Living Well Americans spend more than $60 billion each year trying to lose weight and feel younger...
From expensive "health foods," special diets, and pricy gym memberships, data from research firm Marketdata Enterprises show that Americans are spending a lot of money on losing pounds.
But before you spend big money to feel younger, there's a dirt-cheap and easy method to fight the aging process...
Gardening can make you feel five years younger.
A 2001 study in the Netherlands found that increasing nearby green space led to a decrease in a person's health complaints that was equivalent to a five-year reduction in that person's age.
But that's not all...
Research has shown that gardening for 30 minutes is just as beneficial for your health as jogging. And the time spent weeding, watering, planting, and picking is a great low-impact way to maintain balance, muscle, and bone strength.
I started learning how to garden almost 15 years ago... Since then, I've planted hundreds of bulbs in my yard.
I like to cut flowers and bring them in to work. Flowers in the workplace increase productivity and mood. And at least monthly (I try to do it more often), I give flowers to my gal. Flowers can increase our ability to create new memories... and bring back old memories.
Flowers help your health, too...
A landmark study in 1984 demonstrated that surgical patients who had hospital rooms looking out onto trees in a garden had shorter recovery times than patients whose rooms looked out onto brick walls. Patients who saw the garden also had fewer negative notes in their files from the nurses and needed fewer painkillers.
The American Society for Horticultural Science found that hospital patients recovering from surgery responded better when they received fresh flowers. These patients needed less pain medication and had lower blood pressure and anxiety compared with patients who didn't receive flowers.
Of course, you don't have to stop at flowers.
One of life's simple pleasures is picking and eating food right from a garden or wild in the woods. Each summer, I look forward to picking blackberries, raspberries, tomatoes, rhubarb, and peaches from my backyard.
If you're new to gardening, get out and plant a few things... Start simple with tomatoes, rosemary, basil, and daisies. As long as you give them water and some late afternoon shade, you'll have a bumper crop in no time.
And do what I do and enjoy flowers through gardening at your home like I've done at my house in Augusta, Georgia. I recommend planting perennials because they come back year after year – no need to keep planting new flowers. Try flowers like daffodils, lilies, tulips, irises, and amaryllises. Once they get going, they multiply and spread, too.
With a few pennies and a little bit of time, a small area in your backyard can be heaven.
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What We're Reading...
- A few simple steps to planning your first vegetable garden.
- "From a distance, there in the rising dust of the garden, he looks like he stepped out of an old family photograph, like my uncles, like my grandfather, men who knew the secrets of the dirt."
- Get your garden started with free seed pods from Miracle-Gro.
- Something different: In praise of the push reel mower.
P.S. I also recommend using veggies, fruit, and flowers from your garden to barter at your local farmer's market. Just wander the area and trade for things you run across and want. Bartering is one of the best-kept secrets there is... and in a recession, it's a great way to save on cash and cash expenses.
I talk about bartering for food... medical care... even housing... in my Big Book of Retirement Secrets. This is a huge book – nearly 600 pages of my best and biggest secrets for living a healthy and wealthy life in retirement. It's chockful of some of the most important advice I've given over the years. In fact, it's been so popular that we're currently on backorder for our physical copies, but Amazon still has a few in stock. You can order your copy on Amazon here.