
4. Cortisol level is measured again; if it’s the same as baseline, the adrenal glands aren’t responding properly and aren’t producing cortisol
Important
If the animal is receiving corticosteroids during the testing period, this can give false results. The body needs to be completely off therapy for some time.
Therapy
The conventional therapy the dog needs to receive is hormone replacement, a tablet for cortisol and usually an injection for aldosterone.
With natural approaches, we need to focus on two directions
a) Detect why this disease developed (autoimmune, excessive use of steroids, if so for what reason, tumors?)
– support the body at the root cause; bioenergy is excellent here
b) Balance other hormones due to hormonal therapy – every therapy creates a short or long “storm” in the body, recognize side effects
Bioenergetic treatments, homeopathy, liver support (detox) if needed, milk thistle, dandelion, nutritional support for the digestive system if needed.
