Question from our member:
1. What is the difference between Naf GastriVet and Naf GastriAid? 2. If a pony is on either of the 2 products above, would it be over-supplementing to feed Equine America Uls Guard with either of these products listed above? The pony is also on Naf Metazone.
Dr David Marlin’s Answer
NAF are not particularly transparent in the information they provide. GastriVet contains 39 different ingredients of which the amounts for only 6 are declared. GastriAid contains 14 different ingredients of which the amounts for only 3 are declared. Therefore we can only directly compare the ingredients they are obliged to list the amounts of by law.
Metazone has NO declared amounts for any of the ingredients. Metazone also includes 18 different ingredients which are also mostly common to GastriAid and GastriVet. Therefore there is a huge overlap between GastriVet, GastriAid and Metazone in what they contain.
Furthermore, the amounts included of the declared ingredients are VERY LOW and unlikely to have any effect at all. For example, 25IU of Vitamin E in NAF GastriVet is VERY VERY low as is 0.6g of lecithin.
There are also a few other things which are a concern. For example, Bentonite clay should NOT BE FED long term as it interferes with mineral absorption.
Equine America Uls Guard is slightly better in that they are a little more transparent and the amounts included in common are higher than NAF but still not a very high spec supplement.
None of these products are backed by clinical trials to demonstrate safety or efficacy.
| NAF GastriAid | NAF GastriVet | Equine America Uls Guard | |
| Dose per day (maintenance) g | 60 | 67 | 100 |
| L Glutamine (g) | 0.3 | 3.3 | 0 |
| Vitamin E (IU) | 0 | 25 | 0 |
| Saccharomyces cerevisiae (cfu) | 8.40E+09 | 8.31E+09 | 2.50E+10 |
| Lecithin | 0 | 0.6 | 2.75 |
| Bentonite | 29.9 | 20.0 | 0.006 |
Bottom Line
These products all sound great and the marketing is clearly good, but in reality whilst they contain a lot of wonderful sounding ingredients or ingredients you may see written about or discussed as being beneficial, the actual amounts provided are very low and in my professional opinion, unlikely to offer any benefit. In addition, the products have no trials behind them to give you confidence either. I could not recommend any of these products: NAF GastriVet, NAF GastriAid, NAF Metazone or Equine America Uls Guard.
