Even before human beings get sick, dogs can help detect warning signs of disease. Dogs can detect, for instance, if a person is about to experience epileptic seizures or diseases such as lung cancer just through a person’s breath, bladder, or urinary problems due to a change in the scent of someone’s urine, and can even identify higher or lower sugar levels in people with diabetes.
Diabetes
Dogs have the ability to feel spikes and drops of human glucose levels. Researchers have determined that what they detect in a hypoglycemic episode is isoprene, a known natural chemical found in human breath that increases considerably as blood sugar fluctuates. A fall in blood glucose can lead to restlessness, unconsciousness, coma or even death in an insulin-dependent diabetic, so alerting the patient at the earliest possible sign is essential. Many diabetic pet dogs are also taught to retrieve a sugar source in situations of hypoglycemia.
Cancer
Several researches studies have found that trained dogs can successfully detect different types of cancer in human beings. Dogs could make a major contribution in the early detection of telling people who suffer from lung cancer based on their breath to sniffing out ovarian cancer based on blood samples to identify prostate cancer in urine samples.
One extremely useful study showed that dogs trained to detect breast cancer also had lung cancer and melanoma, even though they had not been trained to do so. This study could signify that cancer patients are likely to have a similar substance, irrespective of the type of cancer that affects them.
Parkinson’s Disease
At Manchester University, the researchers are trying to train dogs to detect Parkinson’s disease years before signs develop. The research is influenced by the work of a human “super-sniffer” who identified a change in her husband’s scent six years before he was given a diagnosis.
Narcolepsy
Narcolepsy is a very dangerous disease. This is when an individual can fall asleep instantly – even while they’re standing up. In this scenario, narcolepsy service dogs can identify when an attack tends to occur- by a change in the smell of your sweat. This has been demonstrated in a 2013 scientific study released by the National Institutes of Health. In the study, 11 of 12 narcolepsy patients were identified by trained narcolepsy dogs smelling their sweat samples. In this case, a trained service dog may alert its owner when they are about to have an incident, based on the biochemical changes in their body. This can save a person suffering from narcolepsy from severe injury.
Migraine
Being able to predict a migraine attack can greatly decrease the duration and intensity of the suffering it causes. As per a study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2013, some 60 % of the people stated that their dog had warned them about impending migraine headaches one or two hours before they started to feel it.
Malaria
Malaria may not be prevalent everywhere, but it can be deadly in countries where it still exists., particularly for children. But again, they’re our trained and sniffing rescue service dogs. Recent research shows that dogs can tell exactly if someone has malaria – simply by sniffing their socks. Even if someone doesn’t display any signs, the dog knows well ahead of time if a person has the disease.
Related: veterinary analyzer
Urinary Tract Infections
Dogs are used to smell pee—and that behavior could actually have health benefits. Researchers spent eight weeks training dogs (five Labrador and Gold retriever) to identify infected urine, and then let them loose on hundreds of samples (mostly women). The dogs were capable of detecting samples tainted with four different bacteria with at least 90% accuracy.
Researchers still need to discover exactly what dogs can smelling about us, let alone how they can be trained to be as accurate as possible about a change in our bodies. Even though many information is not yet known, it’s clear that dogs have an uncanny ability to sniff out certain medical issues.
If your dog does not have the traits to be a dog that knows how you feel. As long as they’re on your side as your buddy when you most need them, that’s all that matters.
