Stuff You Should Know - How Hypoallergenic Cats Work

Episode Date: January 29, 2009

One-third of US cat owners are allergic to cats, resigning themselves to years of suffering and expense on their pet's behalf . Could hypoallergenic cats be the solution these allergic pet-lovers need? Tune in and learn more in this HowStuffWorks podcast. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Miao and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. That's Chuck Bryant. I was going to do the same thing this week. Were you?

Yeah, I was, except I was going to really make it sound like a cat. That was terrible. It was pretty bad. Sorry. That was about as good as your Elvis impression. Actually Chuck, it was great. I'm sorry. I just like that. So Chuck, do you have cat? I have two cats. Oh yeah, where's the name? I have LaRon and I have the wizard. Nice. Those are my two cats. I just 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 and cats regular names. Well, my apologies to your in-laws, Chuck. All right. Well, LaRon gets conceivably a real name, but the wizard, yeah. The wizard, yeah. You're probably going to be brought up on charges if you name your kid the wizard. Okay, so you know what it's like to live among tumbleweeds of hair just kind of going through your house and, you know, the mice put on little gunslinging shows 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. Yeah. I'm too lazy though. I don't sweep every day. Of course you don't. We live in a toxic environment. Yeah. My wife, Emily, is. Is she? Yeah, but she loves animals so much that she lives with it. 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 them.

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 whole 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 new dance in our room. That has nothing to do with the allergies. Nothing at all. She's just told you it does. Yeah. Did she dye her hair red recently? No, she has not. So she's on a slew of things,

but it still acts up. Those are some bad allergies. Yeah, she got bad allergies. Wow. How often does it act up? The allergy shots have kind of worked. So it's not as often, but during the worst of times, it was a couple of times a week, severe debilitating allergy. Wow. Yeah. Wow. And is it because of the cat? I'm sure that doesn't help. Yeah. I think her allergy said you should get rid of your animals and she kind of said, thanks, I'll get a new allergist.

Well, okay. So she's a third of the population of people who are allergic to cats still keep them. Yes. And about 15 to 30% of the population of the United States has a dog or cat allergy. Really? Yeah. That's actually a lot more people than I thought it was. Yeah, it's pretty substantial. And, you know, a lot of them will actually undergo immunotherapy to kind of get over their allergy to it. Right. Which is the shots, right? It is. It's the shots. It's basically, it's like using local honey to get over hay fever.

Right. Same concept. And the local honey thing hasn't been proven, but it seems to work. This actually has been proven. Sure. And all it is is you're introducing a low level of the allergen that's causing the allergic reaction 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? No. I just have to deal with it a lot. So I'm used to it. Okay. Do you want to explain them? I feel better if you did. Okay. So basically an allergic reaction is nothing more than a case of mistaken identity. Okay. So the cat allergy, the allergen that you're allergic to from the cat, we'll get to that in a second, is actually totally benign. What happens is if the first time your body's introduced to it and it takes it as a foreign

invader, it will produce an antibody to fight it off. Exactly. And then every time it comes at it, it will produce that antibody again. And basically one of the results is the release of histamines. Correct. Which actually opens up the capillaries in your soft tissue. Yes. Which is why your eyes water and your sneeze and your gums bleed and you get the spins.

Running nose. Yeah. Well, that's another one too. Yeah. So that's actually the reason why. That's amazing. You 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.

Well true. You know? Stupid body. Yeah. So what is this cat allergen? I believe it's called, I'm not sure if you say it or spell it, but I'm going to spell it. FELD1 glycoprotein. Mm-hmm.

And the FEL clearly stands for feline. So no matter how you say it, what it is, is 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? It does. There was actually a study of a mattress store in Sweden. This was disturbing. It was disturbing.

All these mattresses for sale, you know how they have mattresses out, box springs set, so you can lay on them or whatever. I don't like those places. They actually, you have never been one to actually get on the mattress. But you see people rolling around and stuff. I don't like that at all. So these are brand new mattresses that had never been in anyone's home. Right.

And the Swedes tested them for the FELD1 glycoprotein and found it in aces on every single one of them. Right. So this just came from people that owned cats. So it's very easily transferred. It's very small. True. It's almost impossible to get rid of and your cat produces it constantly through saliva. A glycoprotein actually, it does all sorts of different stuff.

It's found everywhere. It can serve as a lubricant. It can serve as a connective tissue. Right. It's also structural, so it can be found in cell walls. It's all over the place. And it's big in keratin, which is the hair part. Exactly.

Right. Which is why pet danders are so allergic. You got it. Okay. Man, you're smarter than I thought you are. Pow pow. Thanks. It's good stuff.

So, okay, that's the glycoprotein. Right. That's the histamine reaction. That is the cat thing. We've already discussed all of our stuff. And a lot of people are allergic to cats. I think the stat is 50% of asthma cases are allergy related and 30% of those are cat allergies. Yeah.

Yeah, cats in particular seem to be very allergic. So what do you do? I mean, besides, 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 is like 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 kitty. And I tried to wash him again about, and he's probably five years old now. I tried to wash him again, give him a flea path about six months ago. And he was not happy. No. No. No, he just complained a lot.

Yeah. He didn't like fight us or anything. Gotcha. 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 them. No.

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 hypoallergenic cat. Yes. If you have a cool $6,000 to spare.

Six grand. It's actually what, $59.95? Yeah, probably. So six grand. Sure. There's a company called Allerka. And it's an American company, I believe. And basically they have created a cat that they market as a hypoallergenic cat.

Yeah. 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 hypoallergenic. And hypoallergenic doesn't mean allergy free. It just means that there's a much less likelihood that you, that it will produce an allergic reaction. Exactly.

But to back up its claims, Allerka published its own study. And basically the study could be called, here smell these cats. Right. So they took some people who, who are known to have cat allergies. Stuck a cat in their face. And a control group that, that doesn't have cat allergies. And they used the, the Allerka, Allerka cats and basically said, here you go. You know, here's this cat and neither group reacted to the cat.

Yeah. Seems to work. But then they used a non-aller, a regular cat. And yeah, there was a reaction. Right. It's kind of mean, but it, it really serves to help market their cause. Well, the first thing I thought when I saw this article about hypoallergenic cats, is that it was some sort of weird bioengineered type of thing.

Like a, a mouse with an ear growing out its back. Right. Yeah. Which we have a picture of, it's really weird looking. Isn't that disturbing? Yeah, that's odd. We paid extra for that one. It's an AP photo.

Oh, really? Yeah. It's worth every penny. I agree. So yeah, it's not actually bioengineering though. So those that, that 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, 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. Exactly. And in this case, Allerka used a process called bioinformatics, 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, right, into, through an algorithm.

And it basically spit out likelihoods that the, that these breeds would stop producing the Feldy 1 glycoprotein based on their genetic makeup. Right. It's no wonder it costs six grand. Yeah. Yeah. Right. In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami.

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Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1968, five black girls, dressed in oversized military fatigues, were picked up by the police in Montgomery, Alabama. I was tired and just didn't want to take it anymore. The girls had run away from a reform school called the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children. And they were determined to tell someone about the abuse they'd suffered there. Picture the worst environment for children that you possibly can. I believe Mt. Mays was patterned after slavery.

I didn't understand why I had to go through what I was going through and for what. I'm writer and reporter Josie Duffy-Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate how this reform school went from being a safe haven for black kids to a nightmare. And how those five black girls changed everything. All that on Unreformed. Listen to Unreformed on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So they, and I imagine selective breeding, keeping these cats from mating constantly is probably a real pain. Yeah, it's a fun job.

So they, what the computer basically said was go check out the British Shorthair. And so they grabbed the British Shorthair, which I guess had the highest likelihood of abandoning this gene that produces it. Right. Well, actually it doesn't, it still has the FLD1 protein, but it's just a different version of it. Right. Okay. Yeah. It has a different molecular weight. Exactly. Absolutely. Okay. So they basically bred it out of them. They bred the FLD1, FLD1.

We're going to breed that glycoprotein right out of you. Right out. Yeah. And what happened was the Allerka cats now, they may look exactly like a British Shorthair cat, but it's technically another species. True. A speciation event actually just occurred thanks to Allerka. Right. Right. So it's genetic divergence. It's where you take one thing and put them in,

or split them in the two on the tree of life. Right. So they're pretty popular too, right? 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. Right. So an $8,000 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. Yeah. She would draw the line there though. Yeah. Well, I guess the moral for today is cats equal great.

And if you want to learn more about hypoallergenic cats, you can type that into our handy dandy search bar at howstuffworks.com. Also type in handy dandy and see what comes up. You'll be pleasantly surprised. But don't go anywhere. We have something we like to call listener mail. Yes, Josh. We're back, as I say, mere seconds later. And I'm just going to entitle this segment from our young fans.

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Now we're putting it after the hypoallergenic cat one much, much more appropriate. Exactly. So we heard from Cole Silva in Marston Mills, Massachusetts, about flirting. And young Cole is 12 years old, and he says that he loved the episode on flirting. And it really helped him a lot.

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