title: Nutrition and the aging animal.
abstract: The surge in current thinking and research on aging, replete with causes and/or effects, has greatly stimulated serious biologists concerned with giving counsel for the feeding and management of animals to reevaluate present practices. This is particularly true for the feeding of dogs. If we are indeed concerned with the feeding of the geriatric dog, we must begin to emphasize changes in nutritional practices that go back to the period preceding birth. Unrestricted caloric intake of dogs during periods of growth and development, even when in proper balance with intake of essential nutrients, has been shown to accelerate somatic processes, resulting in delayed maturation of cartilage and excessive bone apposition. This was followed by reduced bone resorption and remodeling. These processes were associated with the development of either earlier or more severe degenerative diseases of the skeletal system. Studies with rodents have demonstrated damaging effects of unrestricted dietary intake on longevity itself. Most damaging have been the decreasing efficiency of cellular immunity and corresponding increases in autoimmune responses during later life. Judicious caloric restriction beginning even in adult life can have a rejuvenating effect on immune response capacity. Regardless of age, a controlled nutrient intake seems the order of the day. Returning to Lucretius, the graves are indeed being dug with teeth.
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging; D000824:Animal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D000818:Animals; D002415:Cats / Q000502:physiology*; D004285:Dogs / Q000502:physiology*