I love being outdoors in nature; it is hard to say why, other than it seems to invoke feelings of calm and wellbeing in me that are simply not apparent in other spaces. The greener the better. Add in flowers of different colours, shapes and smells, and a few tuneful birdsongs for good measure and I couldn’t be happier. This is me, in my free time.
The other me is a bespectacled academic, a professor of biodiversity in the University of Oxford who researches plants and has done so for the past 30 years. But my interaction with nature here is an entirely different affair. The plants are on the flat pages of academic books, in scientific articles and peering at parts of them down a microscope. Never do my two worlds of nature, in my free time and work, overlap.
In fact, I should say ‘did’ because a few years ago, everything changed – and as the result of an academic article I came across, published in the journal Science in 1984. The conclusions showed that patients having gall bladder operations recovered much faster and needed less pain relief if they looked out of their hospital window bed on to trees rather than a brick wall. I was both sceptical and curious.
This led me on a whole new scientific journey to understand what happens in our bodies, both mentally and physically, when our senses of sight, sound, smell and touch interact with nature. And, for the first time in my career, I found my two worlds of nature merging into one to ask: what goes on in my body when I spend time immersed in nature?
The link between nature and wellbeing
So, what did I find? Well, first, that there is now a vast body of scientific research that has looked at these interactions, usually involving studies of participants in controlled clinical settings. Second, that when we interact our senses with certain aspects of nature, both indoors and outdoors, it really does bring about significant changes in our bodies, physically and mentally. These include changes to our nervous system (slower breathing rate, heart-beat rate, heart rate variability, blood pressure and so on), endocrine system (reduction in the amounts of stress hormones released such as cortisol, adrenaline and the stress enzyme salivary amylase) and in our psychological state (clinical evidence shows that we become happier and less anxious).
And finally – and probably the most surprising finding for me – is that our bodies incorporate parts of nature when we are in it, to very good health effect. For example, when we breathe in the organic molecules from plants that create distinctive scents – such as the smell of pine forests – some of these molecules pass across the lung membrane and into our blood and here they interact with various pathways to trigger calming and enhance our immunity. Preliminary studies looking at the effects of d-Limonene – citrus scent – show the smell of citrus can reduce inflammation in the lungs. Also, when we are touching nature, in gardening for example, the good microbiome in the soils and plants passes on to our skin and into our gut, improving both.
When I started researching this topic, I was highly sceptical. I’m now a convert – nature really is good for our health.
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