Why Gardening Is Good for Your Health
Gillian Aldrich started growing vegetables in her backyard three years ago, and she’s now working on planting a bed of hydrangeas, butterfly bushes, rose campion, and—her favorite—pale-pink hardy geraniums along one side of her property.
As she digs in the garden, her 8-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son often play around her, sometimes taking a break to dig for worms or pick strawberries. Instead of just watching them, Aldrich is playing, too—”my kind of play,” she says.
“When you sit at a desk all day, there’s something about literally putting your hands in the dirt, digging and actually creating something that’s really beautiful,” says Aldrich, 42, a magazine editor in Maplewood, N.J. “There’s something about just being out there that feels kind of elemental.”
Aldrich isn’t the only one who feels this way. Many gardeners view their hobby as the perfect antidote to the modern world, a way of reclaiming some of the intangible things we’ve lost in ourbusy, dirt-free lives.
The sensory experience of gardening “allows people to connect to this primal state,” says James Jiler, the founder and executive director of Urban GreenWorks, a Miami-based nonprofit that provides environmental services and programs for low-income neighborhoods. “A lot of people [understand] that experience. They may not be able to put it into words, but they understand what’s happening.”
Working in the garden has other, less spiritual rewards. In addition to being a source of fresh, healthy produce, gardening can ease stress, keep you limber, and even improve your mood.
Here are just a few of the ways gardening can benefit your physical and mental health, and how you can start harvesting those benefits for you and your family.
How to Eat Your Vitamins
Pills might seem like an easy fix, but food provides an abundance of nutrients, as well as fiber, that pills lack, says Mary Ryan, a registered dietitian in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
These nutrients are what keep your body functioning at its best―building strong bones; improving brainpower, mood, and memory; and possibly helping the immune system ward off ailments both small (a cold) and large (cancer).
“Vitamins should be used only as supplements to the diet, not substitutes for healthy food,” says Jeffrey Blumberg, Ph.D., director of the antioxidant research lab at Tufts University, in Boston.
While there are hundreds of nutrients, the following information explains the ones you need to consume every day, what they do, and how to get them from your diet.
Top 20 Artery-Cleansing Foods
- AVOCADOS
- WHOLE GRAINS
- OLIVE OIL
- NUTS
- FOODS FORTIFIED BY PLANT STEROLS
- SALMON (OR OTHER FATTY FISH)
- ASPARAGUS
- POMEGRANATE
- BROCCOLI
- TURMERIC
- PERSIMMONS
- ORANGE JUICE
- SPIRULINA
- CINNAMON
- CRANBERRIES
- COFFEE
- CHEESE
- GREEN TEA
- WATERMELON
- SPINACH
Fight Breast Cancer Caused by Birth Control
When it comes to smart dietary habits that can guard us against breast cancer, it can be difficult to sift through all the research out there. To eat soy or not to eat soy, to steer clear of dairy, to drink red wine, white wine, orno wine?! Ahhh! Overwhelming, right? But there’s one rule that never seems to change and only seems to get even more obvious: We have to eat our veggies.
Cruciferous ones (like cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli) are always touted as fighting off cancerous cells, but a recent study published in the journal Hormones and Cancer gives props to two less likely heroes: Celery and parsley.
The researchers from the University of Missouri found that a substance found in both veggies called apigenin can slow the progression of breast cancer tumors associated with the synthetic hormone progestin. You know, the fake “Frankenhormone” paired with estrogen in menopausal hormone-replacement therapy — and also in birth control pills! — which has been known to increase the risk of breast cancer.
Should I Cut Back on Coffee?
• For most of us, java isn’t harmful.
It’s true that caffeine may raise blood pressure, so if you have hypertension, it’s smart to switch to decaf. Caffeine can also interfere with sleep; if you suspect it’s causing you to toss and turn, cut back. Otherwise, there is no health reason to stop drinking it.
• It may lower your risk of becoming diabetic.
Every cup of coffee you drink seems to reduce your risk of the disease. In fact, a review of research in Archives of Internal Medicine found that after three or four cups a day, you see a 25 % lower risk. Other research shows that decaf may also cut your risk of diabetes, which suggests that it’s not the caffeine but something else in coffee, possibly an antioxidant called chlorogenic acid, that’s responsible. Coffee drinkers may also be less likely to develop cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer.
• Caffeine may have its own benefits.
It could reduce your risk of Parkinson’s disease and possibly even Alzheimer’s. That’s not a reason to start consuming it, but it’s good news if you already enjoy a cup of joe.
YES
James D. Lane, PhD, director of the Duke University Medical Center Psychophysiology Laboratory
• The research on coffee’s perks is weak.
The main problem is that many studies compare coffee drinkers with people who don’t drink coffee. Coffee drinkers may have something else in common that’s the true cause of these benefits. Just because two things are correlated doesn’t mean that one causes the other.
• It can make health conditions worse.
The caffeine in coffee does have negative effects, especially for people with high blood pressure or diabetes. In one study, hypertensives’ blood pressure came down a bit after they quit coffee for a week. In another study, we found that giving diabetic patients caffeine before giving them a glucose tolerance test made their blood sugar rise higher than when they didn’t have caffeine. In other words, for people who already have diabetes, it appears to make the condition worse. Decaf, however, is fine.
• Your brew can aggravate stress.
My studies have shown that adrenaline responses to stress are higher if you’ve had caffeine than if you haven’t—it may make you more tense, anxious, and jittery, in addition to giving you sleep problems.
Drew Bees Workout Plan
hen I started training Drew Brees in 2004, I put him through a workout unlike any he’d done before. I used new exercises and equipment that made him stronger and leaner and improved his athleticism. Now I’m going to share that better-body blueprint with you. Use this routine to unlock your potential, speed up fat loss, and pack on muscle like a pro.
This program consists of four circuits of three exercises each. For each circuit, do 1 set of each exercise in succession, resting 20 to 30 seconds between sets. Then rest for 1 to 2 minutes. That’s one round. Do a total of three rounds, and then move to the next circuit. After you’ve completed all four circuits, burn even more calories by doing sprint intervals. You can do them outside or on a treadmill. They’re simple: Sprint for 30 seconds, and then walk for 30 seconds. That’s 1 set. Do 3 sets in week 1, then 4 sets in week 2, and then 5 sets in weeks 3 and 4.
Exercises
- Kettlebell Burpee With Shrug
- Superband Pulldown
- Kettlebell Half Getups
- Kettlebell Straight-Leg Deadlift
- Superband Squat And Single-Arm Row And Rotation
- Kettlebell Bench Press
- Overhead Superband Lateral Walk
- Superband Band Splitter
- Superband Split Squat Anti-Rotation
- Superband Overhead Triceps Extension
- Superband Hammer Curl
- Kettlebell Pushup
Cardio Exercises That You Can Perform At Home
Cardio exercises are those that are specifically designed to increase a person’s heart rate and keep it elevated for certain duration of time. This type of exercise routine is also known as an ‘aerobic exercise’. Some of the most popular forms of cardio exercises include brisk walking, swimming, jogging and running where a ‘no break’ routine is implemented.
Some types of exercises that deal with strength and stretch, such as Pilates, are usually not considered as cardio exercises though it can be done on an aerobic manner. Among the major advantages of cardio exercise routines include:
• Promotes efficient sleep and rest periods
• Aid in strengthening the lungs and also increases the lung capacity
• Improves the body’s daily energy levels
• Burns fats, increases the body’s metabolic rates thus aids in weight loss
Calcium: The key to strong bones and lifelong bone health
Calcium can seem confusing. How much should you get? Where should you get it? And what’s the deal with vitamin D, magnesium, and vitamin K? But once you understand the basics, it’s not that hard to include it in your diet and get the calcium you need.
Calcium is the most abundant mineral in the body, one that plays many vital roles. Your body uses it to build healthy bones and teeth, keep them strong as you age, send messages through the nervous system, help your blood clot, and regulate the heart’s rhythm, among other things.
Making sense of dietary fat
A walk down the grocery aisle will confirm our obsession with low-fat foods. We’re bombarded with supposedly guilt-free options: baked potato chips, fat-free ice cream, low-fat candies, cookies, and cakes. But while our low-fat options have exploded, so have obesity rates. Clearly, low-fat foods and diets haven’t delivered on their trim, healthy promises.
Despite what you may have been told, fat isn’t always the bad guy in the waistline wars. Bad fats, such as saturated fats and trans fats, are guilty of the unhealthy things all fats have been blamed for—weight gain, clogged arteries, and so forth. But good fats such as the monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, and omega-3s have the opposite effect.
As a matter of fact, healthy fats play a huge role in helping you manage your moods, stay on top of your mental game, fight fatigue, and even control your weight.
The answer isn’t cutting out the fat—it’s learning to make healthy choices and to replace bad fats with good ones that promote health and well-being.
What are dietary supplements?
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) defines a dietary supplement as a product that:
- supplements the food you eat;
- contains one or more dietary ingredient (including vitamins; minerals; herbs or other botanicals; amino acids, and other substances);
- comes in pill, capsule, tablet, or liquid form; and
- is labeled as a dietary supplement.
There are different types of dietary, or nutritional, supplements. Vitamin and mineral supplements are types of dietary supplements containing micronutrients meant to help a healthy body function smoothly. Herbal (or botanical) supplements are dietary supplements that have a medicinal purpose. Herbal supplements generally support a specific area of the body’s health, such as the liver, bones or skin.
