Growing plants indoors- can it help your mind?

It seems that lately, lots of websites and companies are encouraging people to invest in indoor lighting kits for growing plants and vegetables indoors. While the prices for some of the LED grow light starter kits may be around $70-$80, others may go for up to $1,300 or more. That is a large amount of money to pay for anything, let alone something that we’re not sure whether or not we really need. In this article, we’ll have a look at some of the many benefits of growing plants and vegetables indoors that help to justify the initial investment of an LED grow light system.

The first area to look at has to do with the psychological benefits of having plants in an indoor space. Especially for those who live in large cities (which in 2008, comprised over half of the world’s population) day to day life can be a constant source of stress and frustration. According to one recent article in a leading American newspaper, “Just being in an urban environment, [scientists] have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control.”

Did you notice that? Just spending time in a city, walking around, negotiating the intersections, navigation your way down the sidewalk, is not only an exhausting experience, but it is causing certain levels of damage to your brain. When arriving at our house, we need to help our brain to recuperate. That’s where indoor plants come in.

A few years back, researchers from the University of Michigan wanted to see how groups of test subjects fared when exposed to different types of stimuli. After asking the subjects to either walk through a nature sceneor to walk through the downtown of a large city, the subjects were tested using some memory exercises. What did the researchers discover? According to one prestigious Psychological journal, “…being around nature replenishes our store of directed attention and the researchers conclude that, in this way, nature may have restorative effects on our mental abilities.”

Yes, according to recent evidence, plants can actually improve our memory and take away the stress that builds up imperceptibly during the day. What’s more, some scientists have begun to suggest that spending time with plants can help children struggling with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). According to one recent study of the benefits of creating “green” environments for children with ADD:

“Thus, children may need attentionally supportive environments where they can go to restore. It seems plausible that natural environments might support attention in children, including children with ADD… This study extends Attention Restoration Theory to a new population, providing evidence that the theory may apply to children. Whereas Attention Restoration Theory suggests that nature supports directed attention functioning in all humans, previous research has only provided evidence that the theory applies to adults.”

As we can see, the psychological benefits of growing plants indoor are important to both adults and children, even though who struggle with concentration or who have learning disabilities. This alone is worth investigating indoor growing and making the initial investment in LED grow light equipment.