How to Improve Your Pet's Gut Health Presented by Dr. Holly Ganz

Presented by Dr. Holly Ganz

CEUs: PPAB 1, CCPDT 1, IAABC 1

Webinar Description

We will start with some background information about the microbiome and its role in animal health, including digestion, immunity, and the nervous system. Then we will consider how contemporary lifestyles, such as antibiotic usage and modern diets, may affect the composition of microbes living in the digestive tract.

We will consider how various health conditions, such as Irritable Bowel Disease is associated with alterations in the gut microbiome and the implications of these observations. Finally we will review different approaches that can be taken to improve gut health.

Webinar Learning Objectives

• The microbiome and its role in animal health
  
• Roles played by key bacteria in the gut
  
• Different approaches to maintaining and restoring gut health, probiotics, diet, and fecal transplants

Your Presenter

Holly H. Ganz, PhD, CEO and founder of AnimalBiome, is a microbiologist, who has published more than 20 papers. She left academia to become an entrepreneur when she founded AnimalBiome in the fall of 2016. AnimalBiome provides assessments of the bacterial composition of the digestive tract of dogs and cats and is creating therapies to help promote healthy guts. Her efforts to translate academic research into solutions for animal lovers began when she launched KittyBiome, a citizen science project that she started while working at the University of California (UC), Davis in 2015. From the KittyBiome project, she came to appreciate that digestive disorders are common in pets and that there is a pressing need for better diagnostics and therapeutics.

Holly received her PhD from UC Davis, where she studied co-evolution between microbes and animals. After receiving her doctorate, she was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation to study how genetics affects the spread of fungal infections in animal populations. Subsequently she was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley studying how bacterial pathogens survive in soil to infect wildlife. She also holds a MS from UC San Diego, where she studied population genetics, and a BS from George Washington University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, received Special Honors in the Biological Sciences, and graduated magna cum laude. An animal lover, Holly is dedicated to improving animal health and wellness through the application of the latest innovations in microbiology.