L-carnitine – why do we add it to our senior food?

July 21st 2022

At Vet’s Kitchen we produce two hypoallergenic diets tailored specifically for our senior dogs; Protect & Care Salmon and Brown Rice or Sensitive Care Turkey and Sweet Potato, which is grain free. These diets contain fewer calories and fat than our standard adult food to help your dog stay lean and healthy, and we’ve also added some extra ingredients to support their twilight years;   including higher levels of joint supplements, prebiotics, probiotics, taurine and L-carnitine. L-carnitine is also added to our Healthy Weight Chicken and Brown Rice diet.

What is L-Carnitine?

Carnitine is an amino acid with many biological roles. Amino acids can be thought of as the building blocks of proteins. You can read more about amino acids in our blog on taurine here.

There are different forms of carnitine, but L-carnitine is the biologically active form used in food supplements.

How can L-carnitine help senior dogs?

Sadly, our golden oldie dogs are more at risk to certain types of diseases. For example, cognitive dysfunction (doggy dementia) occurs in 28% of dogs aged 11-12 and up to 68% in dogs aged 15 years or over¹, and heart disease is another condition that increases in prevalence as our dogs age.

Studies show supplementation of L-carnitine can help with brain decline and heart disease, although its primary function is its essential role in energy production.

L-carnitine could be described simply as a taxi that helps to transport fatty acids (the building blocks of fats) to cell organelles called mitochondria. Mitochondria then act like little factories using the fatty acids to produce chemical energy to powder the body’s cells.  

How can L-Carnitine help with weight loss?

We also add L-carnitine to our Healthy Weight Diet. This is a lower fat, lower calorie diet formulated to help dogs lose weight, or for dogs prone to obesity.

Studies show that L-carnitine maintains lean body mass whilst aiding weight loss.

¹Neilson, J.C., Hart, B.L., Cliff, K.D. & Ruehl, W.W. 2001, “Prevalence of behavioral changes associated with age-related cognitive impairment in dogs”, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, vol. 218, no. 11, pp. 1787-1791.

Photo of elderly chihuahua by Alicia Gauthier on Unsplash