New research from Australia supports the belief that many pet owners have—it shows that pets are good for your health. The
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of this new study suggest that people who have pets are
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less risk from heart disease than
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who do not.
Ironically this
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study on pets was intended to
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the myth that pets are good for your health. Earlier research
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the benefits of owning pets received a lot of
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, but the results were not good enough to
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the more skeptical doctors. The new research was carried
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over three years and examined 6000 people, the largest group yet involved in
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a study. They took tests that measured a
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of different factors known to be
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in heart disease—
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and blood levels of cholesterol (胆固醇) and triglyceride (甘油三酸酯).
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, people were asked about their lifestyles.
The 800 people who owned pets had
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levels on each of the factors
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than those who did not own pets. The differences were even greater than those found in similar studies on people who
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to vegetarian diets or took
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exercise. The study also showed that it did not matter
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kind of pet was owned—a cat was as good as a dog—so the benefits could not be attributed
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the exercise involved in walking a dog.