As a child, Dr. Dhruv Kazi was obsessed with dogs. As a cardiologist and health economist, he wrote about their health benefits. But he didn’t get one of his own until his early 40s.
In 2019, he moved to Boston to take a job as the director of the Cardiac Critical Care Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Then Covid hit. Living alone and working in the intensive care unit, Dr. Kazi said the first year of the pandemic was “immensely isolating.”
Everything changed in 2021 when he got Rumi, a high-energy, high-affection vizsla puppy. Thanks to Rumi, Dr. Kazi started spending more time outside, got to know his neighbors and had a much-needed dose of “positive energy” and “goofiness” injected into his life.
Research dating back decades has found that people who own pets, especially dogs, tend to be healthier than people who don’t.
Studies show that having a pet is associated with lower blood pressure, a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and lower rates of death after a heart attack or stroke. And a large review of studies published in 2019 found that owning a dog was associated with a 24 percent lower risk of dying from all causes over the course of 10 years.
The benefit is so striking when it comes to heart health that the American Heart Association even has a scientific statement devoted to it, declaring that dog ownership “may be reasonable for reduction in cardiovascular disease risk.” (The organization doesn’t advise getting a dog for the sole purpose of heart health, though.)
“Pet owners in general, but dog owners in particular, have longer, healthier lives than people who don’t have pets,” Dr. Kazi said. “The correlation is very convincing. Now the question is: Is this relationship causal?”
Some Pet Theories
Experts think one potential explanation for the health benefits is that people who own dogs tend to be more physically active than those who don’t.