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Bananas & Seizures

About the third or fourth month after we adopted Quincey, he had his first seizure. We did not know at the time he was epileptic, so needless to say when he had his first episode it scared us to death! After doing quite a bit of research, we learned that is is somewhat common with Golden Retrievers. How do you know when your dog is having a seizure? You’ll definitely notice. When Quincey has an episode, his entire body goes stiff (arms and legs straight out), he does not blink his eyes, and his jaw is locked down tight causing him to drool profusely. It is so sad, but the best thing to do is just pet them and keep them calm. When they come out of it they will be confused, so the more calm and peaceful you can keep them the better.

We immediately took Quincey into our vet, and he suggested that before we put him on medication (since it is so hard on their liver), to document and track his seizures. If they happened more than once a month, medication would be needed. For the next several months, Quincey averaged about one seizure every 4 to 6 weeks. Sometimes they would only last a minute, but he had a couple of really bad ones that lasted about 5 minutes. One time he even got really sick after having one, it was so sad.

Brad had a pet photographer suggest bananas to us to help with seizures. She said her dog used to have seizures all of the time and ever since she started feeding it bananas they had stopped. I was a little skeptical, but we decided to give it a try. We have been feeding Quincey 1/2 a banana in his food every morning for the last 5 months, and he hasn’t had a seizure since! Bananas are the miracle fruit for our family. We buy big packs at Costco, peel and freeze them since fresh bananas never last that long. Quincey is a happy boy 🙂

Does your dog get seizures? We really want to see if this works as well for others as it does for us. Here are some great resources on learning more about canine epilepsy:

Canine Epilepsy Resource Center
Canine Epilepsy Network

7 replies on “Bananas & Seizures”

Can you update me on Quincey’s seizures. I found your post from June 2011 when you added bananas to his diet. Has that continued to work for him? My 2 year old has had 3 seizures recently and I am trying to figure out what to do.

Our 8 year old dog started having seizures about a year ago. He was having clusters every 5 weeks in the beginning. They progressively got worse and closer toger over the last year. He started having them every week. We thought it might be a brain tumor. He has 52 seizures in 3 days and he was in and out of the vets emergency care many times. About a month ago I started feeding him the bananas that we’re going bad and he seemed to like them so I will fill his Kong up every day with bananas. It’s been about a month with no seizures. That’s how I found this page. I thought it was strange that the seizures seemed to stop and I googled feeding bananas to dogs with seizures. Pretty crazy if eating bananas really works. How lucky are we!!! I hope that it really is the bananas in action.

Hi, I have recently come upon the same conclusion that bananas reduce, if not stop, seizures. I have a 7 year old Chihuahua and at about 2 or 3 years old she started having seizures and like you said, you definitely know. I also knew because she came from the same breeder that my parents bought two of their Chihuahuas from and one of theirs also suffered from seizures, so I had already seen a seizure in progress. Anyway, my Chihuahua, Tootsie, didn’t have them too much (about once or twice a year) but it still tears you up to see them go through that. I love bananas and will pretty much give Tootsie anything I eat (as long as it’s healthy and I’ve made sure it’s not toxic to her) so she enjoys bananas as much as I do though it’s only the last year or so that we’ve really started eating more of them. I give her about 1 1/2″ – 2″ a day because of her size and since she’s been getting it nearly every day she’s been seizure free for at least a year. I really can’t remember the last time she’s had one. I am not saying bananas will stop or reduce seizures but more banana consumption is the only difference in her diet/lifestyle. It does make me feel more confident about it to know that others have seen a change in their baby after adding banana to the diet.

My dog Murphy has seizures all the time. 3 to 8 in one week then he’d be good for 2 to 3 weeks and he is on meds . So I just saw this so I’m gonna try this for Murphy 🤞hope this works for him….
P.S. so how is Quincy doing now ?

I’ve just come across your post. My Weimaraner has a very rare brain condition and as a result has seizures regularly. He’s always shared a banana with my husband in the morning but one night when he was showing seizure activity he went to the cupboard where we keep the bananas, he refused to go to bed without having one, strangely he settled down and no seizure. He was having regular single and cluster seizures. Now he has a banana am and pm and he’s gone from weekly seizures sometimes clusters to 2 short seizures in 110 days. I can only put it down to bananas. I hope we never have a shortage in bananas!!!

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