Toxicity, Deficiency, Stress:
The Three Threads Behind Dog Seizures

Unknown is not the same as none

When the bloodwork comes back clean and the scan shows nothing, the diagnosis is idiopathic epilepsy. It's an honest label; it means the vet looked and didn't find a reason. But common sense tells us things don't just happen. There is always a reason, and seizures are no different. It's usually not one dramatic thing. It's several small ones stacked up.

Over twenty-five years of answering the phone for families with a seizing dog, we've watched the same three factors show up again and again. We call them the three threads: toxicity, deficiency, and stress.

The three threads

Toxicity. Toxins are everywhere in a modern dog's life, and the first place to look is the food bowl. Many kibbles and snacks carry harsh preservatives, artificial colors and flavors, by-products, glutens, and glyphosate residue. The FDA has even found traces of a euthanasia drug in dog food, in a 2002 survey and again in a 2018 recall of canned food; the 2002 levels were judged too low to harm a dog, and that's fair, but our point isn't any one ingredient; it's how much a dog takes in, day after day. Next come the monthly flea, tick, and heartworm doses: low-dose poisons meant to kill a parasite, and every one of them carries a neurologic warning on the label. The FDA put out a safety alert on one whole class of flea and tick products in 2018 after reports of tremors, loss of coordination, and seizures in dogs with no history of them; in the five years after, the agency logged more than fifteen thousand such reports. Then the environment: herbicide and pesticide drift if you live near a farm or a golf course, chemical lawn treatments, carpet deodorizers, and household cleaners.

Deficiency. Put simply, our dogs' bodies are starved for trace minerals. The food is cooked, processed, and bagged for convenience, and every one of those steps strips enzymes and minerals out. Over-farming has left the soil itself depleted, so even good ingredients carry less than they once did; a University of Texas study comparing USDA data on 43 garden crops found calcium, phosphorus, iron, and three other nutrients had fallen measurably between 1950 and 1999, and the minerals nobody was tracking in 1950 likely fell too. Trace minerals, and the way they interact with each other, run the body's bio-electrical functions and the signals between cells; in plain terms, they're what lets a nerve fire cleanly and a cell talk to its neighbor. Along with amino acids, they are the building blocks of every cell the body rebuilds. There is no substitute for plant-based, bio-available minerals; synthetic ones satisfy the label and leave the body short. A cereal box can list a dozen vitamins and still not feed you.

Stress. This is where the first two threads come together. The build-up of toxins plus the shortage of raw materials raises the internal stress load on the body. The body answers by releasing stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, to compensate. Those hormones suppress the immune system, disrupt sleep, and press on the nervous system and the mind. You've probably felt a version of this yourself after a hard week: run down, not sleeping, quick to startle. A dog feels it too. For a dog already carrying the first two threads, that's the pressure that can tip an episode. The research agrees: in one study of epileptic dogs, three in four had an identifiable trigger, and stress led the list, with stress hormones noted to excite the brain rather than calm it. Another study found a dog's cortisol more than tripled after a seizure, so each episode adds to the stress that helps bring on the next.

How the threads pull on each other

Toxins come in. The body looks for what it needs to deal with them and finds it isn't there. Stress hormones step in to compensate, and end up putting more pressure on a nervous system that was already struggling. None of the three has to be extreme; together they add up to a dog whose system has no room to spare. That's the picture behind most "idiopathic" seizures we hear about, and it's also the hopeful part: each thread is something you can lighten.

Where Nzymes can help

The Back to Balance ProgramSee the program →Antioxidant Treats and Tracite Minerals, built for the three threads

The Back to Balance Bundle was born to address those three areas. Two bottles of Antioxidant Treats and one bottle of Tracite Minerals: enough for a dog of any size to see whether it's working.

Antioxidant Treats bring a live-food resource that lets the dog's own body produce a series of antioxidant enzymes: superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione peroxidase, and methionine reductase. Those enzymes scour the toxic build-up out of the cells, the way a good scrub gets a pan clean, and when the cells are clean, good things follow. That's the toxicity thread. The Treats also carry vitamins A, C, and E with selenium for extra antioxidant support, and rice bran and defatted beef liver for natural B vitamins, which the body burns through under stress. That's the stress thread.

Tracite Minerals answers the deficiency thread. Tracite is drawn from deep deposits of humic and fulvic material, which is plant matter compressed over centuries, laid down when land and sea vegetation were buried under layers of sediment. That process preserved the trace minerals and amino acids in the bio-available form nature made them. A finished batch takes about two years to distill, using only pure water.

Together, the enzymes and the minerals are a match made in Heaven. Each makes the other work better, and the dog is the one who benefits. Together they take the pressure off all three threads.

Not sure which thread is heaviest for your dog? Tell us what he eats, what he's given each month, and what the episodes look like. We'll listen, and we'll tell you honestly where we'd start. Book a free consultation →