Whilst
sitting on the couch watching football and trying my best not to think about
school the family cat, Frank, climbed up next to me. Frank put his paw on my
hand as if he was saying, “You’re not going to forget about the blog, your
paper, the test…It’s okay Joel.” After Frank’s reassurance, I relaxed and my
heart rate began to slow. Frank was providing me with emotional support, but he
was also able to exert a protective effect for my cardiovascular system as well.
Nearly
900,000 people die from cardiovascular disease (CVD) every year (1). CVD kills
through two main pathologies: heart failure and myocardial infarction (MI).
Simply put, heart failure occurs when the heart overworks itself trying to pump
enough blood to the rest of the body. MIs or heart attacks occur when a blood
clot blocks an artery supplying the heart, thus starving the portion of the
heart supplied by that artery. The American Heart Association (AHA) recently
issued a scientific statement on pet ownership and CVD risk reduction. The
statement cited that pet owners have significantly lower resting heart rates,
lower diastolic and systolic blood pressure, and return to resting levels
faster than non-pet owners (2). Dog owners also had significantly lower
triglyceride levels (2). The AHA also cited a study whose findings suggested
that Individuals who had suffered a MI were 4.05 times less likely to be
readmitted to the hospital or die within a year of their cardiac event if they
owned a dog compared to cat owners and non-pet owners. Another study cited by
the AHA found that dog owners are more likely to engage in physical activity (2).
Overall, pet ownership was shown to reduce the CVD risks of hypertension and
hyperlipidemia, but dogs were shown to significantly reduce the mortality rate
of MI patients and promote activity in their owners. So the debate over which
pet is better, a cat or a dog, can chalk one up for the dog lovers due to the
fact that Fido is better at protecting your house and your heart.
1.
Campisi
J. Cardiovascular system: organization & hemodynamics. Biomedical
Physiology Notes, 2013.
2.
Levine GN, Allen K, Braun LT, Christian
HE, Friedmann E, Taubert K a, Thomas SA, Wells DL, Lange R a. Pet ownership and
cardiovascular risk: a scientific statement from the American Heart
Association. Circulation 127: 2353–63,
2013.
As a dog lover, I enjoyed this post. After reading this, I was curious if owning a dog would be beneficial to elderly people? I found an article that proposed that owning a dog is healthy for elderly people, especially those who do not have much companionship. The article states that owning a dog provides structure and a sense of purpose to one's day. Furthermore, having a dog tends to keep people more active, which is related to increased health. Another question I have is-- are people who are visited by pets in nursing homes more healthy/happy than those who do not get pet companion visits? Did you read anything about that? Loved the post though!
ReplyDeleteReference:
Scheibeck R, Pallauf M, Stellwag C, Seeberger B. 2011. Elderly people in many respects benefit from interaction with dogs. Eur J Med Res. 16(12): 557–563.
Dominique,
DeleteI found an article looking at exactly what you were asking. The researchers found that interaction with dogs either in social or therapeutic settings resulted in an overall improvement in the quality of life of elderly individuals living in a community based setting (1).
1. Berry A, Borgi M, Terranova L, Chiarotti F, Alleva E, Cirulli F. Developing effective animal-assisted intervention programs involving visiting dogs for institutionalized geriatric patients: a pilot study. Psychogeriatrics 12: 143–50, 2012.
I love this post because I truly believe that many animals have a sense of empathy and ability to pick up when humans are emotionally distressed. Impacts of having pets are probably because, dogs especially, they love unconditionally and the most drama they want to cause is involving a tug of war match with you, them, and their chew toy...or when they randomly surprise you, even after years of training, of ruining a valued possession.
ReplyDeleteIn relevance to pets, and I might be a horrible person for having this come to mind when thinking of people and pets, but what about people with children? Of course children play a high stress in life, financially and socially..but it would be interesting to see the comparison and contrasting sides of stress people encounter with children and people without children. It would also be interesting to observe this at different stages of life: ie. adjusting as new parent vs having your child visit you on break from college.