Dogs Can Help Us Feel Less Pain

By Pat Anson

If you’re a dog lover like me, you know how beneficial a pet dog can be. Dogs give us unconditional love and companionship, and help us reduce stress, stay active and be socially connected.

What you may not know is that our four-legged friends can also help us feel less pain. In fact, according to a new study, they’re better at it than humans.

A team of European researchers conducted an unusual experiment to see if people experience less pain when their dog was nearby or when they were with a close friend.

They recruited 124 healthy female pet owners to immerse their hands in cold water (about 36°F) for up to five minutes to induce pain. The so-called “cold pressor task” is a common way for researchers to induce acute pain in clinical studies.

For this study, the cold water test was performed in a laboratory while the participants had either their pet dog or a same-sex friend nearby. Some of the women took the test while alone and served as a control group. The interaction of the participants, dogs, and their friends was monitored by video camera.   

The study findings, recently published in the journal Acta Psychologica, suggest that dogs can help people cope with painful situations better than humans can.

“Participants reported and showed less pain and they felt less helpless in the dog condition compared to the alone condition,” wrote lead researcher Heidi Mauersberger, a Research Assistant in the Department of Psychology at Humboldt University in Berlin.

“Participants accompanied by their dog reported less pain and showed lower physiological pain reactions, greater pain tolerance, and less intense facial displays of pain as well as felt less helpless than participants…accompanied by their friends.”

Being with a friend was better than being alone, but Mauersberger says the presence of another human being -- even a close friend -- made the women feel like they were being judged or evaluated.

“In contrast to the presence of pet dogs, the mere presence of close friends may have triggered social demands and social-evaluative threat in the painful situation. In fact, the increased eye contact frequency between participants and friends compared to participants and dogs may be a reason for the heightened threat perceptions in the friend compared to the dog condition.”

To test their theory further, researchers conducted a second test, this time immersing the participants’ hands in cold water while they were with a complete stranger or a dog they were unfamiliar with.

The results were largely the same. The pet owners felt more comfortable and coped better with pain around dogs they had not bonded with. Individuals with positive attitudes about dogs experienced the most pain relief.

“Participants demonstrated better adaptation to pain, exhibited less pain behavior, reported reduced helplessness and higher self-efficacy as well as experienced more positive affect when suffering pain in the presence of unfamiliar dogs compared to the presence of unfamiliar human companions,” said Mauersberger.

To be clear, this experiment wasn’t designed to come up with another wacky treatment for chronic pain. People with chronic pain or taking prescription medication were excluded from the study.

The research was conducted to help demonstrate the value of therapy dogs, which have long been known to provide psychological benefits to people suffering from stress, anxiety or loneliness.

A 2020 study helped explain how that happens. People being treated for fibromyalgia who interacted with a therapy dog had a significant increase in levels of oxytocin – a hormone released by the pituitary gland that’s known as the “cuddle hormone” or “love hormone.” They were also more relaxed, their heart rates slowed, and they had more positive thoughts and feelings.  

Do you have a dog, cat or pet of any kind that helps you feel better? 

Pets Help Take Our Minds Off Pain

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

Pets make good companions, keep their owners physically active and help us enjoy life. But did you know that pets can also help take our minds off pain?

That’s one of the findings from a new National Poll on Healthy Aging conducted by AARP and the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy. Researchers surveyed over 2,000 American adults aged 50 to 80, who answered a wide range of questions online about the health benefits of pet ownership.

Companionship, social connection and physical activity were positive side effects of pet ownership for many poll respondents.

People said their pets helped them enjoy life (88%), make them feel loved (86%), help reduce stress (79%), keep them physically active (64%) and help them cope with physical and emotional symptoms (60%), including taking their mind off pain (34%).

For those who said their health was fair or poor, pet ownership offers the most benefits. More than 70 percent of those older adults said their pet helps them cope with physical or emotional symptoms, and nearly half (46%) said their pets help distract them from pain.

"Relationships with pets tend to be less complicated than those with humans, and pets are often a source of great enjoyment," says Mary Janevic, PhD, an assistant research scientist at the U-M School of Public Health. "They also provide older adults with a sense of being needed and loved."

More than half of those who owned pets said they did so specifically to have a companion and nearly two-thirds said having a pet helps connect them to other people.

"We have long known that pets are a common and naturally occurring source of support," says Cathleen Connell, PhD, a professor at the U-M School of Public Health. “Although the benefits of pets are significant, social connections and activities with friends and family are also key to quality of life across the lifespan. Helping older adults find low cost ways to support pet ownership while not sacrificing other important relationships and priorities is an investment in overall mental and physical health."

While pets come with benefits, they can also bring concerns. Nearly one in five older adults (18%) said having a pet puts a strain on their budget. Some owners even put their animals' needs ahead of their own health.

"For people living on a fixed income, expenses related to health care for pets, and especially pets that have chronic health issues, can be a struggle. Older adults can also develop health problems or disabilities that make pet care difficult," said Janevic.

"More activity, through dog walking or other aspects of pet care, is almost always a good thing for older adults. But the risk of falls is real for many, and six percent of those in our poll said they had fallen or injured themselves due to a pet," said poll director Preeti Malani, MD. “At the same time, given the importance of pets to many people, the loss of a pet can deal a very real psychological blow that providers, family and friends should be attuned to."

More than half of older adults (55%) reported having a pet. Among pet owners, the majority (68%) had dogs, 48% had cats, and 16% had a small pet such as a bird, fish, or hamster.

Over half of pet owners (53%) reported that their pets sleep in their bed. Dog lovers are often told that’s a bad idea, but a recent study found an "overwhelmingly positive" response from owners who say they slept better with their dogs.

Gene Therapy Eases Chronic Pain in Dogs

By Lisa Marshall, University of Colorado at Boulder

When Shane the therapy dog was hit by a Jeep, life changed for him and his guardian, Taryn Sargent.

The impact tore through the cartilage of Shane's left shoulder. Arthritis and scar tissue set in. Despite surgery, acupuncture and several medications, he transformed from a vibrant border collie who kept watch over Sargent on long walks to a fragile pet who needed extensive care.

"Sometimes he would just stop walking and I'd have to carry him home," recalls Sargent, who has epilepsy and relies on her walks with Shane to help keep her seizures under control. "It was a struggle to see him in that much pain."

Today, 10-year-old Shane's pain and reliance on medication have been dramatically reduced and he's bounding around like a puppy again, 18 months after receiving a single shot of an experimental gene-therapy invented by CU Boulder neuroscientist Linda Watkins

shane and taryn sargent (casey cass/cu boulder)

Thus far, the opioid-free, long-lasting immune modulator known as XT-150 has been tested in more than 40 Colorado dogs with impressive results and no adverse effects. With human clinical trials now underway in Australia and California, Watkins is hopeful the treatment could someday play a role in addressing the nation's chronic pain epidemic.

"I'm hoping the impact on pets, their guardians and people with chronic pain could be significant," said Watkins, who has worked more than 30 years to bring her idea to fruition. "It's been a long time coming."

The Role of Glial Cells

Watkins' journey began in the 1980s when, as a new hire in the department of psychology and neuroscience, she began to rock the boat in the field of pain research.

Conventional wisdom held that neurons were the key messengers for pain, so most medications targeted them. But Watkins proposed that then-little-understood cells called "glial cells" might be a culprit in chronic pain. Glial cells are immune cells in the brain and spinal cord that make people ache when they're sick. Most of the time, that function protects us. 

Watkins proposed that in the case of chronic pain, which can sometimes persist long after the initial injury has healed, that ancient survival circuitry somehow gets stuck in overdrive. She was greeted with skepticism.

"The whole field was like 'what on Earth is she talking about?'"

She and her students hunkered down in the lab nonetheless, ultimately discovering that activated glial cells produce specific inflammatory compounds which drive pain. They also learned that, after the initial sickness or injury fades, the cells typically produce a compound called Interleukin 10 (IL-10) to dampen the process they started.

"IL-10 is Mother Nature's anti-inflammatory," she explains. "But in the onslaught of multiple inflammatory compounds in chronic pain, IL-10's dampening cannot keep pace."

Over the years, she and her team experimented with a host of different strategies to boost IL-10. They persisted and, in 2009, Watkins co-founded Xalud Therapeutics. Their flagship technology is an injection, either into the fluid-filled space around the spinal cord or the site of an inflamed joint, that delivers circles of DNA in a sugar/saline solution to cells, instructing them to ramp up IL-10 production.

With financial help from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the MayDay Fund and CU's Technology Transfer Office – which has provided intellectual property support, assistance with licensing agreements, and help obtaining a $100,000 research grant in 2018 – Watkins is edging closer to bringing her idea to clinical practice.

She has teamed up with veterinary chronic pain specialist Rob Landry, owner of the Colorado Center for Animal Pain Management in Westminster, to launch the IL-10 research study in dogs.

Their results have not been published yet. But thus far, the researchers say, the results look highly promising.

"They're happier, more engaged, more active and they're playing again," said Landry, as he knelt down to scratch Shane's belly after giving him a clean bill of health.

With Shane able to accompany her on her walks again, Sargent has also seen her quality of life improve. Her seizures, which increased in frequency when Shane was injured, have subsided again.

linda watkins with shane (casey cass/cu boulder)

Human Studies Underway

Because the treatment is so localized and prompts the body's own pain-killing response, it lacks the myriad side effects associated with opioids – including constipation and dependency – and it can last for many months after a single injection.

Ultimately, that could make it an attractive option for people with neuropathic pain or arthritis, Watkins says.

This summer, Xalud Therapeutics launched the first human study in Australia, to test the safety, tolerability and efficacy of the compound. Another one-year clinical trial of 32 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee is now underway in Napa, California.

More research is necessary in both pets and people, Watkins stresses. But she's hopeful.

"If all goes well, this could be a game-changer."