Owning A Dog Is Good For Your Health

Ok, this is where I blog about my dog. I love my dog. Her name is "Robot" and she is a pitbull. She reminds me to get lazy, to get dirty, to get rowdy. She IS unconditional love.

A UK study reveals that owning a dog is good for your health. And having a pet dog improves your physical and mental wellbeing more than having a cat.

This is the conclusion of a study by a senior lecturer, Dr Deborah Wells, from the Canine Behaviour Centre of Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Dr Wells has published her study in the British Journal of Health Psychology.

The study is a review of research papers that have explored the connection between domestic dog ownership and human wellbeing. In her research Dr Wells found papers that suggest domestic dog ownership can prevent people from getting ill, recover more quickly when they do fall ill, and give warning of early signs of cancer, seizures and hypoglycemia.

She also explored the research into dogs and human psychological health, including the therapeutic role that dogs play in aiding the disabled and also in hospitals, prisons and residential homes.

An Israeli research paper said it was likely that animal companions helped people with schizophrenia feel motivated and calmer. And another UK study suggested that the companionship of a dog helped children with chronic illnesses endure painful treatments.

Some of the evidence was found to be weak, but in other areas Dr Wells found strong evidence to suggest that dog owners have lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, and are less likely to have minor and serious health problems.

In one paper dated 1985, Dr Wells found that dog owners had an 8.6 higher one year survival rate after a heart attack compared to people who did not have a dog.

Dr Wells suggests there could be a number of reasons for the health benefits of dog ownership. There is the more obvious direct effect of increased physical activity, but then there are also indirect effects such as that brought by increased social contact and the possibility that the human-dog bond provides a psychological buffer against stress.

Comparing cat and dog ownership, Dr Wells found evidence that people who take cats and dogs from rescue centres reported reductions in minor health problems such as headaches, dizzy spells and colds as soon as one month after taking their new companion home. However, it was only those people who had taken dogs, as opposed to cats, that still had the improved health conditions up to ten months later.

Guidelines for the control and responsible ownership of dogs (Australian Government).

Article on Dogs Smell Cancer in Patients' Breath (National Geographic).

Why Do Good? Brain Study Offers Clues

Why Do Good? Brain Study Offers Clues

01.22.07,
12:00 AM ET
MONDAY, Jan. 22 (HealthDay News) --



People may not perform
selfless acts just for an emotional reward, a new brain study
suggests.

Instead, they may do good because they're acutely tuned into
the needs and actions of others.

Scientists say a piece of the brain linked to perceiving
others' intentions shows more activity in unselfish vs. selfish
types.

"Perhaps altruism did not grow out of a warm-glow feeling
of doing good for others, but out of the simple recognition that
that thing over there is a person that has intentions and goals.
And therefore, I might want to treat them like I might want them to
treat myself," explained study author Scott Huettel, an
associate professor of psychology at Duke University Medical
Center, in Durham, N.C.

He and lead researcher Dharol Tankersley, a graduate student at
Duke, published their findings in the Jan. 21 online issue of
Nature Neuroscience.

For decades, psychologists and neuroscientists have puzzled over
the tendency of humans to engage in altruistic acts -- defined by
Huettel's group as acts "that intentionally benefit
another organism, incur no direct personal benefit, and sometimes
bear a personal cost."

Experts note that altruism doesn't seem to provide
individuals with any survival edge, so how and why did it
evolve?

To help solve that puzzle, Heuttel's team had a group of
healthy young adults either engage in a computer game or watch as
the computer played the game itself. In some sessions, the computer
and participants played for personal gain, while in other sessions,
they played for charity.

The researchers used high-tech functional MRI (fMRI) to observe
"hot spots" of activity in the participants' brains
as they engaged in these tasks.

Participants were also asked to complete a questionnaire aimed
at assessing their personal levels of selfishness or altruism.

Huettel said he was surprised by the study results.

"We went into this experiment with the idea that altruism
was really a function of the brain's reward systems --
altruistic people would simply find it more rewarding," he
said.

But instead, a whole other brain region, called the posterior
superior temporal cortex (pSTC), kicked into high gear as altruism
levels rose.

The pSTC is located near the back of the brain and is not
focused on reward. Instead, it focuses on perceiving others'
intentions and actions, Huettel said.

"The general function of this region is that it seems to be
associated with perceiving, usually visually, stimuli that seems
meaningful to us -- for example, something in the environment that
might move an object from place to place," he explained.

This type of perception would have allowed humans' more
primitive ancestors to quickly pick out a potential threat -- a
crouching lion, for example -- from amid a mass of less important
stimuli.

It's much less clear why pSTC activity gets ramped up in the
brains of altruistic people, however. "That was really
surprising to us," Huettel said.

The researchers found that pSTC activity was highest when study
participants were observing the computer play the game on its own
-- not when they were playing themselves. "That gets to this
idea of agency -- watching somebody else play the game,"
Huettel said. "You are thinking, 'Oh, the computer pressed
the button -- somebody else did that.' "

The bottom line, he said, is that altruism may rely on a basic
understanding that others have motivations and actions that may be
similar to our own.

"It's not exactly empathy," he said, but something
more primitive. "We think that altruism may have grown out of
-- at least in part -- such a system."

Another expert said the Duke study raises even more questions
than it answers.

"It's a really interesting study," said Paul
Sanberg, director of the Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain
Repair at the University of South Florida College of Medicine, in
Tampa. "It would be really interesting, now though, to see if
people who had damage to that [brain] area were much less
altruistic."

Huettel said he's pondered that possibility. "For
example, we don't know if people who are sociopaths, or people
who are autistic, might show differences in this region," he
said. "It's a good question, but we don't have data
that shows anything one way or another. This is just a jumping-off
point."

Sanberg said the study also showed only an association between
heightened pSTC activity and altruism, not a direct
cause-and-effect relationship. "That needs further
study," he said.

But the Florida neuroscientist said this type of work is helping
unravel the mysteries of human consciousness and behavior.

"These functional studies with high-level human behaviors
are shedding important light on the contribution of different brain
areas," Sanberg said.

More information

Find out more about the human brain at Harvard University.

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