Clayton Jensen

Professor Brandon D Alva

English 2010
Date 11/19/12
A Forgotten Asset For Our Health
For most of the human existence we have been plagued with disease, infection,
parasites, injury and now cancer. Until the beginning of the twentieth century most
people died in the United States and much of the Western World due to infectious
diseases. These were diseases like typhoid fever, influenza, small pox, tuberculosis,
yellow fever and cholera. While these causes of death are still prominent in many
developing countries much has changed elsewhere. In the developed world, due to better
hygiene, nutrition, and sanitary conditions, death by infectious diseases is very rare. We
now focus most of our medical attention and resource on degenerative diseases that
silently plague the world. Degenerative diseases are those in which the body begins
attacking itself. The body becomes out of balance and in order to correct this imbalance it
begins to destroy itself. Unfortunately, Western medicine has done very little to address
the causes of degenerative diseases and still battles these diseases as if they were
infectious diseases. Western medicine still wants to blame germs for disease because that
is the easy way out as an explanation to the public. If you look into the leading cause of
disease in our day one thing will come up, stress. Stress has been proven time and time
again that it is what causes disease in most cases, and if it isnt the leading cause it is
playing a huge role in the battle/recovery against it. Why arent we attacking the problem
at the source instead of trying to find a cure for something that has already infected of

debilitated the patient? Why arent we pushing our patients and the public passionately to
be more involved in stress relieving activities and health promoting hobbies like yoga,
exercise, meditation and others? It is because both the medical staff and the people they
are helping are, for the most part, lazy. I know this first had with those I treat at my work
and those I work with like doctors and nurses. There are many solutions to the problem
and I want to address one of them. One of the most forgotten assets to our health, stress
relief and our fight against disease is the implication of animals and more specifically
dogs in our fight.
I know that not all people are cut out for a dog and the responsibility of it but on
the other had a lot of people are, and more importantly those that are being prescribe
medications when other more methods would work just as well.
First off I know what you are thinking, that Im some huge dog activist and cry
when I think about dog in the pound or being put down Well Im not by any means.
Im someone that just sees an opportunity to better the quality of life for so many people.
Now, I realize the prevention of all stress is almost impossible but I know that a therapy
dog instead of a prescription drug is a better means of stress management in a lot of
cases. Im not saying that prescription drugs are bad by any means but they are not the
only solution to the problem of which most doctors emulate. There are to kinds of stress:
eustress and distress. Eustress is good stress. It is something that activates your
sympathetic nervous system through a positive and beneficial activity like exercise.
Distress however is stress from negative provoking factors like trauma, abuse, money,
life, etc. Distress can be broken down into two subcategories: acute and chronic distress.
Our body reacts to both very differently and it does so in three ordered stages: Alarm

Stage, Resistance Stage and Exhaustion Stage. This is called the General Adaption
Syndrome (GAS) discovered by Hans Selye in the early 20th Century. That is how long
we have know about this and done almost nothing to prevent it. In the Alarm Stage we
react as you would if a tiger where to run after you. Cardiac output, blood pressure and
gluconeogenesis increases. There is also vasoconstriction of the vessels in the skin,
viscera, extremities, and kidneys. This is followed by vasodilaiton of the vessels in the
heart, skeletal muscles and the smooth muscles of the bronchi. This all promotes you to
run that much faster for your survival. Unlike the tiger, we cant simply run away from
our daily stresses so our natural reaction to this chronic stress of daily living is the
Resistance Stage. We increase the level of ACTH from the anterior pituitary, which
controls the aldosterone and cortisol production in the adrenal cortex. The adrenal
medulla increases its release of epinephrine and norepinephrine. Amongst these, the
thyroid and parathyroid and the posterior pituitary are severely hyperactive and hypersecretive. By producing all these chemicals and having no means to slow it down we are
stressing our bodies out tremendously on a cellular level causing them to repair
themselves on a more regular basis than normal. This is where the application of a dog
would be most effective because at this point our bodies are still willing to fight. Have
you ever copied a form or a piece of paper with writing on it and the copy you made was
now dimmer than the original? Well in a sense that is the same thing happening to our
cells in this Resistance Stage until we cant function properly and either attack ourselves
out of confusion and exhaustion or we mutate and develop cancer. This leads us to the
Exhaustion Stage where our body essentially gives up the fit against stress and allows the
cancer to grow or the disease to take over. Unfortunately this is where the medical world

steps in and tries to fix the problem after it has already happened.
Lets take cancer for example, which is a big issue in the medial field now. Yes,
cancer hasnt caused a wide spread death of a nation or people in a matter of weeks like
the Bubonic Plague, Spanish flu or smallpox has but, it is silently killing the world in
huge numbers right under our noses. A global cancer report by the International Agency
for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2007 estimated that cancer would kill 7.6 million
people worldwide that year (about 20,000 cancer deaths a day), and more than 12 million
people would find out they had the disease as well. In the Psyological Bulletin in 1981 a
study was posted declaring Consistent with human research suggesting that stress may
influence the carcinogenic process, data from infrahuman experiments have revealed
that aversive insults may potentiate or inhibit tumorigenicity, with nature of the change
dependent on psychological, experiential, and organismic variables. Exacerbation of
tumor growth is evident following acute exposure to uncontrollable but not controllable
stress, and the effects of aversive stimuli vary as a function of prior stress history and
social housing conditions. The fact that stress influences neurochemical, hormonal, and
immunological functioning and that these changes are subject to many of the same
manipulations that influenced the carcinogenic process suggests a relation between
these 3 mechanisms and the stress-induced alterations of tumor growth. This contention
is supported by findings showing that pharmacological manipulations that modify these
endogenous substrates have predictable effects on tumorigenesis.

All I am trying to say is that the application of a therapy dog in someones life
could prevent this exhaustion phase like cancer well before it happens and save the
person a lot of money, stress, heartache, and ultimately death. Dogs have been proven to
improve your mood, control blood pressure better than drugs, encourage you to get out

and exercise, help with social support, stave off loneliness and provide unconditional
love, and even reduce stress sometimes more than people.
Just to drive the nail that much deeper, Therapy Dogs International, Inc. published
a study titled Perception of the Impact of Pet Therapy on Residents/Patients and Staff on
Facilities Visited by Therapy Dogs. It is full of information on the benefits of therapy
dogs in medical facilities and in peoples lives. What they did was they sent out a survey
to medical staff asking them to report back their experiences that they and their
patients/residents had with therapy dogs in their facilities. Two hundred or 20% of the
surveys were returned to the TDI office over a two-year period of time. Despite the
possible response bias you get from surveys the result were very noteworthy. They asked
questions in the survey like: whether facilities would like to increase the frequency of
Therapy Dog visits, what were the benefits to clients from Therapy Dog visits with a list
of answers, what are the other possible benefits not listed in the previous question about
the benefits, were there any benefits to staff from Therapy Dog visits, if there where any
recommendations for improvement for the Therapy Dog program, and if there were any
unexpected or negative effects of the Therapy dog Program? The results were that over
50% of the facilities wanted more visits, they saw almost 90% increase in patients of
verbalization, socialization, and positive mood alterations amongst many other positives
not listed in the answer options, 54% of employees said it reduces stress and increases
moral, the only recommendations were either more time, more visits, or more dogs per
visit, and the only unexpected or negative effects where delusions of patients/residents
owning the dog or being afraid of the dogs and that was in less than 5% of all cases.

What Im getting at is that we are over looking the possible benefits these furry
friends present to us and not only in the medical setting. We could even utilizes their
stress reducing abilities in school settings by providing a place in schools or on campuses
with dogs for students to come and relive some of the stresses of a student lifestyle. There
are even dogs at work places that live there and are present in all meetings and seminars
and the people that work there love it and recommend it for ever business. There are so
many dogs in pounds and in shelters that we could use their talents to their fullest for our
benefit. We not only would create a huge new means for jobs that we need in this country
but also we would get dogs out of the pounds and help patients, residents and staff by it.
By placing these findings into action we not only kill two birds with one stone but
multiple. It is a win win win all the way around. The numbers have spoken.

Work Cited
Adamle, Kathleen N, Tracy A Riley, and Tracey Carlson. "Evaluating College
Student Interest In Pet Therapy." Journal Of American College Health: J Of ACH
57.5 (2009): 545-548. MEDLINE. Web. 7 Oct. 2012.

Dogs Decoded. Dir. Dan Child. Nova. Dogs Decoded Additional Material 2010
WGBH Educational Foundation. 2010. Film.
J Scott Weese, et al. "Characteristics Of Programs Involving Canine Visitation Of
Hospitalized People In Ontario." Infection Control And Hospital Epidemiology:
The Official Journal Of The Society Of Hospital Epidemiologists Of America
27.7 (2006): 754-758. MEDLINE. Web. 7 Oct. 2012.

Lemonick, Michael D., and Deirdre van Dyk. "The Mother Of All Dogs." Time
160.23 (2002): 78. Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Oct. 2012.

Mukherjee, P, and R Makker. "Canine Visit! In ICU?." Anaesthesia 66.3 (2011):

230-231. MEDLINE. Web. 7 Oct. 2012.

Therapy Dogs International, Inc. Perceptions of the Impact of Pet Therapy on

Residents/Patients and Staff in facilities Visited by Therapy Dogs. PDF File.

Vegas, Jennifer. Prehistoric Dog Lived, Died Among Humans. Discovery News.
28 Feb. 2011. Discovery Communications. Web. 8 Oct. 2011.
<http://news.discovery.com/animals/ancient-dog-burial-siberia110228.html>.

Wilson, C C. "Physiological Responses Of College Students To A Pet." The Journal

Of Nervous And Mental Disease 175.10 (1987): 606-612. MEDLINE. Web. 7
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