As they say, one thing often leads to another!
As I googled Jyme Nichols, MS in equine nutrition, who is the author of the piece I posted concerning reading a feed bag label, I came some research that she was involved with
psyllium, as many of you here know, is used to prevent sand colic, but this study was based on seeing how it affected glucose and insulin levels
Unfortunately , to read the entire article, one has to log in and pay
Anyone familiar with this?
http://www.j-evs.com/article/S0737-0...160-3/fulltext

Good ole google and Horse com, provided info on that research
Perhaps i should be feeding psyllium to Smilie.
Interesting info for anyone with an IR or metabolic horse!
Psyllium for Glucose and Insulin Control | TheHorse.com


Supposed mode of action

equinews.cowww.m/article/use-psyllium-insulin-resistance

I find this from above article very interesting, for obvious reasons!

'Given the recent research highlighting the influence of abnormal responses to glucose and insulin from the diet in metabolically challenged horses, like those with equine metabolic syndrome, if there is a feed ingredient that could moderate the glucose response to a meal, it would be incredibly useful in preventing devastating diseases like laminitis. Psyllium appears to be a promising product that may decrease glucose response to a meal and may have a role in treating insulin resistance if it proves effective in horses.

Sounds very interesting. Am saving to look at later tho - things to do, people to see...

Disclaimer: I haven't read the studies posted above. But wanted to add that I fed psyllium for different reasons - trying to firm up stool. And I read that you should not feed it more than a week at a time, no more than once a month. Otherwise, the horse's system adapts to it and it loses its effect. So just throwing that out there in case the same applies to feeding psyllium for glucose and insulin control.

Interesting.
My friend said her vet recommended feeding Chia seeds because it had similar properties to psyllium. Anyone ever heard of trying that.

Psyllium works great as an aid to controlling type 2 diabetes in people. It wouldn't surprise me to see that it works well for horses. I have had several friends with prediabetes put on this as part of their diet so they could avoid meds. It has worked really well for those that stuck with it. I can't get past the slime to swallow the stuff.

I still have a box full of human grade chia seeds sitting in the animal closet:)

IMO, I think things like chia sees and psyllium might work if a horse is mildly insulin resistant or teetering on the edge of becoming that way.

I had tried the chia seeds on my horse with EMS with no success, and it didn't take long to figure out they wouldn't help him.

I didn't even mess around with any of this stuff with my IR horse. He foundered and his insulin numbers were so high, Cornell asked for a second vile of blood to re-test, as they thought they had made mistake. When the numbers were the same on the second test, they called my vet and asked if the horse was still alive. That was five years ago and he is still alive thanks to a strict diet and hard core medicine.

hind sight being 20-20, I almost hate to see this sort thing come up. The people without a lick of common sense and even less money in their check book will jump on this like flies on you-know-what, in the hopes of saving a vet call, therefore money, and perhaps end up doing more harm than good because they won't call the vet.

yes, there is always the danger that people take things out of context, and not understand that some of these recent research results, produce an additional tool, perhaps in managing these horses, but not in exclusion of known modalities, of which diet of course, is huge.
That does not mean the info should not be out there, for informed people to consider perhaps adding one more thing that might help a metabolic horse.
If you read the chapters in Pete ramey's book , by contributing vets that specialize in managing IR horses, there are quite a few substances that have shown efficacy, and some that are regional specific, as in managing winter laminitis, for those of us that live where winters are extreme
Information is not dangerous, but the mis use certainly can be
Talking from the human perspective, there are certain herbal remedies that show efficacy in cancer, and I myself used some in addition, but not in exclusion of accepted main stream therapy