Study: Sleeping With Pets Can Kill You — Tell Us What You Think!

As Dogsters very well know, research has shown that dogs can be highly beneficial to our health. What better than physical contact with a pet to alleviate stress, decrease blood pressure, increase immune function, and just make you happy? If petting a dog by day can bring on all these great benefits, it’s only logical that having your dog at your side as you sleep must be really good for you.

Not so, say some scientists.

While most experts don’t deny that dogs can be great for you, a study being published next month in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Emerging Infectious Disease says pets can be downright hazardous to your health if they share your bed.

“…the risk for transmission of zoonotic agents by close contact between pets and their owners through bed sharing, kissing or licking is real and has even been documented for life-threatening infections such as plague, internal parasites” and other serious diseases, report the authors of the study, both veterinarians.

With more than half of dog and cat owners ‘fessing up to letting their pets sleep in bed with them, you’d think people would be dropping like flies if this research were correct. But it turns out that the risks are slim, and are generally limited to children and the immunocompromised.

The study points to dog kisses as potential dangers

It’s actually cats who transmit most of the nasty things out there, the study’s authors say. A good post on AOL News cites the case of a 9-year-old boy from Arizona who got the plague because he slept with his flea-infested cat.

But dogs have been blamed for transmitting their share of diseases and infections while sharing a bed with people. The AOL article points to a 48-year-old man and his wife repeatedly contracted MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Their physicians attributed this to their dog, who slept in their bed and licked their faces routinely.

The AOL article is worth reading if you want more details. We’d love you to bark back and tell us what you think about this pronouncement, Dogsters. Does your dog sleep in your bed? Are you still alive? Please share your experiences.

I hope that when the study is published, it doesn’t get blown out of proportion by the popular press and cause people to start kicking their beloved pets out of bed. Flea control and hand (face?) washing can probably go a long way to reducing whatever risk there may be.

(Disclaimer: Jake does not sleep in our bed. He would take up most of it, and he “runs” in his sleep far more than the average dog. But, gross as it is, he’ll occasionally lick you in the mouth if you happen to be talking close to his face. It’s pretty icky to opening your mouth to say something and having a dog tongue go in your mouth for a split second. I think the cringing makes Jake laugh… The point is, even with this yucky “habit,” we have not gotten horrible diseases. And I include a child in the mix. HBU, Dogsters?)

(A big thanks to Cindy R, of Newport, R.I., for letting me know about this study!)

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NY Times Piece Says Dogs May Not Help Health or Well Being. What Do You Think?

The mother of the photographer snuggles with Chuck during her weeks of radiation therapy. According to a New York Times article, interacting with a dog during radiation therapy does no more to enhance morale than reading a book. Um, don't tell that to this woman, or millions of others whose dogs have been their godsends during chemo and radiation... (Photo: Flickr photostream of Sophia-O)

An op-ed article in the New York Times this week suggests that pets may not have much, if any, positive effect on health or well being. In his article, psychology professor Hal Herzog, author of Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard To Think Straight About Animals, goes so far as to say that pets may actually have a negative effect on us.

He acknowledges that past research has shown that pets are healthy for us, with studies showing “that stroking an animal lowers blood pressure, that AIDS patients living with pets are less depressed and that pet owners have lower cholesterol levels, sleep more soundly, exercise more and take fewer sick days than non-pet owners.” But in the same breath, he says he has found stacks of research showing the opposite: “…that pets have either no long-term effects or have even adverse effects on physical and mental health.”

A 2006 survey of Americans by the Pew Research Center, for instance, reported that living with a pet did not make people any happier. Similarly, a 2000 Australian study of mortality rates found no evidence that pet owners lived any longer than anyone else. And last year Dutch researchers concluded that companion animals had no effect on their owners’ physical or mental well-being. Worse, in 2006, epidemiologists in Finland reported that pet owners were more likely than non-pet owners to suffer from sciatica, kidney disease, arthritis, migraines, panic attacks, high blood pressure and depression.

This pattern of mixed results also holds true for the widely heralded notion that animals can cure various physical afflictions. For example, a study of people with chronic fatigue syndrome found that while pet owners believed that interacting with their pets relieved their symptoms, objective analysis revealed that they were just as tired, stressed, worried and unhappy as sufferers in a control group who had no pets. Similarly, a clinical trial of cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy found that interacting with therapy dogs did no more to enhance the participants’ morale than reading a book did.

Herzog says pets are central to his life, and that he doesn’t mean to diminish their importance as companions. But he’d like to see better research that separates wishful thinking from the truth. According to Herzog, this kind of research is being done now, via a multimillion-dollar research initiative by the National Institutes of Health, in conjunction with Mars (maker of major pet foods).

It will be interesting to see what this research shows. Meanwhile, let’s do our own Dogster “study” and contribute some anecdotal evidence to the mix. Unfortunately the scientific method won’t work in our situation, with Dogster readers spread out across the globe. But I’ll bet you can give the skeptics some fantastic examples of how your dogs have helped you be happier and/or healthier through the years.

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