Samoyed dog (details)
Many people may be skeptical about the statement that keeping a dog can reduce the probability of heart disease, and pets are easy to breed parasites, and some pets can even cause asthma. However, there is some basis for saying that keeping dogs can reduce the risk of heart disease.
In 1991, researchers at Cambridge University found that some British people's chronic ailments, such as headache, back pain and flu, were relieved in the months after they had adopted cats and dogs. In 2001, it was reported that among Australians with basically the same living habits, the blood cholesterol level of pet owners was lower than that of non-pet owners, thus reducing the chance of heart disease.
At this stage, these findings are just some confusing coincidences. Why does keeping pets reduce the chance of back pain? Why does it lower the level of cholesterol? Many researchers speculate that this is due to the subtle interaction between mental health and physical health. If the above-mentioned new findings on the relationship between human health and pet ownership are confirmed, it is likely to trigger new research on the psychological and physiological effects of pet ownership.
More than ten years ago, people first discovered that keeping pets seemed to be beneficial to prolonging life. Erica of America? Freedman tried to prove whether people's social life and loneliness were related to their ability to resist heart disease. Freedman selected 92 male patients who were recovering, and asked them about their living habits in detail, some of which were related to keeping pets. A year later, 14 out of 92 people died. Freedman called up their original materials, hoping to find the difference between survivors and the dead. He found that patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder are more difficult to resist the attack of diseases than those who keep pets.
Faced with this discovery, freedman began to look for a new explanation. Maybe it's because dog owners take more exercise in the process of walking their dogs? But he found that other pet owners who don't need exercise are also more resistant to diseases. Freedman's final conclusion is that keeping pets is indeed conducive to the cure of heart disease. The curative effect he found is limited, accounting for only 3% of patients who die of heart disease. But from the perspective of the whole United States, one million people die of heart disease every year, which means that 30,000 Americans are saved by pets in any given year.
Warwick Anderson, Australia, conducted a study in which he asked 5741 patients with heart disease about their living habits and whether they kept pets. The researchers found that the cholesterol level of 784 patients who kept pets was two percentage points lower than that of others. Epidemiologists predict that this will reduce the incidence of heart disease by 4%.
Therefore, it is not just groundless to say that raising dogs can reduce the risk of heart disease, but there is a certain basis.