Gardens do more than just add fabulous curb appeal and develop your DIY skills. Gardening can also improve your health by exposing you to environments and activities that help your mind and body function better. Studies around the world have directly linked the effects of gardening to a better quality of life in both urban and rural settings, with benefits for everyone from children to the elderly. Let’s see 7 reasons why gardening is good for your health.
1. Relieve stress
A Dutch study looked at cortisol, a natural steroid that helps the body respond to stress, and found that gardening after a stressful event provided better stress relief than reading. (Don’t worry, the study found that reading also reduces stress!)
Home gardeners say the psychological benefits, such as stress relief, are more important to them than the cultural ties or economic benefits of gardening, regardless of the type or number of gardening activities they engage in.
It’s not just the act of gardening; Soil bacteria can also help fight stress. The same bacteria have been observed to act as antidepressants and also establish a strong immune system.
2. Count as Exercise
This is one of the main reasons why gardening is good for your health. Activities like carrying pots, digging holes, reaching for weeds, and pushing the lawn mower can collectively engage every muscle in the body.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classifies gardening as a moderate physical activity, noting that it can burn more than 300 calories per hour, about the same as playing golf while walking and carrying clubs.
Heavy yard work, like chopping firewood or carrying heavy bags of mulch, burns over 400 calories.
A study suggests that gardening can help counteract age-related weight gain. There are also other tangible physical benefits, such as improved dexterity and hand strength. Plus, after all that yard work, you’ll probably sleep better.
3. It prevents dementia
Not only physical exercise, gardening is also good for the brain, especially as a protection against the onset of dementia. Gardening boosts cognitive function and one study found it could reduce the risk of dementia by 36%.
4. Helps Fight Chronic Diseases Like Heart Disease and Diabetes
You know plants need sun, but did you know your body needs it too? Like other outdoor leisure activities, gardening can provide a dual effect of healthy exercise and exposure to the sun.
Moderate sun exposure is the most effective way to get vitamin D, which influences over 1,000 different genes and nearly every tissue in the body, affecting everything from metabolism to the immune system.
Vitamin D is linked to positive effects on type 2 diabetes, heart disease, bone health and depression.
Your gut may also feel the benefits, as vitamin D is thought to help regulate gastrointestinal upset.
Of course, it’s important to remember to take precautions to spend time in the sun safely. Never do it at midday in the summer, if you can’t avoid it, wear light clothing, long sleeves, a hat and hydrate yourself every few minutes.
5. Connect people
Gardening connects people to the wider community and combats the negative health effects of loneliness.
This could simply mean interacting with people at a local garden center or sharing gardening tips and success stories with an online community.
Gardening has more direct benefits in spaces such as community gardens, where social bonds and support networks can be formed. This can have an additional impact in urban settings, where many residents may suffer from isolation and a lack of social support.
One study found that gardening also offered the potential to enhance interracial and cross-cultural interaction in these settings.
6. Improves mood and self-esteem
Just being in nature is good for well-being, and the effects of participating in nature include documented mood lifters. Gardening increases positivity and optimism, and has been linked to fighting depression and other mental illnesses.
With all these good vibes, it’s no wonder that spending time on earth leads to higher self-esteem in adults and children with behavioral issues.
A study of emotional well-being associated with common daily activities, such as walking, shopping and eating out, found that gardening consistently ranked among the top five activities that provided happiness and meaning.
The same study showed that the most positive effects were felt by women and low-income participants.
7. Helps lead a healthier diet
Choosing healthy foods isn’t always easy, but growing your own food can help, and that’s another reason why gardening is good for your health. Growing fruits, vegetables, and herbs has the added benefit of making it easier to access nutritious food options (and lets you control what pesticides or fertilizers are used).
Also, people who grow vegetables are more likely to eat them. One study found that children are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables when grown at home, while another study identified an increase in food literacy associated with young people’s gardening.
In addition to nutritional benefits, vegetable gardeners in particular have reported greater positive emotional impacts than those who practice other types of home gardening.
Now that you know the reasons why gardening is good for your health, it’s time to come down to earth.
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