It took a long time for me to recognize just how important a role pets can play in the typical American family unit. My first pet was a cat named Brownie — but she passed while I was so young that it really didn’t mean much to me. I was in second or third grade, and I remember trying to be sad because I figured that’s how I was supposed to feel … but, unfortunately, I never really connected with my earliest feline companion.
After that, I owned two geckos, the maintenance of which quickly became a burden after the initial excitement of owning a lizard wore off. My parents had a couple of family dogs during this time, but it was made explicitly clear that the role they embodied was that of “hunting dogs.” They were tools that fulfilled a purpose in my family, not actual members of the family.
Years later, I would meet my wife and her family, and my perspective on pets would change drastically.
She grew up, a single child, with chihuahuas as companions. These canines were treated as members of the family, pampered, cared for, and even spoken to as such. At first, this was crazy to me. Nevertheless, as time went on, it began to make more sense to me, and the more I looked into it, the more I came to find that pet ownership is more than just fulfilling — it’s actually beneficial to your physical and mental health.
How Pet Ownership Improves Mental and Physical Health
There’s a lot of information out there about how pets can improve your health, both mentally and physically. Here are the most legitimate claims that I’ve found:
- Dog owners are at lower risk of cardiovascular disease: According to a 2017 study of 3.4 million people living alone in Sweden, researchers found that owning a dog can decrease the risk of death by 33 percent and the risk of cardiovascular related death by 36 percent. They also found that chances of heart attack decreased by 11 percent.
- Pets that you can “pet” help to lower stress: Perhaps it’s the repetitive motion of petting, or maybe it’s oxytocin, but physical human-animal interactions have shown to significantly reduce stress, including in students who are just about to take an exam.
- Pets help boost immune systems and get rid of allergies: It might seem counterintuitive, considering that so many people have pet allergies — however, studies show that children raised with pets develop a resistance to these allergies. Additionally new study from 2017 shows that kids exposed to cats in the first year of their lives generally have lower rates of asthma, pneumonia, and bronchitis. Another study found that just petting a dog for a prolonged amount of time strengthens the immune system.
- People who own pets (generally dogs) tend to be more active: This one might seem like a no-brainer, but people who have dogs tend to walk those dogs, and dog walkers tend to be much more fit than non-dog walkers. An archived .gov page makes the claim that “one NIH-funded investigation looked at more than 2,000 adults and found that dog owners who regularly walked their dogs were more physically active and less likely to be obese than those who didn’t own or walk a dog. Another study supported by NIH followed more than 2,500 older adults, ages 71-82, for 3 years. Those who regularly walked their dogs walked faster and for longer time periods each week than others who didn’t walk regularly. Older dog walkers also had greater mobility inside their homes than others in the study.”
While all of these studies illuminate some of the interesting characteristics surrounding pets and their owners, scientists have found a way to exploit the positive effects of animal-human interactions.
The Science Behind Animal and Pet Therapy
An NPR article I recently came across details the use of pet therapy at the Children’s Inn on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. The Children’s Inn is where families stay for children who are undergoing experimental therapies at NIH.
Interestingly, pet therapy isn’t just for children and their families — pet therapy for seniors exists too. According to Benchmark Senior Living:
“Pet therapy for seniors, also known as Animal Assisted Therapy, is a technique that uses animals to interact with seniors for numerous reasons to help improve their quality of life. Studies show that just fifteen minutes spent bonding with an animal promotes hormonal changes within the brain. Stress levels drop as the brain produces serotonin (the ‘feel-good’ hormone), along with prolactin and oxytocin.”
The NPR article that I previously mentioned showed that the National Institutes of Health have recently increased funding to study human-animal interacted. These programs will offer scientists research grants to study the impact of animals on child development, in physical and psychological therapeutic treatments, and on the effects of animals on public health, including their ability to reduce or prevent disease.
Rebecca Johnson, a nurse at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine’s Research Center for Human/Animal Interaction, thinks that this is a big win for this type of research.
“The last thing we want is for an entire field to be based on warm fuzzy feelings and not on scientific data,” she says. “So it’s very important that now the NIH is focused on this … and it is helping scientists across the country like myself to be able to do our research.”
Even though there are already studies that legitimize pet therapy, here’s to hoping that more studies emerge from initiatives like these.
Until then, hold your pet tight and experience the benefits of lower stress, a heightened immune system, and a healthy heart.
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