Cultivating Your Wellness
Embrace the joy of gardening; it’s not just a pastime—it’s a wonderfully therapeutic adventure.
Any list of hobbies that aid the mind, body, and spirit must necessarily include gardening as a top choice. Getting down and dirty in the garden has been proven to improve the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of seniors. As a therapeutic activity with unique benefits for seniors, it is often overlooked. It’s not just a hobby but a powerful form of exercise that reduces stress and enhances mental and emotional well-being. The low-impact activities involved in gardening, such as digging, pulling weeds, planting, and shoveling, help maintain aging muscles and joints. Moreover, gardening stimulates the mind and body as we nurture our crops, making it a holistic activity for seniors.
Gardening is a therapeutic activity that significantly relieves stress and depression, which are unfortunately common among the elderly. It also acts as a natural remedy for sleep, lowering blood pressure, respiratory rates, and heart rates, thereby facilitating sleep. The mental health benefits of gardening are particularly noteworthy, making it a valuable activity for seniors.
Gardening slows cognitive decline for the elderly in part because it demands that they plan, problem-solve, remember, and manage a calendar. These activities exercise mental capacities and work against the advance of decline.
Just working the soil and caring for plants produces very powerful pharmacological effects, including lowered glucose levels and reduced levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. The caring aspects of gardening keep seniors focused on the here and now rather than their worries and stresses. Seniors feel a sense of pride and satisfaction as they see the fruit of their labor and enjoy the feel-good effects of their bodies being flooded with serotonin and dopamine, which contribute to improved mood, reward, and satisfaction.
Complementing this gentle, continuous exercise is the sunshine enjoyed while gardening, which acts as the natural, unavoidable source of Vitamin D in the human body. As we age, all people tend to avoid the sun. Still, their need for Vitamin D – not only for healthy bones but for the proper functioning of the immune system – only increases with age. There is no better source for this fat-soluble vitamin than gentle sunshine enjoyed in an active garden. This sunshine can be supplemented with Vitamin D in tablet form – as doctors recommend – but it is always better taken with safe sunning activities such as gardening, which promote physical and mental well-being.
Alongside the physical benefits of gentle exercise and the psychological benefits of sunshine, all the digging, planting, weeding, watering, carrying, and bending involved in gardening contribute to general cardiovascular health and can be beneficial for seniors by improving mobility and flexibility, building muscle mass and strength, enhancing endurance and longevity, and boosting agility and control.
Seniors with mobility limitations can work raised beds, pots, and all manner of adaptive tools if the tools are available and their mobility allows. Gardening can be tailored to fit almost any limitation and, by extension, keep our elders active, in touch with the world, and a force to be reckoned with, regardless of the limitations. For a frail and ailing elder, this is a tremendously beneficial activity. For the depressed, it’s curative. For the rest, it is an extraordinary holistic therapy. It calms the soul, enriches the mind, and livens the spirit. What more could we want for our elders? Now, will our children and grandchildren understand? I doubt it, but it’s never too soon for our kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids to start practicing and supporting it. What I love about this therapy for our elders or the sick is that it requires no age limit; it can be, in fact, a timeless, precious activity for the very frail, allowing them to stay active and engaged in something that matters.
In assisted living facilities or managed care, attempts ought to be made to bring the outdoors in, giving those in seclusion the same advantages as others.
