The Truth About Cat Vaccines: What Every Pet Parent Needs to Know | The Feline Wellness Summit With Dr. Jeff Grognet

 Welcome to the cat dad show. My name is Scott Colby. And today I'm going to share with you a clip of my interview with Dr. Jeff Grognett. He's a veterinarian. He's got a whole online holistic education platform. And specifically we talked a lot about the misconception that cat parents have about vaccines.

and how vaccines can impact their cat's long term health. Dr. Jeff was a guest for my feline wellness summit. If you would like to hear the entire interview with Dr. Jeff, as well as with 20 other feline wellness experts, just go to felinewellnesssummit. com and you can grab a free ticket, but for now enjoy this clip with Dr.

Jeff.

Yeah, well, the biggest misconception is that you have to follow the reminder card.

And ironically, I was, I taught a class this morning and one of the things we got into was the vaccines and this is just wild. This is, this is one of my students who's also a human, uh, nutritionist. And like she says. All these people that are into holistic nutrition and they're, and they're looking at every vaccine for their kids or whatever, you know, under scrutiny.

But they get the card from the vet and they promptly go in and get them vaccinated. They don't even question it. Okay. So the biggest misconception is that you have to follow that card. Okay. So, so this is, this is the key. The, there's options. And so if you're going in and getting all those vaccines on, in some cases, an annual basis, Uh, that is called over vaccination.

We don't need to do it at all.

Understanding Vaccine Side Effects

u know this part. Back in the: 1990

Bingo, you've got a tumor. And those are really aggressive tumors, they're ugly, they're hard to get out. And they cause a lot of demise in cats. And it's, it's well recognized. That was the, that was the thing that really started the vaccine scrutiny back then in both dogs and cats. Okay?

Yeah.

The Concept of One and Done Vaccinations

And I know you talk about the concept of one and done vaccinations.

Um, can you explain that concept and then how it compares to what we're used to in human health care even?

Okay. Well, think about this. You, you probably had vaccines when you were a little tyke. And probably, probably the best one to talk about, uh, because I think you're the right age, you probably had a polio vaccine.

Okay. I did. Okay. And that's where they actually scratched a little bit on your arm and then put the stuff on. Right. Uh, but then they had other ones with the sugar cubes and whatever. But anyway, the point is when you get that vaccine. We regard it as good for life. You don't, you don't get one done in five years.

You don't get one done when you're 40 or anything like that. You die with having no more vaccines. Right, yeah, just because it's the

one time.

Because it's the one time. And so, what, why is that, right? And the reason is, it's something called, in the immune system, we talk about something called memory. And so what happens is when you get vaccinated for something and it's you and you is now a cat, dog or you or a horse or when you get vaccinated, your immune system says, hey, there's an invader that just came on board.

We got to go kill that guy. And so what happens is some of the immune cells start producing antibodies. This is a key specific to that one disease. Okay. And so you what you have end up with is a clone of what we call B lymphocytes. That's a big word for it. But it's a clone of cells that are responsible for producing that particular antibody to kill that invader.

That clone of cells will be real active when the vaccine is given. And then they sort of go into dormancy. But they last for the lifetime of the animal. And so, if I were to be exposed to polio, uh, you know, this year, uh, my immune system would go, I think I recognize that. And then those cells would come up and say, We're the guys that are going to go kill it guys and they and they start multiplying, they produce antibodies and they stop that invader from causing disease.

Okay, so you have memory cells to childhood vaccinations that you had measles. How many measles vaccines do you have in when you're an adult? And so, so the point is that you, you have that cats have the same thing really to the viral vaccines, which is pretty well all we have in cats really. And so, but the, the point is that that's what we call if we get.

A good immunization, as in the antibodies are produced to the vaccine, they will persist for the lifetime of the cat. And really, there's no need to give another vaccine in that situation. And the way you figure out if you've got a response to the vaccines is by doing something called a titer. You ever heard of that one, Scott?

Uh, just in my last interview for the very first time. I hadn't heard of that before. Okay.

Yeah. So, so a titer is a measure of the antibody level to a specific disease agent to an antigen is what we call it. Okay. And so if you vaccinate a cat and then you do a titer a month later and you found, Hey, look at that.

We've got antibodies to feline panleukopenia. Rhinotracheitis, Calicivirus, those are the three that are usually tested. Then you can say the immune systems responded. You can also say that, oh, there's now memory cells. So you can see where this is going, okay? And so there's two points here. One, it tells you is that, hey, we really don't need to do another vaccine.

And then just as importantly, we don't need to do another titer. We just proved that the immune system came on board. We don't need to keep testing it. There's no, there's no point. Because eventually what's going to happen is the titer will go down and it might probably get below the test detectable level.

But we're, we still know that the background is there. The memory cells are there. So, and this is the same with, uh, with dogs as well. And that is, hey, even though you'll see the titer dropping off, we proved years ago that, uh, immune response is there, and it's valid, and we don't need to keep boosting it, and we don't need to keep testing it either.