How does Sweet Relief Work?

A healthy horse's intestines are full of beneficial bacteria. One of the tasks of these bacteria is to make most if not all of the B vitamins that a horse needs to remain healthy. Because of these beneficial bacteria, a healthy horse doesn't need anywhere near as high levels of B vitamins in the diet as you'd expect given the actual bodily requirements. There's some argument as to which B vitamins are needed in the diet at all, but certainly the levels needed in feed are quite low compared to what gets used by the body as a whole. For example the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin B1 for a 500kg horse in light work is just 30 milligrams per day.

But if a horse's digestion isn't working correctly, the balance of bacteria in the gut can change resulting in a drop in the production of some or all of the B vitamins. We already have some evidence that this is happening in some domesticated horses. For example some horses' hooves improve dramatically when fed vitamin B7 (biotin) whereas others do not - suggesting that some horses produce enough B7 in the gut and others do not.

B vitamins are vital for health - without any B vitamins a horse would die relatively quickly. In particular, B vitamins are essential for the correct function of the immune system. So if some domesticated horses aren't managing to produce enough B vitamins, this would tend to cause obvious health problems.

Sweet Relief is a B vitamin mix that is aimed at the part of the immune system that turns off an immune response when it is no longer needed. If this function isn't working correctly, then the immune reaction generated in response to a foreign invader (such as the proteins in midge saliva) can't turn off properly. This results in an exagerated immune response such as is seen in sweet itch.

Conventional approaches to B vitamin deficiency in horses are based on feeding amounts around the level of the RDA. But these are tiny amounts compared to what the horse actually needs. Sweet Relief uses quantities of B vitamins that are approaching the levels normally produced by bacteria in the gut.

Because Sweet Relief is targetted at ensuring a correctly working immune system and in particular reducing allergies, it may have other benefits in some horses beyond helping with Sweet Itch. For example, it may help with horses that have food intolerances.