Did you know that tending your own garden is good for your health? It really is, and it’s not just because you can grow your own healthy fruits and veggies either! Researchers are increasingly coming to the conclusion that taking care of green space can make you healthier in a myriad of ways.
Check out these neat ways that having your own garden boosts your health:
Relieves Stress
A study conducted in the Netherlands asked two teams to complete a stressful task. Once the task was over, one group did 30 minutes of reading indoors, while the other group gardened. The group that did the gardening was in a better mood and had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol than the ones who read.
Promotes a Healthy Heart
If you hate exercising, but you love tending to your plant and flowers and ensuring that your lawn is perfectly manicured you will be happy to hear that gardening can be counted toward the 2.5 hours of moderate exercise we should all be doing once a week. More than that, the simple act of gardening has been shown to cut the risk of a heart attack by as much as 30 percent in people over 60, and it will certainly promote heart health in younger people too.
If you don’t yet have a garden worth spending time in, it might be worth creating one now. Growing a garden be expensive when you start out, but you could consider personal loans for poor credit to get you started. If you do, and you choose to plant fruits and veggies, you’ll probably save money in the long term, and you’ll certainly give your health a very real boost.
Boosts Mental Health
There are lots of simple things we can all do to give us a lift whether we’re suffering from the blues, depression or other serious mental health issues, but few of them are as joyous as gardening. When you garden, you spend time in nature, breathing in the fresh air, concentrating on your work, and exercising.
All of these things are therapeutic in nature which means that they can lift mild depression. Just be sure to stop and smell the roses, feel the soil between your fingers and enjoy the sun on your face as you dig, rake and plant. Feed the birds too; their regular visits will make your heart sing.
Boosts Brain Health
Gardening isn’t just good for mental health issues like depression either; it can actually boost brain power in older people and help them to reduce their risk of dementia by as much as 36 -47 percent depending on which study you look at. Researchers believe this could be because we use so many of our critical functions like learning, problem-solving, strength, dexterity, and sensory awareness when we garden. In fact, so powerful is gardening that researchers have said it is the single biggest thing you can of to reduce your risk of dementia or Alzheimer’s.
So, put on your gardening gloves, and get outside – it’ll do you the world of good.