Half were told to suck a lozenge every two to three waking hours for as long as they had cold symptoms The rest took a placebo. Among zinc suckers the average duration of cold symptoms fell from 8.1 to 4.5 days Cough symptoms lasted half as long. But previous studies yielded inconclusive results, and some volunteers said zinc irritated their mouths and affected their taste.E-mail your questions to health independent.co.uk. Dr Kavalier regrets that he is unable to respond personally to questions. Gardening has never been more fashionable. Egged on by the ever-growing number of popular TV shows and green-fingered types who become household names, we’re rediscovering an age-old British pastime.

Now there is evidence that gardening is good for your health, reducing stress levels, lowering blood pressure and even helping you live longer

Gardening has never been more fashionable. Egged on by the ever-growing number of popular TV shows and green-fingered types who become household names, we’re rediscovering an age-old British pastime. Now there is evidence that gardening is good for your health, reducing stress levels, lowering blood pressure and even helping you live longer.
Planning for the next season forces us to look positively towards the future, it is claimed. Dr Brigid Boardman, an academic and speaker for the Royal Horticultural Society, says: “Gardening helps the elderly look ahead rather than dwell on the past or refuse to hope for the future. This backward-looking tendency can too often lead to regret and grieving. But the gardener of any age is always looking ahead ­ to the next green shoot, the next bud or flower, the ripening fruit…”Another of the great things about gardening is that it employs all the senses.

As you get older the senses become more difficult to stimulate.”Dr Boardman, who is writing a book on the influence of gardens on community life, said gardening also empowered the elderly. “As we grow older there is the increasing need for dependence on others This can lead to frustration and a longing to be in control. Whereas once we were the ones who cared, now others care for us. In both these situations the garden provides an antidote to the pain and frustration. The need to be in control is met by our control of what we plant, how we plan the garden, and how it is tended. And the need to care is again fulfilled.”Gay Search, a presenter on BBC2′s Gardeners’ World and author of The Healing Garden, agrees that gardening is a nurturing activity “When you are growing plants you have to look after them.

They are not as much pressure as looking after a pet, but if you don’t look after plants they won’t thrive and they’ll die. It’s a chance to be in a non-threatening nurturing relationship with something.”But it is not just the elderly who can benefit from gardening, as it offers both physical and psychological benefits to everyone. Just being in a garden can improve your health, as green spaces can have a dramatic effect on stress levels. In one study, Professor Roger Ulrich of the University of Texas exposed a set of people to a highly stressful virtual car journey.

Half of the group were then taken to a green space surrounded by trees, where their heart rates and blood pressures recovered within two minutes. The other half, who were not exposed to nature, took longer to recover.Professor Ulrich has also showed that looking at trees can help people’s recovery after surgery. A group recovering from gall-bladder operations were put in rooms overlooking trees, and other patients who had had the same operation were put into rooms overlooking buildings. Those who overlooked trees recovered quicker, went home sooner, needed less pain relief and complained less.Search claims that gardening can have other positive psychological effects “Gardening is hugely rewarding.