Abstract
The aim of this study is to understand the effect of horticultural therapy for Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). We had five subjects (two RA patients and two healthy subjects) to do gardening and RA exercises and compared the results. We used Profile of Mood States (POMS) to see the difference between the mood before and after the exercise for each subject. POMS scores for positive mood showed that the score after gardening exercise were higher than that of RA exercises. For negative mood, score after gardening exercises were lower than that of RA exercises. As a result, POMS scores suggested that doing gardening exercises rather than RA exercises are better in psychological ways. In addition, we analyzed the saliva cortisol density. By measuring the change of saliva cortisol concentration rate, we found that the change of its rate measured from gardening was smaller than the rate measured from RA exercise. Salivary cortisol concentration suggested that taking exercises by gardening are better than doing RA exercises for the patients from physical point.
