Since awareness of the importance of preserving nature has spread around the world, so has the idea that being in contact with natural environments is healthy. The contemplative life associated with walks in the forest and resting under the trees. However, it is one thing to believe that nature walks are subjectively enjoyable, and another to believe that they can have objective effects on our health and well-being.

A recent publication in Nature magazine sheds some light on the matter. According to its conclusions, walks in natural areas far from human influence are associated with better mental and physical health , provided they are long enough.

Humans in Nature: More than Just a Good Time

The study, based on questionnaires, included questions related to the frequency of visits to natural environments and their quality (more or less distant from human intervention), as well as four health dimensions: mental health, social cohesion, physical activity and blood pressure. These four dimensions have been linked to findings from previous studies similar to this one, and it was intended to see if similar results could be obtained.

As for the sample used, the group of people studied was composed of 1,538 individuals residing in the Australian city of Brisbane .

A clear improvement in our happiness

The results reveal that people who walk alone more often in wild environments are less likely to suffer from depression and hypertension (a risk factor for heart disease), as well as less stress. People who came into contact with nature more often also showed a significantly higher level of social cohesion.

However, the benefits associated with mental health and blood pressure are revealed as long as the duration of the walks in nature is long enough . Thus, the possible benefits of marauding in virgin areas would be obtained with doses of at least half an hour of walking in nature, and not with less. The frequency of these walks could be at least weekly, and they could be carried out in large parks where they could momentarily escape from the surrounding urban environment.

How do you explain this?

This is not the first study to link making contact with nature and psychological benefits. For example, one study links the integration of schools in green spaces with better academic performance of their students. However, it is important to point out that this study is not based on an experiment, and is only limited to presenting correlations between variables .

Among the ideas proposed by the members of the research team is that if everyone visited a park for half an hour once a week, the cases of depression could be reduced by 7%, but the truth is that this is not certain . People who walk in natural areas have less depression, but this does not have to mean that it is these walks that produce these improvements: perhaps there is some unknown factor that is usually present in people who do this activity and that is what produces the good mental and physical condition found in this study. Correlation does not imply causality.

However, there are also explanations of possible mechanisms by which these walks may directly improve people’s standard of living. Among them, the fact that in natural areas the air is of better quality and less polluted , that the wild areas have more unevenness and crossing them implies more physical activity, the protection against the sun of the shaded areas. All this would translate into better health, related to the appearance of mental disorders.

These possibilities make the conclusions of this study relevant to programmes aimed at preventing disease and reducing its prevalence. Considering how cheap it is to walk in parks, it is worthwhile that both we as individuals and health institutions give this option a chance .