[Sticky] Hyperthyroid cat that cannot be on thyroid meds and not ideal candidate for radioactive iodine treatment. What should I do?  

Hi

My Poppycat is hyper-T, has liver issues so the drug is out, and we can't afford the other treatment. In other words the diet is our only choice. You could do the surgery but I personally think that managing your cat's issue through diet is a viable, workable option.

However there's a caveat. Currently the Hills Y/D canned is unavailable, although the kibble is available. The ONLY commercial food that has the iodine content at the minimum AAFCO requirement is Weruva and their brands (Soulistic for Petco, B.F.F. et al), at 0.6 mg/kg. 

In conversations with Weruva it was mentioned that some of their customers will add unseasoned chicken to their chicken varieties to bring the iodine down even further but he didn't give me numbers. When I run out of Y/D cans, if Hills hasn't gotten more on the shelves I'm going to utilize Weruva WX (no prescription required, and it is extremely low in phosphorus and therefore not harmful to Poppy's kidneys) and mix in the Y/D kibble.

Be aware that iodine is in darn near everything, even coat conditioners such as those with avocado.

Hi Kat,

Thanks for your question and sorry to hear that your cat hasn’t been doing well with their hyperthyroidism. It sounds like you’ve had a difficult time recently.

To answer your question, there are still a few options for your cat.  Diet is a good option but you have to make sure that your cat doesn’t eat anything else as iodine is present in so many things. It could be very difficult to do this if you have other cats or if your cat goes outdoors and eats food elsewhere. If your cat is the only cat in the house and is indoors only, you could give this a try as it’s a very safe option. Technically as the thyroid gland needs iodine to make thyroid hormones, if they’re restricted enough in the diet then the thyroid gland can’t produce high levels of thyroid hormone.

Surgery is also an option and it can offer a good long term solution in a lot of cases. It works particularly well in cats that have a palpably enlarged thyroid gland as this would indicate which gland needs to be removed. If your cat doesn’t have an obviously enlarged gland, a technetium scan can highlight the part of the thyroid tissue that is affected and needs to be removed. I think it would be worth discussing this option with your vet to see if they think your cat is a good candidate for this.

It seems like she had been doing well on the medication until the dose was increased. I can understand why your vet would like to avoid putting her back on this as her levels dropped so low. However if you don’t think that the food or surgery is an option, you could discuss re-introducing this at a lower dose with your vet with close monitoring of her CBC as these levels could drop again. This option would come with a degree of risk and the other options are likely to be safer.

I hope this helps,

Aisling

@mspoppy thanks for this information, it's good to know about the brands available and that the canned Y/D is currently unavailable. I hope your cat is doing well

@aisling Thank you, and I'm always glad to pass along information to try and help 🙂

Hello,

I am not a veterinarian. I am an owner of multiple cats.  In the last 2 yrs I've had 4 cats with hyperthyroidism. I have had 2 vets blindly attribute this to age, rather than trying to find the source of the problem. I don't believe that this trend is coincidence. I strongly believe that this 'trend' is largely due to a common toxic pet food ingredient called sodium selenite. I have no proof of exactly which pet food companies added this ingredient, nor exactly when they started adding it. I did, however, find information that indicates that sometime in 2016, AAFCO changed minimum pet food requirements with regard to sodium and selenium levels. Many petfood companies are fulfilling that requirement with a toxic inorganic source of selenium called sodium selenite. Below is some information that I found on sodium selenite:

--It may be toxic to blood, kidneys, liver, skin, central nervous system

https://www.essentialstuff.org/2018/02/04/cat/beware-sodium-selenite-in-pet-food-is-toxic-2/

Equipped with the above info, I now ensure that my cat food does not contain sodium selenite.

I also had a cat that had CKD, so I also stay away from foods with high phosphorus levels.

(You can find food lists for that here: Tanya's Comprehensive Guide to Feline Chronic Kidney Disease  https://www.felinecrf.org/

--Additional info--Both the hyperthyroidism and my cat's prescribed medicine (transdermal methimazole) give him chronic diahrrea. I tried numerous things--boiled chicken and rice, boiled beef and rice, canned pumpkin, babyfood pumpkin, probiotics. None of those were working. (NOTE that a common otc pet probiotic from Purina Pro contains sodium selenite). I gave him bone broth and/or unflavored Pedialyte--to at least try to keep him hydrated. 

I temporarily discontinued the methimazole. And I finally found that fresh cooked sweet potato works well to significantly firm up his BMs as long as I don't put too much liquid in the mashed sweet potatoes.  I cook them with a little chicken bone broth (bonebroth with NO onion, garlic, etc). And after he had two or three weeks of good BMs, I started him back on the methimazole, although at a smaller amount. I also ordered NHV Resthyro and Turmeric products to see if they will make a difference. I just started with them. I put the NHV drops in his food, and he eats it all.  I read numerous successfull NHV testimonials for those products, so I am hopeful. Some people said they were even able to take their cats totally OFF prescription medication after success with the NHV products.

Hope some of this info helps. Good luck to you and your kitty.

@_papad Thank you for sharing your research—very much appreciated, and I hope it helps others as well. 🙏