How Does Nature Impact Our Wellbeing?

Research reveals that environments can increase or reduce our stress, which in turn impacts our bodies.

What you are seeing, hearing, experiencing at any moment is changing not only your mood, but how your nervous, endocrine, and immune systems are working.
The stress of an unpleasant environment can cause you to feel anxious, or sad, or helpless. This in turn elevates your blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle tension and suppresses your immune system. A pleasing environment reverses that.

Nature heals and restores.

Being in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear, and stress and increases pleasant feelings. Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it contributes to your physical wellbeing, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones. It may even reduce mortality, according to scientists.

One of the most intriguing areas of current research is the impact of nature on general wellbeing. Studies confirm that people in general have improved their mood after spending time outside, changing from depressed, stressed, and anxious to more calm and balanced.

If you want to read more about physical and mental benefits of being outside you can find more valuable information at MyOpenCountry.com (US).

Sources: The Danish Centre for Forest, Landscape and Planning/University of Copenhagen, University of Minnesota, takingcharge.csh.umn.edu. Featured image: Credit: Dreamstime.com.