Transforming Heart Health

dog looking at the camera and a cat

The heart can beat more than a billion times during the life of a dog or cat.1, 2 

With a continuous workload, the healthy heart has a higher resting energy metabolism than any other organ in the body. Many nutrients are needed to support the thousands of ATP-producing mitochondria within each cardiomyocyte to keep the heart pumping, beat after beat.3, 4  

Yet nutrition’s role in cardiac health is often overlooked.

Purina’s research shows that a specific blend of nutrients may help improve key cardiac measures and may help slow progression of heart disease in dogs with early stage myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD).5 

If dietary intervention can slow the progression of early stage MMVD in dogs, what else could nutrition do for heart health?

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  1. Abbott, J. A. (2005). Heart rate and heart rate variability of healthy cats in home and hospital environments. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, 7(3), 195–202.
  2. Haskins, S., Pascoe, P.J., Ilkiw, J.E., Fudge, J., Hopper, K., & Aldrich, J. (2005). Reference cardiopulmonary values in normal dogs. Comparative Medicine, 55(2), 156–161.
  3. Fernández-Vizarra, E., Enríquez, J.A., Pérez-Martos, A., Montoya, J., & Fernández-Silva, P. (2011). Tissue-specific differences in mitochondrial activity and biogenesis. Mitochondrion, 11(1), 207–213.
  4. Veltri, K.L., Espiritu, M., & Singh, G. (1990). Distinct genomic copy number in mitochondria of different mammalian organs. Journal of Cell Physiology, 143(1), 160–164.
  5. Li, Q., Heaney, A., Langenfeld-McCoy, N., Boler, B. V., & Laflamme, D. P. (2019). Dietary intervention reduces left atrial enlargement in dogs with early preclinical myxomatous mitral valve disease: a blinded randomized controlled study in 36 dogs. BMC Veterinary Research, 15(1), 425.

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