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It goes without saying that spring is the perfect time of year to get your home garden growing. The weather is perfect and it’s easy to enjoy a variety of high quality, fresh produce grown right in your own yard! But harvesting your own herbs and produce isn’t just great for your wallet – it can also improve health in more ways than you think.

As home gardening grows in popularity, more people are discovering the benefits of the outdoors. Here are just a few of the ways home gardening can improve your health.

Stress Relief

• Caring for and maintaining a garden can help focus your mind on a productive and gratifying process. All too often, either at work or around the house, we don’t get credit for the hard work we put in just to keep things moving. But with a garden, we can literally eat the fruits of our labor!
• Make your garden your own by filling it with plants, produce or design features that you enjoy. This will make a small, Zen-like space all your own. You can grow what you want, how you want.
• No more shopping for produce only to have it go bad. Now you can pick a tomato as you need it without running to the store!
• A sense of accomplishment. Serving fresh veggies and herbs makes every meal great and will have the whole table asking what your secret ingredient is.

Physical Benefits

• Gardening can actually be quiet the workout. Low impact and moderately paced, maintaining you garden can be a great way to stay active in the heat without overdoing it.
• More strenuous activates (like a complete overhaul of the backyard) can burn up to 600 calories after a full day’s work pulling weeds, digging holes and further improving your garden.
• Gardening has even been found to help improve flexibility by help strengthening underused muscle groups and joints.

Nutrition

• This may be one of the best perks of having your own garden, not only do you get to choose what to grow – but you get to choose how to grow it. Don’t like pesticides or artificial fertilizers? Well, don’t use ‘em. You’ll have organic produce right at your fingertips.
• Feed your family the freshest produce possible. No need for frozen or canned spinach when you have it in the back yard!
• Herbs, spices and other easy-to-grow plants can add some hidden nutritional value to any meal as well as a little flavor. Did you know cilantro is being praised for its anti-inflammatory value? Or that parsley can boost antioxidant levels in your blood? It’s true and they’re easy to grow!

So now that (hopefully) all the April showers are out of the way, let’s get started with the flowers part of spring. You might just be surprised how much you’ll save, how healthy you’ll feel and how much a home garden can benefit your healthy lifestyle.

Characterized by the breakdown of the joint’s cartilage, Osteoarthritis or OA is a painful ailment for many Americans today. This breakdown can cause bones to rub against one another, resulting in extreme stiffness, pain and even loss of movement at the joints.

But there is good news – more research is showing that exercise can both prevent and even reverse the symptoms of arthritis. Now, this may not be settling news for those out there currently suffering from OA. At times, any movement at all, let alone exercise, can seem like a hefty task.  However, movements associated with the strengthening of muscles around the joints like those found in Yoga and Pilates, can have a positive impact while remaining delicate on joints themselves.

Although it may seem like exercise would aggravate these areas, it is actually inactivity and lack of movement that causes pain. Here’s why movement is vital to joint health:

• Movement strengthens the muscles around your joints taking undo strain off your body
• Exercise will help control weight – a major factor in joint health
• Increased strength and energy to keep moving throughout the day
• Exercise will help improve sleeping habits for an overall better health
• Moving your joints can help stimulate and restore your joints for better flexibility
• Exercise often leads to a better range of motion resulting in fewer injuries and aggravations

The important thing to remember is that any movement, no matter how small, can help remove joint pain – A quick walk, a morning stretch or even taking the time to practice some Tai Chi and breathing can have a major effect.

Exercise is crucial for people with arthritis. But it’s also important to recognize your limitations and discuss some options with your doctor or wellness professional. Build with each step and continue to move on past arthritis.