|
PET CARE TIPS & OWNERSHIP INFORMATION
Add 10 years to your life by loving a pet
Almost 60 percent of us house, feed, and care for a furry, finned, or feathered
friend – and in return, they give us unconditional love. But pet ownership
brings more than just warm fuzzies; studies have documented that caring for a
pet relieves stress, depression, and even pain.
“Now the latest research suggests that the health benefits go even deeper than
that,” says animal ecologist Alan Becker, Sc.D., at Purdue University. In fact,
experts now say just having a pet in the house can lower your blood pressure and
cholesterol.
In one National Institutes of Health (NIH) study, just interacting with animals
caused an eight-point drop in blood pressure – enough to reduce the risk of
stroke 15 percent. And another NIH study showed that animal owners have 13
percent lower cholesterol than those without pets!
“We believe these benefits are due to the fact that pets help lower our
production of damaging stress hormones,“ says Becker, author of Between Pets
and People.
The health payoff can be dramatic: in one study, pet owners were four times
less likely to have a heart attack – and 78 percent less likely to
have a second one if they’d already had one.
Check out these links for more pet care
tips:
Grief support websites
www.Petloss.com
The Pet Loss and Grief Support Website
and Candle Ceremony; Cornell University Pet Loss Support Hotline;
CARE: Helpline
http://neuro.vetmed.ufl.edu/alt_med/petgrief/losslinks.htm
University of Florida Pet Grief Support
Hotline: 1-800-552-1076
H. A. Nieburg & A. Fischer, Pet Loss: A
Thoughtful Guide for Adults and Children, $2.50 per copy, Harper &
Row, 1-800-331-3761, 1-800-328-3443
http://neuro.vetmed.ufl.edu/alt_med/petgrief/literature.html
University of Florida Veterinary School
Pet Memorial Brochure
Whether the cause of death is due to old age, an untimely accident, or
other circumstances, it is a blow that leaves a pet owner with a sense
of tremendous loss.
http://www.vetmed.ufl.edu/pr/broch/pet_mem.htm
|
