Come rain or shine, the dog must be walked — and that may be good for seniors who need more exercise, the authors of a new paper say.
In a study of more than 3000 elderly adults in the United Kingdom, dog owners who walked their pets regularly had daily levels of physical activity that were, on average, 20% higher than those of people who did not own a dog, senior author Andy Jones, PhD, and colleagues report in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The dog walkers spent about 30 minutes less per day being sedentary, even in inclement weather.
The findings suggest that regular dog walking may have “considerable potential” in helping older people maintain their activity levels and might even have a place in exercise prescription schemes, they add.
Citing earlier research showing an association between dog walking and physical activity among senior citizens, Dr Jones, professor of environmental sciences, Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom, and coauthors Yu-Tzu Wu, PhD, and Robert Luben, PhD, both from the Cambridge Institute of Public Health, United Kingdom, studied 3123 men and women participating in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition Norfolk study, which is part of a larger, 10-county study into the major determinants of chronic disease, disability, and death in middle and old age.
Volunteers were recruited between September 2006 and December 2011. They were placed into one of three groups: dog owners who walked their dogs at least once a day; dog owners who did not walk their dogs regularly; and nonowners of dogs. To measure physical activity and sedentary time, each person wore an activity monitor during their waking hours for a continuous 7-day period. The final analysis included only people who wore the monitor for at least 10 hours/day. Using local meteorological information, the investigators compared the group’s activity levels with changes in precipitation, temperature, and number of daylight hours.
The participants had a mean age of 69.5 years (standard deviation [SD], 7.6), and included 1775 women (56.8%). There were a total of 573 dog owners (18.3%), of whom 383 (66.8% of dog owners) walked their dogs regularly. The remaining 190 (33.2% of dog owners) did not walk their dogs.
Daily activity was expressed as counts per minute (CPM) and minutes of sedentary time. The average sedentary time for the sample as a whole was 667.1 minutes (SD, 133.9), or approximately 11 hours, and average daily activity was 249.8 CPM (SD, 153.4).
After adjustment for age, sex, educational level, and health status, regular walkers recorded a mean of 300 counts per minute on days with no precipitation. This dropped by a mean of 37 CPM (95% CI, -50.3 to -23.8) on wet days, defined as days with at least 2.8 mm of precipitation. Nonowners started at approximately 250 CPM on nice days and declined by 80.0 CPM (95% CI, -92.6 to -67.3) on rainy days. Dog owners who did not regularly walk their dogs showed a pattern similar to that of the nonowners.
All groups reduced their activity as temperature dropped and daylight hours decreased. But even on the coldest days (<10.0oC), regular dog walkers were more active (275.1 CPM) than owners who did not regularly walk their dog (242.6 CPM) or those who did not own a dog (249.6 CPM) were on the warmest days (19.2oC). Again, this pattern persisted when activity was measured against daylight hours.
Similarly, regular dog walkers recorded less sedentary time (648.6 minutes) on the wettest days, compared with 660.6 minutes recorded by nonowners on dry days.
These findings “show up to 22% higher activity levels in dog owners than dog nonowners in the poorest environmental conditions,” the authors write. “This indicates that dog ownership, in particular dog walking, has the potential to be an effective component of physical-activity promotion in this population.”
However, the researchers acknowledge that housing or financial restrictions may make it impossible even for dog lovers to keep a dog permanently. For them, organizations such as BorrowMyDoggy.com, which matches dog owners with people willing to walk or care for the dogs temporarily, may offer a solution.
This study also hints at the role of extrinsic motivation in getting people to exercise, they conclude. As Dr Jones put it, “Dog walking is driven by the needs of the animal. Being driven by something other than our own needs might be a really potent motivator, and we need to find ways of tapping into it when designing exercise interventions in the future.”
“If we can’t change the weather,” he added, “we need to change people’s attitudes toward it, to make sure they get out and stay active even when weather conditions are poor.”
The authors disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
J. Epidemiol Community Health. Published online July 24, 2017. Article
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