Equine Metabolic Syndrome and Insulin Resistance

If your horse has been diagnosed with EMS or insulin resistance, you’ve probably spent hours searching the internet for answers.

What does it mean? What caused it? What do you feed them? Will they ever get better?

Good news: you’re in the right place.

 

 

What Is Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS)?

Veterinarians — myself included — are trained to look at a group of symptoms and give them a name.   Here are the usual metabolic symptoms:

• Overweight horse.
• Cresty neck.
• Unusual fat pads.
• Low energy

  We call that cluster of symptoms “equine metabolic syndrome,” or EMS.

That’s not wrong, exactly. But here’s the problem.

Nobody stops to ask why those symptoms are there in the first place.

That’s the real question. And the answer is something I call “the bad stuff.”

The bad stuff is an accumulation of chemicals, toxins, heavy metals, microplastics, glyphosate, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, venoms, dewormers, vaccinations, and pharmaceuticals — all of which build up in your horse’s body over time.

Your horse’s body doesn’t know how to get rid of the bad stuff naturally — because it’s not natural. Storing it away is the only plan the body has.

Where it stores it determines what we call the resulting condition.

• Bad stuff stored in the fat around the pancreas → insulin resistance
• Bad stuff stored in the brain (hypothalamus and pituitary) → Cushing’s disease
• Bad stuff stored in fat cells → weight gain, cresty neck, fat pads

That’s what EMS really is. It’s not a mysterious disease. It’s an accumulation problem.

What Are the Symptoms of EMS in Horses?

The most common signs horse owners notice are:

• Weight gain, even with very little feed
• A cresty neck (that hard, thick crest along the top of the neck)
• Unusual fat pads — behind the shoulder, at the tailhead, above the eyes, around the sheath or udder
• Low energy and lethargy
• Difficulty losing weight no matter what you try

Here’s something important: what we call “fat” on an EMS horse isn’t just fat. It’s bad stuff stored in fat cells, along with water to keep it diluted. Your horse’s body is doing the best it can to protect itself.

Understanding that changes everything about how you approach this condition.

Is EMS the Same as Insulin Resistance?

No. And this is one of the biggest myths out there.

Equine metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance are two separate, distinct issues — no matter what the internet says.

Some horses with metabolic also have an insulin problem. But plenty don’t. They are related in the sense that both involve accumulated bad stuff — just stored in different places. The bad stuff around the pancreatic fat affects insulin function. The bad stuff in the fat cells creates the weight and cresty neck picture.

They can exist together, or completely separately.

Does EMS Cause Laminitis?

This is one of the most common questions — and one of the most misunderstood.

The short answer: no.

Laminitis is a completely separate condition from EMS. It is separate from Cushings. It is separate from insulin resistance. These are all unrelated causes.

What happens is that some horses have both laminitis AND metabolic at the same time. People see that and conclude that metabolic causes laminitis. That’s a distortion of the facts.

Plenty of horses with metabolic never get laminitis. And plenty of horses with laminitis have nothing to do with metabolic.

90% of laminitis is feed-related — what the horse is being fed, what they’re not being fed, or the frequency of feeding. Pharmaceutical drugs and injections can also trigger laminitis.

Metabolic and insulin resistance do not, by themselves, cause laminitis.

If My Horse Has Laminitis, Does That Mean They Have EMS?

No — and this is the flip side of the myth above.

Laminitis is its own separate issue, with its own separate causes. Having laminitis does not mean your horse has metabolic, Cushings, or insulin resistance.

Get the food right. Avoid pharmaceutical products and then 90% of the time you won’t be dealing with laminitis.

Should I Feed My EMS Horse Low-Sugar Soaked Hay?

This is probably the most common piece of advice given to EMS horse owners — and it’s based on two faulty assumptions.

Faulty assumption #1: EMS horses need low-sugar feed.

They don’t. Horses’ bodies need sugar. The microbes in your horse’s gut need the sugar in grass hay. In a healthy horse with a healthy microbiome, all the sugar in hay is digested by the gut microbiome — it doesn’t spike the blood sugar.

The reason IR horses show high blood sugar is a symptom of the underlying problem, not the problem itself. Your horse doesn’t need you to eliminate sugar. Your horse needs help getting the bad stuff out.

Faulty assumption #2: Restricting hay helps EMS horses lose weight.

It doesn’t — and it may make things worse.

Studies show that restricting hay for as little as four hours starts killing off the gut microbiome. And soaking hay starts the digestion process too early, which also harms the microbiome.

Horses are designed to eat dry, fibrous, long-stemmed grass hay — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The more variety of grass species, the better.

The more you restrict hay, the more you damage the very system your horse needs to be healthy.

But Won’t My Horse Get Even Fatter If I Let Them Eat Hay All the Time?

Possibly, in the short term. And here’s why that’s okay.

When horses go from restricted feed to always-available feed, they go through a transition period. They may eat a lot at first — for two reasons:

1. They’re rebuilding a damaged microbiome and need the extra fuel to do it.
2. They’ve been so hungry for so long that they’ve learned to eat as fast as possible. It takes time to unlearn that behavior.

Typically it takes 2–3 months for a horse to truly believe that food will always be available and start to slow down their eating naturally.

Be patient. Trust the process.

How Do You Actually Fix EMS and Insulin Resistance?

Here’s the part nobody else is talking about.

Managing symptoms isn’t fixing the problem. To actually fix EMS and IR, you need to address the underlying cause — the bad stuff. There are three steps:

Step 1: Help your horse’s body remove the bad stuff.

The bad stuff is not natural, so horses have no natural mechanism to get rid of it. Tucker BioKinetic Technique (TBT) uses energy to help the immune system release and remove the bad stuff from specific areas. If you don’t have a TBT practitioner nearby, TBT Metabolic Resolve is an energy-based product designed specifically for this.

Step 2: Feed 24/7 access to grass hays.

As many species as you can find. No rye, no alfalfa, no clover. Free-choice, dry, long-stemmed grass hay is the foundation of a healthy equine gut microbiome.

Step 3: Avoid the bad stuff as much as possible.

Minimize exposure to chemicals, toxins, pesticides, herbicides, and unnecessary pharmaceuticals. You can’t avoid everything — but do what you can.

How Long Does It Take to Fix EMS?

EMS and insulin resistance typically take years to develop. Removing the bad stuff also takes time — you don’t want to remove it all at once, as that can make the horse feel sick as the toxins re-enter the bloodstream.

With TBT (Tucker BioKinetic Technique) energywork or TBT Metabolic Resolve herbal product, most horses show gradual improvement over a period of months. Be consistent, be patient, and keep reducing exposure to new bad stuff in the meantime.

What’s the Bottom Line?

Your horse is not broken. Your horse is not lazy. And you are not failing your horse.

Your horse has been accumulating bad stuff — and their body has been doing the only thing it knows how to do: store it.

Your job now is to:

1. Help them get the bad stuff out (TBT or TBT Metabolic Resolve)
2. Feed them the way horses are designed to eat (24/7 grass hay)
3. Reduce their exposure to new bad stuff going forward

Not complicated. Just different from what you’ve been told.

Cheers, Renee Tucker, DVM

Want to learn more? Visit tuckerbiokinetic.com to learn about TBT.   List of TBT practitioners HERE