<< Maybe Tom has some thoughts or may Lynn has some thoughts on this but what
about potential adverse insulin reactines associated with the use of
carbohydrate supplementation - especially pre, during and after a ride.
Several years ago at a distance clinic Kerry Ridgeway, DVM talked of seeing
such reactions from the use of large amounts of grain during a ride.
I know adverse insulin reactuibs can be an issue with humans.
This is one of the reasons why I tend to be very conservative with my
feeding and supplementation program. Can shine some lignt on this issue.
Truman >>
I don't understant "adverse insulin reaction". Insulin output will respond to
a higher carbohydrate intake, but that is a natural and intended response and
not adverse.
In racehorses we've seen that raceday timing and carbohydrate chain-lengths
can be very important. There will be periods after a meal of any kind where
the horse will be bright-eyed or snoozy, and you want to time your carb
dosings to avoid sleepiness. Basically, if you are moving before the horse
gets snoozy, you've avoided it.
We've encountered a couple of "adverse" reactions. In these cases, the horses
started out with very low blood glucoses (~30). With a 4 oz dose of
carbohydrate, blood glucose more than doubled in these animals within 45
minutes--and they demonstrated a washiness for about an hour after dosing.
Two horses total in our laboratory experience and perhanps another couple in
the field reports (we don't know what the sugars were, but similar symptoms
were reported)--out of several thousand different horses and tens of
thousands of applications.
Perhaps this is what you are referring to, but it doesn't appear to be an
"insulin reaction". Just too dramatic a blood glucose change in severely
hypoglycemic horses. We advise our folks to make sure the horse has been
grained an hour or so before dosing with a GL. Under these circumstances, the
same horses that had reactions previously respond just fine.
ti