This article is a viewer-submitted piece in response to the Veterinary Q & A on the B.A.R.F. diet.
Submitted by T. Eakin.

I've never entered a forum before and was having trouble replying with my experience of BARF diets. I wanted to let you know and if you feel it may help other pet owners, please feel free to post it. I just couldn't figure out how to do that myself.

I had a diabetic cat who must have been insulin-resistant because she was on 24 units of insulin twice a day.

Even though she was technically regulated, I could tell she never felt quite right again. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to test feline blood sugars at home so calibrating the right insulin dosage is not able to be fine tuned as it is in humans.

Two weeks after she died of an unrelated chronic illness, my second cat was diagnosed with diabetes. He was much younger than my first diabetic cat and I began to search for alternative treatments.

He wouldn't eat conventional diabetic cat food and glipizide pills did not work. Right before my vet was going to put him on insulin, I put him on a raw food diet. Two weeks later, his diabetes had resolved itself and has remained completely normal for the past two and half years. His quality of life is excellent compared to the alternative of him feeling bad as his blood sugar rises and feeling bad as his blood sugar falls.

The reason for his success is quite simple. Cats and dogs are obligate carnivores. They have no nutritional requirement for grains.

Unlike humans, they derive their energy from proteins and fats. Commercial pet foods have a high grain content because it is used as an inexpensive filler. Dog and cat pancreas' eventually "wear out" trying to metabolize grains that these animals were never meant to eat in the first place. Give them a biologically appropriate diet of the food they would eat if in the wild and their pancreas' can go back to working at a normal level, thereby resolving the diabetes.

It's not easy to get cats to transition over, but it is well worth the patience and effort required.

I don't make my own food. I buy it premixed and frozen from A Place for Paws, 800-354-4216, www.aplaceforpaws.com.

I recommend the BARF diet to anyone wanting to optimize their pets diet and health.