Benefits of having a pet

How to Stay Healthy Around Pets | Healthy Pets, Healthy People

Understand the Risks and Benefits of Pets

There are many health benefits of owning a pet. They can increase opportunities to exercise, get outside, and socialize. Regular walking or playing with pets can decrease blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and triglyceride levels. Pets can help manage loneliness and depression by giving us companionship. Most households in the United States have at least one pet.

Studies have shown that the bond between people and their pets is linked to several health benefits, including:

Decreased blood pressure, cholesterol levels, triglyceride levels, feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and symptoms of PTSD.
Increased opportunities for exercise and outdoor activities; better cognitive function in older adults; and more opportunities to socialize

However, pets can sometimes carry harmful germs that can make us sick even when the pet appears healthy. The diseases people get from animals are called zoonotic (zoe-oh-NOT-ic) diseases. Below are some tips to help you and your family stay healthy while enjoying pets.

Learn more about different types of pets and other animals.

Pick the Right Pet

Before adopting a new pet, make sure that it is the right one for you and your family. Do some research beforehand about the specific needs of the animal. Ask yourself these questions before getting a pet:

How long will this animal live?
What does the pet eat?
How much exercise does the pet need?
How large will it become?
How much will veterinary care cost?
Do I have enough time to properly care for and clean up after the pet?
What type of habitat does this pet need to be healthy?
What type of exercise does this pet need?
Are pets allowed in my house, apartment, or condominium?
Are there young children, older people, or people with weak immune systems who will care for or be around the pet?

Some people are at higher risk for diseases animals can carry

Children younger than 5 years old, people with weakened immune systems, and people 65 years of age and older are more likely to get diseases spread between animals and people (also known as zoonotic diseases). Pregnant women are also at a higher risk for certain animal-related diseases. Before getting a new pet, keep the following in mind:

Households with children younger than 5 years old should not have pet reptiles (turtles, lizards, snakes), amphibians (frogs, toads), or backyard poultry because of the risk of serious illness from harmful germs spread between these animals and young children.
People with weakened immune systems should take extra precautions when choosing and handling pets. Talk to your veterinarian for help picking the best pet.
Pregnant women should avoid adopting a new cat or handling stray cats, especially kittens. Cats can carry a parasite that causes toxoplasmosis—a disease that can cause birth defects. If you are pregnant, you do not need to give up your current cat, but you should avoid handling cat litter.

Pregnant women should avoid contact with pet rodents to prevent exposure to lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, which can cause birth defects. If you’re pregnant and have a pet rodent, avoid direct contact and have someone else clean its habitat.

Get more information for people at higher risk for illness from animals

Ways to Stay Healthy Around Pets

Whether you are playing with, feeding, or cleaning up after your pet, it is important to wash your hands to help reduce the risk of getting sick from germs pets can carry. If you or a family member are concerned about illness, talk to a doctor and mention the animals you’ve had contact with recently.

Always wash hands:

After touching or playing with your pet
After feeding your pet or handling pet food
After handling pet habitats or equipment (cages, tanks, toys, food and water dishes, etc.)

After cleaning up after pets
After leaving areas where animals live (coops, barns, stalls, etc.), even if you did not touch an animal
Before eating and drinking
Before preparing food or drinks
After removing soiled clothes or shoes

Running water and soap are best for hand washing, but you can use hand sanitizer until running water and soap are available. Adults should always assist young children with hand washing.

Whether you have a dog, cat, horse, parakeet, gerbil, bearded dragon, or other fun pet, providing regular, life-long veterinary care is important for keeping your pet and family healthy. Regular veterinary visits are essential to good pet health. Talk to your pet’s veterinarian about how to keep your pet healthy. Provide your pet with a good diet, fresh water, clean bedding, and plenty of exercise. Keep up with your pet’s vaccines, deworming, and flea and tick control. Some pets can carry ticks that can spread serious diseases like Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever to people. In areas with plague—including some rural areas in the western US—fleas can be a risk to both animals and their owners.

By keeping your pet healthy, you help to keep yourself and your family healthy. Contact your veterinarian if you have any questions about your pet’s health or if you think your pet may be sick.

In addition to hand washing, practicing good pet hygiene can help prevent the spread of germs between pets and people. Keep pets and their supplies out of the kitchen, and disinfect pet habitats and supplies outside the house when possible. Never clean supplies in the kitchen sink, food preparation areas, or the bathroom sink. Pets can contaminate surfaces in your home with germs—you don’t have touch pets to get sick from their germs.

Always remove your dog’s feces (poop) from your yard and public places by using a bag, and dispose of it in proper areas. Dog and cat poop can contain parasites and germs that can be harmful to people. Keep children away from areas that might contain dog or cat poop to prevent them from getting roundworms and hookworms. Cover sand boxes so cats don’t use them as a litter box. Clean the cat’s litter box daily to lower the chances of exposure to harmful parasites. Remember, pregnant women should avoid changing a cat’s litter box if possible.

Pets can teach children compassion and responsibility. However, children younger than 5 years old should be supervised while interacting with animals to ensure the safety of the child and the pet. Teach children to wash their hands right after playing with animals or anything in the animals’ environment (cages, beds, food or water dishes). Don’t let children kiss pets or put their hands or other objects in their mouths after handling animals.

Adults should supervise and be extra cautious when children younger than 5 years old have direct contact with farm animals, including animals at petting zoos and fairs.

Although they may look cute and cuddly, avoid touching wild animals to reduce the risk of illness and injury. Don’t encourage wild animals such as raccoons, prairie dogs, or wild rodents to come into your home by feeding them. You might find a young animal that appears to be abandoned and want to rescue it, but often its parent is close by. If you are concerned about the safety of a wild animal, contact a local wildlife rehabilitation facility

4 Tips to Stay Healthy Around Your Pet: CDC’s Dr. Casey Barton Behravesh provides 4 simple ways to stay healthy around your pets.
Power of the Pet: Pets Enrich Our Lives Externalexternal icon: CDC’s Dr. Casey Barton Behravesh discusses how to pick the right pet for your family

The Power of Pets | NIH News in Health

February 2018

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Health Benefits of Human-Animal Interactions

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Nothing compares to the joy of coming home to a loyal companion. The unconditional love of a pet can do more than keep you company. Pets may also decrease stress, improve heart health, and even help children with their emotional and social skills.

An estimated 68% of U.S. households have a pet. But who benefits from an animal? And which type of pet brings health benefits?

Over the past 10 years, NIH has partnered with the Mars Corporation’s WALTHAM Centre for Pet Nutrition to answer questions like these by funding research studies.

Scientists are looking at what the potential physical and mental health benefits are for different animals—from fish to guinea pigs to dogs and cats.

Possible Health Effects

Research on human-animal interactions is still relatively new. Some studies have shown positive health effects, but the results have been mixed.

Interacting with animals has been shown to decrease levels of cortisol (a stress-related hormone) and lower blood pressure. Other studies have found that animals can reduce loneliness, increase feelings of social support, and boost your mood.

The NIH/Mars Partnership is funding a range of studies focused on the relationships we have with animals. For example, researchers are looking into how animals might influence child development. They’re studying animal interactions with kids who have autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and other conditions.

“There’s not one answer about how a pet can help somebody with a specific condition,” explains Dr. Layla Esposito, who oversees NIH’s Human-Animal Interaction Research Program. “Is your goal to increase physical activity? Then you might benefit from owning a dog. You have to walk a dog several times a day and you’re going to increase physical activity. If your goal is reducing stress, sometimes watching fish swim can result in a feeling of calmness. So there’s no one type fits all.”

NIH is funding large-scale surveys to find out the range of pets people live with and how their relationships with their pets relate to health.

“We’re trying to tap into the subjective quality of the relationship with the animal—that part of the bond that people feel with animals—and how that translates into some of the health benefits,” explains Dr. James Griffin, a child development expert at NIH.

Animals Helping People

Animals can serve as a source of comfort and support. Therapy dogs are especially good at this. They’re sometimes brought into hospitals or nursing homes to help reduce patients’ stress and anxiety.

“Dogs are very present. If someone is struggling with something, they know how to sit there and be loving,” says Dr. Ann Berger, a physician and researcher at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. “Their attention is focused on the person all the time.”

Berger works with people who have cancer and terminal illnesses. She teaches them about mindfulness to help decrease stress and manage pain.

“The foundations of mindfulness include attention, intention, compassion, and awareness,” Berger says. “All of those things are things that animals bring to the table. People kind of have to learn it. Animals do this innately.”

Researchers are studying the safety of bringing animals into hospital settings because animals may expose people to more germs. A current study is looking at the safety of bringing dogs to visit children with cancer, Esposito says. Scientists will be testing the children’s hands to see if there are dangerous levels of germs transferred from the dog after the visit.

Dogs may also aid in the classroom. One study found that dogs can help children with ADHD focus their attention. Researchers enrolled two groups of children diagnosed with ADHD into 12-week group therapy sessions. The first group of kids read to a therapy dog once a week for 30 minutes. The second group read to puppets that looked like dogs.

Kids who read to the real animals showed better social skills and more sharing, cooperation, and volunteering. They also had fewer behavioral problems.

Another study found that children with autism spectrum disorder were calmer while playing with guinea pigs in the classroom. When the children spent 10 minutes in a supervised group playtime with guinea pigs, their anxiety levels dropped. The children also had better social interactions and were more engaged with their peers. The researchers suggest that the animals offered unconditional acceptance, making them a calm comfort to the children.

“Animals can become a way of building a bridge for those social interactions,” Griffin says. He adds that researchers are trying to better understand these effects and who they might help.

Animals may help you in other unexpected ways. A recent study showed that caring for fish helped teens with diabetes better manage their disease. Researchers had a group of teens with type 1 diabetes care for a pet fish twice a day by feeding and checking water levels. The caretaking routine also included changing the tank water each week. This was paired with the children reviewing their blood glucose (blood sugar) logs with parents.

Researchers tracked how consistently these teens checked their blood glucose. Compared with teens who weren’t given a fish to care for, fish-keeping teens were more disciplined about checking their own blood glucose levels, which is essential for maintaining their health.

While pets may bring a wide range of health benefits, an animal may not work for everyone. Recent studies suggest that early exposure to pets may help protect young children from developing allergies and asthma. But for people who are allergic to certain animals, having pets in the home can do more harm than good.

Helping Each Other

Pets also bring new responsibilities. Knowing how to care for and feed an animal is part of owning a pet. NIH/Mars funds studies looking into the effects of human-animal interactions for both the pet and the person.

Remember that animals can feel stressed and fatigued, too. It’s important for kids to be able to recognize signs of stress in their pet and know when not to approach. Animal bites can cause serious harm.

“Dog bite prevention is certainly an issue parents need to consider, especially for young children who don’t always know the boundaries of what’s appropriate to do with a dog,” Esposito explains.

Researchers will continue to explore the many health effects of having a pet. “We’re trying to find out what’s working, what’s not working, and what’s safe—for both the humans and the animals,” Esposito says.

The positive impact of animals on human life

Living near pets is very beneficial for humans, and this has long been confirmed by scientific facts. Coexistence with animals necessarily colors our life with bright colors, saturates and prolongs it. But medical research also confirms the specific impact of pets on our health.

Let's dwell on the most basic facts of the benefits of communicating with pets:

Reducing stress and anxiety

Contact with animals raises the level of the hormone oxytocin, which in turn allows you to reduce the level of the stress-causing hormone - cortisol. Therefore, now, in the event of stressful conditions, doctors even recommend getting a pet.

Interaction with pets is especially beneficial for babies. Young children living in families with animals experience significantly less stress and anxiety, as well as social problems. Such communication negates the likelihood of developing mental, emotional and behavioral disorders in adulthood.

Strengthening of the cardiovascular system and stabilization of blood pressure

According to cardiology studies, owners of pets (mostly cats and dogs) are significantly less susceptible to pressure drops and heart problems. In addition to calming down during communication and stroking pets, regular walks with them in the fresh air are of great importance.

Increased physical activity

It's no secret that having a pet makes a person move more. This applies not only to walking and walking, but also to bathing and cleaning up after animals. The most active, of course, are dog owners, but active games with cats are no less useful.

Diagnostics of human diseases

Thanks to the amazing animal sense of smell, it is possible to determine the slightest changes in the human body. Pets, sensing such changes, dramatically change their behavior next to the owners. Most often, animals can feel diseases such as cancer, narcolepsy, migraine, diabetes, and seizures. Dogs are especially sensitive to diseases, identifying them with a high level of accuracy.

Reducing the risk of disease

It has been proven that keeping pets can improve immunity, therefore, the risk of developing allergic diseases and heart disease is significantly reduced. However, scientists at California and Stanford Universities have found that our pets protect the body from some forms of cancer. Children who grow up in families with pets are much less likely to experience allergies, because from birth they get used to the wool and waste products of animals.

The healing effect of animals on man

To relieve pain, improve mood and get rid of diseases, animal therapy, the so-called zoo or animal therapy, has long been used all over the world. It includes hippotherapy (communication with horses), hirudotherapy (treatment with leeches), apitherapy (treatment with bee products), dolphin therapy and pet therapy (treatment with pets). Most often it is used in hospitals, nursing homes and hospices. Communication with animals allows patients to recover faster after illnesses and be distracted from problems.

Expanding social networks

Common interests bring people together and unite. With the help of pets, it is much easier for a person to talk, make new acquaintances or keep up a conversation. Pet owners often get to know each other and begin to communicate during walks, in pet stores and on the Internet. After all, they always have something to discuss and talk about. In this way, our "younger friends" help us cope with loneliness and get rid of shyness.

If you still do not have a pet, then perhaps now you are thinking about it.

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Why start a pet

thanks to a person’s home animal, a person has a feeling that nearby has a feeling that nearby is located near him something small, warm, defenseless and more helpless than himself. This feeling subsequently forms responsibility for the life of another being and develops empathy, the ability to empathize with others.

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The decision to adopt a pet can be a negative experience only if it is made against someone's will, in the course of manipulation. For example, if the care of an animal is imposed on a child, or if the parents do not help at all, they treat the pet with disdain, without love. It only creates the impression that the animal is a toy, a burden. Such behavior can even turn into aggression towards animals.

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How to know if you're ready for a pet

Having a pet is a big responsibility, and any person who wants to own a pet needs to ask themselves a few questions first.

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Disgust questions: can I clean up after my pet? Will I clean my ears? How about washing your paws? Clean the pot or cage? Animals are not only a pretty picture. They themselves and their habitat sometimes smell unpleasant, and you need to be ready to quickly remove the garbage.
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Expectation Questions: Am I ready for my cat to scratch? And the dog - not to obey and not to follow the commands? What if my mice sleep and eat all the time? It is important to read the information about the animals you are going to have in advance so that you have a realistic idea of caring for them.
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Loss questions: What if my pet gets sick? What if he dies? Animals do not live forever, and even at the stage of discussion it is important to think: am I ready, as a future owner, to experience the inevitable negative emotions?
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Organizational questions: What happens if I leave? Who will take care of the pet during my absence?

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How to Convince Your Parents to Get a Pet

Just talking about wanting a pet is unlikely to be helpful. It is important for parents to see you as a responsible adult. Keep promises and commitments in a timely manner, participate in family life. This will help your parents to believe that you can become a good master of a living being.

Although the pet is a collective responsibility of the whole family, parents should not do all the dirty work for you and play with the pet while you play and relax. If the desire to have a pet is your initiative, you should make sure that you do most of the work related to the animal, and discuss in advance how responsibilities will be distributed.

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Mental Health UK claims that pets are good for people's emotional state. Having a pet helps you feel less alone, reduces anxiety, and helps you meet new people. In this material, we understand why pets are useful for both children and parents and how to understand that you are ready to have a pet.