Many people might take gardening as a fringe activity. However, gardening can help you to achieve a lot. For example, you can gain peace of mind, not to mention the various fitness benefits of physical exercise. Let us check out for ourselves the myriad health advantages of maintaining gardening as a hobby:
-
Table of Contents
Gardening promotes sleep, builds strength, and helps you lose excess weight
The CDC states that gardening is a very helpful exercise. It includes various activities such as cutting grass, raking, as well as bending, and stooping. All of these fall under the light and moderate exercise category. On the other hand, digging, shoveling, chopping, and pruning trees and bushes are considered to be a very vigorous form of exercise. Either way, a regular dose of gardening basically uses all of the major muscle groups in the body. Think along the lines of waking up feeling satisfyingly sore after a hard day’s work. Of course, once you are tired you will sleep better. In the end, it will be possible to help offset many weight problems that are related to old age.
-
Gardening can help you to offset the memory loss
Gardening helps to protect memory and stave off dementia and other age-related memory affecting illnesses. It leads to an increased amount of nerve growth factors that are typically associated with the memory part of the human brain. As a matter of fact, horticultural therapy is a known way of using the psychological calming aspects of gardening to improve mental health. As of now, various doctors are using it as an effective treatment for patients suffering from moderate to even worse forms of dementia.
-
Indoor gardening
However, it is not necessary to actually go out into your garden to do a spot of gardening. Rain, storms, and inclement weather can keep you away from your garden but that certainly does not mean that it will keep your garden away from you. Not when you can indulge in a bit of indoor gardening. You will of course need a space in your home for such a garden. Moreover, you will need grow lights, grow tents, and other tools to ensure that your plants grow as big and strong as if they were planted in your external garden from day one. Doing so will allow you to enjoy virtually the same health benefits as if you were gardening outside.
-
Gardening is a stress buster
Once you start working in a garden, you will be able to recuperate from many stressful events faster. It is in fact much easier to recover from stress if you were gardening than if you were to start reading for instance. It will help you become much more positive than just about any other activity out there. There is now a large body of evidence conducted by researchers that has determined that gardening is one of the best stress-busting activities out there. This is because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol in our bodies.
-
It fosters community growth
Family garden patches, School gardens, and for that matter even community gardens are rapidly becoming more and more popular. This is because it leads to not just fresher fruits, flowers, and vegetables for the home, family, and community, but it also fosters more human interaction. People who participate in such community activities get to work with individuals of different ages, backgrounds, and abilities. Not only would it expand your horizons it will also help you to become a more social person.’ Best of all, you can share tips with other fellow gardening enthusiasts.
-
It gives you a sense of empowerment
We live in an essentially unjust ‘dog eat dog’ world. Here tending to your own garden enables you to take time out from the rat race and disconnect from it all. When you see blooming flowers and plants grow under your touch, you will feel very good about yourself.
-
Conclusion
Gardening can be a great way to regain your health. It will ensure that you get good sleep and lots of exercises. You can even start gardening indoors with the help of grow lights for your precious plants.
Visit for more articles: forbesblog.org
