Are you hurting? If so, do you reach for an extra dose of painkiller? According to new research, you might be able to alleviate some of your pain by simply calling your pet dog into the room to sit by you.
Most people think of pain as a purely physiological response to injury or disease. However, the sensation of pain does not reside in a damaged body part, but rather it is a reaction in your brain, and like many mental responses it is subject to a variety of influences. One thing that affects our perception of pain is the social support that we get from family, friends, and loved ones. In our contemporary society, dogs are often viewed as family members and are loved as friends. A team of European researchers, headed by Heidi Mauersberger of the department of psychology at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, conducted an unusual experiment to see if interaction with dogs could reduce the perception of pain in the same way that social support from humans does.
This team conducted two experiments involving 124 healthy females. The researchers were not looking for some unconventional alternative treatment for persistent pain, so individuals with chronic pain or who were taking prescription medications were excluded from the study. Also, the research used only female participants since evidence shows that there is a sex difference in the response to pain in laboratory studies (where males tend to tough it out and deny their perceptions of pain for longer).
What Makes You Hurt?
If you’re going to conduct a controlled study on pain, you need a situation where individuals can experience something that hurts in a regulated and restrained manner. These investigators used a common technique called the cold-pressor task. It involves immersing the participant’s hand in cold water, which is near freezing (roughly 36°F or 2°C). This technique was created in the 1930s to provide a low-level form of stress so that changes in heart rate and blood pressure could be measured. The longer a person’s hand was kept in this cold bath, the more painful it became. Pain researchers have adopted this technique. They added physiological measures of electrical skin conductance (which are related to our perception of pain) and behaviorally measured the degree of pain resistance by the amount of time that the person was willing to keep their hand in the cold water before it felt too agonizing to endure any longer.
Is a Friend or Pet Better at Relieving Pain?
As I mentioned before, the research team conducted two studies. In the first experiment, only pet owners were used as test subjects. There were three conditions: where the individual took the cold-pressor test alone, with a friend in the room, or with their pet dog. It is important to note that there were no physical interactions between the friend or the dog and the person being tested. They were just in the same room.
The results were clear. Having a friend in the room helped deal with the pain, but the presence of their pet dog was better. Participants who were accompanied by their dog reported less pain and had a higher tolerance for the discomfort caused by the cold-pressor task. They showed fewer facial expressions of pain, felt less helpless, and showed less intense physiological responses when their dog was in the room.
Are There Therapeutic Implications?
The researchers were interested in whether these results might have therapeutic applications, so they conducted a second experiment to see what benefits either human or animal-assisted interventions for pain might be discovered. In a therapy setting, any people present are apt to be unfamiliar, and a therapy dog is apt to be a dog that is unfamiliar to the patient as well. The structure of the second study was the same as the first, except that an unfamiliar person could be present in the room. She was described as a trained staff member who was also allowed to respond with comforting gestures. Also, the test participant was allowed to pat the head of the unfamiliar “therapy” dog when it was there during the procedure. The results were virtually identical to the first study. Having a person in the room reduced the experience of pain, but having a dog in the room produced an even better outcome.
As a footnote, the second study did allow for some participants who were not dog owners. All of the people tested were asked to express their attitudes towards dogs. It was not surprising to find that those who felt more positive about dogs in general had a higher level of protection from pain sensations when the dog was in the room.
How Does This Work?
The speculation is that the link that helps people cope with the pain is hormonal, namely oxytocin. Oxytocin (produced by the pituitary gland) is often referred to as the love hormone or cuddle hormone. Studies have shown that this hormone is released when we interact with friends and loved ones, and also when we interact with our dogs. A pet dog may be a better buffer against pain because dogs will never evaluate the pain sufferer. A person feeling pain might worry that a human in the room with them is judging them and their responses, perhaps feeling only pity for their reactions, or wondering why the individual is having difficulty coping with the pain in a better way. Such concerns might offset the positive effects of the oxytocin hormone. The guess is that the increase of oxytocin produced by the presence of our dog helps to provide a better defense against the sensation of pain because it is not being offset by concerns about how we are being socially evaluated by another person. Thus, although the presence of the dog may not result in a direct reduction of pain at the physiological source, it significantly affects how individuals experience and tolerate pain.
Mauersberger summarizes her results on a highly positive note: “It’s amazing to see how strong the effect of the dogs is. People not only feel emotionally supported but also experience less pain. This opens up new perspectives for the use of dogs in pain therapy.”
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