Petting other people’s dogs, even briefly, can improve your health for MONTHS at a time

No one needs to be told that petting a dog can brighten your day, but a growing body of research suggests it can also be good for your health.

A new field of scientific research has found that even brief positive experiences between humans and man’s best friend can have a lasting impact, lowering stress hormones and increasing what experts sometimes call the “love hormone.”

In fact, there is growing evidence that even brief moments of quality time with a good dog can help people think better.

Brief interactions between schoolchildren and dogs every two weeks helped improve the young people’s reasoning and concentration — positive effects that researchers say lasted for months.

“I think it’s safe to say that animals are beneficial to our mental and physical health,” psychiatry professor Nancy Gee, director of the Center for Human-Animal Interaction at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), told National Public Radio.

“We’re seeing very nice effects,” she added.

Gee’s center at VCU is part of an explosion of new research into the health-promoting potential of humans who interact more frequently with animals.

Research on the topic has expanded thanks to funding from both the public sector, including the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and private non-profit organizations, most notably the Waltham PetCare Science Institute.

However, Gee is quick to point out that “pets are not a panacea,” and that many of the therapy dogs used in her group’s research were specially selected for their good behavior, friendly demeanor, and willingness to follow directions.

In addition, not everyone is a dog person, due to allergies or simply due to personal preference.

“But for people who really get it, who really interact with the animals, they can really make a big difference,” Gee said.

Last year, a team of medical researchers and psychologists was in Australia reviewed 129 peer-reviewed studies of human-canine interactionswhich found that more than half of those studies measured positive physiological changes in people’s bodies and minds.

In particular, these studies have shown that the presence of the stress hormone cortisol is greatly reduced in people who have enjoyed just 5 to 20 minutes with a dog. It didn’t matter, the researchers said, whether it was their pet or someone else’s.

“We’re also seeing an increase in oxytocin, that feel-good kind of bonding hormone,” Gee told NPR.

The Australian team also found broad scientific consensus that human-canine interactions increased “heart rate variability,” changes in people’s heart rates that have proven to be a good measure of overall health improvement.

According to medical experts, a higher “heart rate variability” (HVR) has been associated with increased levels of relaxation, while a lower HVR has been associated with major depression diagnoses and a higher risk of fatal heart disease.

“What I like about this research,” Gee said, “is that it’s a two-way street”

“We see the same thing with the dogs,” she noted. “So dogs’ oxytocin also increases when they interact with a human.”

There is some evidence that levels of the stress hormone cortisol decrease in people who have enjoyed just 5 to 20 minutes with a dog. Research has shown that it didn’t matter if it was their pet or someone else’s. But the best part: the dogs’ brains also felt the love

Gee herself contributed to international collaborations for this research, helping scientists at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom a randomized control trial investigating how regular play with dogs can benefit schoolchildren.

The team looked at the effects of short interactions between young students, each around eight and nine years old, and dogs who visit their classroom about twice a week.

She and her colleagues found that the students who played with dogs during the week had less stress and better “executive functioning,” meaning that their reasoning skills and their ability to concentrate improved measurably.

And those cognitive benefits didn’t fade with time.

“We actually saw[those effects]a month later,” Gee said. “And there is some evidence that (they) may exist six months later.”

Of course, for as good as an impromptu encounter with a new dog at a public park or school, their health benefits pale in comparison to the documented rewards of owning a true blue dog.

Another comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed scientific studies, this one published by the American Heart Associationfound that dog ownership was linked to a 33 percent drop in the risk of death for heart attack survivors who lived alone.

The so-called “meta-analysis,” which pooled data from 10 studies that all tracked the health of 3.8 million people, reduced the risk of death for stroke survivors who previously lived alone by 27 percent.

Overall, the American Heart Association found that living with a dog reduced the risk of death — across the board — by 24 percent and lowered the risk of death from a heart attack by 31 percent.

According to Megan Mullera psychology professor at Tufts University, one of the reasons dogs are so good at reducing stress and improving focus for humans is simply because they are so good at living in the moment.

“Animals, and dogs in particular, live in the moment,” Mueller told NPR. ‘They constantly experience their surroundings with wonder and awe.’

“They don’t bring up what happened to them earlier in the day or what they’re thinking about going forward,” she said. “They’re here now.”