Dogs Can Smell Serious Diseases Even Before The First Symptoms Appear: Here’s How They Behave Then!

Viral Storm
3 min readApr 24, 2022

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In addition to being faithful “friends”, dogs can also detect serious illnesses with their owners, long before we decide to go to the doctor.

Scientific research has already been done that shows that dogs can smell diseases in humans, but now a list of diseases that a dog’s sense of smell can sense has definitely been established, writes theguardian.com.

Thanks to their strong sense of smell, dogs can detect diseases in their owners.

“A dog’s sense of smell can smell units in a trillion molecules, so something that can be compared to a drop of water in an Olympic pool is the size of a molecule that a dog can detect. They have 40 times more receptors than humans and I think it is inconceivable for us to experience something like that “, explains Dr. Mario Adams”. He points out that thanks to that ability, dogs can smell just about any change in our bodies.

Here are some diseases they can “smell”:

Diabetes

Dogs can smell hypoglycemia and thus recognize whether their owner has diabetes. They usually react by barking, scratching their paws, and licking. There are also dogs that are trained to detect diabetes in humans.

Parkinson’s disease

Research from the University of Manchester seeks to show that dogs can be trained to sense Parkinson’s disease sometime and years before symptoms appear. The work is based on the fact that a woman, known as a “super-sniffer”, discovered a change in her husband’s body odor six years before he was diagnosed with Parkinson's syndrome.

Changes in blood sugar levels

Scientific studies have confirmed that dogs can smell a drop in blood glucose levels. By the smell of our sweat, they can determine exactly what condition we are in, which helps people who suffer from diabetes. Specially trained dogs can help them detect a problem before dangerous symptoms arrive, so they can take medication or seek help in time. In such situations, the dog will show signs of stress and try to attract the owner’s attention.

Epileptic seizure

Some are even able to warn owners with epilepsy a few minutes to an hour earlier that they will have a seizure. In that case, the dog may behave strangely, or bark.

Prostate cancer

Back in 2015, an Italian study showed that if you train dogs to smell certain chemicals, they can predict prostate cancer. Namely, as part of the experiment, two German shepherds were trained to smell special substances, and when they were brought into the room with healthy and sick participants in the study, the dogs were right in 90 percent of cases. It is interesting that in many patients the disease has not been confirmed yet. A study is underway that will reveal the behavior of dogs in the everyday clinical environment.

Apart from diseases, dogs can also detect very easily how we feel. If we are scared they will know right away.

If you get scared, your pet will know it right away, because he can smell the hormone adrenaline, which is associated with fear and danger, and recognize the characteristic body language. Larger guard dogs, such as Dobermans or Rottweilers, will immediately rush to protect and defend you from threats, while smaller ones will mimic your behavior.

Originally published at https://viral-storm.com on April 24, 2022.

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