Question

Animal Nutrition questions:

3) Why do we worry about the absolute amounts of Calcium and Phosphorus (i.e. % of the diet) in a diet and also about the relative ratios of Calcium to Phosphorus?

4) From a quantitative point of view, pregnancy and lactation result in a large increase in the nutritional needs of a dog, but a relatively minor change in the requirements of humans?

Answer 1

3. The absolute amount of calcium and phosphate in the diet is required for the maintainance of bone mass and prevents the risk of bone disease osteoporosis. The relative ratio of the calcium and phosphorus need to be maintained to avoid the risk of bone problems such as nutritional secondary hyperparathyroidism.The alteration in the relative ratio causes hyper/hypo phosphatemia or hypo/hypercalcemia calcium .The high phosphorus leads to the condition where calcium combine with available phosphorus ,causes reduced blood calcium(hypocalcemia).The hypocalcemia triggers the parathyroid gland to produce parathyroid hormones and increase the calcium level in blood and sometime it produce high amount of calcium causes hypercalcemia, results into the bone diseases.

4. The nutritional requirement of the dog drastically increases during nursing or lactation compare to the gestation period or pregnancy.This is due to the dog loses significant amount of weight after giving birth (in 9th week), the nutritional requirement increases 2-3 times to their normal requirement.The energy requirement doesn't increase until sixth week of gestation.But in human,nutritional requirement is more during the pregnancy which of 9 months,thus the nutrional requirement remains more or less same in lactaction duration as well.