Do you love to take care for your garden? Do you spend time there every day?
This profound hobby brings so much fun, sense of acknowledgement and happiness. There’s no better feeling than knowing that your hard work brings results, and provides you beautiful and delightful experience.
There is so much more in gardening than satisfaction and profound sense of happiness. Gardening makes us better in many ways, more than we could have imagined.
Gardening brings multiple health benefits to you, and I’m not talking about nutritious veggies and fruit you’ll harvest and enjoy in later. Here are health benefits of gardening that might surprise you, and make you love it even more, or turn someone into this beautiful hobby.
Your Hands Get Stronger and More Agile, Precise, and Gentle As Well
Our hands can be subjects of a serious degradation and issues through aging. Problems such as arthritis, tremors, and even heart-related stuff that many elder people faces can be dealt with through gardening very efficiently. Those are research-backed claims, provided by some serious researchers.
On the other hand, when considered by a healthy person, gardening will deliver a quality workout for your hands and forearms, strengthening your joints, tendons and increasing the blood flow. As a rehabilitative technique, it can make wonders to the injured, and provide satisfactory experience and strengthening as an active hobby to a healthy person.
By gardening often, your hands will become more durable and you’ll develop a strong grip. Furthermore, your hands won’t get just tougher from gardening; handling gentle plants and seeds will provide a sensation of gentleness and care that will be felt in your environment. Your interaction with others, especially with your partner, will be on a higher level. You’ll have the best from the both worlds – strength and agility on the one side, and gentleness on the other.
Remember not to push to far though; gardening can cause blisters, injuries, and a lot of fatigue, and even muscle inflammation if you’re reckless. Always be aware of your environment and your energy, the task at hand and the fatigue.
It Boosts Your Brain Health and Reduces Risk for Alzheimer’s disease
Besides strengthening your arms, gardening stimulates your brain in multiple ways. The study published in in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease showed that the frequent work sessions in the garden can nurture your brain functioning, boost the overall health, and reduce the risk for Alzheimer’s disease by astonishing 50%!
This incredible statistic comes from the effort of several factors. First of all, there is physical activity, which increases the heart rate and blood flow, followed by oxygen. This provides a fine boost to the mental functioning.
Next, the awareness of natural surroundings, paired with cognitive stimulation and the satisfaction of the work come into play, resulting in a significant boost of endorphin, followed by overall progression of the mental state.
Moreover, it’s not beneficial just for the elder persons. Gardening delivers therapeutic properties to people regardless of age, and anyone should enjoy the benefits. The best combination is to have both food and aromatic plants; it will stimulate your brain.
It Reduces Stress Significantly
Even though this might seem obvious, the psychological effects of gardening are significant. Besides having a therapeutic effect on people’s brains, gardening will build your self-esteem and lower your stress levels significantly. The research from Journal of Health Psychology shoved that the stress relieve from gardening is stronger compared to reading, and it also provides a joyful experience that can help you get in a better mood. In other words, besides it helps with stress, gardening will get you to a better mood faster and you’ll stay in better mood longer.
Another important feature to mention is the self-esteem enhancement; making this planet a better, greener place makes people feel so much better about themselves and the world in general. This sensation flows through the body naturally, and makes one think about his or her contribution to the world as defining and profound.
Gardening Helps With Heart Health
Regular gardening brings activity and sun exposure to our lives. Spending time being active on the sun is the best thing you can do for your health overall; the vitamin D from the sun will reduce the chance for a heart disease and several types of cancer. Because gardening is fun but demanding, you will spend more time doing it instead of going on a treadmill.
The difference gardening makes is in the environment that stimulates health, the psychological effects that gardening provokes itself, and the physical activity which isn’t boring as running or lifting weights. When you add the reward of new life and contribution to the planet, the satisfaction and fulfilment rise to the top.
All the effect combined provoke the overall health, but the combination of vitamin D, positive attitude from fun activity, and stimulated blood flow will most certainly get your heart beating better, faster, and stronger.
Immunity booster
If you thought that there aren’t more health benefits to name, you were wrong. Gardening is so miraculous, isn’t it? Anyway, here’s the deal; when you plant a new tree, or get around your veggies and nourish them by hand, you’ll get your hands dirty. Considered as a sign of bad hygiene, soil under the fingernails hides the bacteria called Mycobacterium vaccae, a big ally in fight against allergies.
Your body absorbs this bacteria through plants, air, and dirt, and the latest holds the most of it. It is scientifically proven that this bacteria stimulates immune system, and makes it stronger against many allergies. Combined with the scents and aerosol features from various plants in your surroundings, this bacteria will help you stay away from allergies and fight the existing ones. Besides this, the bacteria will fight common cold and various similar diseases, making you less prone to get ill.
Gardens make us feel better, healthier, and happier.
Here you have several elaborated reasons to stay longer in your garden, or to start one. There are no reasons not to, and many health benefits of gardening. It’s up to you to decide: will you get on the green team and enjoy the longer, happier, and healthier life or not?
Were you surprised by some of these health benefits of gardening? Would you maybe add some that we didn’t feature today (it’s quite possible, gardening is an endless source of well-being)?
Let us know in the comments below, and share the article with your friends – bring them over to gardening! They will thank you later.
