Gardening Can Reduce Heart Attack, Stroke Risk

Spending time in the garden, planting those beautiful red roses may actually do wonders for you, a new study suggests.

Researchers at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm analyzed the activity levels of 4,232 people over 12 years that didn't include formal exercise--activities such as gardening, hunting, and home repairs, according to the study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Gardening was found to help cut the heart attack or stroke risk by 27 percent and death by 30 percent. Even without exercising, people who were somewhat active still had a lower risk compared to those who did nothing.

When the study began, the participant who had 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 glucose, insulin, and clotting factor levels in men.

The same was true of those who did a lot of formal exercise, but who were not routinely physically active very often.

The report said: "A generally active daily life had important beneficial associations with cardiovascular health and longevity in older adults, which seemed to be regardless of regular exercise."

"We must be careful when generalizing of course, because older adults tend to be less fit, so gardening represents relatively hard exercise for them," said Dr Gavin Sandercock from the University of Essex, according to the Daily Mail.

"This study is excellent news for large swathes of the population who might not want to run, swim or go to the gym because it clearly shows that even moderate, non-exercise activity like gardening benefits the health of older adults"

"We still need to promote moderate or vigorous exercise like fast walking, running, swimming and cycling in younger people. While the amounts reported here are okay for older people, children still need to do an hour of activity every day to be healthy and that needs to be hard enough to make them breathe hard and preferably feel hot."