Reducing stress benefits
Reducing stress is one of the significant benefits of gardening. Remember, even though stress is also a key to survival, too much stress could be considered dangerous to the human body. It weakens the immune system and caused high blood pressure, fatigue, depression, anxiety, and heart disease. Many types of research had shown that outdoor activities are critical to combat stress, but gardening is the best among sports and recreation outside interests.
Exposure to sunlight benefits
We all know that the right amount of sunlight will make our body healthy. That’s why people preferred going outside for exercise rather than inside. Sunshine gave us Vitamin D, and this vitamin strengthened our immune system and increased the amount of calcium in our body. Doing gardening in the morning or evening might be sensible because the sun is not too hot, especially for gardeners in the tropic. Exposure to sunlight is one of the benefits of gardening we can’t overlook.
Decreased dementia risk benefits
According to Kim Hayes, in the blog AARP, a 2006 study found that gardening could lower the risk of dementia by 36%. Research track more than 2800 people over the age of 60 for 16 years and concluded that physical activity, mainly gardening, could reduce the incidence of dementia in future years. Dementia is a disease and condition where a person faced a decline in memory, language, problem-solving, and other thinking skills.
Boosting our self-esteem benefits
Another benefit of gardening is that it could boost our self-esteem. In psychology, the term self-esteem is a term to describe a person’s overall sense of self-worth or personal value. Gardening could make a person feel productive, and they would have a sense of contribution to society, no matter how small it is. A person could make the environment and surrounding more beautiful, or they could help in some ways to increase food production.
Good exercise benefits
Gardening helped to improve our muscle tissues and memory. Gardening strengthened the muscle and improved our hands and mind coordination. Gardening is an excellent form of exercise because we are so engrossed with our gardening activities until we didn’t realize we had exerted enough movements such as twisting and bending that caused us to sweat a lot.
Burns a lot of calories benefits
Dietitians and nutritionists will always point out that burning calories is one way to reduce fats. Fats help to keep our skin healthy, and fats also stored energy in our bodies. However, too much fat could lead to obesity. Too much sugar is one factor contributing to the increase in calories and thus increasing unwanted fats in our body.
With outdoor exercises, especially gardening, we could help ourselves reduce fats because exercise helped reduce our calories. As mentioned earlier, because of too engrossed with our gardening activities, we didn’t realize that we had used up a lot of our calories because of gardening.
Mood-boosting benefits
Another research cited by Kim Hayes, AARP, from Netherland, showed that gardening could fight stress better than other hobbies. Participants, divided into two groups, completed stressful tasks. Then, one group was told to read indoor, while the other group to do gardening outside for 30 minutes. The gardening group reported better moods afterward, and their blood tests showed a lower level of stress hormones.
Economic benefits of gardening
We all know that any decrease in production would create inflation, or worse, hyperinflation. Inflation happens when there is too much money chasing after too few goods. It can also happen to food. What happens if suddenly, the country is cut out from trading because of war or pandemic? Food is no longer available, and people will eventually starve. However, with gardening and animal rearing, I think we could overcome that crisis. Increasing food production shows how important gardening is to society and the nation.
All outdoor activities involving exercise are beneficial. However, gardening is a bonus for our physical exertion. It is suitable for our muscles and bones, but it is also ideal for our mental stamina. While exercises such as walking, jogging, sports activities bring benefits for our body, benefits from gardening, on the other hand, increase productivity and beauty for our community and surrounding. I would also like to know more suggestions and opinions from the readers.
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