April 2007 | Back to Table of Contents

Pulse

Prescribe a Pet?

Walk the dog, and call me in the morning.

A recent article in Twin Cities Dog titled “It’s Good for You!” lists the multiple ways pets make people “happier and healthier”: They reduce stress, ease anxiety and depression, and lower blood pressure, triglycerides, and cholesterol, to name a few. The Web site of a group called Second Chance for Animals, one of the many organizations across the country that promotes animal adoptions, says pet owners report fewer headaches and bouts of indigestion, and less difficulty sleeping than others, and that pets improve self-esteem and social skills.

Publications for pet lovers aren’t the only place to find articles on the health benefits of animals. A quick search of the scientific literature turns up dozens of studies that do the same. Researchers from multiple fields are apparently intrigued enough by the hypothesis that animals are good for us to test it: For example, a 1990 study found that indicators of stress and use of physicians’ services were lower in elderly people with pets than in those without; a 1999 study found persons with AIDS who own pets were less likely to suffer from depression than other AIDS patients; and a 2006 study found that lung transplant recipients with companion animals had a better quality of life than other transplant recipients.

What jumpstarted the Pets “R” Healthy research, according to R.K. Anderson, D.V.M., M.P.H., professor emeritus in the School of Public Health and College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Minnesota, was a 1980 study by Friedman et al. that showed patients who had pets did better after a coronary crisis than those who didn’t. In the decades since, researchers have documented the beneficial effects of animals on patients with everything from autism to Alzheimer’s.

Last August, a Journal of the American Medical Association article even reported on a growing number of studies that suggest dog walking might be an antidote to obesity. One Canadian study concluded “dog obligation” was a motivator for people to be more physically active. The dog owners studied walked a whopping 300 minutes per week compared with people without dogs, who walked a mere 168 minutes per week. (An unrelated study found walking a dog lowered stress more than walking alone.)

Happiness Really Is a Warm Puppy
All this research may be documenting what humans intuitively know, according to Anderson, who thinks we have a need to interact with animals that is a product of evolution. “It’s innate,” he says, citing the case of an inmate at Alcatraz who made a pet out of a cockroach—teaching it tricks and feeding it for years.

Anderson points out that we’ve known since the 1950s that people with good social networks live longer than those without them. Now we’re learning it doesn’t matter all that much who’s in your network: people or pets. A Saint Louis University School of Medicine study of nursing home residents found that they felt less lonely after they visited with a dog alone than if the visit included other people.

A University of Missouri professor of nursing and veterinary medicine is one of several researchers attempting to explain what happens physiologically when people pet pooches. In one study, people played with either a live dog or a robot dog for a few minutes, then had blood drawn to check levels of serotonin and other hormones. The levels jumped in the group that played with the real dog and fell in those stuck with the robot.

Three-Dog Nights Five years ago, Mayo Clinic sleep expert John Shepard, M.D., started wondering how many of his patients had pets that disturbed their sleep after listening to one woman describe how she got up every night to let her dog out. So he devised a series of questions and proceeded to ask his next 300 patients if they had pets, if those pets slept with them, if they affected their sleep, and if so, for how long? Shepard found that about half of the people he interviewed had pets, and of those pet owners, about half said their pet disrupted their sleep almost every night. The disturbances included such things as snoring (20% of the dogs in the study snored), needing to go outside, and crowding. Shepard was surprised to learn that some people don’t mind such disturbances. He describes one woman who told him her cats woke her at 5:30 a.m. by jumping on the bed and playing. Although she wished she could sleep until 7, she preferred the playtime to the extra sleep. He also found that it’s not easy to convince people to remove their pets from the bedroom. “It’s interesting. We love our kids, but we kick them out of the bedroom after a couple of years. But we let our pets stay—that is, until they become incontinent.” Although Shepard has not done additional research, he and the other Mayo Clinic Sleep Center physicians now routinely ask patients about pets in the bedroom. “It was an eye opener,” he says of the study.—C.P.

Anderson sums up such findings on our physiological responses to animals: “We’re getting all the good things that give us feel-good emotions, and feel-good emotions help our body.”

Suppressing Sniffles
Allergist Nancy Ott, M.D., does not discount the serotonin surge that comes from petting a puppy. But the Edina allergist and president of the Minnesota Allergy Society also knows that animals present real health hazards to some of her patients, particularly those with asthma. And it’s her job, sometimes, to bear the bad news that Fido has to go.

When she started her practice some 15 years ago, she was much more likely than she is now to recommend that patients with diagnosed allergies get rid of their cat or dog. She’s learned from experience that they often don’t heed that advice. “Because of the psychological effects of pets and the attachment people have for their pet, it is hard to convince them to get rid of it,” she says.

When she pushes the issue, patients are more likely to part with her than the pet. “People will actually stop going to the doctor if the doctor tells them to get rid of the cat or dog,” she says.

Now, she’ll work with patients to help them manage the pet and the allergy. If someone has mild allergies, she’ll tell them to wash the pet once a week and keep it out of the bedroom. If that isn’t enough, she’ll prescribe medications and give allergy shots—another change she’s made since she started her practice. “When I started, I didn’t want to do allergy shots for pets. But especially in the case of children, where they often can’t make that choice [to avoid contact with an animal], I will because I want to do as much as I can to minimize their allergic
disease.”

Ott knows both the pleasure that an animal can bring and the pain associated with having to give it up. When she was 12, she was diagnosed with dog allergies, and her parents made the decision that hers needed to go. “It really broke my heart, but I did make it to adulthood.”—Carmen Peota