Unraveling the Itchy Truth: The Flea Chronicles
The Flea Chronicles": Dr. Z shares her expertise on fleas, covering everything from their life cycle to the diseases they transmit. Join the conversation as the hosts discuss the most effective flea control methods and debunk common myths surrounding these pesky critters.
What You’ll Learn:
Flea Life Cycle: Explore the intricate stages of a flea's life, from egg to larva, pupa, and finally, the blood-sucking adult. Understand why disrupting this cycle is crucial for effective control.
Diseases Fleas Transmit: Uncover the potential health threats posed by fleas, including anemia, cat scratch fever (bartonellosis), and infectious anemias in cats. Learn about the historical significance of fleas in transmitting the bubonic plague.
Flea-Related Anemia: Delve into the impact of fleas on young kittens and puppies, leading to severe anemia due to excessive blood consumption. Discover how timely intervention can reverse the effects and promote recovery.
Pathogens in Flea Spit: Understand the role of fleas as carriers of pathogens and bacteria, including Yersinia pestis, responsible for the bubonic plague. Learn about more common diseases transmitted by fleas, such as bartonellosis and hemotropic mycoplasmosis.
Tapeworm Infections: Explore the fascinating life cycle of tapeworms, specifically Dipylidium caninum, and how fleas play a crucial role in their transmission. Learn why addressing tapeworms requires a dual approach involving both deworming and flea control.
Treatment Options: Compare newer isoxazoline-based products like Bravecto, Simparica, NexGuard, and Credelio with older over-the-counter options like Frontline and Advantage. Understand the importance of choosing effective, fast-acting treatments for optimal flea control.
Environmental Management: Get insights into clearing out the flea biomass in your home. Learn why traditional methods like flea bombs may not be as effective and discover practical tips like daily vacuuming to expedite the process.
Natural Remedies: Debunk common myths about natural flea remedies such as garlic, diatomaceous earth, and cider vinegar. Understand why these alternatives often fall short in preventing and treating flea infestations.
Flea Prevention Strategies: Grasp the importance of year-round flea control for both dogs and cats. Understand why consistency in preventative measures is essential to keep pets and households free from the menace of fleas.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
"Fleas are nasty, harmful, blood-sucking parasites. They spread disease and, once they establish an infestation, it takes about three months to get rid of them." - Dr. Xenia Zawadzkas
"The newer products that kill the adults... Isoxazolines. Bravecto, Simparica, NexGuard, and Credelio. These are pretty cool." - Dr. Xenia Zawadzkas
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Read The Transcript:
Dr. Sugerman: [00:00:00] Hi, and welcome to Vetsplanation. I'm your veterinary host, Dr. Sugerman, and I'm going to teach you about veterinary medicine. In this podcast, we can dive deeper into the understanding of what our pets are going through and break down medical terms into easier to understand chunks of information. Just a quick disclaimer, this podcast is for informational purposes only.
This is not meant to be a diagnosis for your pet. If you have questions about diagnostics or treatment options, please talk to your veterinarian about those things. Remember, we are all practicing veterinary medicine and medicine is not an exact science. Your veterinarian may have different treatment options and different opinions.
The information I provide here is to help pet parents have a better understanding about their pets. If you like our podcast, please consider sharing this podcast with at least one friend or just somebody else who has pets as well. Now, let's jump into this week's episode.
Hi everybody, welcome back to Vetsplanation. I am your host, Dr. Sugerman. So I have [00:01:00] here with me today, Dr. Z.
Dr. Z: Hello, I'm glad to be back.
Dr. Sugerman: Yes, thank you so much for coming back. I'm super excited about this topic because I think I'm going to learn so much today.
Dr. Z: Yes, good. I love this topic as well. It's one of my favorite things.
Dr. Sugerman: Perfect. Today we're going to be talking about fleas.
Dr. Z: Okay. Yes. Yeah. So what are fleas? I have so many fun facts about fleas. I can't wait to share them with you. I'll just start from the beginning. I have a lot of notes here to go through.
Dr. Sugerman: I can't wait to hear about the history of these fleas.
Dr. Z: Yes, so I have to talk about the history. Modern fleas are what we consider the fleas like we have today. They're actually really old, 20 to 60 million years old it seems. Yeah, they've been found on like, you know those mammoths that they find in the ice. There's fleas on those mammoths. And then in amber, amber is really a good way to preserve things for eons.
And we've found fleas. And they’ve actually, dug those out of the amber and looked harder at them. And there's bacteria in those fleas that are very similar to the [00:02:00] plague that we have today. Very interesting. These things are ancient and have been sucking on us for a long time. Before us, actually.
Yeah. And in China, they found some fossil, like dinosaur fossils, and there was fleas on them that were much bigger. So back. Back in the day, they seemed to be about one inch long.
Dr. Sugerman: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Z: Which makes sense because dinosaurs were really big.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah, it's interesting.
I wonder why they got smaller then.
Dr. Z: All the animals got smaller I don't know, if I were to harbor a guess. Fleas are wingless insects. They don't have wings in any of their life stages. And they have these crazy laterally compressed bodies, almost like two dimensional.
Dr. Sugerman: Like very skinny, you mean?
Dr. Z: Yeah. Like flat. Like a piece of paper. Not that thin, but pretty dang thin. And on their legs, they have lots of little claws with tiny hairs that point backwards and they help them stick onto the, the host [00:03:00] and it really helps them run between the hairs of their skin and so they can. Just stick and stay and move quickly throughout the body of the animal.
Dr. Sugerman: It helps with that obstacle course of fur.
Dr. Z: Yeah, it's like not an obstacle for them. They just slip through like a piece of paper. And they have these crazy mouth parts that always remind me of like horror movies. Like the monsters with there are the things hanging, that's what their faces look like.
They have these giant mandibles and a couple other parts that just like they're they're super developed for sucking blood. That's what they do and their legs are pretty crazy, too. They have these hind legs that are developed for leaping and they can jump of course really far and I like to compare it to a person like if you and I were jumping as far as a flea would it would be like we could soar for about two football fields. Take a big jump for two football fields.
That's how far they can. There's like a mechanism and it like ping and they just shoot themselves [00:04:00] really far. So they can really jump and that helps them jump onto their hosts when they're passing by. They are obligates, meaning they have to suck blood. They're parasites. They're permanent parasites.
They can't live without a host. And there's so many types of fleas out there, I was looking, there's over 2,500 species of fleas. Which I didn't know until I looked that up. But thankfully only a few of those 2,500 affect us and our pets and 95 percent of them feed on mammals, but 5 percent also feed on birds, there are some bird fleas out there.
But we hardly ever deal with those. Yeah, and the main one that we see is called the cat flea, or Ctenocephalidus felis. It's a weird spelling. It's got a silent C on the front.
Dr. Sugerman: That's always something I remember in vet school. I had to remember the C.
Dr. Z: Yeah, don't say the C. It's just Ctenocephalidus felis.
Felis just means cat. So that's the cat flea that we see over 90 percent of the fleas that we diagnose on our pet dogs as [00:05:00] well, are cat fleas actually. There is a dog flea, Ctenocephalidus canis, but we hardly ever see that one. And honestly, I don't know, you would have to look at it microscopically to differentiate.
Who really cares? It just seems like they're the same, mostly the cat flea. Also affecting us though as far as the other types of species that, that can hurt us. Ground squirrel fleas and rat fleas are the most common ones to carry the plague. If you got rats around, or prairie dogs, I believe they get the squirrel, ground squirrel flea, or the rat flea.
Those guys are more likely to carry the plague. But our cat fleas can carry it, too. Just not as great as carriers as the rat or the squirrel fleas. There are human fleas, which I was reading a little bit about, which sounded really nasty. I don't really know much about them, except that there are some out there.
And then poultry fleas, of course, for chickens and stuff, but yeah. Mainly, this whole talk, I'm going to be talking about the cat flea.
Dr. Sugerman: Okay, perfect. So now, what is the life cycle [00:06:00] of these fleas, and why does that matter?
Dr. Z: Yeah, it's really good to know the life cycle of all the parasites that we deal with, because it helps us battle the best way to stop them from hurting us.
And hitting their life cycle from many areas is the easiest, the best way to stop them and prevent, prevent them. So let's talk about the life cycle of a flea. Adult fleas, first of all, can live over a hundred days. So they live a long life. The females, they'll lay their eggs usually within 24 to 36 hours of obtaining their host.
So they mate with a male, they find a male, they mate, they lay an egg a day later. They start laying eggs.
Dr. Sugerman: That's so fast.
Dr. Z: Really fast. They mature fast, they bite fast, they lay eggs fast. And so let's start with those eggs. They're laid on the pet. They don't jump off the pet and lay eggs on the ground.
The eggs are being laid on your pet. And then they just roll off, they're not sticky, they just roll off and fall into the environment. So the [00:07:00] eggs aren't really staying on the dog or the cat for very long, they just fall off. They are almost microscopic. It's really hard to see the eggs.
They're tiny. They're less than a half a millimeter long. I have sometimes picked a flea off an adult cat and just with the flea comb or a dog. Yeah, and I've smashed it between my fingernails and then eggs have come out. And so I feel like I have seen some eggs. But yeah, they're like, and they're white and they're tiny.
And you're like, oh look, that one had eggs in it. But they're, they're, usually you don't see them because they're so tiny. And see, one adult flea, just some more fun facts intermingled here, can eat about 15 times of its body weight in blood every day. I was like comparing that to myself I'm about 200 pounds, plus or minus, so I would have to eat like 3,000-4,000 pounds per day.
Yeah, to be like a flea. And then I would jump for two footballs to work it off.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly.
Dr. Z: But anyway, it's a lot of blood. One little flea needs [00:08:00] a ton of blood. And one female adult lays 40 to 50 eggs every day. So it's not just one egg coming out a day, it's 40 to 50. And then that flea lives, if it's not killed, it lives for 100 plus days.
Yeah. And so that would be 4,000 to 5,000 eggs in a couple months and that's just one adult female. You have to think every egg is going to, 50 percent of those is going to produce another female. So this just leads to exponential growth. Infestations can happen like in the drop of a hat.
Usually within a couple months you have a huge, huge problem. Just from one flea.
Dr. Sugerman: That's crazy.
Dr. Z: Yeah. So the eggs drop off, let's, let's follow the life cycle. Go on moving right along. They fall off into the environment and then they hatch out these little larva, little worms, and they look like little white worms with a brown face.
And they, they wiggle around in the environment and they like to eat the debris that's nearby. If there's flea [00:09:00] poop there, that's their favorite. They thrive on the flea dirt or flea poop. Like what mom and dad provided for them.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, it's like the milk of fleas.
Dr. Z: Yes, and that might be why they eat so much, so they can provide poo for their babies.
Dr. Sugerman: Makes sense, yeah.
Dr. Z: But often times the fleas that you're seeing on your pet are from eggs that hatched a few weeks ago. So just keep that in mind. And these larvae, they like warm, humid conditions. So this is the more vulnerable ones.
They like it to be warm and moist. They go through two molts. And It's a huge variety of time for how long those molts can happen. If the conditions are right it goes quickly like within nine days they've done both of their molts. If it's dry and cold and whatever else they can just go much more slowly and take up to 200 days to get through both of those molts.
So they're still there. They're still just slowly working on growing. The third molt then they turn into a cocoon [00:10:00] and then a pupa develops inside of it. And it can sit in there waiting to hatch for up to a year. So those pupa, the cocoons that they're in are very hardy. And they are stimulated though to hatch.
And if, if all the conditions are right, they'll hatch within a week so seven days to a year. And what stimulates them to hatch is a, a bunch of things. So heat is number one. If it's warm, they're going to hatch in seven days. Carbon dioxide, if there's a lot of animals breathing around, that, that attracts them, it stimulates the hatching.
And then if there's vibration, like that's been shown to stimulate. So like just the patter of feet or movement nearby, shaking them a little bit. So those three things are always happening in a household. You breathe, you walk and you usually have the thermostat on.
Dr. Sugerman: And you said they're super hearty, right? So cold, cold weather, do anything freezing do anything to [00:11:00] them?
Dr. Z: Good. So it would to like the larva and the eggs a little bit, but those cocoons, they are resistant to freezing. They're resistant to all the insecticides and, you know, growth regulators like, the flea bombs and stuff won't touch cocoons.
They do not dry out. They're resistant to drying like hardy desert conditions. They can survive for a year.
Dr. Sugerman: So at the end of time we're going to have cockroaches and flea cocoons.
Dr. Z: Yeah, maybe. I'd have to research cockroaches because I think they're pretty hardy, too. But fleas for sure. Maybe ticks, too.
We'll go into that. Yeah, that's next. Actually, ticks are even harder to kill than fleas. Okay, so then the new little baby flea emerges from the cocoon. It's been stimulated to hatch by any of those things. And immediately they are trained, or it's in their instincts to watch for shadows.
It's interesting they [00:12:00] have like eyes, and if there's like a blinking light that stimulates them to jump, boom, they start jumping. So if like somebody walks by, a dog walks by, or if they're outside where the, the flea hatched outside cause the dog was sitting out there and the egg rolled off into the grass, and then there was a new flea hatching outside.
Any shadow or whatever will make it, boop, jump! and hopefully land on the host. And they seem to be good at this.
Dr. Sugerman: They've been around forever, so they, they must have figured it out by now.
Dr. Z: Yeah. You're right. I know millions of years. And there's a really cool doctor down in Florida.
I think it's, there's a vet school down there. Yep. Dr. Dryden. He's retired now, but he did a lot of cool studies on fleas. And he developed these flea traps that were cool because they had the blinking light. Like a green blinking light. They like green too because they're usually outside in the grass.
And then he put like a sticky paper down by this blinking light. And all the fleas would jump toward it. And that's [00:13:00] how he would count flea loads in there. Catch all the fleas with the green blinking light. Yeah, pretty cool. Anyway, once they get on the new host, again, they feed within seconds and find a mate within seconds.
Hopefully there's a male one that jumped on as well. They can get together and make some babies.
Dr. Sugerman: And then, I know, I don't think we had mentioned this, but how many babies, you had mentioned it was like, up to 5,000 or something like that, that they could have in their lifetime if they did it every day, right?
Dr. Z: Yeah again, 40 to 50 eggs per day. And then, that's within a day they're laying that. And then, they live about a hundred days if they're not killed, and not chewed up by the dog or whatever. A perfect life of a flea, living for a hundred, she's living for a hundred days, so she could lay like four thousand to five thousand eggs in her lifetime before she dies of old age.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Yeah. Old age. Yeah.
Dr. Z: So a long time.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. So where are these [00:14:00] fleas like commonly found in our environment then, are they mostly outside or do we see them inside as well?
Dr. Z: So the adults are probably never going to be found in the environment cause they're just so quickly jumping and trying to get onto a host that you hardly ever see the adults. The adults are usually just on the pet.
Dr. Sugerman: So that's where we're seeing them mostly, for us, is pretty much on the pet.
Dr. Z: On the pet, yeah. What's in the environment are the the eggs, the pupa, the larva, it's called the biomass, and, it's a gross name, but that's what it is. There's millions of that in a, in an infested home, like everywhere.
And it usually is in areas where the pets spend a lot of time not moving too much. So like, where they lay down to take a nap. And it can be in the carpet, if especially, they like to burrow down into, or fall down and then hatch at, the bottom of the carpet is where flea larva and stuff will be, but also when it places hardwood floors they can get fleas too.
[00:15:00] You don't sweep the corners. There could be some, microscopic eggs in the corner that's just accumulated over time with an infested dog lying nearby. So, um, let's see. If they spend a lot of time outside, so those areas can become infested too, like under the porch, or in shaded bushes, or the doghouse, crawl spaces, wherever the pets or the wildlife that carry them are spending time.
Dr. Dryden, the one I told you about, also likes to refer to dogs and cats that have fleas as salt shakers. For the eggs. The salt are the eggs. So they're just going around shaking off the eggs. Yeah, that's what's happening. So they're the salt shakers.
Dr. Sugerman: People are not going to look at salt shakers the same next time.
Dr. Z: It's making me itch just thinking about it.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, right? Exactly.
Dr. Z: Yeah so that's how pets usually obtain their fleas, is from a newly hatching flea from a cocoon in one of these biomass [00:16:00] areas. They don't get fleas typically from another dog or cat that has adult fleas. Once a flea is on a pet, they don't want to leave that pet. They're like, this is This is Jackpot.
Dr. Sugerman: It's their forever home.
Dr. Z: I'm staying here forever. So unless you like physically pluck that flea off and put it on to another pet, they're not going to go there.
Dr. Sugerman: Great. They're not jumping from host to host.
Dr. Z: No, they don't jump from host to host. They just jump to get on their one host.
And then they stay for life. Yeah. So if you like get a flea bite on a human, it's usually because there was one that just hatched in your home. And it's jumped, it's jumped, jumped, jumped. And then oh, there's a human. Fine. I'll bite that. Okay. So, yeah.
Also, salt shakers to think about besides our dogs and our cats we see fleas on possums, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, squirrels for sure. Wherever there's a lot of those wildlife, they probably harbor fleas and are dropping them in the environment nearby, especially if you have a lot of those pests and I would be very strict about flea control on your pets. Because [00:17:00] they're probably being, it's like a constant threat. Constantly getting new fleas jumping on them.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, that's my whole backyard.
Dr. Z: Oh, great. Yeah. So do lots of flea control.
Dr. Sugerman: Oh, we do. Yes.
Dr. Z: Yeah, me too. I saw a possum the other night.
Dr. Sugerman: Yep. We definitely have them.
Dr. Z: Yeah.
And raccoons, of course. They're all over.
Dr. Sugerman: And since they are so hardy is there even a flea season then that people talk about?
Dr. Z: Yeah, so the immature stage is like the warm and the moist times, so summer months, warmer months for sure. But those pupae in the cocoons, they survive easily in the cold and the dry conditions and the adults, once they're on a host, they live happily on that host for 100 plus days, which can take you right into the winter, no problem.
And in our area, in the Pacific Northwest, it just doesn't get very cold or very dry for very long here. It's mostly wet. Yeah, maybe August we're lucky and it's sunny most of the time, but that's about it. I often say it's June [00:18:00] uary. I'm like, when is this rain going to stop? It's June, and why is it 50 degrees?
But anyway yeah, so it doesn't get cold enough or dry enough to really kill fleas successfully in the environment here. And then again, they're just most of the time setting up this biomass, which is constantly rehatching itself inside homes where it's warm. And so they're very successful at staying alive and well year round here, so I totally disagree with anyone who says that it's flea season here.
Yeah. It's flea season year round here.
Dr. Sugerman: It was the same in California. We pretty much, we definitely had flea season all year round there as well.
Dr. Z: Yeah. I think a lot of places are like that, but I haven't lived everywhere and witnessed it. So I'm not sure. But for here, I highly recommend year round flea control.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Okay.
So on our pets, like if we're going to go looking for any of those fleas on our pets, where, where do you think we're going to find them mostly?
Dr. Z: Good question. So adults can be sneaky [00:19:00] and they're hard to find because they're running away quickly. Unless you have a big infestation and sometimes they're all over and that's pretty obvious.
But cats especially are good at grooming and they'll lick off the adults as soon, almost as soon as they hatch and then you never really see the adults, but they always leave behind their poop, the baby food. And it's called flea frass technically F R A S S Or we often say flea dirt, but that's what it is.
It's actually just flea poop. And you can find that if you get a flea comb, it's like a really tight teethed comb. Some of the ones you can buy over the counter, the teeth of the combs are too far apart and you'll miss it. They have to be almost touching each other. It has to be a specific flea comb.
We have really good ones here at the hospital. And you want to comb a good flea zone, where they usually are hanging out a lot and pooping a lot, is on the back near the tail. It's like the caudal dorsum, we call it. If you've combed quite a [00:20:00] bit right there and then look at the hair that you pull up and put it on your hand, if there are little black specks in there, that's probably flea dirt.
But to make sure, you can put it on a white paper towel, and then put some drops of water on it. And when those flea dirts rehydrate, they turn a reddish brown color.
Dr. Sugerman: From the blood that that it sucks, right?
Dr. Z: Because when it's dried out and pooped out, it's desiccated and dark. But when you re make it wet again, you can see that it was actually blood that was pooped out.
Yeah. It's gross. But that way you know it's not like sand, or sometimes other little black things can be not flea dirt.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, just normal dirt. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Z: But it's flea dirt if it turns red, so do that little test. And if you see that, you have a problem whether or not you can see adults to convince you. If you have flea dirt there's a huge problem. And you need to treat for fleas. Yeah. So look on the, the tail head back area. And get a flea comb. That's the best I can say. That's the best place to look for fleas, yeah.
Dr. Sugerman: Okay, perfect. Yeah, and so when I do that, I would say like one of the number one things I'm doing that [00:21:00] for is because I'm diagnosing that pet, pet with probably I'll say flea allergy dermatitis when I'm in the ER.
Dr. Z: Yes, yes.
Dr. Sugerman: So can you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Z: Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the most common problems we'll see with fleas. It's their, the flea saliva, just like most biting insects, they have histamine like substances in them. So mosquitoes do the same thing. And it causes a welt with itching where they bite.
And it totally depends on the individual dog or cat's sensitivity. Some people have allergies, some people don't. Same with, with pets. And so some dogs like can get a flea bite and they don't react hardly at all to it. And you'll never know that dog has fleas sometimes, they're not very itchy.
And then you have one dog that's super sensitive to flea saliva and has an allergy to it and they get a huge welt and it's super itchy from every flea bite. And they're like constantly scratching and biting at themselves. They start to lose hair, they get infections and rashes and scabs from it.
And then, that's what we call flea allergy dermatitis. Those dogs usually need, besides [00:22:00] flea control, they need antibiotics and some topicals, sometimes a short course of steroids just to get the reaction under control so they stop biting themselves to death. Yeah. So. and some cats are so hypersensitive to fleas they can develop these crazy plaques called the eosinophilic plaques either in their lips or sometimes where they're licking on their belly they'll get these big giant red raised wet lesions that are like thick and hard and you have to do high doses of steroids to get those under control.
Dr. Sugerman: I do see that a lot as well in the ER, unfortunately.
Dr. Z: Yeah, they'll be like, my cat's lip is swollen. And it's like a big ol ulcer right there from the eosinophilic response. Yeah. And that can be due to other allergies. It's not always fleas. But I would certainly rule out fleas and just treat that cat with flea control.
Dr. Sugerman: Yes. Easiest thing.
Dr. Z: Yeah. I'm like, why not? That might fix it. If it doesn't, then you can chase other allergies. That could be causing the same thing in a cat.
Dr. Sugerman: Besides the itchiness and stuff from like the dermatitis, is [00:23:00] there other things then that we have to worry about with those flea bites?
Dr. Z: Oh, absolutely. This is like my favorite part.
Dr. Sugerman: We're about to gross everybody out now. If they weren't already.
Dr. Z: First of all, I mean like, especially the really young kittens and puppies that have a huge flea burden. Those fleas are eating, again, 15 times their body weight each in blood. And so you can actually, you can imagine that you could get anemic from that.
And some of these poor kittens come in like almost white because they have no blood. The fleas have been eating it all. It's really sad. So there's anemia and all the problems that come with that. If it's severe enough, maybe a blood transfusion is needed or something. But usually just getting the fleas off of them and under control they can produce blood again and recover.
But one of the most interesting things, I think, is that these fleas can harbor pathogens in their spit and in themselves, and then when they bite you, they can transmit these pathogens and bacteria diseases. The biggest one, of course, is The Plague.
Dr. Sugerman: The Plague.
Dr. Z: The Black Death.
[00:24:00] Yeah, the Black Death was huge. It killed so many people and we didn't understand that it was from the fleas back then. The rats that carried it were harboring all these fleas and then they contained the Yersinia pestis is the name of the bacteria.
And that's what was infecting people and causing the bubonic plague. The rodent flea and the I think the squirrel flea are the big ones that transmit that one the most. They're most likely to carry Yersinia pestis, but again, it has been shown that Ctenocephalidus, the cat flea, can also carry it, so it's a concern.
More commonly though, we see our cat fleas transmitting bartonellosis, which is another bacterial disease it's also known as cat scratch fever, and it's zoonotic, people can get it too. And that's spread through the flea poop, the flea dirt actually, so if you have any hangnails and you're scratching your pet and getting some flea dirt in there, you might get cat scratch fever. You don't have to just get a scratch from a cat.
Dr. Sugerman: That's what most people think [00:25:00] is you have to get bit or scratched by a cat.
Dr. Z: Yeah, no. It's the fleas. Yeah. And it's so if you have flea control, it doesn't matter if you get scratched by your cat. You're not going and it's, it's all, I think it's got the name Cat Scratch Fever because cats with fleas would scratch themselves and get the flea dirt on their nails and then when they scratch you, it gets into your bloodstream.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Makes sense.
Dr. Z: There's also hemotropic mycoplasmosis. It's another kind of infectious anemia for cats. It makes them super anemic. Not just because the, the fleas are drinking their blood, but because it induces a, like an autoimmune response in the cat and they start attacking their own red cells on top of it.
They're trying to kill the parasite which gets in the red blood cells, but obviously you can't live without your red blood cells, so it's like a downward spiral and it's pretty, pretty serious if they get that. Fleas can also transmit rickettsial diseases, like ticks in some cases, and leishmania can be, has been shown to be transmitted by fleas [00:26:00] as well.
And then probably one of the most common things we see is tapeworm infections, actually. The tapeworm is a very, another very interesting parasite, has an incredible life cycle where part of its life cycle goes through an adult flea, like they live, they have a life stage inside of the adult flea, and it develops in there and then when the cat eats the flea, then it hatches inside the gut.
Out of the flea belly and becomes a tapeworm. Yeah, inside the cat. So those are called Dipylidium caninum, it's hard to say tapeworms. There's a couple different types of tapeworms, but that's probably the most common one that we see is the flea tapeworm actually. So there is a dewormer that takes care of it, usually one treatment, but if they keep eating fleas they can just keep getting more tapeworms.
So, when you're treating tapeworms, you have to also treat for fleas. That's a big thing that...
Dr. Sugerman: yeah, that's a good point.
Dr. Z: I try to explain Yeah, we can deworm your cat, but let's also get him on flea control. [00:27:00] Otherwise, he's gonna get more tapeworms. You gotta do both. There's no way around it.
Dr. Sugerman: I've always wondered, in the bottom of a tequila thing that has the tapeworm in it, I've always wondered if it was the Dipylidium caninum.
Dr. Z: It's not a tapeworm, though. It's not a tapeworm? If you look at it, it's like a . It looks like a segmented larva of some kind.
Dr. Sugerman: Oh. Yeah. I've never done one, so I don't know.
Dr. Z: We should look it up.
Dr. Sugerman: We have to look it up. We have to know about this.
Dr. Z: I thought it was more like a, yeah. Like a maggot looking thing.
Dr. Sugerman: I don't know. We'll have to find out now. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Z: Super gross. Have you ever eaten one?
Dr. Sugerman: I've never eaten one. Nope. Nope.
Dr. Z: Me neither. I couldn't do it.
Dr. Sugerman: Couldn't do it.
I already know what like the life cycle and stuff is, so there's no way. Nope.
Dr. Z: I imagine it's dead, so
Dr. Sugerman: I hope. I don't know.
Dr. Z: What? Of course it's dead in there. Eww.
Dr. Sugerman: Alright, we'll look that up. So now that we know all the life cycle and stuff with fleas, like how, how can we treat them for fleas then?
Dr. Z: Okay, [00:28:00] let's go into it. The first goal is to kill those adult fleas, right? We want to kill them. We want to try and kill them before they can lay eggs, right?
It's just, it's a tough battle because they lay eggs so quickly, 24 to 36 hours, they're laying eggs after they have their first meal. Yeah, but luckily we have some newer products that will kill them that quickly, like within 24 hours, and those seem to be the most effective. I'll go into them in a second.
But the second goal, besides killing the adult fleas, we want to clear out the biomass, right? All of pupa and the larva and the eggs that are salt shaken in the environment. So, uh, let's, let's go through it one by one, so the newer products that kill the adults I've been practicing how to say it.
Isoxazolines. Isoxazolines. I used to say it totally different before, but I actually looked it up and I'm like, Isoxazolines. So think like iPod. Isox. [00:29:00] Isoxazoline. There's a bunch of them out there. These are pretty cool. They came from we've, we've noticed people that study marine sponges, like out in the, There's certain sponges that produce these chemicals that prevent parasites and stuff from eating them, like slugs and snails will die if they eat, try to eat these sponges.
Yeah. And so we've actually figured out what they're, releasing that's preventing that. And that's where these came from. The isoxazolines .
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. I had no idea that's where it came from.
Dr. Z: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a bunch of them are from them, and then we've also synthesized some to mimic the same structure, molecular structure of them or whatever. So the brand names of these are Bravecto, Simparica, NexGuard and Credelio, or Credelio, however you wanna say it. Those are carrying these isoxazolines that are very effective at killing fleas for us, thankfully, and ticks too, by the way, and mites.
And [00:30:00] mosquitoes, they actually kill mosquitoes too.
Dr. Sugerman: Oh, I knew that they repel them, I didn't know that they killed them.
Dr. Z: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so they don't actually repel they have to bite and then they die.
Dr. Sugerman: Got it.
Dr. Z: There's no repellent activity, but. There are older over the counter products too that have been around a long time.
Frontline and Advantage are the over the counter ones. Revolution is a prescription that is a topical as well, just like Frontline and Advantage. And they all just have different chemicals in them that do kill fleas. They're just not as quick as the isoxazolines they take a little bit longer. And so I think they're just less effective in general because of that.
Because that, that female has a chance to lay a couple eggs right before it dies
Dr. Sugerman: A couple thousand, right?
Dr. Z: Possibly. Hopefully just 40. And then 'cause it, you know, one day and then it dies. . But if we take, Bravecto or Simparica, then it will die before that 24 hour mark before she can lay an egg.
Yep let's see. So if you're [00:31:00] using one of the older products or Revolution or Frontline or Advantage. If you're not being really good about putting it on every month and treating all the pets in the house, it's just a little bit harder to get them under control. There's also some data out there about resistance with these older products.
It's difficult to document. When I actually dug into it, it was hard to find any studies, but there was one where some poor college student had to look at flea poop. And they found that over 60 percent of the fleas were finding ways to clear the compound. I think it was a study on Fipronil, which is Frontline and 60 percent of those fleas over time started pooping out the Fipronil more than, and so they, they weren't dying from it.
Like they were, they did actually document some resistance. By looking at flea poop. Yeah.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. It's cool. I wonder why they haven't done that with more of them.
Dr. Z: I imagine it's up and coming. There's lots of research to be done. Always. And I'd say [00:32:00] anecdotally these older products just don't seem to be working as well, in my opinion, just being a vet over the years.
I'm like, cause I've had people come in and be like, I just put frontline on two days ago and there's like a live fleas crawling on this. I guess they could have just hatched and jumped on. But it seems like it's not working. As well. So I really like the isoxazolines simply because of the faster speed of kill and they last longer too.
The Advantage and Frontline maybe 3-4 weeks and then they wear off. And so the Brevecto especially lasts for 3 months which is really nice.
Dr. Sugerman: That's when I remember, oh, I forgot, I need to put some more flea stuff on.
Dr. Z: Yeah. It's hard to remember to do it. Time flies. My own cats have gotten fleas multiple times.
I'm just like, God, I forgot it. I gotta put it on. Okay, so basically I recommend any of the isoxazolines for both dogs and cats. For cats, I really like Brevecto Plus to be specific. That's two months for cats, right? Yeah, that's what's so [00:33:00] great about it. It lasts for two months. It actually probably lasts for three, but for the label to cover there was one tick that would be not killed in the third month.
So they're like, if you wanna protect against all the ticks, you need to do it every two months. Okay. But either way. Yeah. Every two months, Bravecto Plus and it's just so nice 'cause it's longer than all of the other topicals for Cats plus the Bravecto Plus covers like more worms.
Than all of the other ones. So it's just a broader spectrum option. It's what I put on my cat. I really like it. For dogs, there's a couple good ones. Brevecto, of course, does fleas and ticks really well, but I actually like some Simparica Trio the best. Or there's a new NexGuard Plus now. Both of those are great.
They, they're just broader spectrum as well. They cover worms as well as fleas and ticks. They don't last as long, you have to do them every month to make it work, but I, I think it's worth it because of, and we'll go into internal parasites in another episode. But I think that's important too. And so if you're going to pick a preventative, why not choose one that covers multiple parasites and then you don't have [00:34:00] to worry about anything.
Let's see, okay, so let's go to the second goal, besides killing those adults. We want to clear the biomass. So in the past there was all these flea bombs and knockout sprays and stuff I actually don't recommend those anymore. Just because it's gross to put all those chemicals in your house all the time.
Dr. Sugerman: All that like, film of it.
Dr. Z: Yeah, and it's not going to kill the pupa, like we talked about. Or the cocoons. And what, with the new isoxazoline medications that kill fleas so quickly if you didn't do any environmental treatment, that would clear out within about three months. Like, all the new ones would hatch.
And then jump on your pet and die. And then hatch, jump on them and die. As long as you keep that medicine on board, that will clear out the biomass for you. But it takes a while. It takes three months. So you're going to be seeing fleas as they keep hatching, that whole time. But to speed it up, you could just simply vacuum daily, because there's new ones.
And then sweep and, empty the canister every day. [00:35:00] Don't let it just sit in the vacuum. And yeah, I would say with time, it'll just take care of itself if you keep the flea control on board.
Dr. Sugerman: Great. And so then one thing I get all the time in the ER is they say I've put on garlic or given them garlic or I've used diattomaceous earth, uh, brewer's yeast, like all sorts of natural things.
Yes. What are your...
Dr. Z: cedar bedding too. Oh, but he sleeps on cedar bedding.
Dr. Sugerman: So what are your thoughts on those?
Dr. Z: So generally, to make a long story short, no, they don't work, they're not gonna kill your fleas. But we can go through it a little bit. So diatomaceous earth, what it is, is a very fine powdery clay, like very, very tiny pieces.
Like almost aerosolized if you, it would poof if you threw it around. And so the idea is if an insect crawls through it, they get stuck in it and the packages of the diatomaceous earth claim that it'll dry out the insect and kill it. Fleas, they have this really tough exoskeleton, they're not going to dry out, [00:36:00] and they're going to happily jump over the trail of diatomaceous earth that you have tried to put on the floor.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah the two football fields,
Dr. Z: They don't crawl, they jump. And then they are on the pet, they are not, like. So, and I don't want anybody to put diatomaceous earth on their pet, because then that's gross. And it's very tiny particles that they could inhale, and it's just not a good thing to put on your pet.
I guess it would slow down some larvae, like if you were to find a pile of flea larvae and dump some diatomaceous earth on it, it would probably slow them down a little bit. But how are you going to put diatomaceous earth everywhere? Because they're salt shakers and they're all over.
So I just think it's not going to work. Maybe it would for some other slow crawling insect, that's in one spot. That's just not the case with fleas. And then garlic, as probably is toxic.
Dr. Sugerman: I did a whole podcast on toxicity of garlic. Yes.
Dr. Z: So I don't think [00:37:00] anybody should be feeding their pets garlic.
And I think it would be hard to feed them enough of it so that it was like the pet started seeping garlic out of its pores to deter a flea. And I don't know if there's been any studies on that, honestly, but I imagine that a garlicky pet is not going to stop a flea from biting it. Um, So, Brevecto doesn't stop a flea from biting it either.
It's going to bite and then die.
Dr. Sugerman: And then die.
Dr. Z: Yeah, because it got the Brevecto inside of it. Garlic doesn't itself kill fleas. I think the idea is that it would repel them. And the same with like vinegar, isn't the What is it? Cider vinegar.
Dr. Sugerman: Cider vinegar.
Dr. Z: Feed your pet that and that will repel the fleas.
I don't think so. It's not going to stop a flea. I don't think it could eat enough of it to make it work. And, and the potential for toxicity is there and then if you're trying to like smear garlic all over your pet, like how awful is that? Don't do it. Okay?
Dr. Sugerman: Yes.
Dr. Z: No. Don't do it.
Dr. Sugerman: Okay. And one other [00:38:00] thing we hadn't really talked about before. What do you think about Flea collars and the Seresto collars specifically.
Dr. Z: Yeah. Sorry, I forgot to mention that earlier. That one actually works pretty well. It's got the same ingredient that's in Advantage. It's called Imidacloprid.
And it repels that doesn't repel. It kills fleas, but just not as quickly as the other ones. But it's just like putting Advantage on. But it's in a slow release. So it's a nice economical option for people that have multiple pets and can't afford to get Brevecto all the time for everybody.
Dr. Sugerman: It lasts for 8 months if it was, right?
Dr. Z: Yeah, 6 to 8 or something like that. The collar itself is pretty spendy. It's I want to say 80 bucks, but again, it lasts a long time, and they have them for both dogs and cats, it's been proven to be safe for the most part. I think it's a good option, yeah, Seresto collars work.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. What about other flea collars?
Dr. Z: No, don't do the other ones. The other ones don't have imidacloprid in them, they usually have some sort of pyrethrin or permethrin, which is toxic to cats.
Dr. Sugerman: Which we've done another podcast on.
Dr. Z: Okay, good. [00:39:00] Yeah. You gotta just be careful and make sure it's labeled for cats if you're gonna try anything first.
But yeah, those ones, they just, they don't kill fleas quickly enough to make a difference. They will kill them, I think, but maybe it takes a week or two. And how many eggs has she laid by then? Four times seven is two hundred eighty eggs. And that's minimum.
Dr. Sugerman: That's just one,
Dr. Z: one flea.
Yeah. So it's not gonna kill them quickly enough. They stink, they can be toxic. It's not worth your money. When I see people come in with those on, I take them off and I throw them in the trash. And I say, don't do that again. If you want a collar, get a Seresto collar. That will actually do something.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Yeah.
Nice. Do you wanna kinda summarize a little bit for us just about fleas real quick?
Dr. Z: Yes. In summary, fleas are nasty. , they're harmful, they're blood sucking parasites, and they spread disease. Not just to our pets, but to people as well. And once they establish an infestation, it takes about three months to get rid of them.[00:40:00]
And that's only if you treat right away with the first sign of fleas, so it could take longer. So it's just better to never worry about them in the first place. And I think they should be killed, all of them. It's my, it would be an amazing thing if we could eradicate them from this world. But it's just not going to happen because they're too, they're too thrifty.
Smart.
Dr. Sugerman: You always talk about all these beneficial things that, that animals have even if they're like, things that kill us and stuff. But I just don't, I've not found anything beneficial by the flea.
Dr. Z: No. Or mosquitoes. Or wasps. I know.
Dr. Sugerman: Wasps do, the pollinate.
Dr. Z: The yellow jackets and the, the murder wasps, what the hell no, they're good for nothing.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Yeah. Bald-faced hornets.
Dr. Z: Oh, I hate those. Yeah, but fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes, they seem to have no purpose other than to torment other beings. And in my opinion, they all should be killed. So please, keep up your [00:41:00] flea control year round on your cats and dogs.
Dr. Sugerman: I have to ask my one question here for the end here.
Why do you like flea stuff and just like ticks and stuff in general so much?
Dr. Z: Oh, that's a good question. I guess because they are disgusting and fascinating all at the same time.
Dr. Sugerman: That's so true. Yes.
Dr. Z: And I find infectious diseases pretty amazing and interesting as well. I don't know. There's Some things that just float people's boats, right?
Like, why do you like this? I don't know. I think it's really fun.
Dr. Sugerman: All right. Thank you again, Dr. Z. I super appreciate you coming on. I'm already itchy. I'm sure lots of other people are as well. So we really appreciate all of your knowledge on this subject.
Dr. Z: Oh, you're so welcome. My, my very much pleasure. I loved it.
Dr. Sugerman: All right. Next time we're going to be talking about ticks.
Dr. Z: Yes.
Dr. Sugerman: All right. So until then as always, keep your pets happy, healthy, and safe. Thank you guys.
Thank you guys for listening this week. If you have any questions, comments, [00:42:00] suggestions, or you just want to say hi, you can email me at Suggs, S U G G S @ VetsplanationPodcast.com or visit the website at VetsplanationPodcast.com or find us on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok at Vetsplanation. Thank you all for listening and I'll see you back here next week.