These articles, written by Dr. Scott Gibbs, appeared as regular health columns in the Southeast Missourian newspaper from 1999 to 2002.
Headline
Healthy Pleasure of Animal Companions 

  Years ago Harry Reasoner interviewed Dr. James Lynch regarding his book The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness wherein he described how important human loneliness is as one of the single most important contributors to premature death in America.  He had noted that “those who lived alone---the single, the widowed and the divorced---had death rates from all causes that ranged anywhere from two to ten times greater than the rates of those who were married”.  During the two days that the film crew spent at his home filming and interviewing him he experienced what he described as a “defining moment...where one’s perceptions, understanding and beliefs change in a truly profound manner”.  He conducted a simple experiment of having his ten-year-old daughter sit all alone in a chair quiet for three minutes followed by reading poetry aloud for two minutes and then being quiet again for three minutes.  During this period of time he measured her blood pressure and she exhibited the usual pressure increase while reading aloud then her blood pressure returned to a baseline.  He then placed their dog, Rags, on her lap and just as soon as she began stroking her dog her blood pressure fell precipitously down to almost fifty percent of the peak that she experienced while she was reading poetry.  Dr. Lynch also recorded this type of response in a medical laboratory at Johns Hopkins Medical School some 15 to 20 years earlier, documenting that when humans petted dogs or other species of animals they experienced highly significant reductions in blood pressure.  The touch that occurred between the human and animal caused a powerful vascular response in both the animal and the human.

     Medical research has shown:

·        Seniors who own dogs had 21 percent fewer physician contacts than non-dog owners.

·        Pet owners have lower blood pressure.

·        Pet owners have lower triglyceride and cholesterol levels than non-owners.

·        Companionship of pets (particularly dogs) helps children adjust better to serious illness and death of a parent.

·        Pet owners feel less afraid of being a victim of crime when walking with a dog or sharing a residence with a dog.

·        Pet owners have fewer minor health problems.

·        Pet owners have a higher on-year survival rate following coronary artery disease.

·        Medication cost dropped from an average of $3.80 per patient to $1.18 per patient per day in new nursing home facilities in New York, Missouri and Texas that had animals and plants as an integral part of the environment.

·        Pets decrease feelings of loneliness and isolation.

·        Children who own pets score significantly higher on empathy and pro-social orientation scales than non-owners.

   Our physiology seems to be set in such a way that when we include the rest of the living world around us there is a harmonious health effect.  This is especially true of interaction with other animals and this interaction and its effect upon reducing human loneliness and social disconnectedness may positively shape our life and it may even extend it.