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Getting away from it all in the great outdoors has been a proven panacea for generations of city-dwellers, but a new study has quantified how access to nature could be a vital component in our overall mental health.
The researchers took two groups of participants and led them on 90-minute walks through two very different kinds of environments. One group walked across a grassland area populated with oak trees and shrubs, while the other group walked along the side of a heavily trafficked four-lane highway.
By performing brain scans on the walkers before and after the expedition, the team found that neural activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex - the area of the brain that’s active during rumination - had decreased in the volunteers who explored the natural environment. Their experience was consistent with this finding, with the group reporting that they found themselves ruminating less during the walk.
Those who trekked along the side of the road, on the other hand, demonstrated no changes in their neural activity, or in their self-reporting on rumination, suggesting that nature experiences can have a discernable, positive impact on our brains’ emotional regulation.
The notion that the fresh breezes, dappled sunlight and fragrant greenery of a garden can be good for what ails us has its roots in ancient tradition and common sense. But a much cited study, published in 1984 in the journal Science by environmental psychologist Roger Ulrich, now at Texas A&M University, was the first to use the standards of modern medical research—strict experimental controls and quantified health outcomes—to demonstrate that gazing at a garden can sometimes speed healing from surgery, infections and other ailments.
Ulrich and his team reviewed the medical records of people recovering from gallbladder surgery at a suburban Pennsylvania hospital. All other things being equal, patients with bedside windows looking out on leafy trees healed, on average, a day faster, needed significantly less pain medication and had fewer postsurgical complications than patients who instead saw a brick wall.
Fortunately, as the evidence implicating hospitals as major engines of stress builds, the stack of data suggesting that gardens and planted alcoves can encourage healing has grown, too. Just three to five minutes spent looking at views dominated by trees, flowers or water can begin to reduce anger, anxiety and pain and to induce relaxation, according to various studies of healthy people that measured physiological changes in blood pressure, muscle tension, or heart and brain electrical activity.
Not your hippie back-to-the-land ideology of the sixties and seventies,
originally posted by: Gothmog
originally posted by: JinMI
Also don't forget to take your shoes off for a grounding effect!!
You got it.
originally posted by: Bedlam
originally posted by: Gothmog
originally posted by: JinMI
Also don't forget to take your shoes off for a grounding effect!!
You got it.
Total tripe, sorry to say.
The entire "grounding" thing is total hogwash.
You won't maintain a net charge for very long, unless you're in special shoes in total 0% humidity. Being in a garden sort of obviates that. So, very rapidly, you will bleed away any net charge in the form of ionized air until you're only carrying a few Volts of charge relative to ground.
Wiggling your toes in the dirt doesn't cause electrons to rush into your body, either. Because if they did, you'd have a net negative charge with relation to the ground. Electrons don't 'want' that, so you won't get extra.
eta: you might get something extra with barefeet in soil that's been fertilized with 'natural' fertilizer - a nice case of pinworms.
originally posted by: StuKE
originally posted by: Bedlam
originally posted by: Gothmog
originally posted by: JinMI
Also don't forget to take your shoes off for a grounding effect!!
You got it.
Total tripe, sorry to say.
The entire "grounding" thing is total hogwash.
You won't maintain a net charge for very long, unless you're in special shoes in total 0% humidity. Being in a garden sort of obviates that. So, very rapidly, you will bleed away any net charge in the form of ionized air until you're only carrying a few Volts of charge relative to ground.
Wiggling your toes in the dirt doesn't cause electrons to rush into your body, either. Because if they did, you'd have a net negative charge with relation to the ground. Electrons don't 'want' that, so you won't get extra.
eta: you might get something extra with barefeet in soil that's been fertilized with 'natural' fertilizer - a nice case of pinworms.
originally posted by: StuKE
Which is more relaxing? Shoes or barefoot (unless you stand on a bee or something...)
originally posted by: Bedlam
originally posted by: Gothmog
originally posted by: JinMI
Also don't forget to take your shoes off for a grounding effect!!
You got it.
Total tripe, sorry to say.
The entire "grounding" thing is total hogwash.
You won't maintain a net charge for very long, unless you're in special shoes in total 0% humidity. Being in a garden sort of obviates that. So, very rapidly, you will bleed away any net charge in the form of ionized air until you're only carrying a few Volts of charge relative to ground.
Wiggling your toes in the dirt doesn't cause electrons to rush into your body, either. Because if they did, you'd have a net negative charge with relation to the ground. Electrons don't 'want' that, so you won't get extra.
eta: you might get something extra with barefeet in soil that's been fertilized with 'natural' fertilizer - a nice case of pinworms.
originally posted by: Gothmog
Ahh, but you have forgotten. I have very strong ties to my Native American heritage. One of the ways to get "connected" to the earth. Good thing I am not easily offended.