Comparing a Warm vs. Cool Diet for Your Dog
If you are interested in how different foods and diets affect your dog’s energy and health then learning about warming and cooling foods may be of interest to you.
Energy Balance
We evaluate food based on things like calories, fat content, sodium, and many other things. However, you may not even realize it, but we also choose our foods based on the energetic properties is has and what kind of energy it is bringing into our bodies. Knowing which foods are warming and cooling can help you balance your overall energy – or chi.
Chi, in traditional Chinese medicine, is the life force that runs through all living things. Imbalances in a person, or animals, chi can affect the mind, body, and spirit. However, if we can identify deficiencies, we can take corrective measures to bring our energy back into balance.
What Does an Imbalance Look Like?
If your pet has a chi deficiency, you would see various signs based on the organ that is being affected. For example, if they had a heart chi deficiency, they may enter heart failure, whereas a spleen deficiency may cause diarrhea, vomiting, or decreased appetite.
In order to accurately assess an energy imbalance, it is important to first know what is normal for your pet so you have a baseline.
Warming and Cooling Foods
So what is warming and cooling foods and how do they affect chi? You probably already know the answer to this without even realizing it.
In the middle of summer on a hot day, you may want to reach for a slice of watermelon (a cooling food) while on a cold winter day, you may gravitate more towards hot foods like lamb.
We can apply this to our dogs in a similar way. If a dog has something like skin, intestinal, or bladder inflammation, then their body is inflamed, meaning too hot. We can feed our dogs cooling foods in order to help combat this.
Furthermore, if a dog has digestive issues and their food isn’t moving through its digestive tract, then it may have a lack of heat and need warm foods to get things moving.
Diet in Practice
A common reason pet owners would choose to practice a warming or cooling diet is allergies. Allergies are a hot condition that is very common in dogs and could use a cooling diet to help soothe them. Cooling foods include:
- Fish Oil
- Turkey
- Most Fish
- Beef
- Rabbit
- Barley
- Millet
- Potatoes
- Quinoa
- Celery
- Zucchini
- Blueberries
- Mango
If your dog has allergies, you would want to avoid hot foods that could make their allergies worse. Hot foods include:
- Lamb
- Venison
- Shrimp
- Chicken
- Oats
The trickiest part is that most pet foods are made with a combination of warming and cooling foods. This means that if you want to begin changing your pet’s diet, you may need to supplement with more fresh foods.
As always, consult a veterinarian before you start changing your dog’s diet, and remember to be an advocate for your pet.