Dogs are man’s best friend, but it’s not just because they’re cute and adorable. We have a strong relationship with them because dogs are extremely good at reading us.

Dogs can read us through our body language and their extreme sense of smell. In fact, dogs possess up to 300 million scent receptors in their nose, and their brain analyzes smell 40x more efficiently than ours. In fact, their smell is so powerful that they can detect substances at one part per trillion concentration. This is equivalent to a single drop of food coloring in 20 Olympic-size swimming pools!

Dogs can even detect our feelings. This may explain why they’re very effective emotional support and service animals for people suffering from mental health conditions like depression and autism. But aside from being sensitive to human emotions, recent studies show that trained dogs can smell several human diseases. So, if you have medical conditions, trained service dogs can warn you before exhibiting symptoms.   

Here are five medical conditions that trained service dogs can detect. 

1. Cancer

One of the most studied conditions that dogs can detect is cancer. They can smell different types of cancer, including breast, prostate, and lung cancer. They can detect early stages of cancer in blood samples, breath samples, and urine samples with high accuracy.[1] 

Dogs change in behavior once they think you have a medical condition. They may look sad or repeatedly paw or sniff the area with cancer. These may be subtle behavioral changes, but you should take note of them and double-check with your doctor. 

Read more: Top Things You Should Know About Service Dogs 

2. Diabetes

Researchers have observed that dogs can monitor hypoglycemia in people with diabetes.[2] By smelling your breath, dogs can detect if you have too low or too high blood sugar levels. That is because of the chemical isoprene that significantly rises in your breath during an episode of low blood sugar. [3]

Trained dogs notify their owners when they have low and high glycemic levels by jumping up, pawing, or nudging the owner. Untrained dogs may show signs of discomfort or anxiety.

3. Malaria 

A recent study showed that trained dogs can detect malaria by sniffing people’s socks. This is because people infected with malaria produce a specific odor from their breath and skin.[4] For places that are close to eliminating malaria, dogs can sniff out the people who are asymptomatic carriers, which can prevent another outbreak.

4. Seizures

Seizures can be very unpredictable for people with epilepsy, and there are still no tools or instruments that can predict seizures in a domestic setting. Trained dogs were shown to notify their owners right before a seizure appeared. 

Dogs display subtle behavioral changes like licking their owner’s faces and wrists or standing next to their owner before their owner experiences a seizure. [5]

Read more: 5 Nutrition Tips for Service Dogs

5. Narcolepsy 

Narcolepsy is a medical condition that affects the sleep-wake cycles. People with narcolepsy may suddenly fall asleep, even when they’re walking or in the middle of doing something. 

A study showed that trained service dogs can detect narcolepsy patients using sweat samples. They can warn their owners up to five minutes before a narcolepsy attack occurs. Dogs trained to detect narcolepsy warn their owners by barking, nudging, licking, or standing next to them.

Conclusion 

If you’re suffering from these medical conditions, you can get a trained service dog to warn and assist you. They are indeed very helpful, but it doesn’t mean you have to stop seeing your doctor. Note that dogs still cannot replace standard laboratory testing.

Do you own an assistance animal? Register your pet today.

The Service Animal Registry of California invites you to have your assistance animal registered in order to designate its status. We also encourage you to take our online classes so you can be fully aware of your rights and gain more knowledge about your support animal.

Finally, we present to you our book entitled, “ASSISTANCE ANIMAL LAWS: LEARN YOUR RIGHTS REGARDING SERVICE ANIMALS, EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ANIMALS, THERAPY PETS, AND OTHER DOGS, CATS, AND ASSISTANCE ANIMALS” to provide you with a complete education on assistance animals.

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