https://nordot.app/1142687980688359523
https://www.yahoo.com/news/walking-playing-dogs-improves-concentration-051404143.html
The “man’s best friend” adage has been bolstered by new research that shows people feel relaxed while out for a stroll with a dog.
“Interactions with dogs can decrease human stress and induce positive emotional responses,” according to South Korean scientists, who scanned brain activity in 30 adults while they walked, brushed and played with a poodle.
But it’s best to bring a ball or find a stick to throw while out for that walk, as the researchers found evidence that playing with a dog makes people not only more relaxed but more focused as well.
And better again, getting out a brush and teasing out any dirt or debris from the animal’s fur gives yet another concentration boost, the team found.
Being around a dog has a “positive effect on both relaxation and concentration,” the Konkuk University team claimed, in a paper published by the science journal PLOS One.
The researchers were helped and advised by a professional dog handler during the tests, which were done by putting headsets on participants while they spent around 25 minutes with the dog, a poodle named Aro.
The Korean study followed recent research suggesting interacting with dogs increases oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” and work published in 2021 showing university students who keep a pet dog as less stressed than peers who don’t.
The effect is two-way, according to work published last year in the journal Evolution, Medicine & Public Health, which found dogs remained healthier for longer when walked and given attention by their owners.
The latest South Korean study was published around the same time North Korea denounced keeping dogs as “non-socialist behaviour” that should be “strictly eliminated.” Instead, dogs are to be seen as “basically meat” and should be “eaten when they die,” the Socialist Women’s Union of Korea declared.
“The purpose of raising dogs is to collect more furs,” the union announced, according to Daily NK, a South Korea-based online news publication which reports on the dictatorship.
