Cat Ownership Correlated With Heart Health

Ant tips us to a story making the rounds lately, based on reporting a couple of weeks old, that owning a cat could cut your heart attack risk by one third. No such effect was seen from dog ownership, but the researchers say that could be because there weren't enough dog owners in the study population to provide meaningful statistics. The study: "...analyzed data on 4,435 Americans, aged 30 to 75, who took part in the federal government's second National Health and Nutrition Examination Study, which ran from 1976-1980. According to the data in the survey, 2,435 of the participants either owned a cat or had owned a cat in the past, while the remaining 2,000 had never done so. [The] team then tracked rates of death from all causes, including heart and stroke. Cat owners 'appeared to have a lower rate of dying from heart attacks' over 10 years of follow-up compared to feline-free folk..."

Comments

Obviously

[Anne Thwacks]

Obviously, they died of furball before they were old enough to have a heart attack.

Re:Obviously

[The_Jeff_79]

Yeap, Hard to die of a Heart Attack when your smothered in your sleep

LOL

[16Chapel]

I'm in ur aortas, reducing your stress

K thnx bai

Re:LOL

[oodaloop]

so i really can has cheezburger?

I always knew it!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pussy is actually good for you, while having a bitch in your life makes no noticible improvements.

My cats

[foistboinder]

They obviously have never seen our cats. Stress reducers? I don't think so.

Re:My cats

[Lumpy]

Exactly, I have a 1 year old persian that is Evil Incarnate. The little bastard will happily sneak up on you in the middle of the night and then decide to crawl under the covers to steal heat. Then if you move that's the sign to play and you awake in a shriek of "WHAT HE HELL! STOP CLAWING ME!" and then it gives you the innocent kitty look so you dont throw it across the room.

This cat does a lot of other things that has me convinced it's trying to kill me. rushes down the stairs to get fed and then stops on the second step from the bottom so you almost trip and fall to your death for example. I am sure if it could figure out how to flush the toilet when I was in the shower it would be doing it.

I am 100% convinced that cats hate humans. I am certain that if my cat was scaled up to large dog size I would be eaten within 24 hours.

Hmmm

[thedeadswiss]

Does this mean that I can use my health insurance to pay for cat food?

Re:Global Warming Correlated with Pirate Number

[morgan_greywolf]

This could be a bizarre coincidence, or it might be something that we had no idea about before. There have been previous studies that included dogs and other pets that have found similar correlations. The basic idea that many believe is the cause of such correlations is that having a loving pet helps to reduce stress, which, of course, has been proven to reduce the chance of heart attack and stroke.

So, IOW, anything you might do to relieve stress -- pet your cat (or other pet), exercise (good one with additional proven health and heart benefits), shoot your mother-in-law, etc, is good for your heart.

Re:Makes Sense

[Tinfoil]

Dogs are dumb, slobbering beasts that make you take them outside to take a shit.

Rather than shitting in (hopefully) a single location and forcing you to clean it up on a near daily basis lest it offend their senses and they decide the clean, but unfolded, laundry would be a better target?

I do have cats, and I tend to think I would rather have cats than dogs. Besides, that is what I have a human spawn for.

Puppies/Human Larvae are cute.
One must be ever vigilant to protect your property from puppies/spawn
One must clean up the little.... treats left behind.
Neither listen well to verbal commands
Neither will shovel the drive or mow the lawn

Clearly children are nothing more than hairless dogs that have developed the ability to walk upright.

Re:Correlation is not causation.

[JrOldPhart]

Bargain cat scans.

Re:Cats Purr

[autophile]

Wikipedia's article on "purr" claims that all cats DO purr, but their link is to an article on cheetahs. Anyone else?

Sure, I am known to purr on occasion.

--Rob