Pets are good for your health...

Guardian Online

American researchers have discovered that owning a pet can significantly reduce your risk of a common cancer. And that's not all, says Emine Saner

The body of evidence supporting the notion that pet ownership is good for your health grew even fatter this month. A new study, published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, found that keeping animals can cut the risk of developing the relatively common cancer of the immune system, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, by almost one third.

"The idea that pets and good health are associated goes back 20 years or more," says Dr June McNicholas, a psychologist who has researched the relationship between people and their pets. The catalogue of health plusses can't all be attributed to regular dogwalking however. When a study suggested that people who own pets have better cardiac health, says McNicholas, "one of the significant factors in people recovering well from a heart attack was owning a pet, but it wasn't just dogs. It applied equally to cats." Here are some of the many ways in which pets have been found to strengthen our constitutions.
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