05/05/2026
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I turned away a client recently.
Not because she wasn't serious. She was. Twenty horses, a solid feeding program, a real budget, and she'd clearly done her homework.
But there was a fundamental incompatibility between her competition protocol and the way I practice.
Her performance horses run on Lasix and Banamine during competition. She wasn't looking to change that. She wanted a nutrition program that would support hydration, electrolyte balance, and gut health around those medications.
I understand the reasoning. These drugs are deeply embedded in competition culture. But from a functional nutrition standpoint, here's what's actually happening in the body when they're used regularly.
Lasix is a loop diuretic. It forces the kidneys to excrete potassium, magnesium, calcium, chloride, and sodium with every dose. These aren't just numbers on a lab report. These are the minerals the body depends on to manage stress, fuel endocrine function, support muscle contraction and recovery, and maintain hydration at the cellular level. Systematically stripping them from the body doesn't just create a nutritional deficit. It places additional burden on the liver and kidneys, organs that in most horses are already working overtime to keep up with everyday inflammatory load. You're asking a body that's already struggling to process more with less.
Banamine is an NSAID. It suppresses the inflammatory cascade, which provides short-term pain relief. But inflammation is also the body's signaling system. It tells us something needs attention. Suppress the signal, and the underlying issue goes unaddressed. More critically for nutrition work, repeated NSAID use damages the mucosal lining of the GI tract. That lining is where nutrient absorption happens. Compromise it, and the best diet in the world can't do its job. Right dorsal colitis from chronic Banamine use is well-documented and can become a career-ending or life-threatening condition.
When these two drugs are used together, a cycle develops.
The horse experiences pain or inflammation. Banamine is given. The Banamine provides relief but damages the gut lining. The compromised gut impairs mineral absorption. Lasix depletes whatever minerals were absorbed. The resulting mineral deficiencies compromise the body's ability to manage stress, recover from exertion, and support basic organ function. The horse breaks down further. More Banamine. The cycle continues.
This is not a criticism of any individual owner or trainer. It's a physiological reality.
My practice is built on root-cause nutrition. Balance the diet to the horse, not the ingredients to each other. Identify what's happening at the cellular level and correct it through species-appropriate, whole-food nutrition. That process depends on a body that's able to actually utilize what it's being given. When pharmaceuticals are actively depleting minerals and destroying the gut's ability to absorb them, the foundation doesn't hold.
I would rather be honest about that upfront than take someone's money for work I can't deliver on.
If you're curious about what root-cause equine nutrition actually looks like, or if you've got a horse stuck in a cycle you can't seem to break, that's exactly the work I do.
indigoancestralhealth.com
