Dogs Are The Best Friends Of Diabetics

The important help that dogs represent for people with some type of disability is well known. And we will never cease to be surprised about the usefulness they can offer us, as is the case that they are true friends of diabetics.

Among the scientific advances, we are learning that dogs are able to warn epileptic people when they are about to suffer an attack, they are also capable of detecting some types of cancer, they have a special sensitivity with people who suffer some type of mental disability And now we also know about dogs to detect diabetes.

How to detect diabetes, friends of diabetics

Some patients with diabetes have found that their dogs behaved a bit strange before they suffered a crisis due to their disease. Their pets were warning them that something was not quite right.

These situations have led to the first studies to see if dogs could detect low glucose levels that are so dangerous for diabetics.
It is being shown that when a change is going to take place our body smells differently and it is this type of change that dogs detect thanks to their smell and their qualities.

Types of dogs: great friends of diabetics

When it comes to caring for people with diabetes, there are two types of dogs:

• Alert dogs. These animals warn when there is an irregularity in the sugar level.

• Response dogs. Although they cannot detect the variation in sugar, they are trained to help the patient by bringing him the medication or alerting someone to the situation.

Training dogs for diabetes

Currently, there are not many centers where work is being done to prepare these diabetes detection dogs; It is meticulous and difficult work, but the demand for these special helpers grows every day, as they represent a great help, especially for children with diabetes.

These diabetic-friendly dogs receive personalized training so that they know well the scent of their owner and the possible variations, that is, each dog is trained for the scent of only one person. Keep in mind that when we go into hypoglycemia, we secrete a series of hormones.

These types of workouts are not cheap, but they are worth it. They are trained to detect high or low blood sugar and notify humans through signals.

All this is achieved thanks to the sense of smell that dogs have, which enables them, for example, to detect drugs and bombs. For this reason they can also be trained to sniff and detect difficult odors emitted by people who lack insulin. These dogs are trained to smell changes in sugar levels and compare them with their owners.

Most suitable breeds for diabetes screening programs

Although all dogs have the ability to sniff and sense abnormal situations in their owners, some breeds are more prone than others. For example, the breeds that are most used in this type of detection program are Labradors or Golden retrievers, which detect human odors, especially changes in sugar levels thanks to a very precise sense of smell.

But there is more, different tests have been carried out that have confirmed that these animals, considered the best friends of man, can identify people affected by tumors in the bladder, ovaries, skin and lung.

Other pathologies

Some Training Centers educate dogs to be detectors of different pathologies, such as epilepsy outbreaks, low blood sugar, and even locating cancer in a person.

Although there is no evidence to ensure that dogs can perceive that a woman is pregnant, there are a large number of cases that prove that it is. Among the arguments that defend this hypothesis is his privileged sense of smell, which perceives the changes in hormones and pheromones of women in state.

In some cases, cats and dogs that are friends of diabetics have shown curious abilities to predict death. The most famous case is that of Óscar, the cat from a nursing home in Rhode Island (USA) who was lying next to the elderly at the center the same day they died.