Planting Helps Fight Disease Until Keeping Memory

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JAKARTA – Planting has become one of the choices for people during the COVID-19 pandemic in recent months. In urban areas, the term urban farming or the concept of gardening that utilizes space in a house or settlement is slowly gaining popularity and a number of parties see this opportunity by presenting various innovations, one of which is providing learning content to plant.

From a health perspective, apart from being a way to spend time at home, this activity can also help improve your health, one of which is to fight disease. To coincide with Indonesian Tree Planting Day, here is a review of the benefits of planting for you:

1. Fight disease
When you are outdoors and exposed to the sun, your skin uses sunlight for vitamin D. Researchers estimate that half an hour in the sun can produce between 8,000 and 50,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D inside the body. But this depends on how thick the clothes are covering your body and also your skin tone.

Vitamin D itself has a number of benefits for the body, including strengthening your bones and immune system. Various studies have also shown, being in the sun can help reduce the risk of various cancers such as breast, colorectal, bladder, prostate, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma to
multiple sklerosis.

Health experts say that if your vitamin D levels are low, then you have a greater risk of developing psoriasis, metabolic syndrome (prediabetes), type II diabetes, and even dementia.

2. Help maintain weight and sleep quality
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says gardening (part of growing) can build strength, improve sleep, and help you maintain a healthy weight. Activities such as mowing grass may fall into the category of light to moderate exercise, while shoveling, digging and chopping wood can be considered vigorous exercise.

Working on the ground uses every major muscle group in the body and it shouldn’t be surprising if you wake up the next morning feeling sick after a long day of work. Research has found that physical activity such as gardening can help offset age-related weight gain and obesity in children.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that gardeners were more likely to get 7 hours of deep sleep a night.

3. Help maintain memory
Regarding memory, doctors reveal that exercise improves cognitive function in the brain and gardening can be one of them. Gardening activities can stimulate the growth of memory-related nerves in your brain. Researchers in Korea have shown that gardening activity for 20 minutes in people with dementia can increase the number of several brain growth factors associated with memory.

In the Netherlands and Norway, people with dementia often participate in innovative farming programs, which allow them to spend most of their time working on farms and gardens.

4. Encourage mood
Research in the United States found that gardening improves mood and increases your self-esteem. When people spend time in parks, their anxiety levels decrease, and so does their depression.

A study published in 2011 showed that people with depression who participated in a gardening intervention for 12 weeks had better conditions including depressive symptoms. This condition persisted for months after the intervention ended.

5. Calm you down
Working in a garden, garden or farm can help you recover if you experience something stressful. In a 2011 study, researchers found that those who spent time gardening recovered better from stress than, for example, reading. Those who garden also admit their mood has returned to a positive state.

6. How to recover from addiction
Horticultural therapy has been around for thousands of years and is part of addiction recovery programs.

In a study the researchers noted, the plant induces positive feelings in people recovering from alcoholism, and is an effective rehabilitation tool.

In another study, people in rehabilitation programs who chose gardening as their natural therapy reported more satisfying experiences than those who chose art.

Safe farming tips
Like any other activity, farming carries certain risks to your health and safety. The CDC recommends a number of precautions when you are on farm or garden land, namely:

1. Observe the product directions whenever you use chemicals. Some pesticides, weed killers, and fertilizers can be dangerous if used incorrectly.

2. Wear gloves, goggles, trousers, closed shoes, and other safety equipment, especially if you use sharp tools.

3. Use bug spray and sunscreen.

4. Drink plenty of water and take frequent breaks to prevent overheating and dehydration.

5. Supervise children. Sharp equipment, chemicals, and outdoor heat can pose more threats to them.

6. Listen to your body. It is very easy to injure yourself when you are lifting a shovel full of dirt, for example.

7. Make sure you get a tetanus shot every 10 years, because tetanus lives in the soil.

News Source: BETWEEN.

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