Humans are an Outdoors Species!
For most of our history on this great rock, humans (homo sapiens) have been outdoor creatures. It’s only in the last century that we’ve seen a dramatic shift indoors with the rise of first the radio, then television, then the Internet and most recently, social media and online streaming.
The data is alarming. A 2023 survey found that nearly 40% of adults in the UK spend less than one hour a day outdoors. And they realise that this isn’t good for them. Nearly half of the people in the same survey said that mental or physical health suffer if they spend too much time indoors, and wanted to increase their time outside. And the scientific research back them up.
Greenery Matters
Crucially, the type of environment we go outside into makes a difference. For example, a large 2019 study in the UK study found that spending just 2 hours a week in nature was associated with much better health and wellbeing. This was the case even if those two hours were split into smaller chunks.
In 2015, researchers in the US carried out a study whereby participants went for a 90 minute walk either in an urban setting or a rural setting. The participants who went into green areas reported less ruminative thought (when you think about things over and over, in a negative way). And brain scans showed the ones who went to the green areas had lowered activity in the parts of the brain associated with ruminative thought. No such reductions were seen in those who went for a walk in urban settings.
Forest Bathing?
In Japan, scientists have studied something called “forest bathing.” As the title suggests, forest bathing (shinrin yoku, in Japanese) is when you walk through a wooded area “bathing” in the forest energies. A seminal 2009 study compared the results of walking in forest versus city settings, and found that “forest environments promote lower concentrations of cortisol, lower pulse rate, lower blood pressure, greater parasympathetic nerve activity, and lower sympathetic nerve activity than do city environments.”
The benefits of being outside, especially in green areas is overwhelming and confirmed by our personal experience. I think it’s especially important to get children into the outdoor way of life from as early as possible. Here in the UK, we have long spells of each year when it’s cold, dark and wet – not ideal for getting outside. It’s understandable that we tend to hide away indoors from the elements. But winter time is probably the most important time to get outside because we are so starved of natural light and prone to things like seasonal affective disorder.
During those short daylight hours, we must do what we can to get outside. I had an issue a couple of years ago where I was very, very down in in the winter. And I resolved the next year to make sure that we as a family always went out on family walks in the cold. And it worked a tree! I felt much better in myself an winter seemed a lot less of a drag. This year I’ve slipped back into my old ways, so this article is a reminder to myself!
So yeah let’s get outside. Our health depends on it.
