How Hypoallergenic Cats Work

the Wizard. Nice two cats. You hate it when people name their pets like actual human names, like Jason or you know, Gina. You know my in laws are big on that. They always give their dogs regular names. Well, my apologies to your in laws. Chick, well Laurn, it gets conceivably your real name, but the Wizard the Wizard. Yet, you're you're probably going to be brought up on charges

if you name your kid the Wizard. Okay, So, so you know what it's like to live among tumble weeds of of hair just kind of going through your house. You know, the mice put on little um gunslinging shows too for your amusement kind of thing. Right, Between our two cats and two dogs, we could literally collect enough hair each week to make an entirely new animal. Yeah. Yeah, I could sweep every day and still get an astronomical amount. Up, I'm too lazy, though, I don't sweep every day. So

we live in a toxic environment. My wife, Emily is is she Yeah, but she loves animals so much that she lives with it. And so your wife, Emily, you realize, is part of the one third of Americans who love cats so much that they keep them even though they're allergic to them. Yeah, think about that. A third of the people who are allergic to cats still keep That says something about cats. It really does, doesn't it. Yeah that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's awesome. So what does Emily

do for allergies? Well, she's got big allergies as a hole anyway, So she's on shots and pills and nasal sprays. And there's a voodoo guy that comes around once a week and does a little nude dance in our room, and that has nothing to do with the allergy. Nothing. She did you dye your hair read recently? No, she has not, So she's on a slew of things, but it still acts up. You know, those are some bad allergy You got bad allergies? Wow, How how often does

it act up? Uh, it's the allergy shots have kind of worked, so it's not as often, but you know, during the worst of times, it was, you know, a couple of times a week severe debilitating allergy as well. Yeah. Well, and is it because of the cat. I'm sure that doesn't help. Yeah, you know, I think her allergiest said you should get rid of your animals, and she kind of said, thanks, I'll get a new allergist. Well, okay,

So so she's a third of the population. People who are allergic to cats still keep them, and about fifteen the thirty percent of the population of the United States has a ager cat allergy. Yeah, that's actually a lot more people than I thought. It was pretty substantial, and you know a lot of them will actually undergo uh immunotherapy to kind of get over their allergy to it. And it's just the shots. It is it's it's the shots. It's um. It's basically it's like using local honey to

get over hay fever. Same concept, um, And the local honey thing hasn't been proven, but it seems to work. This actually has been proven. And all it is is you're introducing a low level of the UM, the allergen that's causing the allergic reaction UM, and letting your body get used to it. Correct. You want to talk about allergic reactions for a second. That's my favorite topic, is it? Really? I just have to deal with it a lot, so I'm used to it. Okay, do you want to explain him? Uh?

I feel better if you did. Okay. So basically, UM, an allergic reaction is nothing more than a case of mistaken identity. Okay. So the cat allergy, the allergy in that you're you're allergic to from the cat. Will get to that in a second. UM, It's actually totally benign. What happens is if the first time your body is introduced to it and it takes it as a foreign invader, UM, it will produce and uh animbody to fight it off, and then every time it comes at it, it will

produce that anibody again. And basically one of the results is the release of histamines, which actually UM makes your It opens up the capillaries and your soft tissue, which is why your eyes water and your sneeze and your gums bleed and you get the spins. Yeah, well that's another one too. Yeah. So so that's actually the reason why that's amazing, he really think. So, yeah, how the human body works. I love that stuff. I think it's strange that the human body can make a mistake like that,

you know, stupid body. Yeah. So, so what is this cat allergen? I believe it's called UM. I'm not sure if you say it or spell it, and I'm gonna spell it f E L D one glycoprotein and f L clearly stands for a feline. So no matter how you say it, what it is is UM. It's something that cats secrete through their skin and their saliva. And it's actually smaller than dust. Yeah, and it gets everywhere, doesn't it does. There was actually a study of UM

a mattress store in Sweden. This was disturbing. It was disturbing. Um, they're all these mattresses for sale. You know how they have mattresses out box spring sets and you can lay on them. They actually, Um, you have never been one to actually get on the mattress, but you know, people rolling around and stuff. I don't like that at all.

So these are brand new mattresses that have never been in anyone's home, and they the Swedes tested them for the felled one GLCO or the fel D one glycoprotein UH and found it in aces on every single one of them. So this just came from people that the cats. So it's very easily transferred, very small. Um, it's almost impossible to get rid of UH. And your cat produces it constantly through saliva. A glycoprotein. Actually it's it's it does all sorts of different stuff. It's found everywhere. Um,

it conserves a lubricant. Uh, it can serve as a connective tissue, right. Uh. It's also structural, so it can be found in cell walls. It's all over the place, and it's big and keratin, which is the hair partly, right, which is why pet dander is so allergic. You got it? Okay, man, you're smarter than I thought. How Thanks, It's good stuff. So okay, that's the glycoprotein, right, that's the histamine reaction.

That is the you know cat thing. We've already discussed all of our and a lot of people are allergic to UH. Two cats. I think the stat is umi of asthma cases are allergy related, and of those are cat allergies. Yeah, okay, yeah, cats in particular tune to be very allergic. So what do you do, I mean, asides you know Emily's course of action. Sure, I know one thing that the article mentions is washing your cat twice a week. But if your cat, my cat, cats

don't like that. No. I washed my kitten, Lauren when I found him in a dumpster in Los Angeles. And I washed him when I first got him immediately because he was a dumpster kittie. And uh, I tried to wash him again about and he's I don't probably five years old now. I tried to wash him again give him a fleet path about six months ago, and he was not happy. Now now, he he just complained a lot.

He didn't he didn't like fight us or anything. But yeah, there are some cats out there that will draw blood if you try to put water on them. My other cat, the Wizard, would he would attack. Yeah, so you know better than to wash him. So that's not necessarily an appropriate course of action either. No, depending on your cat. Do you know what is please tell me you could buy what is called a hypo allergenic cat. Yes, if you have a cool six thousand dollars to spare six grand,

it's actually what probably so six grand. There's a company called Allerca, uh, and it's an American company, I believe. And basically they have created a cat that they market as a hypoallergenic cat. And they don't have to prove that one bit. According to the FDA anything, any product in the US marketed as hypoallergenic doesn't have to produce any proof whatsoever that it's hypo allergenic. And hypoallergenic doesn't

mean allergy free. It just means that there's a much less likelihood, um that you that it will produce an allergic reaction. But to back up its claims, Allerca published its own study UH. And basically the study could be called here smell these cats. So they took some people who who are known to have cat allergies and control group uh that that doesn't have cat allergies, and um, they used the the Allerca Allerca cats and basically said, here you go, you know, here's this cat, and neither

group react to the cat. It seems to work. But then they used a non out regular cat and yeah there was a reaction, right, it's kind of meat, but it is really serves to help market their cause. Well, the first thing I thought when I saw this article about hypologenic cats is that it was some sort of weird bioengineered type of thing, like a a mouse within ear growing out it's back, right, which we have a picture of. It's really weird looking disturbing. We paid extra

for that one. It's an ap photo. It's worth every penny. Um. So, yeah, it's not actually bioengineering though, So those that that I don't agree with things like that, don't worry. It's actually selective breeding, yes, And selective breeding basically is you're just taking um, you know, a group that has a desirable trait and and continuing to breed them while not letting them breed with the the cats that have the trait

you don't want. And in this case, um Alerca used a process called bioinformatic, which is basically slapping computers and molecular biology together. And from what I gather, they fed the genetic makeup of I guess, several different breeds of cats into through an algorithm and it basically spit out likelihoods that that these breeds would stop producing the fel D one glycoprotein based on their genetic makeup. Right, it's

no wonder. It cost six grand yeah yeah, right, so they and I imagine selective breeding keeping these cats from mating constantly. It's probably a real pain. It's a job. Um. So they what what the computer basically said was go check out the British short hair, and so they grabbed the British short hair, which I guess had the highest likelihood of abandoning this gene that produces it. Right, Well,

actually it doesn't. It still has the the f l D one protein, but it's just a different version of it, right, Okay, yeah, it has a different molecular way exactly, absolutely okay. Um, So they basically bread it, bread it out of them. They bread the the f LD one f e l D one. We're gonna breathe that Glaco protein right out of you right now. Yeah. And and what what happened was these the Alerca cats. Now they may look exactly like a British short hair cat, but it's technically another species.

A species a speciation event actually just occurred thanks to Alerca. Right, So it's genetic divergence. It's where you take one thing and put them in there, split them in the two on the tree of life. So yeah, oh yeah, they there's a two year waiting list last I heard, and you could cut the waiting time in half so you could get it in a year, but you had to pay an extra two grand, so an eight thousand dollar cat and you had to wait a year for it. Right,

So I guess they are pretty popular. Either that or they're breeding fairly slowly. Right, These are some serious cat lovers out there, there are. But then again, I mean your wife, she puts up with these allergies and she would draw the line there though. Yeah. Well, I guess the moral for today is cat's equal. Great And if you want to learn more about hype w allergenet cats, you can type that into our Handy Danny search bar at how stuff works dot com. Also type in handy

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