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The unconditional love of a pet can do more than keep you company. Pets may also decrease stress, improve heart health, and even help children with their emotional and social skills.

Over the past 10 years, the National Institute of Health has partnered with the Mars Corporation’s Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition to fund research studies. Scientists are looking at what the potential physical and mental health benefits are from different pets — from fish to guinea pigs to dogs and cats.

Interacting with animals has been shown to decrease levels of cortisol (a stress-related hormone) and lower blood pressure. Other studies have found that animals can reduce loneliness, increase feelings of social support, and boost your mood.

Researchers are looking into how animals might influence child development. They’re studying animal interactions with kids who have autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other conditions.

“There’s not one answer about how a pet can help somebody with a specific condition,” explained Layla Esposito, Ph.D., who oversees NIH’s Human Animal-Interaction Research Program.

“Is your goal to increase physical activity? Then you might benefit from owning a dog you have to walk several times a day. If your goal is reducing stress, sometimes watching fish swim can result in a feeling of calmness.”

Therapy dogs

Animals can serve as a source of comfort and support. Therapy dogs are especially good at this. They’re sometimes brought into hospitals or nursing homes to help reduce patients’ stress and anxiety.

“Dogs are very present. If someone is struggling with something, [dogs] know how to sit there and be loving,” said Dr. Ann Berger, a physician and researcher at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md. “Their attention is focused on the person all the time.”

Berger works with people who have cancer and terminal illnesses. She teaches them about mindfulness to help decrease stress and manage pain.

“The foundations of mindfulness include attention, intention, compassion and awareness,” Berger said. “All of those things are things that animals bring to the table. People kind of have to learn it. Animals do this innately.”

Researchers are studying the safety of bringing animals into hospital settings because animals may expose people to more germs.

A current study is looking at the safety of bringing dogs to visit children with cancer, Esposito said. Scientists will be testing the children’s hands to see if there are dangerous levels of germs transferred from the dog after the visit.

Animals go to school

Dogs may also aid in the classroom. One study found that dogs can help children with ADHD focus their attention.

Researchers enrolled two groups of children diagnosed with ADHD into 12-week group therapy sessions. The first group of kids read to a therapy dog once a week for 30 minutes. The second group read to puppets that looked like dogs.

Kids who read to the real animals showed better social skills and more sharing, cooperation and volunteering. They also had fewer behavioral problems.

Another study found that children with autism spectrum disorder were calmer while playing with guinea pigs in the classroom. When the children spent 10 minutes in a supervised group playtime with guinea pigs, their anxiety levels dropped. The children also had better social interactions and were more engaged with their peers.

The researchers suggest that the animals offered unconditional acceptance, making them a calm comfort to the children. “Animals can become a way of building a bridge for those social interactions,” Griffin said.

He added that researchers are trying to better understand these effects and whom they might help.

A Wellness Update is a magazine devoted to up-to-the minute information on health issues from physicians, major hospitals and clinics, universities and healthcare agencies across the U.S. Online at http://www.awellnessupdate.com.

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