Yahoo Lifestyle Call of the wild
Photography Getty Images
Sometimes here at WH, we put on lab coats and do serious things.
For example, we recently teamed up with leading international conservation organisation The Nature Conservancy, to survey more than 2500 adults – including 1400 women – about their relationship with the great outdoors. A major discovery confirmed by actual scientists: women now
spend more time inside than ever, putting us at risk of a sneaky new health threat, “nature-deficit disorder”.
While 73 per cent of women wish they could spend more time outdoors, getting a nature fix is easy (usually free), even for city-dwellers. And bonding with Mother Nature can yield big benefits, including a hot body, healthy heart, low stress levels and much, much more. Here’s why...
Are you getting enough Vitamin N?
Growing up, Teresa Bruffey was passionate about nature – passionately against it. To the self-conscious urbanite teenager, the great outdoors seemed dirty, scary and plain uncomfortable. When she did venture out, her suspicions were validated: at the beach, sand got into places it shouldn’t; at picnics, birds terrorised her like schoolyard bullies. Communing with Mother Nature, she decided, was not her thing. Until one day, it was.
After graduating from uni, a boyfriend convinced Bruffey to join him on an overnight bushwalking trip. “I was terrified, panicked about it getting dark and animals lurking in the wilderness,” she admits. “But when I woke up, it was blue sky and mountains all around. Everything was still and beautiful. I just felt, I don’t know, full.”
Bruffey even took up rock-climbing, dragging friends along and overcoming a fear of heights in the process. “Being in nature reset my confidence and peace of mind,” she says.
Intuitively, her story makes sense – remember your parents’ mantra, “Fresh air will do you good”? But it now also makes sense scientifically.
“The vast majority of evidence points in one direction: we can be happier, healthier and smarter if we weave more nature into our lives,” reveals leading naturalist Richard Louv, author of The Nature Principle.
He says research is increasingly suggesting a strong link between the outside and your insides, and that walking out of your front door may be the only prescription you need for a healthier body. Call it vitamin N (for nature).
Forces of nature
For five million years, humans relied on nature for just about everything, including food, shelter and sleep. “One of the reasons we ‘love’ nature is because we depended on it so much; the people who understood and worked with nature were the ones who survived,” explains associate professor Mardie Townsend of Deakin University, who researches the health benefits of interaction with nature. But that all changed during Europe’s Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s.
“We moved from rural villages – farming common land – to living in crowded, urban areas, where we bought our food and worked the hours factory owners wanted us to, instead of getting up by the light and going to bed by the light,” says Townsend. Because evolution occurs over millions of years, not 250, our bodies simply haven’t adapted to this “new” way of life.
Like Louv, Townsend believes humans are biophilic – that we have an innate attraction to, and connection with, nature – and the lack of nature in our lives could throw our wellbeing waaaay off-kilter. Louv has coined the condition “nature-deficit disorder”, and it can lead to a host of health problems.
For example, a Dutch study of 345,000 people found that living more than one kilometre away from green space (nature reserves, parks, forest) increases the risk of heart disease, mental illness, diabetes, asthma, neck and shoulder complaints and even urinary tract infections. Other research suggests that rising rates of allergies and autoimmune disorders might be caused, in part, by less exposure to healthy bacteria found in nature.
Women seem to be sinking deep into nature-deficit disorder. Our study in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy found that super-stressed women were more likely to veg in front of the television, and eat or drink wine than head outside for a walk.
Yet the cure for a vitamin N deficiency may lie in that simple walk. A whopping 86 per cent of frazzled women said their mood improves when spending time outdoors in nature. (Living close to green space motivates people to exercise: those with more than 20 per cent green space within a kilometre of their home are significantly more likely to work out, the University of Western Sydney says.) That would come as no surprise to Louv, who reckons even small doses of vitamin N can protect body and mind.
What science says
In Japan, scientists are busy measuring the physical effects of “forest bathing”, or Shinrin-yoku. One study published in the journal Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine found that blood pressure, resting heart rate and levels of stress hormone cortisol were significantly lower after a 15-minute nature walk compared with a 15-minute city walk. Another study found a 37 per cent spike in the number of women’s natural killer cells – the backbone of the immune system – after they spent a few hours in bushland.
Vitamin N may also be the best mood lifter, ever: when participants took hour-long walks in a park versus a shopping centre, 90 per cent of them reported higher self-esteem, and 71 per cent said they felt less depressed, according to researchers at the University of Essex, UK.
The same researchers found spending time near “blue-green space” – rivers, lakes, oceans – has the most positive effect. Getting back to nature might even make you a better person. Researchers at the University of Rochester, US, purport that it helps us become less self-obsessed and more aware of what’s important in life.
“We inherently need nature,” says Townsend. “The international recommendation is actually that people should have green spaces within between 300 and 400 metres of where they live.”
The fresh air fix
Some doctors find all this data so compelling, they’re writing “nature prescriptions” to help prevent and treat conditions like heart disease and depression. Family GP Dr Daphne Miller gives her patients park maps with instructions on which walking tracks to take. “Nature therapy can be a powerful intervention,” she says. “People are more likely to stick to it, it’s readily available anywhere, and it’s free.”
Even if your GP isn’t prescribing loops around Albert Park Lake, you should still try nature therapy. You don’t even need to move. Those “forest bathing” studies found the same stress-level, heart-rate and blood-pressure reductions in people who spent 15 minutes just sitting in a chair among the trees. And nature is like RSVP.com.au for outdoorsy people. Ever since her conversion from city slicker to Lara Croft double, Bruffey, now 34, has been connecting with like-minded people. On one mountain climb, she hit it off with her guide and, back on flat ground, their rapport blossomed into romance.
See, nature is good for the heart.
The city girl's guide to nature
For the 69 per cent of Australians who live in metropolitan areas , going walkabout may seem impossible, but urban dwellers can still reap the benefits of fresh(er) air.
See a movie – under the stars. Ben & Jerry’s OpenAir Cinema is back this summer, screening new releases and cult classics in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.
Turn to mighty Google Maps It can give you walking and cycling directions from Point A to Point B, or between city parks. Greenify your balcony with a vertical garden like the Vertical Greenwall Blanket by Jamie Durie ($159.95, jamiedurie.com). Attach it to a wall
or railing, plant stuff in the pockets and hey presto, you have a garden.
Can’t get to the park? Download the free smartphone app Pocket Pond and watch koi fish swim to the sounds of nature for five blissful minutes. You can feed the fish and create water ripples with your finger.
Commune with nature – and your neighbours by joining a community garden. Find one at Community Garden. (Bonus: some studies show gardening can reduce stress and boost your mood, while burning up to 1260kJ an hour.)
