Speaker 1: This is Pet Life Radio. Let's Talk pets.
Speaker 2: Hello eline friends, Welcome to Katatude. I'm your show host
Michelle Byrne. There's so many of us that have cats
have allergies, and some of us can get by with it,
like me, but a lot of us can't. I have
somebody to introduce you to and they're going to explain
all about cats and allergies and maybe offer some tips
on what you could do. So stay tuned, will be
right back.
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Speaker 4: Let's talk pets on Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back everyone. I'd like to welcome Dr Evan Zao.
He is the co founder of pack Again, So welcome
doctor Zao.
Speaker 5: Oh thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: So can you give us a little background on yourself.
Speaker 5: Yeah, my name's Evan. I'm a scientist by training. I
use to specialize by technology, and for the last four
years or so, I've been starting companies to create products
that could help people, so that could really help impact
people's lives. Around a year and a half ago we
started packaging, which focuses on right now, a product that
helps with reducing the amount of active cat allergens in
an area.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's talk about cat allergies. I'm allergic to cats,
but it's more there for and the reason I did
actually do that allergy test. I guess it's the old
school one where you have dots that show up on
your arms. It was a long time ago. Are there
any other allergy tests?
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's They can do blood work, there's different things
that they can do try to figure out what you're
allergic to. But all of them the premise is does
your immune system react this specific allergen. So they'll take
a specific allergen from that organism, so whether it's a
plan or it's an animal, and they'll expose you to
that allergen and then they'll see if you react to it.
Speaker 2: Why is it that because a lot of people are
allergic to cats. A friend of mine, her allergy is
so extreme she's never seen my house and she just can't.
So what does it seem among us that cat allergies
are so much more traumatic than other allergies. And mine's
not too bad. I just get like a wheezy and
not itchy, but just wheezy because mind stems, I think
from mild asthma, and I think it's you know, I
have a lot. I have three of them, so that's
a lot, but it's it's dealable, as I say. But
some of people can't even go in a home where
a cat, you know, even cats outdoors and they can't
even still can't even come into the home. Why are
cat allergies so extreme?
Speaker 5: Yeah? So alas in general, they are your body's way
of protecting itself from potential toxins, and naturally it's used
to try to rid yourself, for example, viruses or bacteria
that are trying to enter your body. If you think
about allergies, symptoms, right, so like the you know, you know,
teary eyes stuff, he knows, coughing, wheezing, right, trying it's
trying to get whatever is in your body out of
your body, right, it's trying to block the passages, trying
to get it out. And you know, unfortunately, allergies to
animals or allergies to plants, these are your body's immune
system mistakenly recognizing something from that organism that it now
thinks is a dangerous thing that it actually isn't a
dangerous thing. Cat ouralogies are especially dangerous because there is
one specific allergen from that cat. It's called it's called
Feldy one. It's an extremely stable allergen, which means it
doesn't really get broken down, so it stays around forever.
So you probably have friends visited a house that had
a cat like ten years ago and they still have
the same reaction. And this thing, you know, sticks around forever.
The cat releases it constantly, and it mostly releases it
through its saliva, but sometimes it sweats it out. And
what you're referring to standard or it's fur, it actually
the cat actually licks itself, so the allergen will attach
to it's fur, It'll attached to its standard and that's
how it spreads. Otherwise, allergens are really tiny proteins. They
can't actually spread through the air. So they need to
attach itself to something, and the dander is just what
it attaches to, but it actually stems from the cat's
saliva and it needs to basically latch onto something to
do so. And unfortunately for us, the cats do lick
themselves frequently, and so the dander just is able to
get everywhere. They're perfect sources of transportation for the allergy.
Speaker 2: They sure are what is that called? It was it
LD one.
Speaker 5: LD one, So it's like feline fel d one.
Speaker 2: And appropriately named. And yes, cats are groomers. I think
I bade Dennis twice. He's my long hair Maine coonish
kind of cat. He didn't like it, but the other
cats i'd be clawed to pieces if I tried to
even just try that. But with bathing your cat make
a difference.
Speaker 5: One hundred percent. Your goal is to try to get
rid of this allergen, and in almost all cases, an
allergen is a protein, and one really effective way is
to bathe the cat showered a cat. Unfortunately, again, you
know it's easy to do that with dogs, and dogs
don't lick themselves as much as cats, and so for
cats you have this really really stable protein, stable allergen,
They like licking themselves and they don't like being bathed,
So you have this trifecta of things that makes it
really dangerous. There are other biological issues why felty one
specifically is a very good allergen, but it has to
do with how it activates your immune system. And it's
just a very unlucky circumstance.
Speaker 2: So how does this fealdi one last? Even if a
cat was in the home like years ago. Here's an
example that came in my head, floated in my head.
If you buy a house and there were cat owners
maybe I don't know that lived in the home, not
the recent cellar, but the seller, you know, the owner before,
not the recent owner that's holding the house, but the
one before. Or is a cat with could that affect someone?
Speaker 5: Yeah? One hundred percent. Wow, Yeah, there are cases of
ten years, twenty years, and it's just it just so
happens to be an extremely stable protein. It's just something
that like lasts a very long time and everything, you know,
everything degrades constantly, but this one degrades very very slowly.
And so unless you are constantly exposing the house to
very high temperatures, very high moisture or other crazy conditions. Yeah,
that protein is probably gonna stay there. You know, it's
not gonna all stay there. But for example, I don't
know what the actual numbers would be, but you might
have still like twenty percent of the amount of allergen
that was in a house ten years later. It's a
portion of it, but that twenty percent could still set
off your allergies. That twenty percent could still give you
really hard time.
Speaker 2: Wow, And why are some of us so sensitive to
certain things to fold one or you know, even other
things that affect our allergies and some of us are
just not bothered too much. So like, for example, I
can stand being with my cats, but I get that wheezy,
you know feeling, which is related to allergies. My friend
can't even bother comme in. She would be itchy, blowing up. Whatever.
Is it just that people's bodies react differently or is
it just I mean that will obviously people's bodies react differently.
But is it just the chemical makeup of each person
makes the change or how does this work?
Speaker 5: Of course, the way that your body secures itself is
through these bodyguard cells. So your body's made up of
cells there are specific types of cells that are like
bodyguards that are trying to prevent people from get into
a club, and so these are called mass cells, but
you can think of them as like, you know, these
mostly bodyguards. They have little scanners, and the scanners basically
scan everything that's trying to get through, and they've only
let certain things through. Other things, they'll overreact and they'll
have this you know, you can imagine instead of like
you know, just punching the thing and you're trying to
make sure it's out of the club, it will randomly
combust and set off a set of allergic reactions to
make sure this thing definitely doesn't get in. That's your
body's natural immune system. The scanners themselves were obtained in
a previous instance, So in order to have this allergic reaction,
you had to have been exposed to this allergen at
some point previously. And so every person is exposed to
different allergens as a child, different things, and so every
person has different sets of the little scanners that the
bodyguards are holding. And so if you were exposed a
bunch of cats earlier and your body your bodyguards picked
up those scanners in which it said oh, if I
see a cat allergim, I'm going to overreact. I'm going
to explode and causes allergic reaction. Then you're going to
have more serious allergic reaction. In fact, the way that
you actually test for allergies is you test for those scanners.
So if you you know that someone has more scanners
for the cat allergen, more likely than not they're going
to have very serious cat allergies. So the scanners are
called igeas. There are a certain type of immune protein,
and if you have more of those, then you're probably
more allergic to that thing. That's actually what all the
allergy tests tests for, and those are the final readouts
that you actually get. And so you know, that's how
your body's immune system works. That all has to do
with the history of your body, how your immune system adapted,
how it learned what was bad and what was not bad,
and unfortunately everybody has different ways of doing that and
it's a very complicated process. And somehow, if your allergy cats,
your body has now filled with these scanners that say,
if you see a cat allergen overreact, it's a danger.
Speaker 2: So I wasn't exposed to cats younger, we didn't have cats.
My first cat was Dennis, which was thirteen years ago,
but we did have dogs. So if you're exposed to
not that allergen, but something close, does that make a difference.
Speaker 5: Actually, there is a you know, it's generally believed that
if you are exposed to an allergen is a child,
potentially you might have less allergies to that thing later
because the way that it works is as you mature,
So as you grow, your immune sistm is also growing up.
And so the times in your life when you might
randomly start assigning these scanners and believe that something's dangerous
for you, it depends on when you're exposed to that thing.
If you grow up around cats, actually, pretty high likelihood
your body is going to say, hey, this thing is
around all the time. You know, it's probably not that
bad for you, and therefore let's not have as many
scanners for this thing around. And there's other methodology, there's
other ways that your immune system is able to prevent
that overreaction. So it's highly dependent on when you were exposed.
And that's probably more likely is you were exposed at
a later time point in your life to a cat,
and at that time point in your light. Your body
was potentially overreacting to things, and so when it saw
that cat, it was like, oh, okay, this is the
first time we've seen this thing. It's probably bad for you.
Let's get some scanners in there. Let's make sure this
never gets into us ever again.
Speaker 2: Wow, this is fascinating information about allergies, way more than
I ever expected to know about. So we're going to
take a quick break and we're going to come back
and talk about what led to the creation of packaging
and what's it about. So we'll be right back.
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Speaker 4: Let's talk pets on Petlife Radio dot Com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back everyone. We're talking to doctor Zoo about allergies
and he also created a product. He's you're the co creator, right, yes,
with my wife? Pack again with your wife?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So how did you decide note she's allergic to cats? Yes, yes,
So tell the story. How did you come to create?
You know, say, okay, now I have to create a
product because my wife needs to be around cats.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I always say I'm a converted cat person because
I think prior to twenty twenty, I never thought I
was gonna get a I've always liked dogs more and which,
you know, I don't know if I should be staying
in this podcast.
Speaker 2: That's okay, me too. I mean I'm from you know,
maybe like two thousand and when did we get Dennis?
He found us? All my cats find me. I don't know,
probably the last fifteen years before that, I was dog
in k.
Speaker 5: I mean, I love cats now. So so you know,
it was twenty twenty COVID hit. We were working from home,
My wife was working from home, and she said maybe
we should get a pet, because you know, I'd love
to have someone to take care of you. Know when,
especially because we're home so often, and you know, at
the time, they basically said, if you exit your house,
you will be killing people. So I felt like walking
dogs were probably was probably not what I wanted to do,
and so I just searched, like, you know, kittens available
for adoption near me, and we found yamyao. It was
our cat, and we brought them home. Who brought her home?
And my wife was just pretty allergic to her, so
she was having a asthma attack. She was really not
reacting well, we had no idea she was allergic for
we got Mayamiya. There was no way for us to know.
Speaker 2: Does she have any other allergies or does she have
it like like mild asthma.
Speaker 5: She didn't have any of that. She uh run, yeah nothing.
She actually thought I was going to be the allergic
one because I'm allergic to seafood, and so we were
really shocked that she was allergic. Wow. Yeah, life works
in a mysterious ways.
Speaker 2: It sure does, it shured does. Okay, So then then
what happened? So you adopted a pretty short hair.
Speaker 5: Yep, her name is Mayamio, and you know, we we
fell in love. She's She's perfect and we we found
out my wife had allergies. You know, it got to
the point where my wife couldn't work out in the
house because the instance she worked out, she would have
an asthma attack. It was very, very intense. We tried everything,
so we we were washing the sheets every day, we
were you know, using all the products on the market
for her, and it just wasn't helping that much. She
ended up just taking allergy pills, right, So she was
taking clareiton every day, and I was looking into it,
and my wife's got a phg malec topology, she was
looking into it too, and we were like, this is
such an odd problem that people really haven't come up
with a solution from. It is this protein and proteins
cause almost all of the issues in your body. So
you know, when we're treating cancer, we're basically treating one protein.
That's just how all of our medicine has now been developed.
And so we were looking at this when we were like, okay,
so there's this external protein. It is messing with your
immune system and that's all it does. But this protein
isn't that important for cats to be happy, Like, you know,
you don't actually need it to be active in the
cat's body. And also it doesn't do anything to you,
like it actually has no reaction to your body. So
we saw this and we were like, well, we know
a lot of different ways to neutralize proteins to really
try to make sure that they are not active in
your body. One of the ways is we create a binder,
meaning if you have a protein of interest and it's
causing issues, we can have something that binds to it
and it basically it's like duct tape. Duct tapes his
mouth shut and says, shut up, you're causing issues in
the body. Let's make sure you can go through the
body and not cause any harm. So we found a
lab that worked with outpacked us to try to discover
these things. And I can go to more details. Are
interested in how our pacists are involved. But we leverage
out pactas to help us discover something new. Noa packas
are really hurt, and we then manufacture it, create a
product out of it, and create a spray so that
you can spray the area in which you have a
bunch of cat allergens. The spray duct tapes all the
mouths and all of these allergens, and it makes it
so that your body doesn't recognize it, so you don't
have the reaction. And so that was the creation of it.
We found some friends and we were able to get
a little bit of funding. It costs a bunch of
money for us to do and we got the product
out and now a bunch of people can live with
cats more easily.
Speaker 2: I think that's incredible. So let's talk about how it
works and for what extreme Because they there's people that
are going to say, you know what, I'm allergic cats.
I've been allergic forever. Nothing's going to change. So, yeah,
we have those naysayers. Then you have some that are
going to say, you know what, I want to give
this a shot because I like you. They've always wanted
a cat and they're more open minded. So how do
you go about convincing someone. Sometimes it's someone in your
home or friend. You know, you got to try this,
or I'm going to try this and it works and
you're not going to have a problem.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So there are a couple of reasons why we
created this specific product. The first is everything else on
the market. We saw there are many ways to destroy proteins,
and unfortunately, cat allergens are a very stable protein like
we were talking about, and so some of the other
things people are selling. People are selling like bleach to
bleach to basically spray bleach in their house so that
it kills the protein. But yeah, yeah, that's one solution
for cat allergens is I guess you can dispray bleach.
Here's the problem with all those things is it's not
specific to the cat allergen. And so if you are
spraying something that kills proteins, you are made out of proteins.
Everything that makes us work as humans, those are proteins,
and so that's not going to be safe for you. Right,
you can obviously imagine it probably shouldn't be spraying everything
is concluding you, like your cat, with something that just
degrades proteins. And so the thing that I love about
our solution, or the reason we created it is we
use it every day, is it's very specific. The duct
tape only duct tapes the cat allergen. It does not
work with anything else. So people are always like, hey,
will this work for dog allergens? It will not work
because the dog has a different allergen. And that's actually
what makes it great. It does not work for any
other protein and human body. It doesn't work for anything
else in any living organism, so it's completely safe for
somebody to use. So my wife and I just had
a three month old newborn, and we use it around
newborn because we know that the way that we developed it,
it only binds that one thing, and it's very very
good at duck taping that one thing to make it
not work anymore.
Speaker 2: Well, congratulations, you're a new parents.
Speaker 5: So it's been rough, but uh.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, So now let's go to the cat. As
we know, not true for mine, but most cats are finicky,
so you have the cat topper and a spray the topper.
Cats are finicky. Are they gonna like this? Are they
going to still eat? And how does it work? So?
Do you just sprinkle a little I love the packaging
by the way. You just sprinkle a little bit on
their food and that's it. Once a day, twice a day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, think of it like a salt shaker, you you know,
once every day during the meal. Just put a little
bit on top while they're eating it. It will neutralize
theologians in their mouths and therefore they't you know, and
it also they'll spread it to the other places of
their body right after they eat, and you'll you'll see
very nice results for free allergies.
Speaker 2: And what about flavors. There's chicken flavor. What other kind
of flavors do you have? Or just this one for now?
Speaker 5: There's chicken for now. We are working very hard on
a fish flavor. We're trying to be very safe, and
it just turns out that the supply chain, so trying
to get fish and then trying to get fish powder
is much more difficult than chicken. Chicken is much more commonplace,
and so it's taken us a little longer for that.
We should have that available in a couple of months.
Speaker 2: And how does the spray work.
Speaker 5: The spray it comes with a little powder packet. That
powder packet has the secret ingredient has the whisker block,
which is the special duct tape protein that will lock
the active part of the allergen. And so you pour
that into the spray bottle. You add our stabilizing solution,
which is something that helps our duct tape lasts longer,
and then you just spray the areas in which you want.
Alligis virtualized. So, for example, my wife has a lot
of issues because Meamil is a very naughty cat. She
loves being on our bed. But if you're allergic to cats,
having you know, all over fern dander in the area
where you sleep not that great. So I actually use
the spray mostly on our bed, so I, you know,
of course, you use a roller roll up the fur,
but then I'll spray it and spray the bed so
that when my wife goes to sleep she doesn't have
this reaction. But for example, if you have guests visiting
the house and they're going to sit on your couch,
you can spray a couch. You can unfortunately you can't
a spray a cat. That would be a very great
way of making things work. Another way you can do
it is if you you know, if you've seen people
put on perfume or cologne, you can spray it into
the air and you can breathe it in and that
will help line your lungs in different you know, the
different airways so that if it if it ever comes
in contact with the allergen, it will neutralize that a response.
And so there's multiple different ways to use the spray.
Speaker 2: So you can ingest it. Have you thought about making
I don't know a dosage for humans.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we were working on it. We we want to
be very careful with regulations, with testing all those things.
We've done all the safeties. Doesn't know that it's safe
for humans, but we want to do probably another clinical
trial just to make extra certain, and then we need
to make sure we work with the right regulatory bodies
to make sure that it can be a good product.
But we're working on it right now.
Speaker 2: This has been such a fascinating show. What about other allergens? So,
I know we're you know catitude. You have cats, so
for some people, cats of course have the feline as
you said, it's the feline feld one, and so that's
much stronger than say, you know, if someone's allergic to dogs.
I don't know if people are allergic to other things
like bunnies or iguanas. I know cats and dogs are
most common, but do you think you'd come out with
a dog version.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So dogs have two different major allergens. There's actually
two of them. They're called canine F one and canon
F two. So can F one can F two makes
it easier. Okay, yeah, they make it easy. I guess
they're two different proteins and two different allergen. They are
in the dogs saliva, and so there's there's less people
allergic dogs. But you know, obviously you don't want to
be allergic to dogs. We are going to be releasing
a spray for dog allergens as well. We did the
entire research process over again because it's a completely different allergen,
and we're really you know, we're hoping that we can
help people dog allergies as well. And then we're also
working on dust allergies.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a good one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's much more gnarly than you could imagine. We're
excited about it. Do you want to hear about the
nastiness of dust allergens.
Speaker 2: I did that allergy test, the one where they put
the dots on your arm, and that lit up dots everywhere.
I didn't think I had any allergies, and I lit up.
And I'm allergic to grass dust, you know, dog fer
I take them and you know, an allergy peal, but
I just deal with it. You know, we're right. With
the cats, it's a lot worse because I also have myodasma,
so I find myself wheezing around them every so often.
And again it's because I'm on the couch and that's
where they are. So there's tell us about dust is
whether you have a dog or cat, or fish or bird,
you have probably a dust in your house.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I apologize to everybody listening for ruining your lives.
But you know the truth about dust is you're actually
not allergic to dust. Dust, you're allergic to dust mites.
And you're actually not allergic to the dust mites. You're
allergic to two allergens in their poop. So if you're
having dust allergic reactions, it's because you're reacting to their poop.
It is uh and it just so happens that it's
also a very dangerous reaction because remember what I said
about other allergens. Other allergens are not actually harmful to you.
They're not doing anything to you. You're just having an
overreaction one of the dust mite allergens. So the thing
in one of the dust mites poop is called d
R so dust might's their name. Put starts with er,
so it's DRP. One that is something that cuts things,
So it's called the protease. It cuts other proteins, and
the reason it's causing a reaction is because it's cutting
up all of the linings in your lungs, all the
linings to all of your airways, and it's a lot
allowing other allergens to get into your system, and so
it's actually super dangerous. If you are exposed to dust
as a baby, you have five times higher likelihood to
get asthma. So it's an extremely terrible allergen to be around.
And we did entirely a different process to try to
find something that neutralizes the allergen activity this time. So
the actual ability of the dust might allergen to cut
through things. And the thing that we found, which is
going to be in the dust spray that we're going
to release in February, it neutralizes the activity of that
cutting by seventy six percent. So we're really hoping to
help other people. Even if you are allergic to dust,
by the way, it's still cutting things up. It cuts
things up in everybody. It's just that for forty percent
of people, you just happen to be overreactive to whatever
it lets through.
Speaker 2: So even if you and this is not sorry, not
true me, I'll confess, even if you're spotless in your house,
there's still dust existing.
Speaker 5: So the study about the asthma, excessive amount of dust.
So my guess is if you if you have a
spotless house, you're not going to have enough of the
allergen in order to set off the issue. But yeah,
dust smite allergens also last a long time. The reason
they're good allergens is because they're extremely stable and so
they will cause issues. That's why people that's why people
recommend air purifiers, air filters. They actually are very good.
I actually recommend most people get them because you really
don't want dust lying around. It's really bad for you.
Speaker 2: That's good to know. And yes, I do have an
air purifier. Time to get a new filter for that.
So tell us where this has been fascinating, Thank you
so much. Doctors out. Where can we find packagen right?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Package in like generated generated right?
Speaker 2: Where can we find packaging?
Speaker 5: Sure? So we're available at some novelty pet shops, but
you can find us as well on our website packaging
dot com, E A C, A G N dot com
and uh, you know, all of the products will be available.
You can reach out to us on support. We're really
excited to talk to people and just to help people.
Speaker 2: This has been fascinating and you're a scientists, so did
delve into there, but you made it very relatable to
those that are not of us, that are not scientists.
So thank you so much for all of these first
being uncatituded and sharing this knowledge. I hope you all
enjoyed the show. This has been fascinating for all of
you cat lovers out there. You're going to want to
check this out. We don't talk about products much on Catitude,
but packaging it is simply incredible. I'm excited about it
having catalogies and having people that have catalogies can now
come over, so check it out. I want to thank
my guest today, doctor Evan Zau, Thank you so much
for coming Oncatitude. I want to thank everyone that's listening.
Thank you so much for being a loyal listener to Catitude.
I appreciate it so much. I want to give thanks
to my cat crew that you know allergy or not.
Thank keep me on my toes and I love them,
so thank you, Dennis, Charlotte Mollie, and thanks to my
amazing producer that works his magic and makes this show
sound amazing. So thank you, Mark Winter and you know
follog you or not give your feline a hug? Why not?
And hey, lose to attitude, have caatitude.
Speaker 4: Let's Talk Pets every week on demand only on petlifradio
dot com