While dogs and humans can suffer many of the same injuries (and recover in essentially the same way), dogs heal slightly faster than we do. The reason why, however, depends on many factors, including the dog’s age and immune system response.
Have you ever wondered why your dog seems to bounce back from an illness quicker than a human? Does it seem odd that your dog can get hurt and be seemingly fine the next day? Read on to find out why.
Dogs’ Regenerating Skin Helps Wounds Heal Quickly
Dogs and humans both use skin to protect their vital organs from harm and disease, prevent dehydration, and to regulate body temperature. Though the general make-up of dog and human skin is similar, dogs have some interesting differences. Both human and dog skin is constantly regenerating, but dogs’ skin regenerates every 20 days compared to humans’ 28 days, according to ImpriMed.
One of the reasons for this is that dog skin is only about three to five cells thick, whereas human skin is more than 10 layers thick. Injured skin goes through a few steps to heal: clotting, scabbing, tissue growth, and scarring. Based on the nature of the injury, dogs can heal from a wound in approximately 10-14 days. The deeper and more serious the wound, the longer it will take to heal. This is similar to how long it takes a human’s skin to heal.
So, although a dog’s skin regenerates more quickly, it doesn’t heal wounds any quicker.
Dogs’ Dense Bones Allow for Quicker Healing
Dog bones are less porous and more dense than human bones. This makes them stronger and more impervious to breaking. However, dogs can still suffer broken bones. A younger dog will heal from a broken bone in approximately four to six weeks; however, older dogs may take eight weeks to three months to heal. Comparatively, according to the type of break, human bones can take between six weeks to five months to heal. So, it seems that though dog skin and human skin heal at a similar rate, dog bones are stronger and heal quicker than human bones.
Dogs and Humans Have Equally Strong Immune Systems
Your immune system helps fight off infections from bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. Dogs have similar immune systems to humans––so similar, in fact, that they also get many of the same diseases as humans. Many people may think that humans get sick more often than dogs because you rarely see a dog with a cold. However, dogs do get sick.
But what makes humans more likely to have a cold is the communal nature in which we live. Dogs rarely interact with other dogs. Thus, dogs are spreading fewer diseases. Many diseases that humans get cannot be contracted by dogs and vice versa. If dogs are in groups interacting with others, they too, can spread viruses and bacteria like humans. A dog’s immune response follows many of the same traits as humans and studying this could lead to discoveries for human diseases.
Studying Dogs’ Health Advances Medical Science
For years, drug testing has been done on mice. The problem with this is that mice don’t have the same immune responses as humans. They are also injected with the disease to initiate the study. Their systems are far less active than ours, so when a drug works in a test for mice, it doesn’t always work for humans.
Dogs, however, have such similar immune responses to humans, that some scientists have proposed using dogs for drug tests. This may be alarming, but the National Cancer Institute supports these studies. They claim that dogs are already helping to redefine the way that we look at immune responses. Dogs have similar inhibitors and proteins, so when a drug is tested on them, their bodies react similarly to ours.
The difference in these trials is that they would select dogs who are already suffering from cancers or other diseases to be a part of these trials (with consent from their owners). Then, the trials would be mutually beneficial to both humans and dogs.
Another area where dog physiology is important to human studies is in cartilage. Humans have had difficulties finding an animal that has similar cartilage to test and assess ways to repair it. Even though a dog’s cartilage is thinner, it may hold the key. As Tissue Engineering explains, they are good for studying rehabilitation using bandages, braces, and other healing apparatuses that humans would use. These studies could revolutionize how both humans and dogs are treated for conditions and injuries to cartilage.
Can Dogs Help Humans Heal Faster?
There is a reason why there are therapy dogs. Petting a dog has the ability to calm someone down. Dogs can help soothe PTSD sufferers and people with anxiety. They are empathetic creatures, so they know when you are feeling sad or upset. They react to your emotions and comfort you in all the best ways: sitting by your side, letting you stroke them, laying on you. They help you to feel less alone and less stressed.
Per the American Kennel Club (AKC), dogs also benefit humans by reducing allergies, lowering blood pressure, and increasing an active lifestyle. Research has found that children who had a dog at home as newborns were less likely to develop allergies. Also, studies have shown that heart attack patients who own a pet are more likely to live an extra year.
Even though dogs may not heal faster than humans overall, they still have amazing healing powers. Dogs’ skin regenerates at a faster rate, their bones can heal faster in younger dogs, and they have similar immune systems. They are also helping researchers study more effective drugs and health care to solve many human diseases.
