Owning a dog may encourage older people to exercise

Conclusion This relatively small observational study shows that dog owners over the age of 65 walk more than matched controls who don't own dogs. This finding is perhaps not surprising, given that dogs need to be walked every day. People without dogs may not have this sort of incentive to get out walking. So, it could be assumed that the dog is the direct cause of the increased walking time. But it's also possible that more active people who enjoy spending time outdoors may be more likely to own dogs. For all we know, the dog owner group may have been more active even if they didn't have dogs. There are some points to note about this study: The study had a fairly small sample and quite a high drop out rate. This means the differences in walking time can't be taken as definite – larger samples of dog walkers and non-dog walkers, or those from different regions, could have given different time differences. The big improvement in meeting physical activity recommendations may not be accurate because of the high confidence intervals around the figures. If reliable, the roughly 22-minute difference in how much dog owners walked each day may be expected to make a difference to health outcomes, but we can't be certain about that. Normal walking/sedentary habits and information about the person's health were self-reported, which may introduce inaccuracies. The research doesn't focus on the health of participants, but it's possible that people with more chronic hea...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Older people Source Type: news