By DR.
CHRIS DUKE
McClatchy Newspapers
original source: http://www.sunherald.com/384/story/477156.html
There is good news for those of us who own
cats. Thanks to the study presented at the American Stroke Association's
International Stroke Conference in
For the first time (at least as far as anyone
can tell), the potential medical benefits of cats were considered by the
University of Minnesota Stroke Research Center, in a study that looked at 4,435
people who were followed for a decade.
Cat owners seemed to have health benefits that
exceeded those who owned dogs. People without cats, or those who never had
cats, had a 40 percent greater risk to die of a heart attack and a 30 percent
greater risk to die of any cardiovascular related disease. The study had no such
data for dogs, mainly because fewer participants in the study owned them.
Dr. Adnan Qureshi, the study's lead investigator and executive
director of the Minneapolis-based stroke center says, "We know that stress
and anxiety are factors leading to cardiac disease.
"If a pet can ameliorate stress and
anxiety, clearly having a pet is beneficial. In the past, studies have included
only dogs, but never cats. This is only one study. But it's a start."
In the defense of dogs, we do know that walking
dogs helps owners with their personal fitness, and that dogs responding with
wagging tails and facial gestures, along with the therapeutics of return touch,
is beneficial. Yet, cats do something special back to people that dogs don't:
They purr.
Cats purr as a sign of contentment, but they
also seem to purr as a sort of self-soothing medication. Is it that human
owners may derive an unknown benefit from purring? Qureshi
says that's an interesting and valid point.
"If cats are able to self-soothe through
purring," says Qureshi, "maybe the purring
soothes humans in some way we don't understand."
Qureshi's
additional comments that I add here were in Steve Dale's recent e-newsletter
"Good News For Pets." In this piece, Dale
quotes Qureshi that we're close to the day when doctors
may somewhat routinely prescribe that we "get a pet" by writing these
words on a prescription pad.
Certainly, there's no side effect to stroking a
dog or cat to relieve anxiety.
While presidential candidates haven't addressed
pet therapy as part of their health care plans, Qureshi
says, "Insurance should cover all legitimate medical therapies, so it's
not crazy to cover the cost of getting a pet. The benefits and financial
savings for not treating someone who maintains good health far outweigh the
costs."
Time will tell.