Antioxidants For Dogs And Their Value

The lifeblood of the gasoline engine is of course the fuel that makes it go. The engine would just be a mass of metal without gasoline exploding in the cylinders but the irony of the fuel is that it is essential to function and it is also a contributor to the wear and tear that occurs while the engine is engaged.

Oxygen works much the same way as it is essential to all lifeforms but in the body of animals, it is the metabolism of this vital element that can also cause cell damage as it is ignited and used to keep our engine going. In that action free radicals are released and this is what causes cell damage and shortens their life span.

Free radicals do a lot of their damage when tissue is injured or damaged in some way and it is antioxidants that neutralize that damage and extend the healthy function of those cells and thereby the life of same.

There are many forms of antioxidants, some very effective and some only marginally so but one of the types of antioxidants that is very effective is that way because of two characteristics, one they work very well and two, they are tremendously sturdy. They are heatand time resistant, as a matter of fact, they can take about any kind of severe environment and still work just as good as in their original state.

These antioxidants are called super oxide dismutase or SOD. They come in two main combinations, copper and zinc in one form and iron and manganese in the other. These are minerals and you can do anything you want to abuse and destroy but, you probably can't. But, they are not perfect.

In their usual form, they are mineral compounds fed in combinations and their only drawback is they are barely digestible because these compounds have to be broken down and basically separated in order to work. That is why effective SOD's are generally fed in the chelate form which incorporates raw elemental minerals bonded to certain amino acids.

These effective SOD's have raw minerals like copper and zinc, not mineral compounds like copper oxide or zinc sulfate that must be broken down before they can be digested. They are in their simplest form and, when combined with amino acids(the most basic form of protein) they are readily digested and metabolized at five to ten times the normal digestive rate.

This form of antioxidant will most likely never be found in a bag of dog food and in all truthfulness, rarely found in a supplement product but there are a few and there is one in particular that uses not only chelated minerals as an antioxidant source but also uses 100% stabilized rice bran as its base ingredient. That stabilized rice bran has approximately 100 sources of other antioxidants to compliment the SOD's. This product is called Triad Performance Supplement and it comes from BuildA Better Dog.

They have a tremendous history of curing health problems in dogs including hip and elbow dysplasia, improved condition, great coat quality, and much improved digestion.