Petting a dog can minimize tension and boost joy: specialist

Pets

By Brooke Steinberg

August 4, 2023 | 11:58am

There’s no such thing as excessive puppy love.

Interactions with dogs, whether it be your own or somebody else’s, can in fact increase your health — even if they’re quick, Nancy Gee, a psychology teacher and director of the Center for Human-Animal Interaction at Virginia Commonwealth University told NPR.

“I think it is safe to say that animals are beneficial to our mental and physical health,” Gee announced.

Gee mentioned that evidence found in studies recommends spending simply 5 to 20 minutes with a four-legged friend can drop levels of the tension hormonal agent cortisol in individuals.

“Also, we see increases in oxytocin, that feel-good kind of bonding hormone,” she included.

However, there are, obviously, various aspects that enter into play when it pertains to whether an individual will genuinely acquire anything from these interactions — generally whether they are a dog individual and just how much they click with the canine.

“Pets are not a panacea,” Gee said. “They’re not necessarily going to be great for every single person. But for people who really get it, who really connect with the animals, they really can make a big difference.”

Therapy dogs utilized in research study are now evaluated for various qualities such as friendliness, etiquette and responsiveness.

While owning a dog has actually been linked to living a longer life — specifically amongst cardiovascular disease and stroke survivors — Gee confesses that there is blended proof on this, partially since pet ownership research studies can’t definitively conclude domino effect, “since you can’t just randomly assign one person a dog as a pet and another a horse.”

Gee likewise teamed up on a research study that took a look at whether brief quantities of play time with pups benefitted the cognitive procedures in 8- and 9-year-old kids in the UK.

Short exchanges with dogs in the class two times a week showed to lower kids’ tension levels and enhanced focus.

“We actually saw [those effects] one month later. And there’s some evidence that [they] may exist six months later,” Gee shared.

But human beings aren’t the only ones who profit of these interactions.

“What I love about this research is that it’s a two-way street,” Gee informed the outlet. “We see the same thing in the dogs, so the dogs’ oxytocin also increases when they interact with a human.”

Megan Mueller, an associate teacher at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, informed NPR that this relationship in between human beings and dogs permits individuals to see the world through their eyes.

“Animals, and dogs in particular, live in the moment. They’re experiencing their environment with wonder and awe all the time, and they’re not bringing up what happened to them earlier in the day or what they’re thinking about in the future. They’re there right now,” Mueller explained. “They sort of pull you out of your phone and into whatever environment that you’re in.”

“They really can connect with another human being. And they do it in a very unassuming way,” Gee included.