Overview
Many people believe they have a “brown thumb” when it comes to caring for indoor plants. Often they feel as if it’s too much trouble, emphasizing that you don’t have to remember when to water and fertilize silk plants and adding that you can’t kill one either. Therefore you’ll never feel like a failure because you forgot what days to water or fertilize. Yet once you get into the routine of caring for an indoor plant properly it can improve your well-being in a host of areas ultimately leading to an improved quality of life.
Physical and Mental Benefits of House Plants
It has been known for some time that indoor plants can improve physical health by exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen. Mahoney adds that they also purify the air by removing toxins and pollutants and filtering out chemicals including formaldehyde. These actions can decrease headaches, allergies, colds, clear congestion and even improve your sleep.
Cox points out that while we’ve known the physical benefits of indoor plants, it has become recognized that caring for these plants can improve mental health as well. When individuals are depressed or lonely they become less involved with the world, and may feel paralyzed and unable to get off the couch. “I’ll get to it tomorrow,” becomes a popular refrain. A first step back from this increasing inability to function is to begin caring for another living thing, adding a purpose to life.
To properly care for a houseplant means the individual must get involved with watering and fertilizing at the proper time, trimming as necessary and ensuring proper light. All this creates the need to follow a schedule without putting it off or the plant will suffer. It also creates the necessity to attend to something beyond themselves and their unhappiness.
Moving Forward
Another benefit is derived when they become able to notice the plants beauty. The simple knowledge that they contributed to its life can help individuals feel more at peace with their world and the place they occupy in it. This in turn can lead to feeling more comfortable expanding their world bit by bit as they learn they can maintain this degree of contentment farther away from home and finally with people -- the ultimate therapy for individuals with mental health issues. Barbour remarks that once someone is able to begin building a social support network they are often on the road to recovery as social support increases the ability to cope with physical and mental ailments and provides resiliency against stressors.
Caring For Indoor Plants Can do all That?
Masters in Healthcare states that research has supported the conclusion that having and caring for houseplants can improve both physical and mental health. Familydoctor asserts as the mind body connection was generally accepted in medicine and mental health, it became common knowledge that the two types of health interact and in turn affect and are affected by stress levels.
Caring for houseplants improves overall health which leads to improved mood and a greater ability to deal with stress. It can also decrease mental health symptoms, which could otherwise lead to poorer physical health and a decreased ability to deal with stress. In the field of neuropsychoimmunology, Segerstrom & Miller demonstrated that chronic stress can permanently weaken the immune system leading back to poorer physical and mental health.
Having houseplants to tend to and gaze at has been shown to increase happiness, create a feeling of optimism, induce a state of calm and contribute to an overall sense of well being. The previous study also demonstrated that people who are physically ill and have a number of houseplants to gaze at, recover faster than patients without houseplants surrounding them.
In summary, the benefits of having houseplants extends to improving overall quality of life for individuals suffering from physical or mental problems as well as for those who aren’t.
Sources
Barbour, A., (2003). Social Support and Depression. Paper presented at the 15th International Conference of the International Association of Group Therapy, Istanbul, Turkey.
Cox, P., (August 2, 2010). The Health Benefits of Indoor Plants. Ezine Articles. http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Health-Benefits-of-Indoor-Plants&id=4786952
Familydoctor.org. Mind/Body Connection: How Your Emotions Affect Your Health. American Academy of Family Physician. Retrieved 8/23/2011.
Mahoney, S. Is the Air in Your Home Making You Sick? Prevention Magazine. Retrieved 8/21/2011
Masters in Health Care, 15 Fabulous Health Benefits of House Plants. Retrieved 8/23/2011.
Segerstrom, S. C. & Miller, G. E. (2004). Psychological Stress and the Human Immune System: A Meta-Analytic Study of 30 Years of Inquiry. PsychNET, DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.130.4.601
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