Science plus common sense<\/p>\n
One of the pioneers of PFT was Erika\u00a0 Friedman, head of the Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences\u00a0 at Brooklyn College. Even though there were obvious benefits to owning pets shown in many of the studies, common sense needs to be applied to the findings.<\/p>\n
Pets are not medicine, and the scientific\u00a0 case for the benefits of pet ownership is not watertight. In 1995\u00a0 in a review of research, Dr. Friedman said there\u2019s no question\u00a0 that emotions have an impact on health, and that pets may help\u00a0 promote positive emotions.<\/p>\n
Still, it will always be difficult to\u00a0 study this subject scientifically, since emotions are not measureable.\u00a0\u00a0 If pet owners are healthier,\u00a0 it\u2019s always possible that they were healthier to begin with. Clinical trials are impossible in areas like this\u2014you can\u2019t\u00a0 really hand out pets and test their effects, as you might test\u00a0 the effects of a drug.<\/p>\n
Also, though it has been shown that\u00a0 the presence of a friendly pet can have a positive effect on heart\u00a0 rate and blood pressure, it\u2019s not clear that a person actually\u00a0 has to own the animal to get the effect.
\nThey could get it from petting an animal coming to visit it for a certain period of time for example. Pet ownership is a big repsonsibility and is becoming prohibitively expensive for some as we struggle through this current recession.<\/p>\n
Still, Dr. Friedman concludes\u00a0 that since heart disease and other stress-related diseases are\u00a0 so common in our society, it can\u2019t hurt to recommend pets\u00a0 for their calming effect\u2014at least for people who like animals\u00a0 and are willing and able to undertake the responsibility and expense of owning\u00a0 one.<\/p>\n
Continued in The Power of Pawsitive Thinking Part 3<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Science plus common sense One of the pioneers of PFT was Erika\u00a0 Friedman, head of the Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences\u00a0 at Brooklyn College. Even though there were obvious benefits to owning pets shown in many of the studies, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pets-and-health"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}