| Healthy Pet Tips:
Why Have a Pet?
Why Have a Pet | How
to Choose a Pet
It doesn’t matter whether your pet is
covered with fur, feathers or scales. Caring for an animal
of any kind can improve your physical,
mental, and emotional well-being, reduce
your risk for certain diseases and, if you are already
ill, improve the quality of your life
and sometimes even increase your life span.
How can you benefit from caring
for a pet that is right for YOU?
Physiological tests
have shown that petting an animal can improve your overall
health, lower blood pressure, reduce anxiety, and help manage
stress. One study of patients undergoing oral surgery revealed
that even watching fish in an aquarium for a few minutes can
relax you significantly.
On the spiritual level,
some people feel a sense of oneness with life and nature when
they are with their pets. This can also contribute to stress
reduction by enabling you to forget the rush of the civilized
world or the rat race of your work environment while you focus
on the grace and innocence of the animal.
Caring for a pet can make you more social.
Bringing a pet into a nursing home or hospital has been shown
to boost residents’ and patients’ moods, and enhance
their social interaction with other people. Also, children
who participate in caring for pets are more likely to develop
compassion for other people than children who grow up without
pets. What if prison inmates could keep pets in their cells…
Pets that require walking, riding, or other
types of physical activity also
help their humans get some exercise. This can help you maintain
healthy weight and reduce your risk for illnesses associated
with obesity, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and
certain types of cancer.
If you do become ill, pet ownership can help
you get better. A study of angina
and heart attack patients showed that 28% patients who did
NOT own pets died within one year of being discharged from
the hospital, compared with only 6% pet-owning patients. The
presence of a pet was found to increase the survival rate
more than having a spouse or friends.
Studies of AIDS and cancer patients have also
shown that pet owners among them tend to live
longer. Apparently, the need to take care of their
pets gives many terminally ill people a reason to live, prolonging
their life span, and improving the quality of their life.
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Why Have a Pet | How
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