As a person who has had a few German Shepherds, a Newfoundland, and a Dachshund mix, I realized that it’s not the breeds but the animal that I adore. Dogs are loyal, loving, smart, and incredibly fun pets. No wonder we’ve been hanging out together for thousands of years! So, here’s a treat for everyone just like me who can’t get enough of them: a list of wholesome memes from the appropriately titled Instagram account, ‘Dog Meme Supreme.‘ It’s the next best thing to cuddling one!
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A recent study from the University of Denver, United States, suggests that dogs might have a deeper and more biologically complex effect on humans than scientists previously believed.
“The human response to stress is a finely tuned and coordinated set of various physiological pathways. Previous studies of the effects of dogs on human stress focused on just one pathway at a time. For our study, we zoomed out a bit and measured multiple biological indicators of the body’s state, or biomarkers, from both of the body’s major stress pathways,” co-authors Kevin Morris and Jaci Gandenberger write.
This allowed the team to get a more complete picture of how a dog’s presence affects stress in the human body.
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The stress pathways the scientists measured are the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal, or HPA, axis and the sympathoadrenal medullary, or SAM, axis.
“When a person experiences a stressful event, the SAM axis acts quickly, triggering a ‘fight or flight’ response that includes a surge of adrenaline, leading to a burst of energy that helps us meet threats. This response can be measured through an enzyme called alpha-amylase,” Morris and Gandenberger explain.
At the same time, but a bit slower, the HPA axis activates the adrenal glands to produce the hormone cortisol. “This can help a person meet threats that might last for hours or even days. If everything goes well, when the danger ends, both axes settle down, and the body goes back to its calm state.”
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Today, we get uncomfortable even hearing the word stress, but it has been important to human survival. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had to respond effectively to animal attacks and other threats. In such instances, over-responding could be as ineffective as under-responding, and staying in an optimal stress response zone maximized humans’ chances of survival.
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