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| A new study found that the stress relief cats and kittens provide their owners can lead to healthier hearts. |
The calming effects of stroking a purring cat can help relieve the stress that can lead to a heart attack, according to a study by the Minnesota Stroke Institute at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The 10-year study of more than 4,300 Americans found that the stress relief cats provide their owners can lead to healthier hearts.
“For years we have known that psychological stress and anxiety are related to cardiovascular events, particularly heart attacks,” Dr. Adnan Qureshi, the study’s senior author, told U.S. News and World Report. “Essentially there is a benefit in relieving those inciting factors from pets.”
The study examined data from the federal government’s second National Health and Nutrition Examination Study, which ran from 1976 to 1980. Researchers focused on 4,435 Americans, aged 30 to 75. Of those people, 2,435 either owned a cat or had owned one in the past, while 2,000 had never done so.
The researchers tracked rates of death among this pool, noting all causes of death, including heart attack and stroke. According to Qureshi, cat owners “appeared to have a lower rate of dying from heart attacks” over 10 years of follow up compared to those people who did not own cats. In fact, researchers noted a 30 percent reduction in heart attack risk among cat owners, a finding Qureshi noted “was a little bit surprising.”
“We certainly expected an effect, because we thought that there was a biologically plausible mechanism at work,” Qureshi said. “But the magnitude of the effect was hard to predict.”
Qureshi said dog ownership probably brings people the same type of heart-healthy benefit, but the number of dog owners in the study wasn’t large enough to track statistically.