look news india
An international research team has found that people who own cats are relieved of stress and anxiety. They have fewer heart and BP problems than other people. The Daily Telegraph quoted lead author Professor Adnan Qureshi of the University of Minnesota as saying, “The logical explanation could be that owning a cat relieves stress and anxiety and as a result reduces the risk of heart disease.
According to the researchers, one reason may be that caring for a pet can reduce levels of stress-related hormones in the blood. The team came to this conclusion after analyzing data from 4,435 adults aged 30 to 75, half of whom owned a cat. The team then looked at mortality rates from all causes, including heart disease and stroke.
Professor Qureshi said that after a 10-year follow-up, cat owners had a lower rate of death from heart attacks than people who avoided cats. He said the improved blood flow reduced the risk of heart attack by 30 per cent, which was a bit surprising.
When the team took into account factors that can trigger heart disease, including high cholesterol levels, smoking and diabetes, they found that cat owners were significantly less likely to suffer a stroke or heart attack.
The research showed that we certainly expected an effect, because we thought there was a biologically accepted mechanism at work. But the magnitude of the effect was hard to predict.
The findings were the main result of a 10-year study of more than 4,000 Americans by researchers at the University of Minnesota Stroke Institute in Minneapolis. “We’ve been researching this for years,” Dr. Adnan Qureshi, the institute’s executive director and also the study’s senior author, told U.S. News & World Report.
What we found clearly in this study is that people who own cats are in significantly better health and have a lower risk of stroke and heart attack than normal people.