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Second, we are not designed to look at concrete and areas of The science of why
threat. We are designed to look at nature, and we are designed to we all need nature
be in touch with nature.
trees even make you better at maths!
Third, we’re not designed to have no purpose. We want to do
things, to make things, to be useful. Here are two pictures of the same street, one with trees added in
using Photoshop. The researchers showed people one or other of the
If we get these three things wrong, we get chronic stress. pictures for a short while, and then gave them a mental arithmetic
Note that’s not the same thing as acute stress, which is different. test, taking 13 away from 1,000 repeatedly. They recorded their
We all get acute stress when we’re doing something we don’t subjects’ success, and repeated the whole experiment many times.
particularly like, but we know by the evening it will all be over.
Chronic stress is when you go to sleep and you wake up with the City street without trees
same anxiety, worry or fear because things aren’t right.
Group 1 just saw
Does lack of nature cause chronic stress? this picture for a
minute or so. Their
Let’s look at some experiments. And I can assure you, there are scores were the
loads of these. lowest.

The first one is opposite: the city street with and without Group 2 were
trees. It shows how even a subliminal exposure to a picture of shown the same
trees has a positive effect on cognitive performance. So clearly thing, but with the
it’s not just our conscious side. There’s something deeper in us trees below added
that responds to the sight of those trees, because the people just for a
weren’t actually conscious that they’d seen them. But that microsecond, so it
engagement was so important. was subliminal.

Another study, which has been repeated many times, relates They scored
green space to depression and anxiety. Of course the researchers better.
have to adjust out other factors such as affluence and education.
But people living in areas with tree cover showed significantly Group 3 saw the trees normally for the full minute. They scored
reduced anxiety and depression. the same as Group 2 – the people who saw the trees momentarily.

Another looked at children facing significant problems in City street with trees
their lives, and found that their stress in high nature surroundings
was significantly less than in low nature. In other words, nature Group 4 saw the
was helping to reduce their overall stress. tree version too, but
they also had
A huge study of mortality data looked at how green the someone telling
subjects’ neighbourhood was. It showed that just having them about those
greenery and trees, particularly in deprived areas, reduced the trees: what type
health inequalities between rich and poor. they were, what
animals lived there,
Why do we get ill? what their evolution
was. So they got
At the cell level, inflammation is the cause of almost every engaged and
disease we have. It means our immune system is heating up and interested.
sending out signals. It causes all 23 chronic diseases that afflict
us, including diabetes and heart disease. They did the best.

Chronic stress increases visceral fat – that’s fat inside your Research by Ying-Hsuan Lin, Chih-Chang Tsai, William C. Sullivan, Po-Ju Chang, and
body. We all have fat on the outside of our bodies, but it’s the Chun-Yen Chang. Originally published in Frontiers in Psychology, 2014
stuff inside that’s the dangerous bit. You can’t see it and it’s
poisonous. It generates lots of this inflammation. gym v heart CONSERVATION WORK “I met all
work party rate these new people; we had a real good
Unfortunately the more inactive we are, the more stressed we laugh. We went out, we built a
are and the more we eat the wrong things, the more that visceral So we need to be walkway and there was a badger sett.
fat grows. active, connected to I had no idea the badgers changed
nature and social. But their own bedding.”
How do we get well? how to get people to do
these things? For that 150
The good news is that if you become habitually active and your we need to have some
stress levels drop, then even if you don’t lose any weight, the purpose. Here’s a girl 100
visceral fat reduces. So getting outdoors and not being stressed taking part in two
reduces your instances of chronic inflammation. And getting out activities, and what STEP AEROBICS “Brilliant! I got my heart
is a lot easier when you have a purpose. In short: she said.
50 rate up to 75% of my VO2 Max. I learned
1. We are designed to be connected to nature. Her gym comments how to tone up my pecs. I’ve got all these
2. When we disconnect we develop chronic stress, so we eat were all about her
more and exercise less. We lay down visceral fat and damage body and herself. After exercises I can do.”
our cells. the work party she
3. All this leads to chronic disease. didn’t talk about 0 10 20 30 40 50 mins
4. Connecting people to nature is therefore good medicine. herself or her health at
■ Find more information on nature and health at all. But she actually did
intelligenthealth.co.uk more exercise.

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