Cultivate a Garden, Cultivate Your Gut: 4+ Proven Reasons Gardening Improves your Gut Health and Ove
Illustration by Gaby D'Allesandro
Many would consider how eating home-grown produce can improve your overall health, but how about the impact of the physical experience of gardening? Research has proven that gardening and interacting with healthy soil can improve your immune system, expose the body to beneficial bacteria in outdoor air, reduce stress that effects the gut, and stimulate exercise that promotes lasting brain and gut health. Gardening can do all that and more. I’ll explain these four evidence-backed health implications that getting dirty can have for you and your family.
1. Exposure to the soil microbiome improves our immune system, and it does so the same way it increases the nutrient load in plants.
Author of The Dirt Cure, Dr. Maya Shetreat-Klein, has amassed brilliant research on the way that gardening and interacting with dirt have tremendous health benefits. She focuses on nutrient-dense food that comes from healthy soil, exposure to certain microbes and spending time outside. Dr. Shetreat-Klein notes how children raised on a farm tend to have lower rates of allergies and asthma1. Although both urban and rural environments have a similar number of bacteria, the rural environment offers a far greater diversity of bacteria; the interaction with a large diversity of microbes keeps the immune system in check because it does not allow any one bacteria strain to get out of balance as easily. She notes that, “in one teaspoon of soil, there are more organisms than there are humans on the planet. Soil houses about 25% of the world’s biodiversity.”
Soil organisms also boost phytonutrient content in plant foods by creating a beneficial environmental stressor for the plant. In turn, people who eat the food greatly benefit because these phytonutrients are what improves our health by lowering risk for disease, deficiencies and negative health symptoms.
2. Clear out and replace damaging indoor air in your lungs.
While gardening, you are filling your lungs with fresh, vibrant outdoor air. Outdoor air and indoor air, from the microbiome perspective, are similar in the way that both have roughly an equivalent number of bacteria; however, within those grand totals, a 2012 study2 found that indoor air contains a significant level of bacteria strains that are more closely related to human pathogens. What’s unsettling is that most humans, especially in the U.S., are estimated to spend about 90% of their days indoors! Hospitals, nursing homes, institutions and any built environment that is already at risk for additional airborne pathogens would be wise to consider ventilating outdoor air into rooms or better yet, including time to expose patients and residents to outdoor air and garden soil. Work in an office all day? See if you can sit by an open window or take frequent outdoor walks to get [beneficial] air in your lungs. Growing indoor plants can also filter the air (this is called phytoremediation) and remove volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as ozone, benzene, formaldehyde; these are commonly found in fabrics and plastics, detergents, cosmetics, pesticides and smoke. Of course, this astounding process is all thanks to the soil microorganisms of potted plants that actually do the job of neutralizing these harmful compounds!
3. Reduce stress!
Daily life includes stress, to varying degrees. More and more people admit to feeling “stressed out” due to the pressures of modern life and the workplace. Stress impacts our physiology in many ways, and it especially has a detrimental effect on gut health through hormonal and neural mediators. Stress affects “the microbial colonization patterns on the mucosal surface,”3 which increases our vulnerability to infection. What’s interesting is that shifts in the human microbiome interplay in the gastrointestinal tract and may have the inverse effect on the continual neural activity in stress-responsive parts of the brain. Your mentality can alter your gut health and your gut health can alter your mentality! Gardening, thought of by many as a moving meditation, can lower your stress levels and improve your gut health by reducing stress hormones (hi, cortisol!) and creating a positive experience to occupy your time and your mind.
4. Get easy exercise in which the whole family participate. Yes, it is important for young children to exercise too, to promote optimal brain health and metabolic function throughout adulthood (thanks again to microbial signals).
Gardening is a lot more than picking flowers or plucking tomatoes – it can be hard, physical work too! Get the whole family involved and introduce constructive and empowering chores to even the littlest of ones, equipping them with leadership opportunities in the garden that will benefit them for the rest of their life in many capacities. Of course, we’ll focus on the microbial impact: a 2016 study at the Department of Integrative Physiology and the Center for Neuroscience at University of Colorado, Boulder, found that exercise during the developmental stages of a child promotes microbial signals that deliver optimal brain and metabolic function that lasts a lifetime4. It is key to expose children to these microbial-boosting activities (and microbial worlds such as that of the soil discussed by Dr. Maya Shetreat-Klein) because these development periods are crucial for disease prevention, as they have lifelong impact on human health.
And the list goes on! Gardening outdoors increases exposure to sunlight & vitamin D absorption, improves mobility through exercise, promotes a deeper sense of connection to our planet & those around us, and is a constructive use of the Earth and its resources.
Organic, regenerative agriculture and garden cultivation are PROVEN immune-boosting, toxin-clearing, happiness-helping, disease prevention methods by which we can benefit the tiniest of microbiomes to the biggest biospheres.
I want to hear from you if gardening has impacted your health for the better in any way at all, or if this post provoked any thoughts or opinions! Please comment below and share freely!
Peace & plants,
Allie
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