Gardening Is Good For You

Did You Know That Gardening Provides Many Health Benefits, Including Moderate To High Intensity Exercise !

http://www.dietoflife.com/gardening-health-benefits/

Like never before, vegetable, herb, and seed sales are soaring, thanks to the new spirit of consumers who are not only concerned about the quality of their diet, but who also recognize the physical, mental, and spiritual benefits of connecting with Mother Nature.

Modern living has literally built an abyss between us and the natural world. Fortunately, many people are starting to “connect the dots”, recognizing that a connection with the earth is important for health, fitness, and overall happiness.

1. The fitness gains from gardening

There are numerous reasons why gardening is good for anyone. One is related to the fact that human body needs repetitive mobility to function normally, and gardening is one way to stay active at times when you might otherwise be sitting motionless.  

There was research published in 2012 stating that those who actively engage in community gardening projects have considerably lower body mass index (BMI) than non-gardeners, suggesting that proactive lifestyle indeed translates into improved weight management.

Statistics showed that male and female community gardeners were 62% and 46% respectively less likely to be overweight or obese when compared with their non-gardening company.

Fitness researchers have also realized that when you exercise outdoors, you do exercise harder, which is why you have more health benefits as it will encourage you to work out harder than you might indoors.

2. Gardening means moderate-to-high-intensity exercise

It was the Korean researchers who have confirmed that gardening counts as moderate-to-high-intensity exercise for children, but it can likewise be intense exercise for adults too – especially if you get into soil works, discussed below.

The Poughkeepsie Journal noted: “In the Centers for Disease Control’s 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, gardening is classified as a moderate-to-vigorous activity. Lifting and carrying 40-pound bags of mulch, stretching into hard-to-reach places to do weeding or pushing a lawnmower around demonstrates that gardening can be a physically demanding workout.”

The featured article also notes that a person weighing 150 pounds (68 kg) can burn up to 300 calories an hour by moderate-intensity gardening. On the other hand, higher-intensity activities (such as stirring compost, raking leaves, spreading soil amendments, or simply digging holes) can burn up to 400 calories an hour!

The following gardening tasks constitute moderate-intensity exercise, based on energy expenditure evaluations in children: weeding, mulching, sowing seeds, harvesting, planting, mixing, growing medium, hoeing and even watering. Digging and raking accounted for vigorous exercise, the first being the most intense of all gardening activities. Another task, that can certainly make gardening a high-intensity effort, is adding soil amendments like wood chips.

You’ll need to plunge into this about 2-4 times a year, and you may spend a week or so getting it all done, depending on the size of your soil plot. The only requisite needed for this kind of exercise is a wheelbarrow and a pitchfork or shovel. Do keep proper body mechanics in mind when gardening—just as you would during any other exercise—as the bending, twisting, and reaching could cause injury if you’re reckless.

Key considerations when gardening are the following:

• pay attention to proper spinal alignment while you work as this will help absorb shock, and allow for proper weight distribution and optimal range of motion.
• avoid over-reaching by keeping objects and work surfaces close to your body
• if possible, work at waist height with elbows bent and arms comfortably at your sides
• while planting or weeding at ground level, make sure you bend your knees and squat or kneel, rather than stooping forward with your legs straight (or use a gardening stool)

Yes, let’s get back to Eden…

The documentary film titled Back to Eden reveals how you can transcend your garden by adding a thick layer of wood chips (mulch) around your trees and plants. As previously noted, this task ranks high in terms of intensity. If you haven’t seen it yet, we strongly encourage you to watch the entire video. It has certainly transformed our “stale understanding” of gardening. The film offers excellent advice for anyone interested in sustainable agriculture, regardless of its scope.  

Simple truth: Your health ultimately depends on the health of the soil!

Yes, it is exactly this circumstance that allows your food, that is the vegetables and fruits, to grow nutrient-dense. As discussed in the film, nature is self-sustaining, and when left alone, the ground will get covered with leaves and organic materials that then turn into lush compost, adding nutrients back to the soil.
This top layer of organic material also shields the soil and helps retain its humidity.

Mimicking nature, by covering your garden with wood chips, will result in less watering, and improved crops. The most cost-effective solution is to reach your local tree service, where you can get large amounts of wood chips (they are cut-off tree branches that have gone through a wood chipper) for free, instead purchasing mulch from a garden center. It is important to distribute all the chips in 1-2 days though, otherwise they tend to decompose and you will breathe in some bad dust as you move them.

Once you devote yourselves to doing this program, you won’t need any fertilizers and you’ll radically reduce the watering sessions. The chips also serve as phenomenal food for earthworms, which will digest them and create incredible topsoil of worm drops for free. You can easily get them to create a few tons of this valuable soil amendment every year if you continue to “feed” them. It is one of the absolute best soil amendments you can possibly apply, and it is just absolutely great that they are free of charge.

4. Adding soil amendments is a great workout that brings outstanding payouts in your garden

In addition to wood chips (mulch), we strongly encourage you to consider addingbiochar to your garden soil, to optimize the health of your planting soil. This soil amendment can truly transform your garden, in terms of dramatically boosting yields. One of the keys to a truly successful garden is to improve the microbiology of the soil. It is this varied collection of bacteria, fungi and parasites that actually transplants the nutrients from the soil into the plant. While synthetic fertilizers like Miracle Growwill supply some nutrients, these salts actually kill the soil microbes! Due to this side effect, your garden will not turn into a self-sustaining one.

In order to thrive and multiply, these soil microbes need a home to hang out in, or else they simply die shortly after application. Biochar serves this function perfectly. We’ve applied about 8 tons of biochar on our property—and believe us, that was an intense workout!

After you have applied the biochar, you need to activate it either by combining it with compost, rock dust powder, or our favorite, human urine. The human urine is a phenomenal source of nitrogen potassium and phosphorus and will bind strongly to the carbon in the biochar.

Wetting the biochar is also important in order to promote beneficial earthworms. You can certainly add biochar to existing plants, shrubs, and trees, but ideally it’s best if it’s in the soil prior to planting, so the plants have an ideal form of nutrition earlier on.
If you garden is small in size, you might only need a few hundred pounds. Larger landscapes will require more of course.

5. Mental health benefits also come along with gardening

Now, let’s get back to the health benefits of gardening. There are many considerable benefits of gardening beyond exercise. For instance, gardening can also help relieve depression. Depression is often rooted in the feeling of being disconnected from nature, and hence disconnected from inner you. Researchers have also found that digging in the soil may affect your mental health via the microorganisms in the soil—again confirming the link between your personal health and the health of your soil!  

In a study conducted in Norway, people who had been diagnosed with depression, persistent low mood, or ‘bipolar II disorder’ spent 6 hours a week growing flowers and vegetables. After 3 months, half of the participants had experienced a measurable improvement in their depression symptoms. What’s more, their mood continued to be better 3 months after the gardening program was over.

Christopher Lowry, Ph.D., has been injecting mice with Mycobacterium vaccae, a harmless bacteria commonly found in soil, and has found that they increase the release and metabolism of serotonin in parts of the brain that control cognitive function and mood — much like serotonin-boosting antidepressant drugs do.

A survey by Gardeners’ World magazine, reported 80% of gardeners being happy and content with their lives, compared with 67% of anti-gardeners. This feeling of wellbeing can have other more far-reaching implications for your physical health as well. According to a recent research done by Johns Hopkins, having a cheerful temperament can significantly reduce your odds of suffering a heart attack or sudden cardiac death, for that matter.

The TV presenter and garden writer, Monty Don, attributes the wellbeing of gardeners to the “recharging” you get from sticking your hands in the soil and spending time outdoors. This seems more than reasonable when you consider the health benefits associated with grounding, also known as earthing.  As detailed in the documentary film Grounded, the surface of the earth holds subtle health-boosting energy, and all you have to do is touch it.

Walking shoeless on the earth transfers free electrons from the earth’s surface into your body that spread throughout your tissues. Grounding has been shown to relieve pain, reduce inflammation, improve sleep, and enhance your well-being. Many gardeners will confirm the sense of wellbeing obtained from sticking your hands in the dirt as well, and this is a separate additional pleasure that comes from eating your own home-grown food!

6. Gardening offers stress relief and boosts brain health

Netherlands researchers have found that gardening is one of the most potent stress relieving activities out there. In their trial, two groups of people were asked to complete a stressful task. One group was then instructed to garden for half an hour while the other one was asked to read indoors for the same length of time.

Later, the gardening group reported a greater improvement in their mood and temper. Tests also revealed they had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, compared to those who tried to relax by quiet reading.

CNN’s report also refers to research showing that gardening may even help reduce your risk of dementia: “Two separate studies that followed people in their 60s and 70s for up to 16 years found, respectively, that those who gardened regularly had a 36 percent and 47 percent lower risk of dementia than non-gardeners, even when a range of other health factors were taken into account. These findings are hardly definitive, but they suggest that the combination of physical and mental activity involved in gardening may have a positive influence on the mind.”

7. Gardening is a superb way to improve your sustenance

Keeping a garden can also improve your health by providing you with fresher, uncontaminated, nutrient-dense food that you can’t buy in your local grocery store or even green market. It will also help you reduce your grocery bill.  Urban gardening is an important step toward building a more sustainable food system as well.

In fact, we’ve been encouraging everyone to plant a “Victory Garden” as a proactive step toward fixing our broken food system and improving our natural diet. They are named Victory Gardens because during World Wars I and II, 40% of the produce grown in the U.S. came from people’s backyards. I believe it is possible to spur a similar movement today, only for a different purpose. The new reality is that for most people it is very difficult to obtain high quality nutrient-dense foods unless they grow them themrselves.

Just start small, and before you know it, large portions of your meals could come straight from your own edible landscape. We recommend getting your feet wet bygrowing sprouts, as they are among the most nutritious foods you could possibly grow around your households.

Seeds, when sprouted, can contain up to 30 times the nutrients of organic vegetables! Sprouts also allow your body to extract more of the vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and essential fats from the other foods you eat. Add to that the boon of requiring very little space, and the ability to grow them indoors, year around. So, SPROUT IT!

You can use sprouts in a myriad of salads, either in addition to or in lieu of salad greens, or add them to vegetable juice or smoothies. We started out growing sprouts in Ball jars long ago, but we’ve found that growing them in potting soil is a far better option. You can harvest them in about a week, and in a 10×10 tray, you can harvest from 1-2 pounds (1 kg) of sunflower sprouts.

That will last you about 3 days. Or you can store them in the fridge for 7 days. Sunflower spouts will give you the most volume for your work and, in our opinion, have a taste to enjoy!

To sum up: Gardening may be the key facet of a healthy lifestyle

The groceries grown in a garden of your own are overall fresher, more nutritious, and taste better than store bought food, and, most important, you can’t beat the price!

Urban gardens are also the key to saving energy, protecting water quality and topsoil, and promoting biodiversity and beautifying densely populated communities. Gardening may also hold the key to improved mental health, stress relief, and much-needed exercise in a world where most of us spend our days sitting in front of computers in artificially-lit accommodations.

We personally obtain the majority of our food supplies from our own edible landscape now, which includes multiple varieties of kale, red peppers, hot peppers, onions, garlic, parsley, rosemary, cilantro, oregano, one olive and three avocado trees, and plenty of fruit, including 130 strawberry plants, mulberries, blueberries, service berries, cherries, lime, oranges, tangerines and mangos.

It really is one of life’s great pleasures to be able to walk out the door of your home and pick fresh high-quality food. Take our word for this, it is worth the while!

SHARE IT WITH SOMEONE AS KEEN ON GARDENING AS WE ARE!

Sources:
Fix.com
mercola.com