Cats and dogs, gerbils and hamsters; fish, frogs, and turtles – we LOVE our pets!
Research shows that the bond between humans and animals is strong and can contribute to overall emotional and mental health.
But how can families stay physically healthy while caring for household pets?
Dr. Jill Gora, board-certified family medicine practitioner with Summit Medical Group, shares expertise and insight into the types of human illnesses that can be triggered through pet ownership and how, with proper attention, families can stay healthy and enjoy their pets.
Selected Podcast
Pets and Families: Staying Healthy and Happy
Featured Speaker:
Jill Gora, MD
Dr. Gora is a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. She is a member of the Pathways Women's Cancer Teaching Project Advisory Board in Summit, NJ. She has been an American Medical Women's Association Women in Medicine Panelist at Rutgers – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Transcription:
Pets and Families: Staying Healthy and Happy
Melanie Cole (Host): Cats and dogs, gerbils and hamsters, fish, frogs, and turtles – we love our pets. Research shows that the bond between humans and animals is strong and can contribute to overall emotional and mental health. How can families stay physically healthy while caring for household pets? My guest today is Dr. Jill Gora. She’s a board-certified family medicine practitioner with Summit Medical Group. Welcome to the show, Dr. Gora. As I said, pets can be so great for our health, for our heart health and our emotional health, but there are also some things we need to watch out for. When we start with the most basic of pets, dogs, and cats, what are the things you see as a family practitioner that people have issues with their pets?
Dr. Jill Gora (Guest): Sure. I think we also have to keep in mind that the benefits of pet ownership far outweigh these risks and by following some simple preventative steps, I think we can prevent many of the things that I’m about to talk to you about today. Dogs and cats are the most common animals that we have in our household today in the US. In fact, over 50 percent of US households have a pet in the home, and I like to think about the different types of illnesses that can come from our pets under a few different headings: either bacterial infections, viral infections, things that are caused by dog or cat, parasites or fungal infections. That’s sort of how I categorize them in my head. One of the most common things that we see are the bacterial infections. We see a fair amount of people who have unfortunately been bitten or scratched by their pets. Those bacterial infections can arise very quickly, let’s say, in an animal bite. We always recommend that if God forbid you do have a bite, the very first thing you should do is wash it with copious amounts of water and soap, even if that bite is bleeding. Then seek medical attention quickly. The mouths of cats and dogs are not really that clean, and the bacteria that live in their mouths can enter our skin very easily with a bite. Oftentimes, people who do sustain a bite need to go on some oral antibiotics to prevent that from getting infected. That’s definitely one of the first things that we see most commonly. Another bacterial infection that we see is salmonella. That comes particularly from pocket pets, which are gerbils and mice, but also coming from reptiles, particularly pet turtles in the homes. This has actually risen to a special level of concern that very small reptiles, in particular turtles less than four inches across when you measure the back of their shell, have been banned in the US because there was such a high rate of salmonella infecting these animals. If you think about it, those animals are particularly attractive to young children. They’re small, they’re easy to hold, and unfortunately, young children would pick these animals up and then touch their mouths or actually kiss these animals or put them in their mouth and that is a great source for salmonella. Salmonella causes a very terrible diarrhea illness in children and adults and can be very debilitating and life threatening especially in children or those who are immunocompromised. We ask that, really, children less than five years old shouldn’t have pets like that in the home that are reptiles or even amphibians, and pocket types can actually harbor this germ as well. The other group of animals that harbor salmonella are baby chicks and baby ducklings. This comes into play when there’s an experiment at school where chicks are hatched. Those really should not be handled by young children because they really are a great risk. The other bacterial illness that I’d like to talk about, which is very big where I live here in New Jersey, is Lyme disease. Our pets are often seen as sentinel animals for a disease like Lyme disease. What that means is if our pet becomes sick with Lyme disease, it should be a trigger to us as medical providers, but also to the family that owns that pet, that the burden of ticks in and around your home is so great that your pet is sick, so you are very much at risk for contracting Lyme disease as well. Again, Lyme disease is a bacterial organism that lives inside your ticks and when your tick bites a dog or a cat and gets into their blood stream, the dog or cat can get very sick, and we can get very sick as well if the tick bites us, too. This is a disease that often goes unnoticed or undertreated, but really can come back and be much worse as chronic Lyme later on if not treated sufficiently from the get go. Veterinarians and family doctors really try to keep an eye out for this all through the year, but particularly in the warmer months when ticks are most active.
Melanie: If we notice that our dog or cat is sick and we take them and they tell us, “Oh, yes, they’ve been bitten by a tick,” or “Your dog has ticks,” and, you know, we pick ticks off our animals—as owners, we pick them off and throw them away or do something with them—should we, if we ever find one of these, save it and take it in to be tested because then we’ll know if we’re at high risk of Lyme disease in the ticks that are around us?
Dr. Gora: Yeah, that’s a great question. Years ago, probably like 20 years ago, when we really started to see Lyme disease first emerging in this area and really recognizing it, we used to send the ticks to the local health department. But now the burden of Lyme disease is so great and it’s so prevalent, especially in the northeast, that we no longer send them to the Board of Health. They don’t have the people power to keep up with that demand. So we ask that you just dispose of the tick correctly. Make sure they’re no longer on you, on your pet, and that you are then on high alert. Everyone in that family should keep checking themselves every day when they come in from outside to make sure they don’t have any ticks on them. If you do, the best thing to do is to pluck them off and to take them off completely including the mouth part, making sure that you don’t get the bacterial infection Lyme disease transmitted through you.
Truly, the Lyme tick has to be, first of all, infected with Lyme, but also has hatched and feeding on your body at least 48 to 72 hours in order to transmit Lyme. So the theory goes that if you check yourself every day and pluck ticks off, you should never get Lyme disease if you pluck them all off.
Melanie: Give us some more of your really good tips about pets and health.
Dr. Gora: Sure. I just want to alert a special group of people about a parasitic infection that’s very important in families, and that is for pregnant women. They need to be aware of a parasitic infection related to cats that we call toxoplasmosis. This is an infection that cats can get by being outside, and if they consume an infected mouse or an infected bird, it gets inside the gut of the cat. Cats usually don’t show really any symptoms of this at all, but they end up passing the parasite or the eggs of the parasite in their feces. If you have a cat that goes outside, then comes in, and let’s say uses a litter box in the house, the feces in that litter box could contain those parasites. If a pregnant woman is changing that litter box, she is really putting not only herself, but particularly her developing fetus, at risk. Toxoplasmosis is usually a pretty self-limited infection if an adult gets it, but if a pregnant woman gets toxoplasmosis, her baby could be born with some very serious birth defects including blindness and pretty severe mental disabilities. So we ask pregnant women to, first of all, give the job of cleaning the litter box to someone else for those nine months and really try to stay away from that stuff completely. Also, it’s not a good time to adopt a brand new cat, especially a stray cat when you’re pregnant. You don’t want to bring a cat in from the outside. The other way that cats can pick up toxoplasmosis is if they eat undercooked or relatively raw meat, so you always want to make sure that you’re giving your cat a well-respected commercial brand of cat food, and if you do feed your cat any table food, it should be very well cooked. You don’t want to introduce anything unwittingly into their system that could in turn make you sick. The other sort of harbinger of toxoplasmosis are sandboxes because to a cat who is outside, a sandbox is just a giant litter box. You always want to keep sandboxes covered when not in use because you don’t want children to pick up toxoplasmosis from infected feces that are in their sandbox outside. Then finally, when gardening outside, if the cat has gone outside and deposited feces in a garden, you don’t want to stir that up with your bare hands, so always wear gardening gloves when gardening. Then any vegetables that you might get from the outdoor garden, you always want to wash them thoroughly of course before you eat them.
Melanie: Dr. Gora, in just the last minute, please give your best advice for scratches and nips from our household loving little pets, what we can do to keep ourselves safe and why they should come to Summit Medical Group for care.
Dr. Gora: Sure, absolutely. The number one thing to do is keep your pet healthy. You want to make sure that you’re taking good care of your pet, that your pet is vaccinated if need be, and gets regular checkups at their veterinarian because a healthy pet is obviously much safer for us to have in our homes. If you do get scratched or bitten by a pet or someone else’s pet, again, wash that wound copiously with water and soap—you really can’t use too much water and soap for a wound—and do that as quickly as possible. That should be the very first instinctive thing you do if God forbid you get bitten. Also, make sure when you’re taking care of you pet, food bowls and water bowls, you don’t want to wash those or clean those in your kitchen sink where you wash or prepare food. Do that in another sink. Don’t wash their bedding or any of their toys in your kitchen sink as well. Make sure that if they’re visiting petting zoos or any other animals that you bring hand sanitizer or wash your hands immediately after touching other pets, particularly to wash your hands before you eat after that. Those are really the best things to do. I want to particularly say that there are some groups that are at great risk for catching infections from pets and those are the very young, that would be children under five; anyone who has a compromised immune system, those are people who are undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer or anyone who is very elderly or frail or anyone with HIV-AIDS. You want to particularly keep them away from potential sources of infections. Otherwise, the benefits that we can gain from having companionship of healthy pets in our home is very well studied and very well documented to help lower our blood pressure, decrease depression and actually increase the socialization of owners as well, and I’d like to think that they really enrich our lives. But if you do feel that you’ve gotten sick from your pets, absolutely please bring them to your doctor at Summit Medical Group. We’re very happy to care for you and to help keep you healthy.
Melanie: Thank you so much, Dr. Gora, beautifully said. You are listening to SMG Radio. For more information, you can go to summitmedicalgroup.com. That’s summitmedicalgroup.com. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.
Pets and Families: Staying Healthy and Happy
Melanie Cole (Host): Cats and dogs, gerbils and hamsters, fish, frogs, and turtles – we love our pets. Research shows that the bond between humans and animals is strong and can contribute to overall emotional and mental health. How can families stay physically healthy while caring for household pets? My guest today is Dr. Jill Gora. She’s a board-certified family medicine practitioner with Summit Medical Group. Welcome to the show, Dr. Gora. As I said, pets can be so great for our health, for our heart health and our emotional health, but there are also some things we need to watch out for. When we start with the most basic of pets, dogs, and cats, what are the things you see as a family practitioner that people have issues with their pets?
Dr. Jill Gora (Guest): Sure. I think we also have to keep in mind that the benefits of pet ownership far outweigh these risks and by following some simple preventative steps, I think we can prevent many of the things that I’m about to talk to you about today. Dogs and cats are the most common animals that we have in our household today in the US. In fact, over 50 percent of US households have a pet in the home, and I like to think about the different types of illnesses that can come from our pets under a few different headings: either bacterial infections, viral infections, things that are caused by dog or cat, parasites or fungal infections. That’s sort of how I categorize them in my head. One of the most common things that we see are the bacterial infections. We see a fair amount of people who have unfortunately been bitten or scratched by their pets. Those bacterial infections can arise very quickly, let’s say, in an animal bite. We always recommend that if God forbid you do have a bite, the very first thing you should do is wash it with copious amounts of water and soap, even if that bite is bleeding. Then seek medical attention quickly. The mouths of cats and dogs are not really that clean, and the bacteria that live in their mouths can enter our skin very easily with a bite. Oftentimes, people who do sustain a bite need to go on some oral antibiotics to prevent that from getting infected. That’s definitely one of the first things that we see most commonly. Another bacterial infection that we see is salmonella. That comes particularly from pocket pets, which are gerbils and mice, but also coming from reptiles, particularly pet turtles in the homes. This has actually risen to a special level of concern that very small reptiles, in particular turtles less than four inches across when you measure the back of their shell, have been banned in the US because there was such a high rate of salmonella infecting these animals. If you think about it, those animals are particularly attractive to young children. They’re small, they’re easy to hold, and unfortunately, young children would pick these animals up and then touch their mouths or actually kiss these animals or put them in their mouth and that is a great source for salmonella. Salmonella causes a very terrible diarrhea illness in children and adults and can be very debilitating and life threatening especially in children or those who are immunocompromised. We ask that, really, children less than five years old shouldn’t have pets like that in the home that are reptiles or even amphibians, and pocket types can actually harbor this germ as well. The other group of animals that harbor salmonella are baby chicks and baby ducklings. This comes into play when there’s an experiment at school where chicks are hatched. Those really should not be handled by young children because they really are a great risk. The other bacterial illness that I’d like to talk about, which is very big where I live here in New Jersey, is Lyme disease. Our pets are often seen as sentinel animals for a disease like Lyme disease. What that means is if our pet becomes sick with Lyme disease, it should be a trigger to us as medical providers, but also to the family that owns that pet, that the burden of ticks in and around your home is so great that your pet is sick, so you are very much at risk for contracting Lyme disease as well. Again, Lyme disease is a bacterial organism that lives inside your ticks and when your tick bites a dog or a cat and gets into their blood stream, the dog or cat can get very sick, and we can get very sick as well if the tick bites us, too. This is a disease that often goes unnoticed or undertreated, but really can come back and be much worse as chronic Lyme later on if not treated sufficiently from the get go. Veterinarians and family doctors really try to keep an eye out for this all through the year, but particularly in the warmer months when ticks are most active.
Melanie: If we notice that our dog or cat is sick and we take them and they tell us, “Oh, yes, they’ve been bitten by a tick,” or “Your dog has ticks,” and, you know, we pick ticks off our animals—as owners, we pick them off and throw them away or do something with them—should we, if we ever find one of these, save it and take it in to be tested because then we’ll know if we’re at high risk of Lyme disease in the ticks that are around us?
Dr. Gora: Yeah, that’s a great question. Years ago, probably like 20 years ago, when we really started to see Lyme disease first emerging in this area and really recognizing it, we used to send the ticks to the local health department. But now the burden of Lyme disease is so great and it’s so prevalent, especially in the northeast, that we no longer send them to the Board of Health. They don’t have the people power to keep up with that demand. So we ask that you just dispose of the tick correctly. Make sure they’re no longer on you, on your pet, and that you are then on high alert. Everyone in that family should keep checking themselves every day when they come in from outside to make sure they don’t have any ticks on them. If you do, the best thing to do is to pluck them off and to take them off completely including the mouth part, making sure that you don’t get the bacterial infection Lyme disease transmitted through you.
Truly, the Lyme tick has to be, first of all, infected with Lyme, but also has hatched and feeding on your body at least 48 to 72 hours in order to transmit Lyme. So the theory goes that if you check yourself every day and pluck ticks off, you should never get Lyme disease if you pluck them all off.
Melanie: Give us some more of your really good tips about pets and health.
Dr. Gora: Sure. I just want to alert a special group of people about a parasitic infection that’s very important in families, and that is for pregnant women. They need to be aware of a parasitic infection related to cats that we call toxoplasmosis. This is an infection that cats can get by being outside, and if they consume an infected mouse or an infected bird, it gets inside the gut of the cat. Cats usually don’t show really any symptoms of this at all, but they end up passing the parasite or the eggs of the parasite in their feces. If you have a cat that goes outside, then comes in, and let’s say uses a litter box in the house, the feces in that litter box could contain those parasites. If a pregnant woman is changing that litter box, she is really putting not only herself, but particularly her developing fetus, at risk. Toxoplasmosis is usually a pretty self-limited infection if an adult gets it, but if a pregnant woman gets toxoplasmosis, her baby could be born with some very serious birth defects including blindness and pretty severe mental disabilities. So we ask pregnant women to, first of all, give the job of cleaning the litter box to someone else for those nine months and really try to stay away from that stuff completely. Also, it’s not a good time to adopt a brand new cat, especially a stray cat when you’re pregnant. You don’t want to bring a cat in from the outside. The other way that cats can pick up toxoplasmosis is if they eat undercooked or relatively raw meat, so you always want to make sure that you’re giving your cat a well-respected commercial brand of cat food, and if you do feed your cat any table food, it should be very well cooked. You don’t want to introduce anything unwittingly into their system that could in turn make you sick. The other sort of harbinger of toxoplasmosis are sandboxes because to a cat who is outside, a sandbox is just a giant litter box. You always want to keep sandboxes covered when not in use because you don’t want children to pick up toxoplasmosis from infected feces that are in their sandbox outside. Then finally, when gardening outside, if the cat has gone outside and deposited feces in a garden, you don’t want to stir that up with your bare hands, so always wear gardening gloves when gardening. Then any vegetables that you might get from the outdoor garden, you always want to wash them thoroughly of course before you eat them.
Melanie: Dr. Gora, in just the last minute, please give your best advice for scratches and nips from our household loving little pets, what we can do to keep ourselves safe and why they should come to Summit Medical Group for care.
Dr. Gora: Sure, absolutely. The number one thing to do is keep your pet healthy. You want to make sure that you’re taking good care of your pet, that your pet is vaccinated if need be, and gets regular checkups at their veterinarian because a healthy pet is obviously much safer for us to have in our homes. If you do get scratched or bitten by a pet or someone else’s pet, again, wash that wound copiously with water and soap—you really can’t use too much water and soap for a wound—and do that as quickly as possible. That should be the very first instinctive thing you do if God forbid you get bitten. Also, make sure when you’re taking care of you pet, food bowls and water bowls, you don’t want to wash those or clean those in your kitchen sink where you wash or prepare food. Do that in another sink. Don’t wash their bedding or any of their toys in your kitchen sink as well. Make sure that if they’re visiting petting zoos or any other animals that you bring hand sanitizer or wash your hands immediately after touching other pets, particularly to wash your hands before you eat after that. Those are really the best things to do. I want to particularly say that there are some groups that are at great risk for catching infections from pets and those are the very young, that would be children under five; anyone who has a compromised immune system, those are people who are undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer or anyone who is very elderly or frail or anyone with HIV-AIDS. You want to particularly keep them away from potential sources of infections. Otherwise, the benefits that we can gain from having companionship of healthy pets in our home is very well studied and very well documented to help lower our blood pressure, decrease depression and actually increase the socialization of owners as well, and I’d like to think that they really enrich our lives. But if you do feel that you’ve gotten sick from your pets, absolutely please bring them to your doctor at Summit Medical Group. We’re very happy to care for you and to help keep you healthy.
Melanie: Thank you so much, Dr. Gora, beautifully said. You are listening to SMG Radio. For more information, you can go to summitmedicalgroup.com. That’s summitmedicalgroup.com. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.