Hannah Zulueta Watch the Cups
The newest dog longevity supplement is a shell game.
There is a man on the Santa Monica boardwalk with a folding table and three cups. Under one is a little foam ball. He moves them slow enough that you can follow, and you can, you really can. You are certain you know where the ball is.
The ball is never under the cup they are pointing at.
Once you start watching the hands instead of the cups, the trick stops working. Here is the trick.
So you point. It is empty. You were always going to be wrong, because the ball left that cup while you were watching his eyes. The trick was never where you were looking.
I think about that table every time a dog product makes a claim that gives me the grift vibes. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up telling me to pay attention.
The newest one is a longevity chew. It opens by telling you that spaying or neutering your dog stripped away up to ninety percent of her hormones. Ninety percent. Then it sells you the thing that supposedly puts them back. The page is gorgeous. The science words sit in tidy rows. And while you are staring at that frightening number, the real move is happening in the other hand.
Lift each one and watch the hand
Three claims sit on the table. Each looks solid until you lift it. Pick one.
The loud cup
Spaying stripped away up to ninety percent of her hormones.
Under the cupA spay removes the ovaries, and the ovaries make the sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone. The surgery leaves the thyroid, the adrenals, the pancreas, the whole rest of the endocrine system that runs your dog every second of the day. She did not lose ninety percent of her hormones. She lost the reproductive ones years ago and has been asleep on your couch perfectly fine ever since. The number is there to make you look at a healthy six-year-old dog and wonder if you broke her.
The other hand
The chew puts the hormones back.
Under the cupWhat is actually in the chew is not estrogen and not testosterone. It is velvet antler, sold for its growth factors, mainly one called IGF-1. The surgery took out sex hormones. The product offers a growth signal instead, and the page calls that restoring what she lost. Two different systems. One cup pointed at, another one played.
The cup they point at hardest
There is a real study.
Under the cupThere is, and it is real. Dogs given elk velvet antler walked with a better gait and stayed more active, with clean bloodwork throughout. Open the actual paper and those were older animals with arthritis, and what got better was how they moved. Nothing in it touched hormones, or lifespan, or spaying, or a healthy young dog. A modest arthritis result in old dogs gets sold as hormone restoration and longevity for every dog from puberty forward.
A growth signal is not youth
IGF-1 is the message that tells cells to multiply and to put off dying. The pitch is that more of it means a younger dog. The biology runs the other direction. The dogs that live the longest tend to carry less of this signal, not more.
It is part of why a small dog can reach sixteen and a giant breed is gray at eight. Big dogs grow fast and carry more of that signal. They also die younger.
A chew that promises a long life by adding growth factors is selling you the large breed’s clock.
Then there is the matter of digestion
IGF-1 is a protein, and proteins mostly get taken apart in the stomach. That leaves two doors.
Almost none survives
The growth factor breaks down in digestion the way protein does. If it does not survive, the chew is not doing the thing on the label. You are buying elk and liver at a markup.
Some survives
Then you are nudging up the exact signal that aging research keeps tying to cancerous tumors. The version where it works is the version you would least want to give a healthy dog.
Once you spot these, you spot them everywhere
Tested on humans, perfected for dogs
The normal order is you test on animals first, because that is the safety gate, then you decide whether people can have it. They printed the reversal like a selling point. And for a supplement, tested on humans means people bought it and swallowed it. The line confesses where the chew came from: a human growth-factor product that went looking for a second species to sell to.
Start her at year one
The page tells you to start the chew at year one, before any decline shows. It sounds responsible. It also means you can never tell whether it did a thing, because you began before there was anything to measure. A product that only works before a problem could appear is a product that never has to prove it works.
The word peptide
Peptide. Growth factor. These land on the label because they sound like a laboratory instead of a kitchen. A peptide is a short string of amino acids, the thing protein becomes as it breaks down. Your dog has eaten them her whole life. When a label leans on a word you cannot quite define, that is the cup to watch.
Their own cancer warning
You do not have to take my word for the cancer part. The people selling these chews say it themselves, on their own website, in an article a few clicks from the buy button: high IGF-1 is linked to certain cancers in dogs, and deliberately raising it in a healthy dog is not a good idea. They put the warning and the product in the same place, and counted on you reading only one.
I am not against a business selling a product
People build things, people need to eat, and a chew of elk and liver is not poison. Liver is real food, some of the best there is. If the label said this may help an older dog feel a little springier, I would have nothing to argue with. May is an honest word. So is might.
The ick comes from the lie. It comes from people who notice how much you love your dog, how much you would give for one more good year, and decide that love is something to farm. They take the most tender thing about you, the wish that she could stay, wrap a false number around it, and bill you monthly.
Selling is fine. Lying to a person who is only trying to do right by her dog is not.
Maybe now that I am older I am more pessimistic. Maybe I am a tad grouchier, because I have been on the other end of this. I fell for the grift too. I have been the dog owner who was promised years of longevity from all sorts of products. That is why I am much more suspicious today.
You can see the shape of it now
A beautiful page. A number built to scare you. A real study sitting underneath that measured something else. A growth signal sold as youth, when the longest-lived dogs run it low.
- Watch the hands, not the cups. The scariest number on the page is usually the misdirection.
- When a label leans on a word you cannot quite define, that is the cup to watch.
- If you want a second set of eyes on what you are giving your dog, bring me the label.
Once you watch the hands instead of the cups, the trick stops working, and you keep walking down the boardwalk with your dog, who is, for the record, completely fine.
Based on a published trial of elk velvet antler in older dogs with osteoarthritis, which measured gait and activity and reported clean bloodwork, and did not measure hormones, lifespan, or spay status. The relationship between lower IGF-1 signaling and longer lifespan, including the size-and-lifespan pattern across dog breeds, is drawn from established aging research. The cancer association referenced is stated by the supplement maker in its own published material.
References
Greer, K. A., Hughes, L. M., & Masternak, M. M. (2011). Connecting serum IGF-1, body size, and age in the domestic dog. Age, 33(3), 475–483. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-010-9182-4
Jaillardon, L., Abadie, J., Godard, T., Campone, M., Loussouarn, D., & Siliart, B. (2015). The dog as a naturally-occurring model for insulin-like growth factor type 1 receptor-overexpressing breast cancer: An observational cohort study. BMC Cancer, 15, Article 664.
Moreau, M., Dupuis, J., Bonneau, N. H., & Lécuyer, M. (2004). Clinical evaluation of a powder of quality elk velvet antler for the treatment of osteoarthrosis in dogs. The Canadian Veterinary Journal, 45(2), 133–139.
Renehan, A. G., Zwahlen, M., Minder, C., O’Dwyer, S. T., Shalet, S. M., & Egger, M. (2004). Insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-I, IGF binding protein-3, and cancer risk: Systematic review and meta-regression analysis. The Lancet, 363(9418), 1346–1353. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(04)16044-3
Hannah Zulueta obtained her Certificate in Canine Nutrition from CASI Institute. She is also studying for her Doctorate in Acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Herbalism from the esteemed Pacific College of Health and Medicine. If you’re as keenly interested in health for yourself, visit her website for human health: Satori Acupuncture and Herbs.
She resides in San Diego with her three dogs, Maggie, Orbit, and Mr. Higgins.
She is available for one on one consultations. She develops evidence-based recipes that meet both NRC and AAFCO nutritional standards while integrating the therapeutic food principles of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine into her formulations.
Additionally, you can find her sharing free content on Instagram.
