Official: Cats are Good For Your Health
A leading academic has conducted a study that shows cat owners are at much less risk of heart attack than people who don’t own a cat.
Professor Adnan Qureshi is Executive Director of the Stroke Research Center at the University of Minnesota. At the 2008 International Stroke Conference in New Orleans, he presented findings of a study of data from a 10 year study of 4,435 Americans. Roughly half of them had owned a cat at some point during in their lives.
What the study showed was that people who had owned a cat had a 40% less chance of suffering a heart attack.
The study didn’t offer any explanation as to why this is the case, but Prof. Qureshi speculated that being in the company of a cat reduces stress and anxiety (Hardly news to us cat owners!) - both contributing factors in heart attacks.
Other experts have suggested that stroking and petting a cat reduces stress, blood pressure and heart rate, while others reckon that cat owners are the sort of people who are less susceptible to heart attacks anyway.
Whatever the reasons, it’s good to have the scientists confirm what we cat owners have known all along - cats are good for you!