The immune boosting potential of keeping fluffy friends in our homes: diversifying the microbiome, stress busting and social connection.
Paw dust, pet cuddles and the occasional pet lick can be incredibly beneficial. The notion that pets provide an immune benefit to human health stems from the hygiene hypothesis, first put forward by David Strachan in 1989. He attributed the risk of allergic disease to overly hygienic environments.
There has been much research since then to validate his claims such as this study which concludes that early-life exposure to household pets has the capacity to reduce risk for overweight and allergic disease in children.
‘… exposure to pets increased the abundance of two bacteria, Ruminococcus and Oscillospira, which have been negatively associated with childhood atopy and obesity.’ (1)
A fascinating read if you are intrigued by the complexities of the microbiome.
Simply put, pets bring into the home a diversity of bacteria which we either inhale or pick up from surface tops such as work surfaces, bare floors, duvets and the toilet seat (ever caught your cat drinking water out of the bowl?). One benefit of this new bacteria is that a diversity of microbes is capable of priming the immune system, so that it is ready to act should the individual be exposed to a pathogen.
When I find our beautiful moggy horizontally positioned across the kid’s duvet, his dusty paws stretched out in a state of yogic relaxation I consider 3 things:
He is diversifying our microbiomes
I should learn to live in the moment
He offers social connection at a time when we may be suffering from a lack of this
Animals in the home offer more than additional microbes. Data suggests that exposure to pets may influence other specific aspects of the immune system. After petting a dog, volunteers in one study showed significant increase in salivary levels of an immune antibody called IgA, a key player in our immune defense.
And then there is stress busting. Chronic psychological stress is well known to damage our immune function, inhibiting our ability to ward off infections while increasing inflammation. Pets may be able to help dampen this destructive effect by reducing stress hormone output through companionship and the social connection we feel by another’s presence, whether human, feline, canine or other.
Of 2,000 pet owners in a recent review, 74 percent reported mental health improvements from pet ownership. (2) Other research suggests that pets may even increase longevity.
Data from a 2019 review with the involvement of over 3 million people revealed that dog ownership was associated with a 24 percent reduced risk of dying over a 10-year period.
There is no better time of our lives to give our pets the deserved place within our homes, to stroke for those well needed oxytocin (the love hormone) hits, feel a sense of presence and not worry too much about the paw prints.
(1) https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-017-0254-x
(2) https://habri.org/2016-pet-owners-survey