owning a dog might contribute to longer and healthier life
Dogs are hands down THE best.
Incredibly loyal, they comfort, protect, and love their humans unconditionally, making dogs superior to any other pet out there. As a pup lover, there is no doubt that a dog can bring many upsides to life. I mean, how can you NOT live happily waking up to a smiley face and wagging tail?
We all love dogs. We feed them lobster, take them to spas, sleep with them in our beds, buy them sweaters and booties, and delight in all but their pooping. To those with no canine, this adoration appears absurd, expensive, and gross. The investment, though, may be worth it. Dog ownership, new research shows, is a form of natural insurance offering health and longevity, along with the affection of an animal companion.
A new study, published today in Scientific Reports, finds that dog ownership is linked to reduced risk of heart attack—and a longer life. And it seems to be about more than just the added exercise you get from walking a dog.
The Swedish team looked at data from the country’s registry, which included 3.4 million people who, in 2001, had no history of
cardiovascular disease. The team was able to correlate dog ownership with health outcomes over the years, including heart risk and mortality.The results left little doubt that having a dog reduces your overall mortality, with risk of death being roughly 33 percent lower in dog owners who lived alone. That same group benefited from an 11 percent drop in risk of cardiovascular disease as well, when compared to their non-dog-owning peers. Those in multi-person households also had a lower risk of mortality if they owned a dog, and hunting breed dogs specifically helped to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease.
“A very interesting finding in our study was that dog ownership was especially prominent as a protective factor in persons living alone,” said study author Tove Fall, “which is a group reported previously to be at higher risk of cardiovascular disease and death than those living in a multi-person household. Perhaps a dog may stand in as an important family member in the single households.”
“Perhaps a dog may stand in as an important family member in the single households,” Mwenya Mubanga, lead junior author of the study and PhD student at the Department of Medical Sciences and the Science for Life Laboratory at Uppsala University, explained. “The results showed that single dog owners had a 33 percent reduction in risk of death and 11 percent reduction in risk of myocardial infarction during follow-up compared to single non-owners.”
“We know that dog owners, in general, have a higher level of physical activity, which could be one explanation to the observed results. Other explanations include an increased well-being and social contacts or effects of the dog on the bacterial microbiome in the owner,” says Tove Fall, a senior author of the study and associate professor at Uppsala.
Another finding was that owners of dogs from breed groups originally bred for hunting were the ones most protected, so dogs in the retriever, terrier, and scent hound families are the ones that may provide the most benefit.
“There might also be differences between owners and non-owners already before buying a dog, which could have influenced our results, such as those people choosing to get a dog tending to be more active and of better health. Thanks to the population-based design, our results are generalizable to the Swedish population, and probably also to other European populations with similar culture regarding dog ownership,” Fall concluded in the statement.
