{"id":654,"date":"2022-01-10T17:48:45","date_gmt":"2022-01-10T22:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/?p=654"},"modified":"2025-05-01T04:45:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T08:45:18","slug":"how-dogs-are-being-trained-to-diagnose-parkinsons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/how-dogs-are-being-trained-to-diagnose-parkinsons\/","title":{"rendered":"How Dogs are Being Trained to Diagnose Parkinson’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

We know that dogs can help with improving our mental health, but what about our physical health? Dog\u2019s senses are actually so strong that they can sniff out changes in our body to indicate different diseases before we even know about them! Diseases like cancer, neurogenerative, and Parkinson\u2019s all have the opportunity to be sniffed out by your furry friend to help get you in treatment quicker than you may have without your dog\u2019s warning. Read on to learn more about the power of a pooch\u2019s nose:<\/p>\n

Human\u2019s Sense of Smell<\/h3>\n

Parkinson\u2019s researcher, Tilo Kunath, conducted a study<\/a> with a woman named Joy Milne to see if Parkinson\u2019s disease was actually sniffable and how this phenomenon worked. Milne claimed she was able to notice the difference in the smell of her husband as he was diagnosed with Parkinson\u2019s. After the study with Kunath, Milne was able to confidently point out the participants that had the disease. This study lead to curiosity and further research in the field to see if scent really could identify metabolic changes in a human if they had particular diseases, like Parkinson\u2019s. Kunath, and Milne, were able to conduct research that identified different chemical compounds that allowed for the \u2018smell\u2019 of Parkinson\u2019s to be more structurally noted.<\/p>\n

Dogs and Disease Sniffing<\/h3>\n

With Kunath and Milne\u2019s discoveries about the scent tracking of disease, researchers began to wonder if dogs, who have 1,000-10,000 times the smelling power<\/a> of humans, could also sense metabolic changes in humans. Dog trainers who were inspired by the researchers formed the non-profit program Parkinson\u2019s Alert Dogs (PAD) to help train pooches to sniff out disease. The training has helped identify biomarkers left from scents that are then pointed out by the dogs. Since starting PAD, the program has had 25+ dogs trained with a 90% rate of detecting Parkinson\u2019s Disease in humans! These miracle furballs have helped in data tracking and analysis of Parkinson\u2019s scent training since 2017. PAD\u2019s pups continue to operate with the goal of being able to aid in Parkinson\u2019s research development, prevention, and treatment.<\/p>\n

How PAD Helps<\/h3>\n

PAD does its dog sniffing training using an operant conditioning method of research by reinforcing the scents of Parkinson\u2019s (from t-shirts) to teach their pups how to identify the scent easily on humans. These dogs are able to then make \u201cdiagnoses\u201d of Parkinson\u2019s after training to be able to thoroughly, and accurately, identify when the disease\u2019s scent is present on a presented shirt. PAD previously focused efforts on being able to identify biomarkers of sebum, but now the non-profit is testing urine. Urine will contain significantly fewer \u201cbackground scents\u201d compared to a fabric, but will still have linkages to biomarkers for Parkinson\u2019s!<\/p>\n

The work Kunath, Milne, and PAD are doing\/have done is extremely important in the scientific study and medicinal practice of Parkinson\u2019s disease. These studies and programs prove that dogs are more than just our furry companions, but also help to improve researching important health developments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We know that dogs can help with improving our mental health, but what about our physical health? Dog\u2019s senses are actually so strong that they can sniff out changes in our body to indicate different diseases before we even know about them! Diseases like cancer, neurogenerative, and Parkinson\u2019s all have the opportunity to be sniffed…<\/p>\n

Read More <\/i><\/b><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":655,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9588],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dog-health"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":903,"href":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sitmeanssit.com\/dog-training-mu\/cleveland-westside-dog-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}