Think an elderly family member is better off with a pet? You may want to think again.
Sure, there have been hundreds of articles claiming dogs and cats can lower blood pressure, zap stress and combat depression and loneliness. But some experts say the evidence that pet companionship is healthy is not all that definitive. And for the elderly, having a dog and cat can be both stressful and dangerous.
Falls involving pets and their paraphernalia are an underappreciated health hazard. ?Over 86,000 people per year have to go to the emergency room because of falls involving their dogs and cats, and these fractures can be devastating for the elderly,? said Judy Stevens, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and lead author of a report on this peril.
?If we were giving a drug that had such a serious side effect, we?d consider taking that drug off the market,? said Harold Herzog, professor of psychology at Western Carolina University.
In a 2011 report in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, Dr. Herzog took aim at a central tenet of pet ownership: the widely touted evidence that pets are good for people.
Take a truth that we animal-lovers hold to be self-evident ? that pets cheer us up. A December 2011 study in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that pet owners had greater self-esteem, were less lonely and tended to be less fearful than people without pets. And another study reported that pets eased depression and agitation and improved nutritional well-being among nursing home patients with dementia and Alzheimer?s.
Dr. Herzog, who is also author of ?Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It?s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals,? is having none of it. Contradictory findings haven?t gotten anywhere near as much publicity, he said. A 2011 study of elderly people in Pennsylvania found that the more attached they were to their pets, the more depressed they were, he pointed out.
Researchers have reported more than once that if you have a strong social network, having pets won?t make you any happier.
Indeed, a new study of 8,709 adolescents in Sweden, published this month, found that those with pets reported more psychological problems than those without.
A survey of 3,000 Americans by the Pew Center found no difference between pet owners and people without pets in the proportion who rated themselves ?very happy.? And Dr. Herzog cited a 2007 longitudinal study in England showing that even though people who got pets said they felt happier and less lonely, their responses on more objective psychological tests didn?t show them to be.
As for pets easing stress and lowering blood pressure, a widely cited benefit, Dr. Herzog acknowledged one ?good, clinically controlled study? to back the conclusion. (There was another, arguably: Medicare patients with pets reported feeling less stress than people without pets and visited doctors? offices less often.)
Some of those results have been tough to replicate. Two similar studies (published in Anthrozoos in 1997 and in Epidemiology in 2007) found that the presence of pets did not lower blood pressure.
Furthermore, among the elderly, pets can actually add to the stress, rather than ease it, if the aging owners find it difficult to keep up with the care.
?Getting outside a few times a day to walk the pet is an incredible burden ? that?s why most of our clients are elderly,? said Rachel Herman, founder of Pets are Wonderful Support, or PAWS, a New York City nonprofit group that helps low-income residents care for their pets. ?And often they can?t afford the vet.?
And then there?s the heartbreak that the death of a beloved pet can bring.
?Grief over an animal is very real,? said Alan Beck, professor of animal ecology at the Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine, who has conducted research on the positive effects of pets on Alzheimer?s patients. But Dr. Beck thinks the benefits of ownership probably outweigh the drawbacks for the elderly.
Both sides agree that pets can help increase the amount of exercise their owners get. A Canadian study found that dog owners walked nearly twice as much per week, 300 minutes, compared with their dog-free counterparts, clocking in at only 168 minutes (though a California study by the National Cancer Institute credited dog owners with walking only 18.9 minutes more each week than people without dogs).
But the evidence is mixed regarding pets and heart disease. One of the first peer-reviewed studies into the healing power of pets, in 1980, found that 28 percent of pet owners survived the risky first year after a heart attack, while only 6 percent of patients without pets did. And even cats, which rarely submit to walks, somehow lowered their owners? chances of dying of heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases, compared with people who didn?t own a cat, according to a new study by the University of Minnesota Stroke Research Center.
But just to show you how slippery pet research can be, this same Minnesota research did not find any heart-attack protection among owners of dogs (or any other pets).
And Dr. Herzog said, after excusing himself for a minute to let his cat in during our phone call, ?there?s another study in which cat owners had four times the hospital readmission rate of non-cat owners after a heart attack.?
So is pet ownership healthy or harmful for the elderly? There is little debate about the safety and success of pet programs that bring animals into nursing homes or hospitals for patients to play with and pet.
But individual pet ownership may be a different proposition, and it depends a great deal on the strengths and weaknesses of the owner. ?I?m not a Grinch,? said Dr. Herzog, ?but the science is not as clear as most people think.?
Dr. Beck countered: ?Herzog?s wrong, even if he is a friend. He?d probably like to find that apple pie causes cancer.?
He added, ?When the benefits are so much larger than the risk, you take the risk.?
Are they? Do you?
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