Plants can improve our health by simply being inside our homes, rooms, or offices. They can act as air filters and help us reduce stress and improve blood pressure and heart rate. Let’s find out if how these indoor plants work.
Helps Improve Mood
We love plants and they make us happy. Indoor plants with flowers can help us feel more relaxed and calmer as they can help evoke positive emotions and have been shown to improve episodic memory in elderly people.
A 2003 study revealed that 79% of patients at four San Francisco Bay Area hospitals felt more relaxed upon interacting with plants. Likewise, 19% felt more positive, and 25% felt refreshed and stronger.
Stress Reduction
Spending time in natural settings can help slow down heart rate, speed up our recovery from mental fatigue, lower anxiety, and reduce high blood pressure.
Stronger Memory Retention
Studies have shown that people who used to walk through a natural or green environment have better focus and concentrate on a test of their working memory as compared to those who walked through a well-trafficked urban area.
Helps Decrease Risks Of Illness
Aside from increasing the comfort levels in a certain room, indoor plants may also lower our risk of getting sick. Greenery helps reduce the risk of irritated airways, runny noses, and itchy eyes.
In a study from Washington State University, researchers have found that plants reduce dust in rooms by as much as 20%. Therefore, people in the rooms may experience less dry, dusty air than rooms without plants.
Also, a 2009 study revealed that patients in hospital rooms with plants had experienced lower anxiety, lower fatigue, higher pain tolerance, and had lower blood pressure.
Helps Improve Air Quality
Plants are beneficial in air purification. Having indoor plants can help improve the quality of air in our house, office, and rooms. We need to know that air pollution may cause dizziness, headache, throat irritation, and lowers our ability to concentrate.
Studies revealed that plants can help remove up to 87%of toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the air every 24 hours.
Some of the best indoor plants that we can have are as follows:
Peace Lily – can help break down compounds like carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and benzene.
Aloe Vera – absorb airborne compounds from paint or cleaning agents.
Snake Plant – they’ll improve the air quality as we sleep and work to remove xylene, toluene, and trichloroethylene from the air in our home.
Gerbera Daisy – are known for their ability to absorb airborne compounds and produce oxygen at night, which may help those who suffer from sleep apnea.
Golden Pothos – has air-purifying qualities.
Boston Fern – removes compounds like formaldehyde, plastics, or cigarette smoke from the air.
