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The Role of Energy in the Healing ProcessBy Dr. Peter Huntington · March 17, 2011
When evaluating the healing process after a musculoskeletal injury, nutrition is often a neglected consideration. Attention is usually focussed on medical or surgical treatments with confinement, followed by a graded return to exercise. There are no scientific data that directly validate the role of certain nutrients in enhancing the healing process in horses. However, extrapolations can be made from knowledge of the role of nutrients within the body and from what is known about healing in humans and other animals. The key is balanced nutrition with particular attention being placed on those nutrients that have a defined role in the healing process.
Meeting energy requirements is one of the most important steps in promoting rapid healing after a musculoskeletal injury. The pain resulting from such an injury will often lead to a short-term period of inappetence, so energy intake decreases. At the same time, the impact of pain on metabolic rate leads to an increase in requirements for energy. Energy intake with respect to meeting a horse's requirements can be expressed as energy balance when caloric intake equals caloric expenditure and weight gain or loss is zero. In a negative energy balance, a horse will lose weight. Because caloric intake has a direct effect on nearly every metabolic pathway and physiological function in the body, this will also have an impact on the healing process.
If energy intake does not meet requirements, one of the consequences will be the breakdown of amino acids to supply the energy required to maintain body functions. This leads to a loss of muscle and potentially to a secondary impact on the healing process.
When an injury leads to a reduction or a complete cessation in the horse's workload, energy requirements will drop after the injury. Remember that maintenance requirements are about 50% of the energy requirements for intense work. Hard-working horses are likely to have been on a high grain intake, and feed changes related to confinement and the lack of exercise after an injury should be made over a few days to give the horse's gastrointestinal tract time to adjust to a diet with less grain and more forage.
If a horse is totally confined to a stable after an injury, care must be taken not to overfeed grain as this may predispose the horse to intestinal disorders, laminitis, and tying-up. However, most horses should remain on some grain, as putting them on an all-forage diet immediately is likely to result in a negative energy balance. Energy intake can be calculated using the known digestible energy content of feeds. This is made easier by the use of computer programs such as MicroSteed, developed by Kentucky Equine Research. Weighing the horse is the best guide to energy balance, but many people do not have access to suitable scales and must resort to careful observation of changes in the horse's condition to monitor the situation.
