How Being Involved With Nature Can Improve Your Health?

In late 2020, Canadian doctors made news for "prescribing nature," or recommending time outside based on a study that found people who spent two or more hours per week in nature enhanced their health and wellbeing.

Knowing this, Drexel University transdisciplinary researchers studied how nature-relatedness just feeling connected with the natural world promotes dietary diversification and fruit and vegetable consumption in a study published recently in the American Journal of Health Promotion.

Nature on someone's health

(Photo : OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP via Getty Images)

Nature connectedness has been linked to improved cognitive, psychological, and physical health, as well as higher levels of ambient responsibility.

Brandy-Joe Milliron, Ph.D., an associate professor at Drexel's College of Nursing and Health Professions and the publication's primary author, said, "Our findings expand this list of advantages to include food consumption."

They discovered that persons who were more connected to nature were more likely to report beneficial food intakes, such as increased nutritional diversity and more fruit and vegetable eating.

The study team questioned over 300 persons in Philadelphia to evaluate their nutritional intake and calculate their daily fruit and vegetable consumption, as well as their self-reported relationship to nature, including their experience with and view of nature.

The demographic features of survey participants mirrored those of Philadelphia as of the 2010 census, as per ScienceDaily.

The information was gathered between May and August of this year.

According to the survey results, those with a greater connection to nature ate a more diversified diet and consumed more fruits and vegetables.

These findings, according to the research team, illustrate the significance of utilizing environment personal experience or intervention strategies such as trying to incorporate natural areas or urban greening into city planning, assimilating nature- and park-prescription initiatives into healthcare practices (similar to the Canadian model), and promoting nature-based perspectives in educational environments, among several others.

Read more: Dr. Alddo Molinar: Overcoming Mental Health Stigma

Nature has played a critical role for our mental health

The findings of The Mental Health Foundation researchers are consistent with past studies that have revealed that individuals going and recognizing nature, in particular, was significant in enhancing their wellbeing.

This is an extremely significant point because it helps us understand how a connection with nature unlocks the mental health advantages and also provides us with crucial insights on how to maximize these benefits for personal wellness.

The findings of the mental health foundation researchers are consistent with past studies that have revealed that individuals going and recognizing nature, in particular, was significant in enhancing their wellbeing.

This is an extremely significant point because it helps us understand how a connection with nature unlocks the mental health advantages and also provides us with crucial insights on how to maximize these benefits for personal wellness.

We may strengthen our connection to nature in a variety of ways. Activities involving the senses, as well as activities in which we feel emotions such as compassion, recognize beauty, or discover meaning in nature, can all assist to enhance our connection with the natural world.

We could perceive the beauty of nature by listening closely to birdsong or stroking the bark of trees, for example.

Smelling flowers or feeling the earth between our fingers as we plant bulbs in the garden are both profoundly sensuous ways to connect with nature.

People don't always have to be in nature to strengthen our relationship with it, penning a poem about our favorite nature site or thinking about favorite hikes may help us deliberately recognize, appreciate, and appreciate the natural environment.

Related article: Climate Change: Extreme Heat Increases Mental Health Issues