15 health benefits from mountian hiking

Increase your happiness

Hiking improves your mood acc to Harvard Medical School. Research shows that spending time in green spaces, like nature trails, mountains and woods, can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. And it doesn’t matter if you hike alone or with others. Hiking makes your body produce endorphins, which help in fighting mood swings, anxiety and depression.

Improve your overall health

Just the fact that you are physically active can help you prevent a lot of diseases such as obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis and coronary heart disease. Mountain hiking certainly gets you active, so if you do it regularly and train for it, you are on a healthy path.

Lower your cardiovascular risk

Hiking is a fantastic way to improve your cardiovascular fitness, particularly if your route includes some hills or mountains, which will force your heart to work harder. Regular hiking can help to reduce the triglyceride levels and increase high-density lipoproteins in your body, which will help to reduce your risk of developing stroke and heart-related diseases.

Improve your blood pressure

If you hike regularly, your heart gets stronger. This means it will pump more blood with less effort and the force exerted on the arteries decreases, and consequently, your blood pressure reduces.

Longer life expectancy

Hiking helps you increase your life expectancy. Research has found that each increase of 1,000 steps a day was associated with a 28 percent decrease in death.

Keep fit into old age

It is never too late to start if you do it slowly and listen to your body. I have met many older hikers in their seventies, who couldn’t live without it. Some have done it their whole life, others have started at an older age, but both enjoy the same benefits and show the same passion.  

Secure a good nights sleep

Hiking helps you sleeping better. Your body gets tired and your mind calms down. I always feel wonderfully tired after a mountain hike. Hiking is a great stress remover. You fall a sleep faster and feel more rested the next morning.

Natural stress relief

“There’s a real sense of peace and composure you get from being outside and away from everything,” says Dr. Baggish to Harvard Health Publishing. A number of small studies hint that spending time in green space — nature preserves, woodlands, and mountains — may ease people’s stress levels.

Improve your core

Taking a hike on an uneven surface of a trail also provides a natural way to engage the core muscles in your body. These are vital for all physical activity and link the upper and lower body together.

Improve your balance

Hiking on a trail also improves your balance skills. Especially as you get older, improving your balance is important. You cannot really do that with a walk on a pavement, a treadmill or riding a bike. Mountain hiking is the most natural way of doing it.

Increase your bone density

Hiking exerts pressure on your bones, which respond by enhancing their density enabling them to withstand the extra pressure.

Burn calories

Hiking burns calories. Check your calory app to see how many you burn when you are out hiking.

Improve your blood sugar

When hiking the muscles can make use of glucose without relying on insulin. When the muscles use up glucose, the blood sugar levels reduce.

Increase your energy

You may be tired when returning from a long hike, but regular hiking will increase your energy and make you stronger over time. Along with a healthy diet being physically active actually increases your energy level.

Get addicted to….

…nature. Mountain hiking takes place in the most beautiful surroundings. You experience and see things you do not see in your office nor in a city. You are in fresh and clean air. Like me, you hopefully already long for your next mountain hike.