Do You Know That Owning A Pet Can Improve You Health? See How.

Companionship and unconditional love is what we love most about our furry friends. But, it seems our pets do a whole lot more than love us. Studies have shown that living with a pet can improve your health in a number of ways and, more than that, be your ticket to staying young.

Owning a pet can:

•Lower your blood pressure

•Encourage you to become more active (Walk, anyone?)

•Help you cope with stress

•Help you live longer after a heart attack

•Make it that much easier to live alone

•Improve your mood and sense of wellbeing

•One study found that pets can buffer how you react to stress.

The study compared the heart rates and blood pressure levels of people without pets with those who owned them and the results were surprising - people with animal companions had lower heart rates and blood pressure levels. On top of that, they had smaller increases in those levels when put under stress and faster recovery from elevated levels following stress.

In a separate study, stockbrokers with high blood pressure were treated with a type of medication called an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor. Of that group, those individuals who owned a pet experienced even greater reductions in blood pressure when under stress.

Studies of older adults suggest that those who shared their lives with pets were less likely to experience depression, were better able to handle living alone and were more active than their counterparts who didn’t have pets.