Gardening

• One-in-four American adults list gardening as a hobby, ranking it only behind reading, music and cooking in popularity. (Discount Store News, July 26, 1999)
• The average household spends approximately $350 on yard and garden products annually. (National Gardening Association, 1999)
• In 1999, gardening sales among all channels were $33.52 billion, an increase of 11 percent from 1998. (National Gardening Association, 1999)
• The primary reason people garden is to get outdoors (72 percent), aesthetic pleasure (42 percent), stress reduction (39 percent), exercise (35 percent). (Discount Store News, July 26, 1999)
• There are more than 42.6 million households that list flower gardening as a primary leisure activity. (Lifestyle Market Analysis, SRDS, 2001)

Pain

• Chronic pain has been estimated to affect between 8.7 percent to 11 percent of adults. Ninety percent of these localized their pain to the musculoskeletal system. (www.pain.com)
• Back pain, migraines and arthritis account for medical costs of $40 billion annually. (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 1997)
• Pain was the cause of 25 percent of all sick days taken annually. (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 1997)
• Unrelieved pain has many negative health consequences such as increased stress, metabolic rate, blood clotting, water retention, hormonal imbalances, impaired immune system, and gastrointestinal functioning. (Bedard, CA State University, Fresno, July 15, 1997)

Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)

• The $27 billion that was spent on alternative therapies in 1997 was comparable to the amount spent on all physician services that year. (Journal of the American Medical Association)
• Sixty-nine percent of Americans use unconventional medical therapies. (Stanford University Survey, September 1998)
• Sixty percent of physicians have referred patients to CAM practitioners and programs. (NIH Office of Alternative Medicine, 1997)