Plath’s instincts towards keeping her hands moving in the winter turned out to be correct. A 2007 study by Harvard Medical School found that knitting can lower blood pressure as much as yoga and can also help to relieve sufferers of chronic pain by releasing serotonin. In 2018, the charity Knit for Peace conducted research on the health benefits of crafting, and found that it had a range of benefits for their members, including maintaining mental sharpness, helping smokers to quit and reducing loneliness and isolation in the elderly. They went on to argue that craft should be prescribed on the
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