Anxiety and depression: Why doctors are prescribing gardening rather than drugs

by Yvonne Black, The Conversation

Gardening gives people the chance to reconnect and relax. Credit: Joshua Resnick/Shutterstock

Spending time in outdoors, taking time out of the everyday to surround yourself with greenery and living things can be one of life's great joys—and recent research also suggest it's good for your body and your brain.

17 sept 2019--Scientists have found that spending two hours a week in nature is linked to better health and well-being. It's maybe not entirely surprising then that some patients are increasingly being prescribed time in nature and community gardening projects as part of "green prescriptions" by the NHS. In Shetland for example, islanders with depression and anxiety may be given "nature pescriptions," with doctors there recommending walks and activities that allow people to connect with the outdoors.

Social prescriptions—non-medical treatments which have health benefits—are already used across the NHS to tackle anxiety, loneliness and depression. They often involve the referral of patients to a community or voluntary organisation, where they can carry out activities which help to meet their social and emotional needs, and increasingly doctors are opting for community gardening—as this also has the added benefit of involving time spent in nature—even in highly built up areas.

And the evidence base for such treatments is growing—with research indicating that social prescribing can help to improve patient's anxiety levels and general health. Findings also seem to suggest that social prescribing schemes can lead to a reduction in the use of NHS services.

Community gardens offer space and solace for local people. Credit: Karin Bredenberg/Shutterstock

The benefits of gardening

Research shows that gardening can directly improve people's well-being. And that taking part in community gardening can also encourage people to adopt healthier behaviors. It may be, for example, that neighborhood projects can be reached on foot or by bicycle—prompting people to take up more active transport options in their daily lives. Eating the produce from a community garden may also help people to form the habit of eating fresh, locally grown food.

Growing food is often the driving force behind community gardening projects, whether purely for the consumption of the gardeners or for local distribution or sale. Unlike growing on individual allotments or private gardens, community gardening requires an element of cooperation and collective planning. Working together towards shared goals can create a real sense of community. And in a garden, a feeling of connection may develop, not just with other people, but with the living world as a whole.

Gardens also play a significant role in conserving biodiversity, by developing wildlife pockets and corridors across towns and cities—an idea encouraged by the RSPB's Giving Nature a Home program. The inclusion of even a small pond in a garden can provide a home for important species such as amphibians. Gardens can also help to mitigate climate change. Their vegetation captures carbon and can improve air quality. Tree and shrub roots in the soil absorb water, reducing flood risk.

So because people's relationships with the living world affects their behaviors towards it, taking part in community gardening could also make people old and young more environmentally conscious and responsible. By connecting people to nature, it may be that community gardens can also help to transform society – allowing towns and cities to move towards more sustainable futures.

Community gardens offer space and solace for local people. Credit: Karin Bredenberg/Shutterstock

Community connections

This process of using plants and gardens to improve health is known as social and therapeutic horticulture. On top of promoting physical and mental health benefits, social and therapeutic horticulture has also been shown to help improve people's communication and thinking skills.

At Hull University's Centre for Systems Studies we want to understand more about the ways community gardening can boost well-being for people, societies and the living world. So we are working with the Rainbow Community Garden in Hull, which also has links with local schools, social services, mental health teams and veteran's association, to observe activities and interactions over the course of a year. We are also interviewing staff and volunteers about their experiences, looking at how people's well-being changes as they participate in the project.

Although no one intervention is right for everyone, community gardens do have wide appeal and potential. But such projects tend to be run by charitable organizations—often relying on grant funding to employ staff and provide equipment. And at a time when funding gaps mean that local councils are struggling to preserve public parks and gardens, it seems that despite all the positives that can be gained by such spaces, the future of many community gardening groups could be uncertain.

This would clearly be a massive loss, as individual well-being, societal well-being and the living world are all inextricably linked. John Donne was correct when he said "no man is an island". Community gardens can bring together diverse groups of people and it's possible to make these spaces widely inclusive and accessible. Raised beds and paved pathways, for example, can improve access for wheelchair users, while a complex sensory experience can be created using scents and sounds as well as visual stimuli. We hope that our research will help to highlight the importance of these places and the many benefits they can bring for people, society and the living world.

---

Provided by The Conversation 

The many health benefits of gardening for elderly women

A study in HortTechnology confirms that gardening has a multitude of physical and psychological benefits for older women. Elderly women who participated in a 15-session gardening intervention significantly reduced their waist circumference and improved aerobic endurance, hand dexterity, cognitive function, and amount of their daily physical activity. In contrast, elderly women in the control group (nonparticipants in the gardening intervention) experienced reductions in physical and psychological health.

12 oct 2016--The authors say that, despite the documented benefits of regular physical activity, most elderly individuals spend 80% of their daily time in sedentary activities. "Gardening is a popular leisure time physical activity among elderly individuals," they noted. To investigate benefits of engaging in gardening, the researchers studied 24 elderly women at a senior community center who participated in the 15-session gardening intervention. An additional 26 elderly women at another senior community center (the control group) did not participate in any gardening during the study. Health assessments were done for both groups before and after the gardening intervention, which involved twice-weekly sessions for an average duration of 50 minutes per session.
Intervention participants did gardening tasks such as garden design and planning, making furrows in the plots, making name tags for garden plots, planting transplants, garden maintenance (e.g., fertilizing, weeding, watering, harvesting), and other activities such as flower arrangement and garden parties. Activities were selected for the study to represent low- to moderate-intensity physical activities that would yield similar health improvements or maintenance.
Following the 15-week program, women in the gardening intervention group exhibited a significant decrease in waist circumference, while the waist circumference of women in the control group showed a tendency to slightly increase. Women in the gardening intervention group maintained their lean mass, but women in control group lost lean mass over the period.
Women's aerobic endurance was also affected; the intervention group showed increased scores in an aerobic endurance test; the control group showed no improvement in a step test for aerobic endurance. Women in the intervention group also demonstrated improvements in hand dexterity.
The women in the gardening intervention experienced benefits to cognitive and psychological functions as well. Assessments revealed that women in the intervention group showed "significant improvement" in cognitive function. Interestingly, women in the control group exhibited a "significant increase" in scores for depression, with symptoms progressing from normal before the intervention period to moderate depression symptom at the end of the study. "Meanwhile, the depression scores of elderly women in the gardening intervention group did not change during this period," the authors said.
The researchers said their results demonstrate that the gardening intervention improved the physical and psychological health conditions of the elderly women who participated. "Moreover, satisfaction with the gardening intervention as a leisure time physical activity for health conditions of elderly women was very high," they said.

More information: ASHS HortTechnology: horttech.ashspublications.org/content/26/4/474.abstract


Provided by American Society for Horticultural Science

DIY and gardening can cut heart attack, stroke risk by 30 percent and prolong life in 60+ age group

A spot of DIY or gardening can cut the risk of a heart attack/stroke and prolong life by as much as 30 per cent among the 60+ age group, indicates research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

29 oct 2013--These routine activities are as good as exercise, which is ideal for older people who don't often do that much formal exercise, say the researchers.

They base their findings on almost 4000 sixty year olds in Stockholm, Sweden, whose cardiovascular health was tracked for around 12.5 years.

At the start of the study, participants took part in a health check, which included information on lifestyle, such as diet, smoking, and alcohol intake, and how physically active they were.

They were asked how often they had included a range of daily life activities, such as gardening, DIY, car maintenance and blackberry picking over the previous 12 months, as well as whether they had taken any formal exercise.

Their cardiovascular health was assessed by means of lab tests and physical examinations, to check on blood fats, blood sugars, and blood clotting factor, high levels of which are linked to a raised heart attack and stroke risk.

At the start of the study, those who had a generally active daily life had a much lower risk profile for cardiovascular problems, irrespective of how much formal exercise they took, than those with low levels of daily activity.

This profile included smaller waists, lower levels of potentially harmful blood fats, and lower gluose, insulin, and clotting factor levels in men.

The same was true of those who did a lot of formal exercise, but who weren't routinely physically active very often. Those who exercised regularly and were also often physically active had the lowest risk profile of all.

During the 12.5 year monitoring period, 476 of the participants had their first heart attack and 383 died from various causes.

The highest level of daily physical activity was associated with a 27% lower risk of a heart attack or stroke and a 30% reduced risk of death from all causes, compared with the lowest level, irrespective of how much regular formal exercise was taken in addition.

"Our findings are particularly important for older adults, because individuals in this age group tend, compared to other age groups, to spend a relatively greater proportion of their active day performing [routine activities] as they often find it difficult to achieve recommended exercise intensity levels," say the authors.

They suggest that the biological explanations for their findings might lie in energy expenditure: prolonged sitting drives down metabolic rate to the bare minimum, while standing up and physical activity increase it.

Muscular contractions may also provide some clues. Sitting down doesn't require any muscle effort, which can disrupt the skeletal muscle's normal hormone production, with potential adverse effects on other body organs and tissues.

More information: The importance of non-exercise physical activity for cardiovascular health and longevity, Online First,

Provided by British Medical Journal

Gardening linked to increased vegetable consumption in older adults

New research from Texas A&M University and Texas State University found that older adults who participate in gardening may be more likely to eat their veggies. The report, published in HortTechnology, presents the results of an online survey of adults aged 50+ and includes recommendations for promoting gardening "intervention" programs to older adults.

21 mar 2011--According to researchers Aime Sommerfeld, Amy McFarland, Tina Waliczek, and Jayne Zajicek, studies have shown that poor nutrition is one of several factors responsible for mortality and morbidity in the elderly and is comparable to deaths caused from cigarette smoking. "Although older adults tend to report a higher intake of fruit and vegetables than other age groups, over half of the U.S. older population does not meet the recommendation of five daily servings of fruit and vegetables." They added that several previous research studies confirmed that gardening is one way to increase individuals' fruit and vegetable intake.

The objectives of the study were to examine and compare fruit and vegetable consumption of gardeners and nongardeners, and to investigate differences in fruit and vegetable consumption of long-term gardeners compared with newer gardeners. To collect the information, an online survey was posted on a web site for one month; 261 questionnaires were completed by adults aged 50 years and older.

"Our results support previous studies that indicated gardeners were more likely to consume vegetables when compared with nongardeners. Interestingly, these results were not found with regard to fruit consumption", stated Waliczek, corresponding author of the study. The responses also showed that the length of time an individual reported having participated in gardening activities seemed to have no relationship to the number of vegetables and fruits they reportedly consumed. "This suggests that gardening intervention programs late in life would be an effective method of boosting vegetable and fruit consumption in older adults."

The number of hours per week individuals spent gardening did not appear to be a factor in vegetable and fruit consumption; the researchers observed that this indicates that even older adults with limited time or abilities—those who spend less time gardening—may consume greater quantities of vegetables and fruits than their nongardening counterparts.

Finally, the survey results showed that a person's reason for gardening had no relationship with the quantity of vegetables and fruit consumed, implying that programs designed to encourage older adults to participate in gardening need not exclusively promote the health benefits derived from gardening, but may appeal to a range of personal motives.

More information: The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS HortTechnology electronic journal web site: http://horttech.as … act/20/4/711

Provided by American Society for Horticultural Science