Spending time with furry kids doesn't just make you feel better! "JAMA": The "risk" for pet owners is expected to decrease significantly
Many people find spiritual comfort through keeping pets. In fact, it has been scientifically proven that spending time with furry children not only improves mental health, but actually helps improve cognitive function and avoid potential risks of cognitive decline. A study published in the authoritative journal “JAMA Network” pointed out that pet owners have slower degradation of verbal memory and language fluency and have better cognitive functions than those who do not own pets.
Spending time with furry kids doesn’t just make you feel better! “JAMA”: Keeping pets can help delay “cognitive decline”
A research team from China used data from 7,945 subjects in the “English Longitudinal Study on Aging (ELSA)”. The average age was 66.3 years old, about 35.1% owned pets, and 26.9% currently lived alone. The study first used a linear mixed model to explore the relationship between pet ownership and cognitive ability, including age, gender and race, education, employment status, wealth status, living alone and social isolation.
The results found that compared with non-pet owners, pet owners experienced slower declines in overall verbal cognition, verbal memory, and verbal fluency. Specifically, the annual decline rate of owners in the three major areas was 0.008, 0.006 and 0.007 standard deviations respectively; however, compared to those living with others, the decline rate of those living alone in the three major areas was faster, increasing respectively. 0.021, 0.018 and 0.015 standard deviations.
In addition, the study also found that people who live alone seem to play a mediating role between keeping pets and the speed of cognitive decline. For those who live alone, the decline rate of pet owners in three major areas is 0.023, 0.021 and 0.018 standard deviations respectively. In groups living with others, the relationship between keeping pets and reducing cognitive decline is Less obvious.
Overall, the research suggests that keeping pets may help slow cognitive decline in language, especially among people who live alone. The research team also pointed out that although living alone is associated with faster cognitive decline, having pets seems to mitigate this risk to a certain extent.
Is living alone related to cognitive decline? Expert: Keeping pets may help reduce risks
Professor Li Yuanzhi, the lead author of the study and a Ph.D. from the School of Public Health of Sun Yat-sen University in China, said that elderly people living alone have a higher risk of developing dementia, and living alone is not easy to change. Notably, pet owners who live together do not show a faster decline in cognitive function than pet owners who live with a co-resident. “Results suggest that owning a pet may help offset the relationship between living alone and cognitive decline in the elderly!”
Professor Li Yuanzhi pointed out that future research may further explore the correlation between keeping pets and preventing dementia; in addition, past studies have pointed out that people living alone are at greater risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, depression, addictive behavior, suicide or premature death. High, and whether keeping pets can offset these risks requires larger-scale studies to confirm.
Don’t you have to choose between furry and kids anymore? “Living together” can reduce children’s food allergies
In fact, keeping pets is not only beneficial for the elderly living alone, but also has the benefit of “preventing food allergies” for children? A study published in “PLOS ONE” by Fukushima Prefectural Medical University in Japan pointed out that by analyzing the health data of 97,413 mothers and their children, the results showed that exposure to indoor cats and dogs during fetal development or early infancy is associated with the following food allergy risks: Reduction related to:
Can reduce the risk of “all food allergies” before 3 years old. Exposure to cats/dogs during fetal period and exposure to cats/dogs in infancy decreased by 16%/14% and 13%/13% respectively.
Can reduce the risk of “egg allergy” before 3 years old. Exposure to cats/dogs during fetal period and exposure to cats/dogs during infancy decreased by 17%/16% and 18%/16% respectively.
Can reduce the risk of “milk allergy” before 3 years old. Exposure to cats/dogs during fetal period and exposure to dogs during infancy decreased by 17/18% and 16% respectively.
Can reduce the risk of “wheat allergy” before 3 years old. Exposure to cats during fetal/infancy decreased by 16%/37% respectively.
Exposure to indoor cats in early childhood can reduce the risk of “soy allergy” by 57% before the age of 3.
Exposure to indoor dogs in early childhood can reduce the risk of “nut allergy” by 28% before the age of 3 ; exposure to hamsters during fetal period will increase the allergy rate by 1.93 times.
In addition, fish, fruit, crustacean and buckwheat allergies were not significantly different from exposure to any pet species, the team said. The number of cases with rice and sesame allergy was too small to allow adequate adjustment for covariates. The study also found no significant difference between exposure to pet turtles or birds before age 3 and the incidence of any specific food allergy.
However, Dr. Okabe believes that this study still has many limitations. For example, the study did not conduct any objective assessment such as oral food challenges, blood tests, or skin tests to diagnose food allergy, but relied on medical records provided by parents to determine the diagnosis. In the future, randomized controlled trials with pet exposure allocation may be needed to confirm the research team’s conclusions and further explore the correlation between keeping pets and preventing and treating allergies.
Source:
Pet Ownership, Living Alone, and Cognitive Decline Among Adults 50 Years and Older
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