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Monday 27 March 2017

Living close to trees and green spaces is good for you

We know trees and nature are good for us:
Futures Forum: The healing power of Great Ormond Street's new garden
Futures Forum: Hug a tree > it's good for you
Futures Forum: The green prescription: 'forget your tablets and get moving'
Futures Forum: The clinical benefits of trees
Futures Forum: Take a walk in the forest
Futures Forum: Green cities: Good health
Futures Forum: Landscaping for Health: inspiring projects in the south-west
Futures Forum: Nature.Health.Design. Bringing nature nearer to the patient
Futures Forum: Healing by Design
Futures Forum: Healing gardens
Futures Forum: More green spaces at schools 'beneficial in the mental development of children'
Futures Forum: "Green spaces in town and cities create immediate and long lasting improvements in people's wellbeing."

The latest research confirms this once again:


Access to nature reduces depression and obesity, finds European study

Trees and green spaces are unrecognised healers offering benefits from increases in mental wellbeing to allergy reductions, says report




Hardcastle Crags, West Yorkshire. The study cites research that 26% of England’s black and minority ethnic populations visit natural environments less than three times a year. Photograph: Rebecca Cole/Alamy

Arthur Neslen

Tuesday 21 March 2017

People living close to trees and green spaces are less likely to be obese, inactive, or dependent on anti-depressants, according to a new report.

Middle-aged Scottish men with homes in deprived but verdant areas were found to have a death rate 16% lower than their more urban counterparts. Pregnant women also received a health boost from a greener environment, recording lower blood pressures and giving birth to larger babies, research in Bradford found.

Overall, nature is an under-recognised healer, the paper says, offering multiple health benefits from allergy reductions to increases in self-esteem and mental wellbeing.

A study team of 11 researchers at the Institute for European environmental policy (IEEP) spent a year reviewing more than 200 academic studies for the report, which is the most wide-ranging probe yet into the dynamics of health, nature and wellbeing.

The project first appeared as an unpublicised 280-page European commission literature review last autumn, before being augmented for Friends of the Earth Europe with analysis of the links between nature-related health outcomes and deprivation.

“The evidence is strong and growing that people and communities can only thrive when they have access to nature,” said Robbie Blake, a nature campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe, which commissioned the analysis.

“We all need nature in our lives, it gives us freedom and helps us live healthily; yet deprived communities are routinely cut off from nature in their surroundings and it is suffocating for their well-being.”

The report makes use of several studies that depict access to nature as being inextricably linked to wealth inequality, because deprived communities typically have fewer natural environments within easy reach.

The study cites research that 26% of England’s black and minority ethnic populations visit natural environments less than three times a year, compared with 15% of the rest of the population.

Patrick ten Brink, the IEEP’s director, praised cities such as Oslo and Victoria-Gasteiz for taking steps to make nature accessible to all.

“We should be inspired by this and work together so that all Europeans have nature within 300 metres of their homes in the next 10 years,” he said.

Previous US research has found that that hospital patients with tree views from their windows were discharged a day earlier than those whose rooms faced walls.

An extra 10 trees on a Toronto city block provided health benefits to residents equivalent to a $10,000 increase in annual income, or being seven years younger, another study in 2015 found.


Access to nature reduces depression and obesity, finds European study | Society | The Guardian
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