Recently I read an article about hemp oil in Dogs Naturally Magazine after someone posted it on a Facebook raw feeding group. (Btw if you haven’t already joined my new Facebook group, please do so. I am hoping it will become a great resource for people who are feeding properly to further refine their understanding of how disease really works and how they can use this information to keep their animals optimally healthy.)
Getting back to the article, it made claims about the benefits of feeding hemp oil that deserve a closer look, imo.
Firstly, in 20 years of raw feeding I have never fed refined oils of any kind to my animals. There’s nothing in the biological history of dogs that would lead a rational, objective raw feeder to the conclusion that dogs need refined oils. I can’t imagine what in the natural diet of dogs free oils are supposed to replace, or supplement.
It is looking too deeply and trying to micromanage things that don’t need to be managed (like omegas) that causes people to make mistakes like this. And we are encouraged to do that because when people claim that there is something missing from the typical domestic dog’s raw diet, they can sell us something. That’s why everyone looks to deficiency when things go wrong, instead of in the direction most likely to hold the answer: EXCESS. Our minds have been manipulated by industry to think that when symptoms happen, we need to ADD something. In truth, most often we need to TAKE AWAY something. Taking away, however, makes NOBODY any MONEY. That’s why we never hear about it.
Does Hemp Oil “Fight Cancer”?
If you understand what causes cancer, you’ll realize that you don’t need to fight it, you just need to not cause it. What causes it? Although the cancer industry would have us think this is an unanswerable question, the causes of cancer have long been understood by objective truth-seekers. Cancer is caused by overall body toxemia, just like all other diseases. When the body is not burdened by indigestible foods and other waste-producing factors, cancer cannot manifest. The law of cause and effect rules cancer just as it does the entire universe. It is not properly fed dogs that are causing the dramatic uptick in canine cancer, it is those who are fed commercial foods, and who are vaccinated and medicated. Raw dogs are getting cancer too, although it’s much rarer than those fed cooked commercial foods, which just illustrates that it’s not enough for a dog to be raw! There is plenty in the typical raw fed dog’s diet to potentially cause problems, including cancer. One source of waste in the raw dog’s diet is supplemental “foods” that owners add to the food because they think doing so is covering all their nutritional bases. The alternative, “holistic” dog-care industry is happy for this trend but it’s a disaster for dogs. The reality is that it is very important to DECREASE non-foods and other indigestibles in the diet of dogs, particularly OILS. I have no idea how Dogs Naturally can support the claim that adding oils to the diet “fights” cancer and I note the article doesn’t even provide a citation. The implication that the claim makes is that if you’re not feeding hemp oil, your dog is at greater risk of getting cancer no matter what you feed, which is pure hogwash, of course.
Does Hemp Oil Help Arthritis?
Arthritis has similar causes and need not happen at all. When it does, whatever relief may be offered by having oils circulating through the body is entirely offset by the hardship it causes the organs, particularly the liver. There are better ways to manage an arthritic dog that do not involve burdening the body with the elimination of refined oils. Here’s a great video I just found about how to alleviate pain from arthritis and prevent it occurring in the first place.
Does Hemp Oil “Improve Skin and Coat”?
No. It is sometimes the case that a mis-fed dog will have flaky or dry skin, and the addition of oils is thought to improve this. However, what’s really happening is that the overburdened primary organs of elimination are not able to handle all the waste so the body sends the oils through the skin along with other wastes. This covers up the symptom of dry skin, but does not improve the skin overall. This happens in humans as well, btw.
Dogs Already Get Way Too Much Fat in their Diets!
If this is news to you, please read my recent blog post about “hunger pukes” that are caused by excess fat in the diet and excessive fat in commercial raw foods. The hemp oil article does caution users against using “too much”, especially if they feed poultry, since poultry already has lots of fat. Of course this begs the question that if a dog is already in danger of eating too much fat, why on earth are we feeding more? The idea that a dog might not be getting enough fat is like thinking kids today aren’t getting enough sugar. Dogs DO NOT need more fat, they need LESS of it, even expensive refined oils that carry fantastic health claims.