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Stroke a cat it cuts stroke risk by a third |
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Written by MyPetFriends
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Wednesday, 19 March 2008 |
 American scientists have discovered that cat ownership helps to relieve stress and anxiety, which is known to help protect against heart disease by lowering blood pressure and reducing the heart rate. You lucky cat owners.
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At a stroke conference in America, researchers showed that 3.4 per cent of cat owners died from a heart attack over 10 years. The study looked at 4,435 adults aged between 30 and 75, about half of whom owned a cat. Among the group who had never owned a cat the rate was 5.8 per cent. Cat owners still had a much reduced chance of developing strokes or heart attacks when researchers took account of other factors known to trigger heart disease, including high cholesterol levels, smoking and diabetes.
Prof Adnan Qureshi, from the Minnesota University, who carried out the study, believes one reason for the benefits of cat ownership to health could be that stroking the pet could cut the level of stress-related hormones in the blood. Reducing stress is known to help protect against heart disease by lowering blood pressure and reducing the heart rate. But Prof Qureshi went on to say that the type of person who owned a cat was usually already fairly stress-free and at low risk of heart disease (tell us something we don’t already know Professor)
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