10 Health Benefits of Hiking

Hiking is a great activity that men, women, and children of all fitness levels can enjoy. It is a healthy form of exercise with many positive effects on your well-being. With only 30 minutes of hiking, your body gets multiple benefits. Hiking offers many health benefits, such as improving your life, boosting fitness, burning calories, improving heart health, and many more.

Below are some benefits of hiking on your physical and mental well-being.

1. Hiking is Good for Mental Health

Hiking not only keeps your body healthy, but it is good for your brain and mental health. Research shows that spending time outdoors, away from noisy city life and the hustle, hiking leads to a healthy mind. Spending time outdoors has been proven to calm anxiety, reduce stress, and reduce your risk of depression.

2. It Can Help you Lose Weight

Losing weight is a task that requires determination and sacrifice. But when you go outdoors and get to the mountains, you will engage in something fun but helpful. Hiking won’t seem like work, but it can help you lose some pounds. Going for a hike every weekend is an easy-calorie burning activity that will surprise you after some months.

Because hiking involves walking on uneven and challenging surfaces, your body will use more energy while burning calories. So, hiking regularly will be a great way to help you lose some pounds.

3. Hiking Boosts your Mood

Nowadays, doctors are prescribing exercises such as hiking to combat depression and reduce depressive thoughts. Walking outdoors is a good mood booster, as it combines the benefits of exercise with the mental health benefits of being surrounded by nature.

When you spend most of your time indoors, your mind will never relax well, and sometimes you can think about embarrassing or negative things in your life. So, next time you feel like lifting your mood, go for a hike.

4. Helps Increase your Bone Density

Do you know that your bone density significantly decreases as you age? To maintain healthy bones, you must get enough vitamin D, calcium, and exercise. By hiking regularly, your bone density increases, hence slowing down osteoporosis (loss of bone density). For individuals with arthritis, hiking for 1 or 2 hours every week will help keep joints flexible and prevent joint stiffness.

The good thing about hiking is that it is comfortable, mostly when exploring mountain trails. Mountain trails are softer for the back, knees, feet, ankles, and hips, unlike concrete ground that makes it uncomfortable for the body. Moreover, carrying a backpack will offer more benefits by working on the upper body to build overall fitness.

5. Hiking Helps you Sleep Better

One thing hiking does to your body is relax and help you have good sleep. It does this by stimulating the brain, your soul, and your body. Whether you decide to take an easy or tough trail, the body and mind gets out of their comfort zone. This reduces adrenaline, and the benefits of the hike will be long-lasting.

While the body is out of its comfort zone, the body pumps adrenaline until you finish the walk. Once you complete the hike, the body gets back to recovery mode, making you have a peaceful sleep.

6. It Helps Build Muscle Strength

As you navigate the obstacles of the terrain, your glutes, calves, hamstrings, quadriceps, lower back, abdominals, and thighs become constantly engaged. Every climb you make or ditch you jump challenges your body in a way other strength-training equipment can’t. Hiking helps tone muscles while enhancing elasticity.

If you want to build more body strength from a hike, go hiking on uneven terrain because it increases the amount of energy the body uses compared to walking on flat ground. Paths that are uneven and go sideways require you to make subtle shifts, increasing the amount of energy you are using during your trek. So, hiking once a week will help build strong muscles and keep you healthy.

7. Hiking Lowers the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease

If you want to protect yourself from cardiovascular disease, hiking will keep your cardiovascular system in good shape. Hiking is a good way to lower triglyceride levels and increase high-density lipoprotein levels. This can reduce the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke.

Moreover, this activity can reduce blood pressure by 10 points and balance the body’s triglycerides and cholesterol levels. Improving your cardiovascular health, reducing the chances of heart disease.

8. It Improves Respiratory Health

Going for a hike allows the body to breath fresh air. Hiking is an aerobic activity that brings extra oxygen that fuels your organs, muscles, and tissues. With the extra oxygen, your lungs and muscles are strengthened, increasing energy levels and alertness. Besides, the more fresh air you breath, the more active the lungs become, and more blood is pumped.

9. Improves Balance

Because most hiking trails have uneven surfaces, tripping or falling is a must if you don’t have good balancing skills. Mostly, beginner hikers fall off rocks or trip over roots, but through practice, they improve and master balancing skills. However, it takes time to improve the aspect of hiking on uneven terrains for you to master balance skills.

After improving your balance skills, the mastered balance will help you in other areas of life. Lack or loss of balance is the major cause of accidental falls, so hiking will help prevent falls.

10. Hiking Helps you Socialize

While you can hike alone, it is not bad to join a hiking group so that you can socialize. Joining others will help build memories that will last a lifetime. Unlike hiking alone, where you can give up easily, a hiking group will encourage you to be on the move. The fact that you can join any hiking group, it will be simple to enjoy the scenery and company of your friends.

Bottom Line

Hiking is an enjoyable activity with many benefits, both physical and mental. This outdoor activity boosts your brain, shapes the body, increases your mood, and it can protect you from many health conditions. What are you waiting to start?

Grab a friend, or you can go alone, your hiking boots, water, and everything you need to make your experience great.