5 Reasons Why Owning a Dog Will Make You Live Longer
December 28, 2011 3 Comments
When you are stressed, how do you deal with it?
Do you eat excessively?
Do you sleep all day?
Do you smoke cigarettes?
A dog can be your best friend
Stress leads to a bunch of terrible habits, and people resort to them because they are easy and make them feel better immediately.
What these people don’t take seriously enough is that these stress relievers lead to heart attacks, strokes, and multiple types of cancers.
There are much better ways of dealing with stress. Meditation, Yoga, exercise and talking with friends are great methods, but they should be obvious to you after following ZazenLife.
One way to eliminate stress that many people don’t know about is owning a dog(s). Research has shown that owning a dog(s) provides an excellent source of stress relief, maybe even more than speaking to your friend.
Here is a list of reasons why dogs are one of the best stress relievers:
1. Dogs Control Your Blood Pressure
Stress and tension can cause major spikes in your blood pressure. Yes, there is medicine on the market that can control your blood pressure, but why not try out a natural method.
Stock Brokers have been used in a recent study to test out if dogs would improve a person’s blood pressure spikes, and they did!
Stock Brokers who got dogs were found to have a lower blood pressure and heart rate than those who didn’t get dogs.
Dogs relieve stress
2. Dogs Eliminate Loneliness and Provide Unconditional Love
When you are home alone, you probably do a lot of thinking.
This may not affect people with positive personalities, but people who suffer from negativity may think only bad things. This can lead to severe sadness and even depression.
If you have a dog, you will always have company, and you will always have someone to cuddle with. It is a proven fact that cuddling reduces stress and increases happiness.
Your dog will never be mad at you, and they keep secrets better than anyone else.
If you are feeling a lack of social support and are isolated from society, get yourself a dog.
3. Dogs keep you in a good mood
I use to have a dog, and it was impossible to ever be in a bad mood when she was with me.
Literally impossible.
Dogs bring you this feeling of happiness that cannot be compared to anything else.
Men that tested positive with AIDS have been used in recent studies to test this. Most of these men that have AIDS suffer from depression for obvious reasons, but if they had dogs, they were less likely to become depressed. Men with AIDS that didn’t have dogs were 3 times more likely to become depressed.
4. Dogs force you to exercise
Exercise is a great method of reducing stress, but a lot of people have trouble actually getting up and doing something physical.
If you own a dog, you are basically forced to walk them at least two times a day (if they are not house dogs). This may not like a lot of exercise, but it is much better than not exercising at all.
5. Dogs can initiate conversation
Sometimes, it may seem difficult to start a conversation with someone.
If you are walking by yourself and pass someone you may be interested in, you might choke and not approach them. This is a problem that many people have.
You might be passing up on the person you will spend the rest of your life with (which will bring you even more happiness).
Men sometimes feel intimidated to talk to women that they are attracted to. Owning a dog makes it a lot easier to stir up conversation, as they act as a third-party in this situation. They take a lot of the tension off of your shoulders.
“Oh my god your dog is so cute!”
Now you can go multiple ways with this, just choose the right words. You might not have realized this, but your dog just hooked you up.
Dogs simply make a person’s life so much easier. When you are down they bring you up, and when you are lonely they give you company.
If you get yourself a dog and they positively change your life, don’t thank me, thank Max! 🙂
Zazen Life 