By Vivian van Hasselt
Do you have plants in your home? You might have started bringing plants into your home for decoration or have taken up caring for plants as a new hobby. Plants have numerous benefits ranging from mood improvement, reducing stress and anxiety, and aiding health concerns like allergies. Let’s grow your collection, for having plants in your home is not just for aesthetics. Continue reading to discover the many health benefits that plants offer.
Health Benefits
Better Air Quality and Healing Properties
Having plants indoors can contribute to the better air quality inside your home. Plants cleanse the air by absorbing some of the toxins that are unknowingly floating around inside your house. By absorbing these toxins, the plants are now providing better air quality making it easier to breathe and resulting in better respiratory health. Plants can also increase the humidity in your home by releasing water vapor. This is extremely beneficial especially during the winter and dryer months of the year as the heating systems in our homes cause drying effects. The biggest drying effect heating systems have is on our skin. Heating systems dry out our skin, causing our skin health to decline as it’s not getting the moisture and hydration necessary. Therefore, incorporating plants for medicinal purposes into your day to day can help you fight against dryness. For instance, aloe vera has numerous skin care benefits, such as fading dark spots and clearing up acne. In combination with some skin care products, such as a good moisturizer, these plants can help amplify the benefits.
Another reason why you should have plants in your home is so you can avoid sick building syndrome (SBS). Due to poor ventilation, dust, and not enough lighting people can develop health concerns and become sick after being inside too long. Bringing in indoor plants can help with air purification. Doing this will help you to avoid SBS and also bring in the outdoors inside. It’s still important to get outside and enjoy the environment we live in.
Increased Focus and Productivity
With more people working from home these days, it’s important to have an office or workspace where you can have total concentration on the task at hand for optimized productivity. Surprisingly, a big portion of your ability to focus and your productivity level in your workspace relies heavily on the way it is decorated. The ideal workspace includes decorations that promote concentration and motivation. For example, framed posters with encouraging statements, a timer, or plants. When plants go through photosynthesis they increase oxygenation. Increased oxygenation helps to improve focus, mood, and work performance. By bringing in a plant to your workspace you are able to have a connection to nature inside your home. Having this connection to nature will contribute to increased problem solving, along with sparked creativity.
Allergy Relief
In addition to contributing to better air quality, plants help with allergy relief. Plants are natural filters that filter out air pollutants, allergens, and airborne particles. Because of this, plants can filter out these things that could affect your allergies. However, pollen can intensify allergies so it’s important to have plants indoors that do not pollinate. Make sure you do your research on how to take care of your house plants appropriately so you can minimize those allergies. Try one of our floor plants, like the fiddle leaf tree.
Better Sleep
Another health benefit of having plants in your home is the potential of getting better sleep. Some plants cause a relaxing and soothing effect, making it easier to fall asleep. A good example of that is lavender. In addition to lavender, some plants can reduce the time it takes you to fall asleep. If you struggle with waking up in the night or being restless there are also plants that can help you stay asleep. If you pair another sleep aid like a weighted blanket with some indoor plants in your bedroom, you could take a step towards getting the best sleep of your life.
Quicker Recovery Rate
Another major health benefit of having indoor plants is a quicker recovery rate. According to research by the American Society for Horticulture Science, researchers have found that people who have had surgery had a faster recovery time and shorter hospital stay if their room had plants in it. They also saw a quicker recovery time for patients who had a view of nature from their windows. The recovery time was quicker due to the plants giving off soothing effects.
More often than not, we spend the most time indoors or inside our homes. If this is the case for most of us, it seems like a no-brainer to have plants in your home. With the health benefits plants have they are an added resource and helping hand to your overall living conditions and health needs. Shop our plants here to bring some into your beautiful home today.
