For years, studies have shown the health benefits of pet ownership ? low blood pressure, less cardiovascular illness, less stress.
But a Baltimore researcher is starting to explore how that works by looking at aging pet owners.
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“Dog owners walk longer and more often than non-dog owners,” said Johns Hopkins University research fellow Roland Thorpe, author of the study. “Pet ownership by itself does nothing for mobility. You have to walk the dog.”
His research, appearing in the journal American Geriatrics Society, found that, for pet owners age 71 to 82, 36 percent walked at least three times a week for at least 150 minutes ? the level recommended by the Surgeon General for improving overall health.
The dog walkers he studied were able to move more easily inside the home, and faster, Thorpe found. He suggested getting a dog might be beneficial for grandma?s or grandpa?s health, particularly if they are not already having trouble getting around.
“It?s not universal. It depends on a lot of different things,” he said.
Thorpe, a third-year fellow at Hopkins focusing on epidemiology, began looking into the relationship between pets and health in his graduate studies.
He was inspired to continue his work by the work of a group of Australian researchers in 2004 from the University of Melbourne?s Centre for Public Policy. Their work, published in the Journal Social Indicators Research, showed that dog and cat owners make fewer doctor visits and are less frequently medicated for heart problems and sleeping difficulties. They also found that pet owners reduced Australia?s national health care costs by $988 million between 1994 and 1995. Thorpe said he plans to look into pet ownership?s effects on heart rate and other health indicators and see if that is tied to the exercise of walking or to the harder to measure unconditional love pets give.
“The Centers for Disease Control contacted me. They are interested in putting together a group of researchers from all over the nation,” Thorpe said. “Pets are part of the total environment. We should include them in scientific study of human health.”
