Heeling power
Whether you’re hiking a trail or cuddling on the couch, having a pet by your side is truly good-foryou company
They’re known
as man’s best friend for a reason
Zooeyia isn’t the name of the newest social media influencer or a celebrity. Pronounced ‘zoo-AY-uh’, it’s the notion that pets are beneficial for human health – and it has plenty of proof to bark it up.
A University of Maryland School of Nursing study found that heart-attack survivors who owned pets tended to live longer than those without furry (or finned, scaled or feathered) friends. Several other studies suggest the simple act of stroking a dog or cat can lower blood pressure and cholesterol. Pet owners may even visit the doctor less frequently than their pet-free peers.
Palling around with a pug, cuddling a kitty or taking care of a turtle helps us stay active, engaged and less stressed – all things that are important in diabetes management and in reducing the risk of complications such as heart disease. Read on for four pawsitively healthy, sciencebacked reasons.
They keep you company
“Pets provide social support, making people feel less lonely and more valued,” says Erika Friedmann, lead author of the University of Maryland study. The social support pets offer is different from the support we get from human friends. “In a way, it’s more dependable; it’s nonjudgemental,” says Friedmann. That unconditional love can help reduce loneliness, which has been linked with greater cognitive decline, earlier death and additional stress, which in turn may increase the risk of chronic disease.
They motivate you to lead a healthy lifestyle
Meatball isn’t going to walk himself, is he? Owning a pet often means you’ll need to move more, whether it’s hauling home large bags of cat litter or chasing down the guinea pig your child accidentally let out of its cage. Two studies in a review done by the American Heart Association found that dog owners who walk
their pooches are more likely to hit the recommended 150 minutes a week of moderateintensity aerobic activity than people who don’t have a dog to walk. Moving more is important for blood glucose management and has been linked with slowing or delaying the progression of chronic diseases such as hypertension – this may be one reason having a dog is linked with reduced heart-disease risk.
Besides being an impetus for exercise, pets can help keep their owners on a healthy schedule, including eating regular meals and taking medication. They can also provide a sense of purpose, or at least make you smile. “They give you a reason to get up, and that improves self-worth,” says Friedmann. As Megan Hosey, an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, puts it, “Pets are a metaphorical carrot for getting out of bed.”
When taking care of a pet, “you feel responsible for something else,” says Friedmann, which can translate into taking better care of yourself. In fact, our bodies release prolactin in the presence of animals, a hormone known as the ‘parenting hormone’ because it can cause us to feel nurturing. Pets can also provide motivation for recovering from an illness or injury. “A dog sitting in a patient’s lap eases suffering and builds motivation in ways that medical interventions may ➤
not,” says Hosey. “We’ve seen hospital patients whose main motivation for getting better was to go home and see their dog, cat or even llama, in one case.”
They chill you out
In one fascinating study, researchers measured the blood pressure of 480 married individuals – half of whom owned pets – as they performed a timed mental arithmetic task. Heart rate and blood pressure spiked for all the math-doing participants, whether they were alone, with a spouse or with a pet. But those who calculated with a pet for company saw smaller rises in heart rate and blood pressure and returned to baseline more quickly.
“When we look at a pet with whom we’re bonded, there’s a flood of [the feel-good chemical] oxytocin to the brain, so we feel happy, and a decrease in the stress hormone cortisol,” says Rebecca Johnson, nurse, University of Missouri professor, director of the Research Centre for Human-Animal Interaction and author of Walk a Hound, Lose a Pound. These hormone changes cause our heart rate and blood pressure to drop in a beneficial way, she says.
That’s one reason critically ill patients at the Johns Hopkins Medical Intensive Care Unit in Baltimore receive visits from trained therapy dogs as part of the on-site Pet Partners program, and Cornell Companions, from Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, dispatches volunteers and their pets to visit hospital patients, children with disabilities and nursing home residents. It’s worth noting that a pet needn’t be cuddly to elicit a calming effect. In an Israeli study, participants were asked to pat a live turtle, live rabbit, toy turtle or toy rabbit while undergoing a stressful situation (in this case, being shown a tarantula and told they might be asked to hold it). Patting a living creature, even one with a hard shell, reduced anxiety, an effect not seen when patting a toy.
They can sniff out low blood glucose
Specially trained diabetes alert dogs (aka DADs) have such well-tuned noses, they sense a
Pets give you a reason to get up and that improves self-worth
human’s drop in BGLs “just before or as it starts dropping,” explains Jeannie Hickey, certified diabetes educator, a retired diabetes care and insulin pump nurse and an active volunteer with the nonprofit Dogs4Diabetics, which trains and places DADs for people with diabetes. These dogs can pick up changes in body chemistry on the skin and breath, she explains, and are trained to take specific actions after sensing a drop
(or rise) in blood glucose, such as bringing a special object to their owners, nosing them or jumping on them if the drop is detected during sleep – when more than half of hypoglycaemia episodes occur. (People with diabetes are advised to use DADs as an adjunct to, not in lieu of, blood glucose monitoring.)