Take Care When Raking Leaves - Health Encyclopedia (2024)

FAQs

Take Care When Raking Leaves - Health Encyclopedia? ›

Wear gloves or use rakes with padded handles to prevent blisters, and vary your movement, alternating your leg and arm positions often. Keep your vision free of impediment and wear shoes with slip-resistant soles. To avoid back injuries, do not overfill leaf bags.

Wear gloves or use rakes with padded handles to prevent blisters, and vary your movement, alternating your leg and arm positions often. Keep your vision free of impediment and wear shoes with slip-resistant soles. To avoid back injuries, do not overfill leaf bags.

Potential Heart Risk

There is also a lot of bending and twisting that goes into raking leaves. When taking all of this into account, raking leaves could be considered a vigorous workout, and if too much exertion is put onto your heart too quickly, it can cause a heart attack.

Your activity while raking leaves, sweeping the patio, mowing the lawn, and pulling weeds is a great way to increase oxygen flow to the heart, aids in arterial flow, reduces blood pressure and stress, and gets your heart rate going. Just be sure to keep water on hand and stay hydrated during your back yard workout!

The National Institutes of Health classifies raking leaves as a "moderate intensity" aerobic activity, on par with walking at a brisk, 15-minute mile pace. According to the Surgeon General, a 150-pound person will burn 150 calories in 30 minutes of raking.

Not only does mulching your leaves help your grass and soil, it also helps reduce greenhouse gases and limits waste. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 8.7 million tons of yard trimmings, which include leaves, went to landfills in 2017, accounting for just over 6 percent of all waste in landfills.

Raking is serious work

The repetitive motions coupled with repeated bending, reaching, twisting, lifting, and carrying can easily lead to a pulled or torn muscle or worse. These strains often occur in the shoulders, arms, and neck. Especially if you don't regularly exercise these areas.

Just thirty minutes of raking and squatting to scoop the leaves up and transport them fits into the CDC's recommended daily exercise for adults of 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day.

Raking is an aerobic activity. Remember to take breaks and drink plenty of water. Take symptoms seriously. Chest pain or shortness of breath could be a sign of a life-threatening emergency.

What do scientists say about raking leaves? ›

What lies beneath the bed of foliage, though, is worth leaving untouched, scientists say. In a forest, fallen leaves fertilize the soil and offer habitat to pollinators and other wildlife.

Reasons Not to Rake

When the leaves break down where they fall, they return essential nutrients to the grass and soil. Additionally, the coverage that the leaves provide preserves soil moisture and suppresses weeds. Finally, birds and insects such as butterflies and moths depend on the fallen leaves.

Raking leaves requires use of our upper body with the primary muscles involved being the biceps, deltoids, rotator cuff, parascapular muscles and forearm muscles. It is important to warm up these muscles before and after raking.

Raking and bagging leaves – Raking and bagging leaves burns 250 to 450 calories per hour, depending on the size of your garden. Performing raking tasks not only keeps your lawn looking clean and inviting, but it will also work your entire upper body, including your core, biceps and triceps, and shoulders.

Excessive leaf matter on your lawn going into winter is bad for several reasons. First, it will smother the grass and if not removed very soon in the spring it will inhibit growth. Second, it can promote the snow mold diseases. And finally, turf damage from critters (voles, mice) can be more extensive in the spring.

To maintain proper posture while raking keep your legs slightly bent, your weight centered, and reach with your arms and not your back. After every 20 minutes of raking activity stand up, place hands on hips and gently stretch into a back bend for a few seconds 3-5 times especially before lifting anything.

Loose leaf piles should be placed behind the curb or edge of pavement without blocking the sidewalk. Do not rake or blow leaves into the street as they present a safety hazard and a flooding concern when leaves are washed into storm drains.

Rake leaves when they're dry. Wet leaves are heavier and more difficult to lift. They also breed mold and mildew, which can be unpleasant for those who suffer from allergies.

Use a tarp for easy leaf cleanup

As you sweep the rake across your lawn, push the leaf pile onto the tarp for easy cleanup. Try raking the leaves from one area of your lawn onto the tarp until it's full. If you're using a leaf blower, try using it alongside a tarp to make cleanup easier.