Psychological Resilience through Nutrition
The Companion Animal Edition
What’s your day been like today?
If we just took a moment, closed our eyes, and pictured the challenges we dealt with today:
sitting in the Starbucks line and running late for work
tire pressure light comes on in the car
short-staffed at work
the ever present concern of when you might be exposed to COVID (again..) because you know you can’t afford to get sick
waiting on the biopsy results for your pet’s liver “abnormality”........
What we didn’t envision.... is how it affects our furry family members that share our household spaces.
What is psychologic resilience?
In many of our lives it is now, more than ever, that we face the day-to-day challenges to our ability to be psychologically resilient.
Let’s break that down for a second.
To be ‘psychological’ is to be related to the mental and emotional state of being.
To have ‘resilience’ is to have the capacity to withstand (and quickly recover) from difficulties.
Put the words together - psychological resilience - and we have the mental and emotional capacity to withstand and quickly recover from difficulties.
Whether you are a veterinarian rounding out your third straight 15-hour day with a new puppy visit right after helping your long time client say goodbye to his el-
derly pet, or your family unit is trying to balance how to get your young son to “use the toilet” while also dealing with the news that his elderly grandparents just contracted COVID for the first time … life has the uncanny ability to constantly test our psychological resilience.
How does our emotional state affect our family-unit? … including our pets.
But more about that family unit...... It is not uncommon to leave out the family dog or cat when considering the family unit, but they are, in fact, deeply invested into our families, our lives, and our homes. Our stressors affect them through us.
Think about Burt, the chocolate Laborador struggling with the fact that his walks have decreased ever since ‘his human’ went off to college, or
Garfield trying to make sense of the annoying new kitten in the house, and
Chief, the Belgian Malinois, attempting to adjust with his owner to a civilian life where they are not constantly getting shot at all the time, and
then there’s Willow contemplating whether it is worth asking those painful arthritic hips to take her to the kitchen to scoop up the baby food dropping to the floor off the high chair.
The happenings, changes, stressors, and time shifts within the human family member’s lives affects the animals within that same family. The psychological resilience of our animals must parallel ours… to be well in our world.
Resiliency through Nutrition
As pet guardians, we serve as caregivers and ‘parents’ to our animals. It is our privilege to support our pets through the challenges of their lives just as they unwaveringly support us through ours.
Recently, as my own household has been recovering from emotional and physical stressors, I’ve been grateful to lean on what I’ve learned about nutrition to support my own and my household’s psychologic resilience.
Through nutrition support, we can provide that extra help our pet’s (and our own!) bodies need to deal with the acute and chronic stresses of life and be more psychologically resilient. Research has broadened our knowledge of the connection between stress and nutrition. Both micronutrients and macronutrients can be affected by stress while also having an affect on behavior and the ability to handle stress. From the balance of minerals that allow our brain and immune cells to function appropriately, to the health of the gut and skin… healthy body systems need building blocks and nutrition resources to keep at their optimal level of function.
The physiologic effects of stress result in a higher demand for nutrients during these times of stress can result in a deficiency as the body scrambles to meet that increased demand.
Warner Pet Wellness | Nutritional Counseling for Animals
If you are looking for some support in planning out your pet’s nutrition and diet plan…
If your animal is battling an acute (new) or chronic illness, and you want to explore how nutrition can support their body…
If your looking to increase your animal’s vitality and both physical and psychologic resiliency… please reach out!'
Find out more about Warner Pet Wellness, our Nutrition Counseling Program, and how to get started on our program page. I look forward to working with you and your animals soon!
In health,
Chris Warner
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