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Journalism of Courage
People spend billions annually on their pets 8212; feeding, grooming, even clothing their animals. They play with them, sleep with them, approve surgery for them and mourn for them, much as they would for people.
But does owning a pet make people healthier?
Popular assumptions notwithstanding, science is still out on that question.
A new study out of Finland suggests the answer may be no. Pet owners, the study finds, smoke cigarettes more but drink alcohol less than those without pets. They also have a higher Body Mass Index, a ratio of weight relative to height. Pet owners spend slightly less time playing organized sports than non-owners but take part more often in activities like hunting, fishing and boating. Pet owners are also less likely to report having good health than non-owners.
The findings point in a different direction from many previous studies, which have suggested that pet owners enjoy such health advantages as lower cholesterol, triglyceride and blood pressure than non-owners, even after accounting for such variables as exercise. Previous studies also have shown that owning pets may relieve feelings of loneliness and encourage pet owners to exercise more, spend more time outdoors and socialize more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But this area of research is filled with inconsistencies, with one study8217;s findings often contradicting another8217;s.
And because many of the studies are of poor quality and not much funding goes to finding new answers, said James Serpell, director of the Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, 8220;much of this is speculation8221;8212; meaning more research needs to be done to find definitive answers. What seems most promising, he said, is the idea that pets offer social support 8212; something that can affect how people deal with stress, which is known to impact health.
8220;At some level it seems obvious to me that pets are providing exactly the same types of support as other social networks, including family and friends,8221; Serpell said. Still, 8220;while we like our friends and our family, they8217;re likely to be a source of conflict, but most animals are not. Most animals give but don8217;t take much.8221;
Gold-standard evidence of pets8217; benefits to human physical and mental well-being may be scant, but examples of their use for health purposes are not.
For decades, household animals have been used to assist patients with medical conditions such as blindness or seizures, as well as to relieve depression and social isolation. But when the US National Institutes of Health last thoroughly explored the health benefits of pet ownership 20 years ago, its experts hedged.
8220;Persuasive evidence was presented to conclude that pets are likely to be medically beneficial to some people8217;s health,8221; they wrote in a consensus statement. 8220;However, much is to be learned about many of these relationships before broad generalizations of medical benefit can be made.8221; No comparable group of experts has since been convened to re-examine the question.
The health differences found between pet owners and non-owners in the Finnish study, published in December in the online medical journal PLoS ONE, were small and may not apply to everyone, the authors say. What8217;s more, the study found a 8220;difference only in the proportions of people reporting 8216;good perceived health8217; and not in the proportion reporting 8216;bad health,8217; 8220; said lead study author Leena Koivusilta, a researcher at the University of Turku, in an e-mail interview.
8220;We wanted to report the slight differences8221; between the pet owners and non-owners who both reported good perceived health 8220;but, at the same time, to make sure that no 8216;larger than life8217; interpretations could be made,8221; Koivusilta said.
Overall, pet owners in her study also were less educated than non-owners, suggesting that any health benefits observed might be due to socioeconomic status rather than pet ownership, the researchers said.
8220;The grand message of the study could be that pets provide us all with a vast potential for health promotion as has been shown previously,8221; Koivusilta said. 8220;Walking your dog makes you feel better, for your sake and for your hairy friend8217;s sake, and perhaps also helps you to lose some weight.8221;
Some research has suggested that pets offer social support that acts as a stress reliever, which affects health. One such study, published in 2001 in the journal Hypertension, found that pet owners had lower blood press-ure readings when undergoing mental stress than people who did not own pets.
A 1995 American Journal of Cardiology study reported that dog ownership by men was associated with decreased risk of death within one year of a heart attack, compared with those who didn8217;t own dogs. A 1999 Journal of the American Geriatric Society study found that men and women who owned a pet scored better on a scale that measures the ability to complete daily tasks 8212; such as bathing and dressing themselves, preparing food and walking several blocks 8212; than peers who didn8217;t own a pet.
In 2005 BMJ formerly the British Medical Journal published a review examining studies that helped popularize the idea that pet ownership positively affects human health. The review found that while some studies reported pet-owning benefits such as better physical and psychological well-being in the elderly and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, many later studies failed to confirm these findings.
Given this inconsistency, the BMJ review suggested that researchers focus less on whether owning a pet offers measurable health benefits and instead on how pets affect individual quality of life and how humans are affected by a pet8217;s death.
Future research also should tackle more specific questions, gleaned from what8217;s already known.
8220;If pets are another form of social support, then we should begin to ask more directed kinds of questions about the kinds of people who would be more likely to benefit from having a pet 8212; maybe the kinds of people who don8217;t have a strong social support network,8221; Serpell said.
8211;January W Payne
The Finnish study
Published in: Online medical journal PLoS ONE in December
Who did it: The University of Turku in Finland
Survey: Over 21,000 Finnish people as part of a 15-year health and social support study
Process: All responded to a questionnaire.
Result
8226; 80 of those who had pets reported good perceived health, compared with 82 per cent of those without pets.
8226; 28 of pet owners smoked regularly, compared with 23 per cent of non-owners
8226; 33 of pet owners smoked occasionally, compared with 32 per cent of non-owners
8226; 39 didn8217;t smoke, compared with 45 per cent of non-owners
