How Pets are Providing a Healthy Lifestyle for Seniors

July 7, 2011 - PRLog -- With 39 percent of households in the United States owning 77.5 million dogs, it’s not surprising to know that dogs simply bring joy to humans. The Society of Certified Senior Advisors recently released an interesting article that discusses how owning a pet has significant benefits to a person’s health and wellbeing, especially to those over the age of 65.    

A study in the Journal of American Geriatrics demonstrates that “seniors living on their own who have pets tend to have better physical health and mental well-being than those who don’t. They are more active, cope better with stress and have better overall health. They also reported shorter hospital stays and less health-care costs than non-pet owners.”

Studies have shown that dogs in particular provide the following benefits:
  Reduced stress and lower blood pressure  
  Increased amount of exercise
  Enhanced social interaction
  And more   

Excerpts from article:

“People with Alzheimer’s disease have smiled and laughed because of interactions with dogs (Buttram, D. 2004). Patients who underwent joint replacement surgery and were visited by therapy dogs needed 50 percent less pain medication (Plunkett 2009).”

“Cancer in many forms has proven to be a disease that dogs can accurately smell. Using urine samples from people with and without bladder and prostate cancers, dogs have accurately uncovered the cancerous samples. The British Medical Journal published a    study from the scientists at Amersham hospital in which dogs had a 41 percent success rate for sniffing out bladder cancer.”

This press release contains only small excerpts from its original source. To read the full length of How Pets are Providing a Healthy Lifestyle for Seniors, please visit www.csa.us/HealthLibrary.

The Society of Certified Senior Advisors (SCSA), provides free resources and tools for our members as an ongoing commitment that we have in helping professionals to understand the complex and dynamic lives of modern senior citizens.

About SCSA
SCSA’s mission is to educate professionals to work more effectively with their senior clients. For those who work with seniors, this means understanding the key health, social and financial factors that are important to seniors—and how these factors work together. For more information about SCSA and its educational course, please visit www.csa.us.

Get more information on similar topics. Download them now for free:

If You Have Alzheimer’s Disease, What You Should Know, What Should Do: http://www.csa.us/docs/Alz-WhattoDo.pdf

How to Get Better Healthcare: http://www.csa.us/MedicalQuestions

Fighting Vision Loss: http://www.csa.us/VisionLoss.aspx

Contact:
Erica Ananich, SCSA
(888) 538-2599
society@csa.us
www.csa.us/blog

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SCSA educates professionals to work more effectively with their senior clients. That means understanding the key health, social & financial factors that are important to seniors — so you can find success in the senior market.