Are You Nature Deficient?

by Hannah Aylward: How much time do you spend outside on a daily basis? Let’s break it down. Your average workday may look something like this: wake up, commute to work, sit at work for eight hours, commute home, and then spend the rest of the evening unwinding at home and preparing for the next weekday. You may not have thought of it in this way before, but that is a lot of time spent inside. Our bodies were designed to run, jump, and play. We intuitively crave movement. Before modern advances, if we had to get somewhere we walked. We know how important exercise is for our bodies and souls, but we often overlook the importance of actually spending time outside. When it comes to exercise, most of us try to make time to move, but we do it on a treadmill, in a classroom, or in a studio. We are still lacking that beautiful touch with nature. So why is spending time outdoors so important? For example, city dwellers have a higher risk for anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses than people living outside urban centers. Various studies have found that urban dwellers with little access to green spaces have a higher incidence of psychological problems. But get this — stress hormones decrease immediately after visiting natural environments. Isn’t that amazing? Plants give off airborne chemicals to protect themselves from insects. These chemicals are called phytoncides. Phytoncides have antibacterial and antifungal qualities. While we breathe in the fresh air outdoors, we take in these chemicals. Our human bodies respond to these by increasing the number and activity of a type of white blood cell called natural killer cells, or NK. These cells kill tumor- and virus-infected cells in our bodies. Talk about magic. So, exposure to forests […]

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