Pets: Health Catalysts

Last Monday, we talked about some of the more well-known benefits that come with pet ownership. Benefits like a more robust immune system and lowered risk of heart disease.
But did you know that pets are considered preventive medicine?
Some insurance companies poll subscribers about pet ownership - and add health points to your account if you're a per owner!



Pets can be catalysts
for harm reduction 

When Dr. Hodgson made that statement, I was intrigued. I hadn’t thought about it in quite those terms before.

She gave three examples:

• Pets can motivate you to exercise more – and more consistently 
• Pets can provide therapeutic intervention to treat illness 
• Pets can help you stop smoking 

Exercise: More Often, 
More Consistently 

This first one’s fairly intuitive. After all, if a dog needs to be walked that’s a powerful motivation for you to walk with him!

Jogging with dog and baby: bonus points! Photo: Don DeBold

But if you’re ever challenged to prove it, here’s the 4-1-1:

A few years ago, a study called the PPET was conducted. Here are some of its results:

• Overweight people who exercised with a pet dog increased their physical activity by almost 4 hours per week 
• Over 60% were still exercising one year later. They stuck with it! 

Therapeutic Intervention 

Then there are the benefits pets can have for those who are ill. Your state of mind is a powerful part of the wellness equation when recovering from illness or injury. That’s why therapy dogs and cats are so welcome in hospitals and nursing homes.

Recognize this therapy cat? We met him at BlogPaws!

Loyola University published a study a few years back, with results that showed patients undergoing total joint replacement required 50% less pain medication when in a program that included animal-assisted therapy.

And a Mayo Clinic oncologist, Dr. Edward Creagan, calls pets “medication without side effects.” He so believes in the beneficial effects of a pet during treatment and recovery that he asks patients for their pets’ names when he takes their medical history.

What I didn’t know was the benefit pets can bring to Alzheimer’s patients: a visit from a pet has been shown to reduce anxiety, agitation and depression. A Purdue study indicated that even fish tanks had calming effects.

The data compiled showed that nutritional intake increased by over 20% when the aquariums were first introduced and body weight increased significantly for the patients in the 16-week study. Patients also required fewer nutritional supplements. Quite a performance by our finned and scaled friends!

Pets and Secondhand Smoke 

Pets are far more adversely affected by secondhand smoke than you may realize. It’s not just the risk of lung cancer from inhaling.

If Faraday were around smokers, he'd be ingesting
 up to 15 cigarettes' worth of carcinogens right now.

A cat in the home of a smoker has 14-15 cigarettes’ worth of toxins in their fur.

Those carcinogens get in the mouth when grooming, and cause oral cancer. Studies also indicate there is an increase in association with lymphoma & mammary cancer.

Dogs, too, are very adversely affected. Dogs with shorter noses have higher incidents of lung cancer due to secondhand smoke, because their shorter nasal passages don’t filter out the toxins as effectively as other breeds.

Conversely, the dog breeds with much longer noses such as the collies and greyhounds are more susceptible to nasal cancer.

There was a fascinating study done in 2008 that polled smokers and people who lived with smokers. The results indicated that when a smoker learns his behavior is endangering a beloved pet, he or she is almost 30% more likely to quit smoking!

The next time you engage someone in a discussion on the joys of pet ownership, don’t forget to let them know about the health benefits they’ll reap, too.

Pets are indeed catalysts for more healthy behavior!

_______________
Sources:

Pet Owners' Attitudes and Behaviors Related to Smoking and Secondhand Smoke: A Pilot Study

WebMD: Health Benefits of Pets excerpt:

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America: The felid purr: a healing mechanism?
Excerpt: "Domestic cats, servals, ocelots, and pumas produce fundamental, dominant, or strong frequencies at exactly 25 Hz and 50 Hz, the two low frequencies that best promote bone growth/fracture healing [Chen etal., Zhong. Wai Ke Za Zhi. 32, 217–219 (1994)].   ... Purr frequencies correspond to vibrational/electrical frequencies used in treatment for bone growth/fractures, pain, edema, muscle growth/strain, joint flexibility, dyspnea, and wounds."

PPET Study Abstract, National Institutes of Health, excerpt: “Time spent in physical activity increased in both groups to 3.9 (PP) and 3.5 (PO) h/wk. Two-thirds of total physical activity in the PP group was spent with the dogs.”

Zooeiya

Last Monday, I mentioned that pets are good for your health. Did you know there’s a technical term for that?

It’s zooeiya.

You may have heard the term zoonosis used when discussing pets and illness.

 Zoonosis comes from the crashing together of two Greek words, “animal” (zoo) and “disease” (nosis). We’ve known for a long time there are diseases we can pick up from our pets, such as ringworm and rabies.

More recently, there’s been talk about the diseases that we can give our pets. It’s called reverse zoonosis, and it refers to such cases like the ones where our pets catch the flu from us.

Zooeiya is literally the opposite. Zooeiya is “animal” (zoo) “health” (eiya). Canadian veterinarian Dr. Kate Hodgson coined the term.

She spoke last month at BlogPaws on behalf of HABRI, the Human-Animal Bond Research Initiative. Some of what she shared with us is stuff you may already know, and that’s what I’ll share today.

Next Monday, we’ll talk about some of the things she mentioned that were unexpected – at least, to me.

The Stuff You May Know

Pets can help reduce
your blood pressure

Research gathered over more than 25 years has borne this out. And in fact, a 1995 study of 369 patients with heart disease showed that the ones with pets were 4 times more likely to be alive one year later.

Pets can help boost
your immune system

This is based on the scientific theory known as hormesis, which states that exposure to toxins in small amounts is beneficial. It’s basically the science behind allergy shots: introduce minute amounts of an allergen into the system to toughen it.

This goes hand in hand with the next observation, one that has done a full 180 in the past 30-40 years: Owning a pet as a child can help reduce the risk of developing allergies and asthma (see excerpt from WebMD at end of post).

The frequency at which
a cat’s purr resonates
has healing properties

Studies on the felid purr have shown that “domestic cats, servals, ocelots, and pumas produce fundamental, dominant, or strong frequencies at exactly 25 Hz and 50 Hz, the two low frequencies that best promote bone growth/fracture healing.” (see abstract from study at end of post.)

A waveform I captured of an actual domestic cat's purr

If you have ever suffered an injury that required physical therapy, you may have experienced human medicine’s mechanical analogue to this in the form of ultrasound therapy.

Honestly, the affection our three show us would be reason enough to have them in our lives. Increased health? Those are fringe benefits.

Next week: the benefits of pet ownership that I didn’t know about! 

_______________
Sources:

Pet ownership, social support, and one-year survival after acute myocardial infarction in the Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial (CAST). National Institutes for Health, PubMed.
Excerpt: "Dog owners (n = 87, 1 died) are significantly less likely to die within 1 year than those who did not own dogs (n = 282, 19 died; p < 0.05)"

WebMD: Health Benefits of Pets
Excerpt: "A growing number of studies have suggested that kids growing up in a home with "furred animals" -- whether it's a pet cat or dog, or on a farm and exposed to large animals -- will have less risk of allergies and asthma."


Journal of the Acoustical Society of America: The felid purr: a healing mechanism?
Excerpt: "Purr frequencies correspond to vibrational/electrical frequencies used in treatment for bone growth/fractures, pain, edema, muscle growth/strain, joint flexibility, dyspnea, and wounds. Domestic cats, servals, ocelots, and pumas produce fundamental, dominant, or strong frequencies at exactly 25 Hz and 50 Hz, the two low frequencies that best promote bone growth/fracture healing [Chen etal., Zhong. Wai Ke Za Zhi. 32, 217–219 (1994)]. These four species have a strong harmonic exactly at, or within 2 Hz of 100 Hz, a frequency used therapeutically for pain, edema, wounds, and dyspnea."