Interprofessional Education
Catch up with Part 1 about heart health here.
Catch up with Part 2 about allergies here.
As pets are part of the family for many people these days, their impact on our health is important. I'm writing a series of posts about the effects pets have on human health. In Part three I want to talk about the difficulty of measuring the impact of pets on human health.
Daily Mom
The effect of human-and animal interaction on health is not fully understood because it is difficult to study. Most evidence on the benefits of having a pet comes from surveys of people's current health, but that means it is impossible to know if a person is in good health because she has a pet or if he is more likely to get a pet because she is in good health. Someone whose health is poor may decide he does not have the time or energy to care for a pet.
It may be that having a pet for a longer period of time is more beneficial to your health, but it is also possible that people with pets have less time to spare to go to the doctor or are less concerned about their own health.
In addition, people who love their pets are likely to want to let researchers know that their pets help improve their lives. This could bias the study results.
Concerning children, when a child has no brothers or sisters, research shows that pets help children develop greater empathy, higher self-esteem, and increased participation in social and physical activities. Again, how do researchers know what the child would have been like without pets?
Vector net
Another issue is how the word “pet” is defined. Does having a goldfish confer the same health benefits as having a golden retriever dog? Most pet studies are of people who have a dog or a cat, making it difficult to draw conclusions about health benefits of birds, lizards, fish, bunnies or other pets. How much time the person spends with his or her pet could be strongly influenced by the type of pet and in turn could influence the health benefits of having a pet.
There is certainly a lot to think about there.
Do you have a pet? Do you think it benefits your health?
Thank you for viewing!