园艺工作对健康的4个惊人好处

Spring's here, and though some of us are dealing with freak spring snowstorms, it's getting warm enough in most of the country to start prepping your backyard garden with peas, lettuces, and spring flowers. If the idea of digging in the dirt has never much appealed to you, consider this: A growing number of studies are finding improved mental and physical health benefits of gardening that extend far beyond the obvious rewards of exercise and fresh air. And in this economy, the free food certainly doesn't hurt. There's no need to dig up your entire backyard, either.

现在是春天，尽管人们正生活在春季反常的暴风雪天气中，全国大部分地区气候开始转暖，人们也开始准备在花园里种植豌豆，莴笋和春天的花。如果在地上挖土并不太吸引你，那就考虑一下这个吧：越来越多研究发现园艺工作有利于增强精神和身体健康，远超过从锻炼和新鲜空气获得的好处。而且从经济角度来说，免费食品没有带来损失。也没有必要对整个后院都进行挖掘。

You need only a window box or a few houseplants to see these improvements in your health:

你只需要一个窗台花盆箱或一些室内植物，就可以改善你的身体健康：

1: Improve your satisfaction with life.

1. 提高对生活的满足感。

It's hard not to enjoy life when you're surrounded by flowers, vegetables, and all the wildlife they attract—and now there's science to back that up. Professors from the University of Texas and Texas A&M asked 298 older adults how they would rate their "zest for life," levels of optimism, and overall resolution and fortitude and found that gardeners had significantly higher scores in all those areas than non-gardeners.

当你身处鲜花，蔬菜和所有野生物之中时，你很难不去享受生活，而且如今也有科学根据。德克萨斯大学和德州农工大学教授访问298名老年人是如何评价他们的“生活热情”，乐观水平，总体决心和勇气，发现园艺工作者在这些问题中比非园艺工作者得到的分数明显高了很多。

Considering that antidepressant use among adults over 65 has nearly tripled since the 1980s, gardening could be as useful as Prozac for warding off the blues in our aging population.

就成年人服用抗抑郁剂而言，从20世纪80年代开始，超过65岁服用抗抑郁剂的老年人增加了两倍，园艺工作对老年人来说可以当成跟百忧解的预防忧郁作用一样有效。

2: Lower your osteoporosis risk.

2. 降低患骨质疏松的风险。

It's probably no surprise that gardening, and all the physical activity that goes along with it, leads to weight loss and better overall physical health. But that physical activity can improve your bones as well. In a study of 3,310 older women, researchers from the University of Arkansas found that women involved in yard work and other types of gardening exercises had lower rates of osteoporosis than joggers, swimmers, and women who did aerobics.

或许毫不惊奇，园艺工作加上所有的身体活动，可以减肥和使全身更加健康。不过那种体力活动还可以增强你的骨质。阿肯色大学的研究人员进行了一项包括3310名老年妇女的研究发现，从事园艺工作和其他园艺活动的女性比慢跑者，游泳者和做健美操的女性患骨质疏松的几率更低。

That likely has to do with the fact that gardening is sort of like weight training, the study authors note; you have to pull weeds, dig holes, carry heavy loads of soil and compost, and do other forms of weight-bearing activities that ward off osteoporosis.

研究人员指出，这很可能是由于与此相关的事实——园艺工作有点像举重训练；你必须播种，挖洞，搬重量的土和堆肥，还有其他形式的负重运动可以预防骨质疏松。

3: Lower your diabetes risk.

3. 降低患糖尿病的风险。

One of the primary components of managing diabetes is getting enough physical exercise. Active gardeners easily get more than the recommended 150 minutes per week of exercise, and those who garden just for fun get just slightly less than that, according to research from Kansas State University.

对付糖尿病的一个主要方法是进行足够的身体锻炼。积极的园艺者很容易就获得所要求的每周150分钟的锻炼，而那些只是以兴趣进行园艺工作的人锻炼时间只是稍微低于那个数字，根据堪萨斯州立大学的研究。

And if you grow food in your garden, you have another diabetes-management tool at your disposal: fresh produce. A number of studies have found that diabetes rates are lower in areas with community gardens, or places where backyard gardening is more common.

而且如果你在花园里种植植物，你还有另一个可以任你支配的糖尿病管理工具：新鲜种植。大量研究已经发现在社区花园或有后院花园的地方人们患糖尿病的几率更低。

4: Better sleep.

4. 睡得更好。

The mental health benefits of gardening are so strong that a field of medicine called horticultural therapy has been developed to help people who have psychiatric disorders deal with their conditions. Studies of people with dementia and anxiety have found that gardening helps calm their agitation, leading to better sleep patterns and improved quality of their rest.

园艺工作的精神健康好处是如此强大以至于园艺疗法这一医学领域开始发展，来帮助患有精神疾病的人治疗他们的症状。研究患有痴呆和焦虑症的人也已经发现园艺工作可以帮助他们平息躁动，养成更好的睡眠方式和提高睡眠质量。

There's no reason the rest of us won't benefit, too. Researchers from the International Society for Horticultural Science interviewed 42 people both with cancer and without cancer, and found that all of them used gardening as a coping strategy for stressful life situations. The less we're all stressed out, the better we'll sleep.

同样，没有理由其他人不受益。国际园艺学会研究人员访问了42名患有癌症和没患癌症的人，发现他们都把园艺当成对紧张生活的一种放松方法。我们越压力越小，就会睡得更好。