Scientists recently found that gardening has a multitude of physical and psychological benefits for older women.
Older women in a 15-session gardening work strongly reduced their waist circumference and improved aerobic endurance, hand dexterity, cognitive function, and amount of their daily physical activity.
The research is published in HortTechnology.
Despite the documented benefits of regular physical activity, most elderly individuals spend 80% of their daily time in sedentary activities.
In the study, the team examined 24 elderly women at a senior community center who participated in the 15-session gardening intervention.
These women 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.
An additional 26 elderly women at another senior community center (the control group) did not participate in any gardening during the study.
Following the 15-week program, the team found 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 the 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 showed 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.
These results showed that the gardening intervention improved the physical and psychological health conditions of the elderly women who participated.
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