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Diabetes

Clueless

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Praying.....
 

Begone

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So sorry to read this. :(
Sending tons of positive and healing thoughts and hoping you will have a lot more happy days together. ❤❤❤
 

Hankmacaw

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That's very scary. Insulin can be so dangerous, especially with a bird that you never know just how much they have eaten. Are you going to switch him to glipicide?
 

Greylady1966

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We're going tomorrow and go over the other options. We took turns throughout the night watching him for any signs of it happening again. Within minutes after giving him the syrup he was tired but laughing and talking. I've never seen such a fast response. So little information on diabetes in parrots. I honestly don't know how we can regulate the amount on him whether it's shots or oral.
 

Hankmacaw

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Greylady1966

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Thank you. I'm not a worrier but with this I am. When Nikki was diagnosed with aspers it was horrible but the information was out there treatments meds ect. That's not the case with this.
 

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I wonder......@milo have you guys seen diabetic birds up there?
 

Begone

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I tag @Milo too, your tag Clueless doesn't work.
I hope you can help Milo. :)
 

Hawk12237

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@Hankmacaw 40 minutes after Howard's injection he crashed. Corn syrup brought him back up. We leave tomorrow at 5 am to see his avian vet.
Oh no...But in a previous post, I mentioned that possibility. You see because of the metabolism of birds, the spectrum of wide range fluctuations of diabetes can go from one end of the spectrum to the other. The injected medicine to treat it can also act in such a way as a beta blocker, thus ( as I mentioned) could cause a low sugar crash. And you did right by bringing that up by giving the syrup.
I'm with Mary in switching that meds.. If your vet or you still insist on the injections, make darn sure you make note to get the duration of time before crash, any and all food the bird has eaten or drank prior to injection and how much, and if it's the birds normal intake amount, what times of the day your bird eats the most. This is very important. Make a food diary if you have to and monitor it closely. Because the injection will most likely need to be altered.
 

Hawk12237

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That's very scary. Insulin can be so dangerous, especially with a bird that you never know just how much they have eaten. Are you going to switch him to glipicide?
Exactly...and insulin no doubt can be very dangerous to a bird because of the fast metabolism and wide fluctuation.
You really really have to keep a log on what the bird eats. And yea, that's easier said than done.
Correct dosage one time may not be correct dosage the next day at the same time...the vet will need to find a median dosage based on the amount and what the bird eats on a daily basis.
 

Milo

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True diabetes is super uncommon in companion parrots so I don't have a lot of experience with it... I know that toucans are prone to developing diabetes and that the treatment of choice is metformin orally, and then going to insulin if needed. I"m not sure how long he was managed, but I know years ago my doc had a blue and gold that was diabetic that received injections twice a day (they gave him peanut butter and he would let them inject him) They can still develop ketoacidosis, but figuring out exactly how to check for it reliably can be challenging. Even with cats and dogs the process to get their glucose under control is tricky and requires careful dosing and retesting. I know that we've done pancreatic biopsies in the past to try and help diagnose it or to rule out other disorders of the pancreas.

I'm sorry I don't have much more information :/ My suggestion would be that at insulin time you give him something absolutely fabulous to eat to make sure that he has something in his system and it takes out the guesswork. You can try low glycemic index fruits and veggies (which are better for birds anyways) like berries or some veggies. You could also try offering him some fruit/veggie baby food as an extra special treat at those times. When I have to medicate my kiddos I get a couple of those pouch type baby foods and they go crazy for them.
 

Hawk12237

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True diabetes is super uncommon in companion parrots so I don't have a lot of experience with it... I know that toucans are prone to developing diabetes and that the treatment of choice is metformin orally, and then going to insulin if needed. I"m not sure how long he was managed, but I know years ago my doc had a blue and gold that was diabetic that received injections twice a day (they gave him peanut butter and he would let them inject him) They can still develop ketoacidosis, but figuring out exactly how to check for it reliably can be challenging. Even with cats and dogs the process to get their glucose under control is tricky and requires careful dosing and retesting. I know that we've done pancreatic biopsies in the past to try and help diagnose it or to rule out other disorders of the pancreas.

I'm sorry I don't have much more information :/ My suggestion would be that at insulin time you give him something absolutely fabulous to eat to make sure that he has something in his system and it takes out the guesswork. You can try low glycemic index fruits and veggies (which are better for birds anyways) like berries or some veggies. You could also try offering him some fruit/veggie baby food as an extra special treat at those times. When I have to medicate my kiddos I get a couple of those pouch type baby foods and they go crazy for them.
Hi Jenny, that's true to a point. It seems that diabetes is uncommon in parrots. Truth is it's labeled uncommon, because very little was known as to how to detect it, measure it, and treat it.
Give you an example, back in 1990-91, I took in a 22 yr old cockatoo ( tigger) that people decided they didn't want anymore.
During the duration that I had him, he would sometimes just fall over as if he was super weak. I didn't know crap about diabetes back then, and vets knew barely anything either.
The too was tested over and over and over and could not readily find anything wrong. He had good health according to vet... But his sugar was low. 90 days later, another blood test was off the charts...tested him again a few weeks later it was very low again..the fluctuations was baffling.
It was mentioned then that the vet thought he acted like
He had diabetes. But very little was known as to how to treat it in parrots, and what appropriate dosage would be.
I was worried that vet made right diagnosis. So I got a second opinion, different vet. After tests, it was just as baffling as first vet, with same results...how do we treat it and how much?.
When I had the bird he ate a good diet, but you never know what they are before you get them. Once diabetes sets in ...it's in... Trigger passed away 8 months later....crashed and didn't recover. So that prompt me to read all I could find on the matter with parrots and diabetes. And to date, still not a lot known on it, but they are making progress.
 

enigma731

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The injected medicine to treat it can also act in such a way as a beta blocker, thus ( as I mentioned) could cause a low sugar crash. And you did right by bringing that up by giving the syrup.
Wait, what? How would insulin act as a beta blocker and in what way would decreasing blood pressure cause blood sugar to crash?
 

Hawk12237

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Wait, what? How would insulin act as a beta blocker and in what way would decreasing blood pressure cause blood sugar to crash?
Personally, I do not fully know. A vet gave it to me ( the info) in layman terms. When tigger died unexpectedly after having an injection, I needed to how and why.
I don't think it was the insulin ,per se ,as the beta blocker,
But (as he explained it) it's how the insulin helps ( or doesn't help) the body chemistry in releasing certain chemical necessary for proper balance. And as he described " like blocking the release and or over producing the chemical
( Oohh what's that called now.) Glusumine? Pardon my brain fart this morning.
Anyway it's a combination of release, as vets are not 100% up to speed on the chemical make up of parrots yet and how much is produced and when. Because not every bird has the same metabolism, there is a wide range variables involved.
Insulin, same dosage, given at a particular time may be too much, when another time it may be too little.
Take the humming bird, their metabolism is very very fast.
 

enigma731

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I think you're thinking of glucagon and glycogen, and I agree that birds have a wide range of variability in their metabolism, but I can't make any sense of the rest of that explanation.
 

Hawk12237

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I think you're thinking of glucagon and glycogen, and I agree that birds have a wide range of variability in their metabolism, but I can't make any sense of the rest of that explanation.
It's a whole completely different aspect with birds compared to human diabetes. It's still widely understood in birds. It's not the same.
 
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