Senior citizen gardeners might start thinking, "What the hell, I'm planting tropicals this year. Life is short, summer is short--I'm going for tulips bulbs and annuals." But you might want to choose some of your favorite perennials or even trees, as you could very well beat the average life span.

To encourage my clients to spend time tending their gardens, I have argued both the therapeutic and the health benefits, as I tell them, "For anyone over 30, gardening counts as exercise."

A book coming out in April 2008, Gardening Your Way to Health and Fitness by Bunny Guinness and Jacqueline Knox claims that you can burn over 300 an hour by gardening. That's about a third more than an hour of pilates or yoga. But you don't have to forego these favorites, as the book gives pilates exercises for gardeners. (I do love pilates. In Buenos Aires, they've developed tango-lates, or pilates for tango dancers. Could there be a garden-lates? A core strength course developed specifically for gardeners?) The Timber Press website states: "Step-by-step sequences based on the Pilates method illustrate the safe way to push wheelbarrows, lift heavy pots, pick low-lying fruit, and much more in a way that boosts fitness benefits while avoiding stresses and strains.

Another recently published book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, makes the claim that exercise is the single best thing you can do for your brain. Exercise stimulates the production of proteins that are known as growth factors, and these promote the growth of brain cells and synapses. As well, deterioration in the brain is often caused by disruptions to the cardiovascular system by microstrokes. Exercise may help prevent these. To read more on this go to US News. US News

So while a case of carpel tunnel might by unavoidable as you hit triple digits, gardening may keep Alzheimer's at bay.