by James J. Lynch, Ph.D., Life Care Health

There are defining moments in life where one's perceptions, understanding and beliefs change in a truly profound manner. Mine changed the day I watched my 10-year-old daughter's blood pressure fall by 50% the moment she simply began to reflexively stroke her beloved pet dog, "Rags." Rags was a mixed schnauzer-terrier who had been rescued from the county pound. For all the years Rags was on this earth, she was one of the central loves of my daughter's life. That dramatic proof of what was, in fact, a wonderful affair between two hearts, one animal and the other human, occurred about two decades ago when Harry Reasoner and his "Sixty Minutes" crew were visiting my home. They were there to create what would evolve into a powerful television documentary about the health benefits of animal companions. While we had no way of knowing it at that time, this program was destined to become one of the most frequently rebroadcast segments in the history of "Sixty Minutes."

Rags was shown on television with Harry Reasoner on the day this marvelous television reporter died. It was a truly lovely epitaph, and one that I am certain both Mr. Reasoner and Rags would have liked. I did not know at that time, however, that the experience would lead me to write a book 20 years later ( A Cry Unheard: New Insights into the Medical Consequences of Loneliness . [Available from Amazon.com.] , Bancroft Press, 2000). In that book, I was finally able to put forward a comprehensive theory about how Rags had managed to lower my daughter's blood pressure by 50%. It involved something that I would come to understand as the "physiology of inclusion". It took that long for me to fully appreciate the nature of Rags' power!

The television crew spent two days in my house filming, describing, documenting and integrating three different types of information. The first was the recent publication of my book The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness (Basic Books, 1977), in which I described how human loneliness had emerged, unseen and unappreciated, as one of the single most important contributors to premature death in America. Those who lived alone -- the single, the widowed and the divorced -- had death rates from all causes that ranged anywhere from 2 to 10 times greater than the rates of those who were married. Loneliness, it turned out, was a major contributor to heart disease, the single most important cause of death in America. (Detailed references to this and all other studies described in this review are on our web site: www.lifecarehealth.com.

The second event occurred a couple of years later, and involved a research study that I had conducted with Dr. Aaron Katcher and our colleagues. In that study, we uncovered the powerful influence that pet animals had on the long-term survival of heart patients released from a university Coronary Care Unit. This particular study was part of a much larger effort we had undertaken to find and develop useful clinical approaches to help effectively counteract the devastating health toll exacted by human loneliness.

We planned to follow a large group of heart patients for several years, and ask the question as to what determines long-term survival once these patients were released from a coronary care unit. While the question was simple enough, the study itself involved the analysis of hundreds of physical, social and economic variables. We made every effort to include every variable that might conceivably influence the long-term survival of these patients. Not surprisingly, the most potent factor influencing long-term survival was the extent of damage to the heart tissue itself. The greater the myocardial damage to the heart, the greater the risk of death within the year after release from coronary care.

Yet we were scarcely prepared to believe the second most important variable. Those heart patients who had pets had a far better chance of living than those who did not have pets. 78 of the 92 patients that we followed lived for at least one year, while another 14 patients died. Of the total group of patients, 58% reported that they had one or more pets, while 42% did not have any pets. One year later, after their release from the hospital, 28 of the patients without pets were still alive and 11 had died. Of those with pets, 50 were still alive and only three had died. It was a mortality pattern that stunned us. Four times more patients without pets had died within the first year, even though they comprised only 42 percent of the population! It was a landmark finding, and one that prompted us to pursue this remarkable influence further.

Although we had no way of knowing it at the time, the third discovery would eventually bridge the gap, and clarify how and why pet animals exerted such a powerful effect on our health and well-being. In 1978 we were truly fortunate to obtain one of the very first computerized devices that automatically measured blood pressure and heart rate. Unlike the traditional stethoscope and mercury manometer that had been historically used to measure blood pressure -- a technique that required silence from both the patient and doctor so that the blood pulsating down the brachial artery could be heard -- this new computer measured pressure automatically. It did not require silence; and it permitted conversations to continue even while the pressure was being measured.

With the aid of this technological breakthrough, we quickly observed that whenever a person begins to talk there is an immediate increase in blood pressure, and when they are quiet once again, there is an immediate reduction in blood pressure. At first this finding appeared to be a paradox, seemingly at variance with the observation that human loneliness was a major contributor to premature death from heart disease, and that people could die from a Broken Heart. It was only later, as described in The Language of the Heart: The Human Body in Dialogue (Basic Books, 1985), that we began to recognize that the two were similar aspects of the same global phenomenon. Those who found communicating the most difficult (as measured in pressure surges) were also most likely to withdraw from communication and social interactions and end up in a vicious, downwardly spiraling cycle of events that led to ever increasing physiological stress and increased isolation, and ultimately premature death.

As we examined the link between communication and blood pressure, we began to discover that there were a number of predictable laws and aspects of the relationship between talking and blood pressure. The first was our discovery that the higher a person's baseline blood pressure, the more it rose when they talked. Hypertensive individuals increased their pressure significantly more than normotensive individuals, and no medications seemed to be able to block this reaction. People who spoke rapidly and breathlessly (the prototypical Type A Behavioral Pattern) increased their pressure more than those who spoke slowly. With everything else equal, these communicative pressure surges while talking increased in a linear fashion with age. Older people increased their blood pressure while talking more than young people. Gradually we came to understand that patients with coronary heart disease were particularly vulnerable to increases in blood pressure while they talked, especially when they talked about emotionally meaningful material. (See A Cry Unheard). We also began to observe in a very consistent fashion that as soon as a person is quiet, and especially if they listen to others, their blood pressure falls back to baseline levels, and sometimes below baseline levels.

We also observed that when children read books aloud (whether in schools or at home or in the laboratory) their blood pressure increased, sometimes up to very precipitous levels. It was these observations that led us to study factors that might help to lower their pressure. The introduction of pet animals did the trick. Aaron Katcher and I, as well as other colleagues, studied 38 children and observed that the presence of a pet dog resulted in lower blood pressure both when the children were quiet as well as when they read a book aloud. A potentially inexpensive way to aid children to read had been suggested.

This brings me back to Rags, my daughter Kathleen, and that "Sixty Minutes" program. We intended to demonstrate this reading effect by having Kathleen sit all alone in a chair, be quiet for three minutes, read poetry for two minutes, then be quiet again for three minutes, after which we would place her pet dog on her lap. She exhibited the usual pressure increases while reading the book aloud, and then her pressure returned to baseline levels when she was quiet once again. And then Rags was placed on her lap, and just as soon as she began to stroke the dog, her pressure fell precipitously, down almost 50% from the peak recorded while reading the poetry, to an entirely new baseline level. Fifteen or 20 years earlier I had observed the exact same type of response from dogs studied in a laboratory at The Johns Hopkins Medical School. As soon as human beings petted the dogs, they too would react with highly significant reductions in their blood pressure. This type of vascular response was recorded not only in dogs, but also in horses and other species of animals. It took an additional two decades to recognize that very similar reactions occurred in human beings when they petted their animals. Animals reacted to touch, and human beings reacted as well, in very powerful ways.

One additional bit of evidence will help prepare you to better understand what changed in my understanding the day my daughter's pressure fell when she touched her dog. It was a remarkably simple experiment conducted by Dr. Aaron Katcher. He had volunteers practice a variety of meditation techniques in order to ascertain which method was most effective in helping a person lower their blood pressure. He then compared these techniques against the simple assignment of have a person gaze at fish swimming in a tank. He observed that simply gazing or focusing one's attention on a tropical fish moving about in a fish tank was far more effective in lowering blood pressure than any of the more traditional meditative techniques. The evidence was becoming overwhelming. Animals and the way we interacted with the rest of the natural living world had a truly profound effect on our hearts and blood vessels.

This led us to gradually begin to decode what I came to identify as the Language of the Heart. (Basic Books, 1985), as well as develop a concept that I now call the physiology of inclusion. This bodily reflex operates exactly opposite to the physiology of exclusion (see A Cry Unheard, Bancroft Press, 2000). In essence, dysfunctional dialogue, withdrawal from dialogue or in a social context where other people (and animals) are seen as a threat, triggers the repetitive activation of what physiologists long ago labeled as the "fight/flight response." This reflex, regulated by the autonomic nervous system, developed in higher mammals over the eons of evolution. Faced with meeting the proverbial saber tooth tiger or the wooly mammoths of old in the primeval forest, both human beings as well as non-human mammals had to have a way to react quickly to preserve their lives. Unfortunately, though the saber tooth tigers have long since disappeared, the human body still responds to symbolic threats as if they were the real things. It is the repetitive mobilization of such excessive fight/flight in situations that do not require such reactions, which eventually wears down the human body.

It was the development of new computerized blood pressure technology that revealed the surprising frequency of such reactivity in everyday dialogue and in everyday social interactions. These repetitive, undetected, and maladaptive fight/flight reactions, frequently wired in early in life by the experience of parental "toxic talk," or educational failure, would inexorably lead to physiological exhaustion. This in turn helped to create a biologically based need to withdraw from others for self-preservation. This communicative reflex of exclusion, would increase loneliness and social isolation, and ultimately lead to premature disease and premature death. And as noted elsewhere in A Cry Unheard, "dialogue that includes others -- a dialogue that did not respond to others, or the living world around them as a potential threat -- would activate the opposite type of physiological response, a Physiology of Inclusion, which is a biological state of enhanced relaxation. It produces physiological responses that do not merely bring the body back to baseline levels, but rather into a state of enhanced relaxation." This produces precisely the opposite physiological state, one that produces health and longevity. It is one that draws people out of themselves, closer to others in dialogue, rather than excluding and sealing them off.

This, then is the powerful lesson that animal companions have taught us. This is what Rags produced that day so long ago when the simple act of touch brought my daughter out of herself, into a world that included Rags, and into a state of heightened relaxation. The Delta Society plays a major role in educating society about the health benefits of animal companions. Whether it is the enhanced relaxation produced by pet animals in the classroom when children read books aloud, or the lowering of blood pressure in the elderly when they pet an animal, or the role animals play in social support and long-term survival of heart patients, the evidence is overwhelming.

Animals, and nature in general, are a marvelous health tonic. If we include them in our lives, if our physiology is set in a way that includes the rest of the living world, then we shall live longer and certainly more rewarding lives. The Delta Society has a very real role in helping more members of our society to live their lives in an inclusive fashion, to reach out to others, to educate our educators about a new type of biology -- one that is living and interactive, and to help end the ever-rising tide of human loneliness and social disconnectedness, which is the great plague of the new millennium.