Did You Know That Gardening Provides Many Health Benefits,
Including Moderate To High Intensity Exercise !
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
Photo Credit Mark Kent
Photo Credit Leonard J Matthews
