Pets: Good for Your Health

As pet lovers, we all know the inherent benefits associated with owning a fur friend. We all look forward to having one to snuggle up with at the end of the day, and appreciate our very own Cuddle Champions in their own right. But can pets have actual benefits outside of giving us the "warm fuzzies"? A new report says they can.

A new article posted by our friends at iVillage says that owning a pet can have mental and physical health benefits. According to the article, pet ownership can help those who are single, widowed or lonely, as the interaction between a pet and a person has many of the benefits that person-to-person interaction has. In that vein, interaction with a pet can work to ease anxiety and stress.

Additionally, owning a pet has been shown to help heart patients. In heart attack survivors, pet ownership combined with a "high overall level of social support" was shown to give a patient a greater chance of survival over the course of one year. This greater chance of survival, however, only applied to dog owners, and may be attributable to the exercise that people may get from walking their dogs.

The report gives us yet another reason to love our pets.

Do you buy in to pets having health benefits for us? Share your thoughts in a comment!