‘Horsing around’ reduces stress hormones in youth

https://news.wsu.edu/2014/04/24/horsing-around-reduces-stress-hormones-in-youth/

April 24, 2014
By Rachel Webber, College of Agricultural, Human & Natural Resource Sciences

New research from Washington State University reveals how youth who work with horses experience a substantial reduction in stress – and the evidence lies in kids’ saliva.

The results are published in the American Psychological Association’s Human-Animal Interaction Bulletin this month.

“We were coming at this from a prevention perspective,” said Patricia Pendry, a developmental psychologist at WSU who studies how stress “gets under the skin” and the effects of prevention programs on human development. “We are especially interested in optimizing healthy stress hormone production in young adolescents, because we know from other research that healthy stress hormone patterns may protect against the development of physical and mental health problems.”

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