Skip to main content

Health Benefits of keeping Pets

Image
By
When Neal toddled into our home and hearts four years ago, little did we realize that this cuddly pup was bringing in not just happiness but good health as well.  Indeed medical research shows that an animal companion can beneficially impact physical, social and psychological well-being.
In a workshop on the Health Benefits of Pets convened by the National Institute of Health, USA, researchers shared evidence on how our animal companions make us healthier, not just by wiping off our loneliness and depression but by settling high blood pressures and reducing cholesterol levels too.
Throughout history animals have played a significant role in human customs, legends, and religions, and human- animal relationships have been important to our very survival. In our own time, the great increase in pet ownership in developed countries reflects an often unsatisfied need for intimacy, nurturance, and contact with nature.
The importance of pets was demonstrated in the clinical setting as long back as 1919 when doctors at the St Elizabeth Hospital in Washington DC, USA, first used dog companions to help patients in a mental ward recover from depression. Encouraged by the results, patients suffering from the traumatic experiences of the Second World War were encouraged to keep company of animals to hasten their recovery.
Pets can help patients with heart disease. Relaxation, stress management and life style changes have been shown to reduce the risk of heart ailments and animal companions enhance these benefits. Caressing and cuddling pets can reduce stress levels substantially and bring down heart rates and high blood pressure. Walking dogs is a great exercise, especially when they tug at the leash and make you break into short runs.
Further through their faithful companionship and by promoting psychosocial stability for their owners, they reduce the levels of stress hormones in our body. Results from a study, presented at the conference, found that pet owners survived heart attacks more often than those who did not have such bondings.
Another setting where animal companions have proved to be of great value is for handicapped people confined to the wheel chair or bed. Contrary to the common perception that a pet means additional work and burden to a stressed out family, a companion dog can provide wheel-chair patients with a much greater amount of social stimulation than what human companions, such as parents, spouses, siblings, or therapists can provide. Our loyal Indian ones are not expensive to keep but can effectively lift the spirits of such people and usher in cheer and happiness in these gloomy homes.
Pets, especially dogs, are the most faithful and loving companions that humans can ever hope to have in their lives.They can be a great source of joy and support to us. It is indeed a tragedy of our times that some perceive them as a threat or nuisance.
Neal has not just added years to our lives but life, love and meaning to our years!
As published in HT City( Hindustan Times) dated 21 August, 2011.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Food Fads in Liver Disorders

By
In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more.  The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food suppl...
2 comments
Read more

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...
2 comments
Read more

Uberification of Health Care

By
The imaginative concept of matching transportation demands of people with cab facilities using a smartphone platform that Uber is credited to having created is now beginning to be applied to health care as well. At the outset, let me share with you what I understand of Uber. It is an on-line transportation company that develops, markets and operates the Uber mobile app, which allows consumers with smartphones to connect with Uber drivers through a software platform for taxi service. Uber itself does not own any assets such as cars, or hire the drivers. Uber was founded by Tavis Kalanick and Garrett Camp as recently as 2009 in San Francisco, but the impact and success of this “start up” has reverberated across the world, being now valued at US $ 62.5 billion. Fresh successful ideas in one domain often tickle the minds of entrepreneurs in other fields. Healthcare experts are now trying to explore if they can bring about a revolution in their sector as well. The proposition se...
Post a Comment
Read more