“I am too busy. I work too much. I don’t have time for hobbies.”
Do you ever hear yourself saying these statements either to someone else or to yourself in an internal monologue? If so, then it is even more important for you to have hobbies that keep you happy, refreshed, and energized. Have you ever heard the saying “Everyone should meditate for 30 mins a day, except those who say they don’t have time to meditate. Those people should meditate for 2 hours each day. ” The same can be said about hobbies. Hobbies are a form of stress relief and self-care and their value to our health should not be minimized. They can be productive too!
So, which hobbies should you choose to improve your health?
In order to maintain our health and vitality long term we need to develop hobbies in 4 different categories.
- Active Hobbies
- Social Hobbies
- Creative Hobbies
- Educational Hobbies
These hobbies may change or develop as we age as our interests and abilities change. Hobbies can overlap and you can have 2 or 3 hobbies that span all 4 categories. For example, if my hobbies are playing tennis and learning to bake pastries, I have developed hobbies that are: 1. Social and active (tennis is a sport which requires more than one player ) and 2. Creative and educational (making and designing pastries while learning new baking concepts).
Alternatively it can be hobbies such as woodworking, reading books, and playing board games with friends: 1. Woodworking satisfying the active and creative categories, 2. Reading satisfying the educational component and 3. Playing boards games with friends satisfying the social component.
Whichever hobbies you choose should strive to satisfy these 4 categories in order to keep your brain sharp and your body strong as you age. You can see how a single hobby of watching TV would not be considered a suitable hobby to maintain your health-span!
Now let’s get into the health benefits of each hobby category:
Active Hobbies
This category speaks for itself. Physical activity is essential to an overall healthy life. As we all know , physical fitness is a marker of health. It is essential to helping maintain a healthy body weight, control glucose levels in the blood, lower blood pressure, and maintain the strength and function of our heart. Regular physical activity helps to boost happy hormones in the brain which improve our mood, decrease anxiety, and help to combat depression naturally. Regular exercise has been shown to lengthen lifespan by up to 4 years!
Additionally, resistance exercise builds muscle and strengthens bone. This is important to preventing injuries and fractures as we age. While muscles are post-mitotic, meaning we cannot grow new muscles outside of those we are born with, we can strengthen and hypertrophy them to make them larger and stronger. This is important not just for appearance but also serves a more important role in helping to stabilize joints and prevent injury as we grow older. Weight bearing activities such as weightlifting, walking, running, and essentially all land sports are very important to keeping our bones healthy and strong. Swimming, while an excellent form of exercise, does not have the same bone strengthening benefits as water decreases the physical weight and stress on your bones needed to promote bone remodeling. Our bones, unlike our muscles, are constantly remodeling. They are constantly being broken down and reformed to meet the needs of our bodies at different stages of our life. Bone remodeling is also necessary to maintain a steady level of calcium in our blood, which is essential to a multitude of cellular processes. The more physical stress our bones encounter the stronger they become and this is especially evident in the bone density of those who practice resistance training as opposed to those who are sedentary.
Most interestingly, recent research has shown the profound effect that physical activity has on our brain health as well. Did you know that according to the Alzheimer’s Society regular physical exercise decreases the risk of dementia by 28% and alzheimer’s disease specifically by 45%? There is no medication in existence that can match these numbers. This is why those who study dementia have a very strong position on ensuring their patients are getting daily physical exercise.
There are so many reasons to have an active hobby that you love!
Examples of active hobbies:
– Join a sports league
– Tennis, pickleball, golf, or volleyball with friends
– Horseback riding
– Fishing
– Dance
– Gardening
– Hiking/Walking
– Archery
– Swimming
– Biking
– Bowling
– Skiing/Snowboarding
– Karate/Taekwondo/Jiu Jitsu
– Etc.
Social Hobbies
The importance of social health and social hobbies is often overlooked. Social health is one of the key tenets identified by Dan Buettner , longevity researcher who founded the Blue Zones Vitality Project. He studied the 5 different regions of the world with the longest and healthiest living residents. Through his studies he identified 9 different values/ practices these societies shared that helped them live longer and healthier than most other societies in the world. He noted these societies all had very strong social and familial ties and placed a strong emphasis on daily social interactions.
Humans are much like animals. Last year we raised 3 pigs. Unfortunately they were weaned and sold much too young by the breeder and became quite ill within a few days of joining us on the farm. Despite our best efforts to treat them only 1 survived. This single pig became so depressed after the loss of its friends that it stopped eating, became much more skittish, slept all day, and refused to interact with us. We realized what was happening. Although now physically recovered, he was lonely and depressed. A few weeks later we found him 2 new friends and as soon as they joined him in the pen he was up and about. The next day he was back to “eating like a pig” and as sweet and interactive as ever.
I share this story because just like animals humans do not thrive in isolation. We are created to live in societies with other humans. Living in isolation without social interactions brings about a whole host of mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and substance use disorder. In fact the lack of social connections is linked to a 2x higher risk of early death.
Why are social interactions so important and how do they help us?
Strong social ties create a sense of responsibility to others. Our health becomes a concern that not only affects us but also affects those who care for us. This in turn encourages us to take a stronger interest in our heath to allow us to continue to be a part of social engagements. Belonging to social circles imparts a sense of purpose and meaning in life. It helps to create an identity and wards off depression and feelings of inadequacy. Engaging in social hobbies helps to mitigate stress and minimize the drive to pursue risky behaviors. These are all keys components of living a long healthy life!
When I look at previous generations such as my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents I see how strong their social connections were with friends and neighbors. It makes me hyper-aware of how much that is lacking in our modern-day society. I can’t help but think technology has something to do with it. While in some ways it has made our lives more accessible for others to view and involve themselves in, those true beneficial strong social bonds are missing. They are much more superficial and we more frequently feel isolated and distanced from others. We need to work harder as a society to improve this aspect of our health. Involving ourselves in social hobbies is a start.
Examples of social hobbies:
– Board games/Game nights
– Team or pair sports
– Any active hobbies done with friends, family, significant others
– Book clubs
– Workshops/lessons
– Volunteering
– Trivia nights
– Monthly get togethers/playdates
– Choirs/bands/music clubs
– Regularly scheduled self-care days with friends
Creative Hobbies
Creativity is a trait often thought of as a luxury for when time allows. This way of thinking is a product of the society we live in today. Our grandparents and great-grandparent’s generations were forced to be creative. They found new uses for common household objects in an effort to make their lives easier. They found creative ways to preserve food. They whittled toys out of wood to keep their children entertained. They sowed their own clothes and knitted scarves for the winter. This creativity was bred out of necessity. Today’s society is much more consumerist and focused on convenience. Many of us have lost the skills once cherished. Everything is available to us without the need to make or create it ourselves. Often we are so focused on utility that creativity is thought of as a luxury of time and we weigh the time, money, and effort it would take to make it ourselves as opposed to purchasing it online with the click of a mouse. The latter more frequently becomes the default.
Why then is creativity so important? How do creative hobbies help us to be healthy?
You probably at this point see a theme in the hobbies listed. All are considered to be “active” hobbies as opposed to passive. Creative hobbies involve active thought and planning in multiple areas of the brain. The current theory of the mind is that we have 3 different networks within our brain which make up “the mind”. These are the default mode network (DMN) , central executive network (CEN), and the salience network (SN). They are responsible for different types of thinking. Put very simply the theory is that the DMN is active in the state of wakeful rest such as when we are daydreaming, thinking about ourselves, thinking about others, or remembering the past. The CEN is active when we are problem solving or working on a task that requires focused attention. The SN helps to allow the brain to switch between networks. Usually these networks (DMN and CEN) do not work together. They are opposite.Creativity is the only state of mind in which we see these two networks working together. (Beaty, R. E., et al., Cerebral Cortex, Vol. 31, No. 10, 2021)
Why is this important? I believe anything that challenges your mind and helps to create new neural networks is protective for your brain. It’s a form of mental exercise. The more you train and stretch your brain, the easier these thought processes become. It expands your thought processes and keeps your brain healthier for longer.
Creativity also has other more tangible benefits. It is essential to both personal and professional growth. It is also important to humanity on a grander scale leading to progress and innovation. It also makes us more authentic to create something new as it is an external expression of our own personal thought processes.
Seeing the physical outcome of something you made can have a profound impact on our mental well-being. When we create something with our hands or see the outcome of our labor it makes us feel proud, accomplished and successful. The more of these small successes we see on a regular basis the better our self esteem becomes. We feel a sense of worth and value. These are all benefits of a creative hobby.
Examples of creative hobbies:
– Developing new recipes
– Playing an instrument
– Painting, drawing, photography
– Crafting
– Sewing/Knitting
– Woodworking
– Building
– Decorating/Design
– Scrapbooking
– Creative Writing
– Etc.
Educational Hobbies
Last but never least are those hobbies which are educational to us. These are very different for every person depending on what knowledge you start with. Educational hobbies often span the other categories and involve us learning things we didn’t know when we started the hobby. They help us to grow, learn new skills and trades, and keep us constantly growing and improving. They prevent us from becoming complacent and our thoughts, ideas, and skills from being stuck in the past. Our entire lifetime is one long educational experience. We are constantly learning new things through our experiences. Learning something new makes us feel smarter, more accomplished, and more confident. This builds not only knowledge but self-esteem.
Take a child for example who has just learned to read for the first time. They often feel proud, smart, more independent and confident because they now have a means of learning and educating themselves about other things. This educational experience then propels them forward in many other aspects of their lives. Educational hobbies for adults can be cornerstone habits as well which can propel them forward in their life or career.
Physically, educational hobbies keep us sharp and keep our mind working to form new memories. Some may find this difficult at first but just like any other learned task it gets easier with time and practice. It’s like another form of exercise for your brain. Memories become easier to form and recall the more we work on linking them to prior knowledge or recalling them frequently. There are mental and physical benefits to educational hobbies which is why everyone should have one!
Examples of Educational Hobbies:
-reading
– attending classes
-learning new trades
-practicing computer skills
-learning a new language
-playing music
-continuing education for your job or career
-attending workshops, seminars, conferences
-online classes
– learning new games or sports
– etc.
All in all, hobbies make you healthier. We are much better at encouraging this for our children than for ourselves but they are no less important for adults. Start with one or two and you will soon see improvement in your health and happiness.
In health and wellness,
Dr. S