Can spending time with a pet help protect your brain as you age? In this episode of Memory Moments, neuropsychologist Dr. Linda Ercoli explores the growing body of research showing how pets can improve physical health, reduce loneliness, support emotional well-being, and even help slow cognitive decline in adults over 65. Learn why pet ownership may be one of the simplest ways to support healthy aging—and what the research says about dogs, cats, birds, fish, and even pets for people living with dementia.
Dr. Linda Ercoli, PhD, is the Interim Director of the UCLA Longevity Center and is a geriatric psychologist specializing in neuropsychology, dementia caregiver education, and the management of behavioral symptoms in individuals with dementia. She has collaborated on numerous research studies focused on early detection of dementia, late life depression, healthy lifestyle interventions, and caregiver support. She conducts behavioral management training for paid and unpaid caregivers. Dr. Ercoli developed cognitive enhancement programs for individuals with mild age-related memory concerns and people cancer-related cognitive changes.
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Linda Ercoli (00:02.446)
Hello everyone, I’m Dr. Linda Erkerly and welcome to the Memory Moment. Retirement is a great time to spend more time with your pets or add a new pet to your household. But are there physical and mental health benefits for having a pet? And the answer is yes, there are. Let’s talk a little bit about the research in this area.
And how it might affect your life. So let’s start with the physical and mental health benefits of pets. Pet ownership is associated with cardiovascular benefits, such as lowering the resting heart rate, lowering blood pressure, having less cardioreactivity in response to stress. Also, pet ownership of any kind is associated with survival.
In people who already have cardiovascular disease and dog ownership in particular is associated with reduced mortality. In fact, the American Heart Association recommends dog ownership for people who have heart disease. Now, what about the effects on physiology? Yes, and in fact, we know from research studies that being around pets is associated with the release of feel-good hormones.
Like dopamine and oxytocin. And it can be associated with a decrease or an increase in stress hormones. So most of the time being around pets is associated with a decrease in cortisol, which is a stress hormone. But one small study showed that playing with cats can increase stress hormones representing positive stress or what we call eustress. What about mental health benefits?
Well definitely having a pet can reduce social anxiety or nervousness around people, it can alleviate depression, it can reduce loneliness, reduce social isolation, and be part of the treatment for people with PTSD.
Linda Ercoli (02:18.23)
Now what about the brain health benefits of pets? Absolutely. There’s not a lot of resear research on this, but more and more research is showing benefits of pet ownership on brain health. Now there are two kinds of studies. We have these cross-sectional studies which just look at people at one point in time. So you might compare somebody who owns a pet to somebody who doesn’t and what effects it has on their activities, their brain health.
Or certain physiological measures. And then there are the kind of studies that follow people over time. And those are called longitudinal studies, where you watch people over, you know, one, two, ten, more years. And those are the most powerful studies for making cause and effect types of interpretations. So we’re going to talk about both of these kinds of studies, but in general, what they find is that brain health benefits include
When people have pets, they do more things that boost their brain health. They exercise more. In fact, they eat a healthier diet. They smoke less and they drink less alcohol. Also, the brain health benefits include socializing. So people with pets, for example, might go dog walking with another person, might be in a club, might socialize more with people they have these things in common with.
common with like pet ownership, dogs, cats, etc. Again, we know that trauma therapy includes pets often, especially equine therapy, right? Where people spend time and learn to care for and learn to relate to horses. And that’s because horses are so sensitive, they can detect when somebody is feeling anxious or uncomfortable. So pets have calming effects and we know that pets have
Cognitive benefits. So let’s look a little bit closer at those cognitive benefits. There was a study done, a longitudinal study on long-term pet ownership. And the results of that study showed that long-term pet ownership in people 65 years and over may protect against cognitive decline. So this was from the Health and Retirement Study of over 1,369 Americans.
Linda Ercoli (04:43.81)
Followed for six years. The people received cognitive testing every two years between 2010 and 2016. And then they looked at the people’s test scores who were either under 65 and over 65, and for people who owned pets greater than five years, less than five years, or people who were not pet owners at all. And what they found again.
was having a pet for five years or more and folks 65 and older delayed or slowed rather their cognitive decline. And this is what is what the graph shows. So the data line here shows the cognitive test scores over time for folks 65 and over who had pets five years or longer. And the other two lines the gray and the black show the the trajectories
For people who were either non-pet owners or old owned pets for less than five years. And you can see, yes, everybody declined over that time period, right? Over the six years, but the decline was slower and less in the folks who have the dotted line representing their scores again, which is the people who were pet owners of five years or more. So you can see this line.
is not as steep and it’s always above the other two lines. Now what’s interesting is this was not found for people under 65. So that’s a very important point of this study is the benefit seems to be for people who number one are older and number two have had pets for five or more years. Now what about other kinds of pets? So the question is what about birds and fish?
Right? Because most studies are done for dogs and cat owners. Well, this is what has been found. There have not been many studies mo that look at other types of animals. Most studies look at dogs and cats. But the dogs and cats, in this one study, having a dog or a cat was associated with cognitive benefits, particularly for memory and word retrieval speed. So thinking of of as many words as you can in a minute or two.
Linda Ercoli (07:12.314)
And it also showed long-term benefits of dog and cat ownership, which was slower cognitive decline over time. And what about for birds and fish? Well, birds, fish, dogs, and cats were associated with physiological and social benefits like greater relaxation, lower blood pressure, the benefits of companionship, and reduced loneliness.
Now, what about for somebody who has dementia? Do pets help them? Do they have benefits? Yes, they do. And studies have shown that the pets provide companionship, cognitive stimulation, calming effects. And in a finish study that followed people over five years, and this was a large study, pet owners with Alzheimer’s disease had significantly better.
Daily activity function and slower disease progression compared to non-pet owners. Now, the important thing to know is though, even though pets are generally good for people who have dementia, people with dementia will need support in caring for a pet. So if you know somebody who is caring for a pet and they have severe memory problems, they’re gonna need help with getting the dog out, remembering to feed the dog.
Remembering to give any medication pretty much across the board. So that’s something to keep in mind that a pet will require someone else to be responsible for it, but not the person with dementia. So the good news is having pets has benefits for people who are older, with or without dementia, has benefits on physical health, mental health.
and cognitive health. So in general, pets are great for brain health. So enjoy your pet and be well. Thank you. Bye bye.