Fitness Unleashed Chapter 1: The People and Pets Health Connection
(Excerpt.
© Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.)
People and dogs have always leaned on one another. In return for
food, shelter, and affection, dogs are helpmates in everything from
retrieving downed ducks to guarding the house and guiding the blind.
For most of us, though, the “services” we receive from our dogs are
much less utilitarian but equally endearing: they adore us when
we’re up, when we’re down, and even when we’re having a bad hair
day, wearing our rattiest old bathrobe, and feeling cranky. They sit
on (not just at) our feet, wait for us at the door, and go to great
lengths to wriggle into a spot right beside us whenever they can get
away with it. They make us laugh by being silly and full of puppy
charm, regardless of their age; and they have an uncanny ability to
read our emotions and sync themselves up, ready and willing to be
cheerful or mad just because we are.
Somehow all the small acts of affection, concern, loyalty, and
furriness add up to more than just gestures and companionship.
Research has proven that having a dog is good for your health in a
number of measurable and not-so-measurable ways. Studies show that
people who own pets tend to have lower blood pressure and lower
cholesterol levels than those who don’t. Pet owners have better odds
of surviving heart attacks than patients without pets. As a group,
pet owners find their chronic pain diminished, make fewer trips to
the doctor, are less medicated, less lonely, less depressed, and
less stressed than their petless counterparts—and those are just the
subtle, unintended benefits of time spent with our four-legged and
furry companions. For those who deliberately harness the health
benefits of pets, there are even greater rewards to be reaped. Dogs
have been trained to provide services that assist people with a vast
range of needs—including guiding the blind, serving as hearing
companions for the deaf, helping the physically challenged to
overcome obstacles, and serving to alert their owners of imminent
seizures or blood-sugar imbalances. Dogs are used to tremendous
effect in therapeutic and educational settings, doing everything
from helping kids learn to read in classrooms to providing
much-needed inspiration for residents of nursing homes to increase
their levels of activity and social interaction.
In these kinds of win/win partnerships, dogs also reap some
surprising benefits. You may have read that when you pet your dog,
your blood pressure drops and the level of the feel-good hormones
such as oxytocin, prolactin, and serotonin in your blood increases.
But did you also know that during that interaction, your dog
experiences the same benefits—his blood pressure drops and he
receives a biochemical spa treatment, too? Your dog’s longevity is
directly tied to the care you provide; everything from a roof over
his head at night and regular veterinary visits to optimum nutrition
and the affection that makes him feel loved and needed contributes
to his good health. A dog who’s been abandoned has a life expectancy
of a year or less. Those who live in loving homes can expect to live
to their breeds’ expectancy—anywhere from seven years to eighteen or
more.
Despite all the good that people and pets do one another, in recent
years our healthful relationship has taken an unexpected turn. In
our increasingly sedentary, stressed-out, and overfed culture,
people are consuming more calories, exercising less, and
collectively getting more overweight by the minute. Without
intending to cause any harm, many of us have shared our generous
portions and inactive routines with our beloved pets. We share our
couches and beds, as well as our ice cream and cookies, with our
dogs, and they’re very happy to get on board with whatever lifestyle
we’re offering—especially one that’s heavy on the treats. Centuries
of species self-preservation have left most dogs with a strong
desire to consume any edible bite they can find—they’ve historically
survived as scavengers, after all. Many will eat as much, and as
often, as you’ll let them.
Scaling Up, Side by Side
One big (and growing) result of these changes in
lifestyle for pets and people is the effect Dr. Kushner has dubbed
scaling up—weight gain that’s a common, if unwelcome, life
experience. Scaling up describes how people put on pounds not just
through failed willpower or the wrong mix of carbs and protein, but
because we live in a society where every aspect of our food
consumption and activity levels seems designed to add weight to our
frames. Factors like crammed-full schedules, crammed-full plates,
desk jobs, slowing metabolisms, and a lack of time to devote to the
care and maintenance of our bodies all contribute to it gradually.
Scaling up doesn’t even necessarily imply poor choices—it means that
just following the basic eating and exercise trends our society
offers is enough to make trying to maintain—or reduce—your current
weight a losing battle.
The concept applies equally well to dogs, who are truly the victims
of their environments as they pack on the pounds. Often, it’s just
our generosity that’s making them chubby! Our food-is-love affection
adds up to lots of treats, lots of off-the-table snacks, and too
much kibble in the bowl from day to day.
Surprisingly, when you look past the basic calories-in/calories-out
equation for both people and dogs, the roots of this crisis are very
similar for both species. In a nutshell: most of us are not using
our bodies the way nature—and natural selection—intended. The human
body is “designed” for function—for movement. Up until the
twentieth-century inventions of the automobile, the washing machine,
riding lawnmowers, power tools, personal computers, and countless
other gadgets and gizmos designed to reduce the physical labor in
our personal and professional lives, average folks were in
near-constant motion. A recent study that highlighted this point was
led by researchers from the University of Tennessee. To try to come
up with an assessment of the physical exertion previous generations
might have made, the team asked members of an old-order Amish
community in Canada to wear pedometers as they went about their
daily lives. The chosen community is one that shuns modern
conveniences and continues to maintain a self-sufficient farming
lifestyle. Though there was no deliberate effort made by the
participants to “exercise,” as they kept up their normal routines,
the men logged an average of more than 18,000 steps a day. The women
logged an average of more than 14,000. To put those numbers in
perspective, the average American is currently walking between 3,000
and 5,000 steps a day, and the goal you’ll read about in this book,
the one fitness plans and gurus across the country have embraced as
an ideal exertion level, is 10,000 steps. Taking close to double
that number of steps, the Amish men were getting the same level of
workout as a long-distance runner by just doing their daily work.
Though their other physical efforts were not measured, it’s a pretty
safe bet that the people in this community were also doing more
lifting, bending, squatting, stretching, and general exercising than
your average, say, computer programmer, magazine editor, or retail
store clerk.
Just as we humans are not living up to our physical potential,
neither are our dogs. Before selective breeding, rather than finding
food in a bowl, they were always walking and running in search of
“fast food.” In more recent history, hundreds of years of selective
breeding designed most dogs to be tireless physical workers. Breeds
like Labs and goldens and border collies and shelties and huskies
and many, many others are genetically programmed to run, not just
walk, for hours without getting worn out. Historically, the majority
of dog breeds were selectively bred to either hunt or herd alongside
their owners. Their functions ranged widely, but in most cases, the
intent was to train an effective “tool” for the family. Everything
about their frames, their musculature, and their mental abilities is
designed for a life on the go. It contradicts your dog’s hardwiring
and natural inclinations to sideline all that physicality on the
couch, often alone, day in and day out, not far from pantries
bursting with food and treats. As both species become more and more
out of shape, we experience almost identical health complications of
overweight and obesity, including heart disease, diabetes, joint
ailments, and an increased risk of cancer. New studies even suggest
those extra pounds may put us at higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease
as well. What’s more, we share the experience of getting trapped by
our own symptoms—the more weight we gain, the more the aches and
pains and feelings of being tired and heavy keep us from getting the
exercise that could help improve our circumstances.
Why Worry?
In our “thin is in” culture, with underweight models and
actors staring back at us from every billboard, magazine cover, TV,
and computer screen, most people with weight issues are aware of the
problem. If you have any doubt, it’s easy to find a Body Mass Index
(BMI) chart and a scale to make an assessment. (For convenience
we’ve added a BMI chart with some examples on page nnn.) For better
or worse, that’s not at all the case for assessing the body
condition of dogs. Because of substantial breed differences, nailing
down pet-weight statistics is sticky business. Depending on the
source, the number of dogs that are overweight or obese is about 40
percent and rising steadily. One recent study (of both dogs and
cats) puts the number as high as 60 percent. Even more surprising is
the fact that almost half of the owners of overweight pets that
participated in that study described their pets’ body condition as
“ideal.”
The perception of pudgy pooches as perfectly fine is one of the
significant challenges pet owners and veterinarians face in trying
to help dogs maintain healthy weights. We really do love them just
the way they are, and there are no rail-thin dog models reminding us
at our every turn that our pups might have a problem. As the study
mentioned in the previous paragraph shows, we not only love our dogs
at any weight or size, we’re often oblivious to the fact that
there’s anything “wrong” with them at all.
So, if your dog is happy carrying around a few extra pounds, and if
you adore him at any weight, why bother to help him get in shape?
The fact is that overweight pets cope with almost all the same
health implications that overweight people do—but they cope with
them sooner and with more potential ill effects. Dogs don’t have the
luxury of long lives to cushion the complications of weight gain.
While you have a projected lifespan of seven decades plus a few
years, your dog is looking at a much shorter life. With an average
of twelve short years on this earth, dogs truly need every health
advantage they can get. Research shows that trim pets live about 15
percent longer, or an average of two additional years, than
overweight pets. That’s an incredibly sobering statistic for anyone
who lives with and loves a dog. The fountain of youth for our furry
friends may just be putting less food in their mouths and more miles
on their feet.
The effect of extra weight on a dog’s lifespan carries across
breeds, affecting dogs as different from one another as bichons and
beagles and boxers. There is another big consideration to keep in
mind when you assess your dog’s weight, though, and that’s his size.
On a body frame that averages 150 pounds, humans have a little room
to grow, so to speak. But small dogs begin to suffer health problems
with just a couple extra pounds on their compact bodies. In fact,
just 1 extra pound on the frame of a 10-pound dog is equivalent to
more than 20 pounds on an average adult human! If you think that an
extra pound on Fido is no big deal, just put a can of soup on the
middle of your pet’s back, and imagine him packing it around 24/7.
A New Solution
Until now, the weight-related health crisis in people and
the same crisis in dogs have been addressed separately.
Veterinarians recommend diet changes and increased activity for
overweight dogs. Doctors recommend diet changes and increased
activity for overweight people. For some, those suggestions, or one
of a host of programs designed to help them stick to the changes,
help solve the problem. For many, the challenge is more than they’re
ready to face. Many dog owners even tell us they aren’t able to
stick to their dogs’ weight-loss programs because they can’t stand
to see their four-legged friends deprived. (If you’ve ever watched
your dog put on a full-fledged, Oscar-worthy “Can’t you see I’m
wasting away?” routine to get a scrap of food, you can understand
how this could happen.) The challenge, of course, is figuring out a
way to change our eating and exercise habits without making our
lives so miserable that we give up and quit before the program can
make any difference.
The solution comes in the form of Fitness Unleashed, a simple,
comprehensive program that encourages dog owners to harness the
inspiration, companionship, and sense of duty to their friend by
turning to the four-legged personal trainer who works just for the
love of it. The National Institutes of Health estimates that
Americans spend $36 billion a year on weight-loss products and
services, but for many of us, the best piece of exercise equipment
is standing by the door with its leash in its mouth, with no
membership fees or installment payments required.
The Fitness Unleashed program came about when a research study
caused our professional paths to cross. As authors and guardians of
health, both of us have built our careers on promoting health and
well-being—in people, in pets, and now in both. In our separate
fields, we’ve kept our eyes and ears open for methods, ideas, and
innovations that might make life easier or more enjoyable for the
patients who rely on us. One eye-opening, ear-perking moment
occurred three years ago when an executive from Hill’s Pet Nutrition
called Dr. Kushner to propose jointly developing a weight-management
program that would help both overweight people and pets. With so
many proven, positive health implications of pets in other areas of
medicine, it was a concept that made perfect sense. After all, many
weight-loss studies had shown that social support for any diet and
exercise program is one of the best predictors of its success.
Having someone around to encourage you to stick with it, to
participate alongside you, and to push you through the hard days is
one of the true keys to successful weight loss. Why not take a hard
look at how a group of overweight pet owners and their overweight
dogs might be able to help each other shed pounds and gain health?
Both Dr. Kushner and Hill’s Pet Nutrition were interested to see if
a study could prove dogs were as good at providing social support as
people are. If it worked, a whole new type of fitness program might
be possible.
|