This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on ISI (2)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Exercise  • Alert me on articles by topic

Rebecca Voelker

JAMA. 2006;296:643.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

One potential tool in the fight against obesity has four legs, a wagging tail, and a leash. A small but growing number of research studies is demonstrating how extensive a role the beloved canine can play in helping humans lose weight and become more fit.

"We have 65 million dogs in US households," says Jacqueline Epping, MEd, lead health scientist in the Physical Activity and Health Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in Atlanta, Ga. "If more people walked their dogs, we could be taking better advantage of a strategy [to lose weight] that's right at our feet."

(Photo credit: Rebecca Voelker)

Epping and Sandra Ham, MS, a CDC health statistician, are authors of the first epidemiologic study of dog walking in the United States, published in April (Ham SA, Epping J. Prev Chronic Dis. 2006;3:A47). They analyzed data from 1282 individuals, who . . . [Full Text of this Article]