It’s something I grew up thinking, and I don’t even remember where I first heard the idea: pets improve your health. They’re especially good for the elderly or others living alone. Pets give you someone to care about and look after, bringing additional purpose and companionship to your life. Some recent medical studies, however, indicate that owning pets might have a more direct effect on our health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claim that pet ownership can decrease our blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglyceride. Their studies also indicate that rates of stress, loneliness, and depression are lower among … Continue reading →

Here’s an even better reason to expose your children to pets at an early age: adults never exposed to them have a higher chance of developing allergies if they get pets. A team from the University Hospital of Verona (in Italy) studied more than 6,000 adults twice in nine years. It found that people who had never lived with cats before, and then adopted them in adulthood, doubled their chances of becoming allergic to the cat. The chances were even higher if the adults had other allergies or asthma. The process of becoming allergic to something when previously you weren’t … Continue reading →

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a real reason to keep our dogs around our babies? Some people are terrified of the idea, thinking that it’s dangerous to let dogs around small children. At first it’s best never to leave dogs alone with babies, to make sure the animals know to be gentle around them. However, we pet owners know that some dogs are great with babies. There have already been some studies about how being around dogs in the first year of infancy can help reduce the chances of a child later developing allergies to dogs, but what about … Continue reading →