Many of us love being surrounded by nature and its serenity and peace, but not everyone likes to engage in gardening. Some people might think that gardening is the job of elderly people only, which is incorrect as every individual can benefit from gardening. There are a large number of benefits that any individual can enjoy by engaging in gardening as a daily activity:
- Effective exercise that also helps prevent heart disease
Engaging in gardening daily can help you to burn a lot of calories as gardening, in itself, is a high-intensity exercise. Research says that you can burn over three hundred calories in just one hour of gardening.
Heavy gardening is equal to thirty minutes of moderate exercise. This means that gardening five times a week can reduce the risk of heart stroke or heart disease. There are also people who recommend gardening to reduce the risk of high blood pressure or to prevent the condition from getting severe. - Provides healthy food
Another great benefit of gardening is that you can get healthy food from your own garden. As we are all aware, eating healthy fruits and vegetables supplies the body with the required vitamins and nutrients and help you to stay fit and healthy. Growing your own food will make you satisfied with its purity and freshness, and you will know the quality of the food you are having. - Supplements family budget
In most places, by growing their own fruits and vegetables through gardening, many families reduce their monthly expenses to a great extent. These families regularly and actively maintain their home gardens, through which they can cut down on the expenses of buying fruits and vegetables, reducing about forty percent of their monthly expenditure. There are some families who need to buy only oil and spices for their living, as they get all the other items from their own garden. - Reduces the risk of osteoporosis
While gardening, you have to work in the sunlight that provides you with a sufficient amount of vitamin D, which is beneficial for your bones. Also, for gardening, you have to dig, plant, weed, and perform other tasks repeatedly. All of these tasks require stretching and strength, which will build your muscles and bones. This reduces the risk of developing osteoporosis in most people who are engaged in intensive gardening. - Stressbuster
Gardening is also considered to be a stressbuster along with being an effective exercise. You can also say that gardening is better than other leisure activities in which you indulge to relieve stress. Many studies suggest that engaging in only thirty minutes of gardening helps in reducing the levels of cortisol, which is a stress hormone to a great extent, making you feel happier.
Even though it is taken up by many only as a hobby, it has immense benefits for both the physical and mental health of a person.