The powerful prescription of nature

Enjoy spending time in nature? This short animation illustrates how and why that’s a good thing. Watch it, and you’ll be eager to get outdoors!

Transcript

Kaiser Permanente — The Powerful Prescription of Nature

Research across the globe indicates that spending time in nature helps improve health and well-being. Getting some fresh air can have many benefits.

Enjoying nature:

• decreases levels of cortisol, the stress hormone
• improves mood
• helps regulate emotions
• reduces anxiety, depression, anger
• helps relieve mental fatigue, improving short-term memory
• and may help with attention span and impulse control in kids with ADHD

Natural light normalizes your internal clock, which can improve sleep. Spending time outdoors lowers blood pressure and boosts the immune system. 

Nature provides so many benefits that in some countries, physicians are prescribing “shinrin-yoku” – “forest bathing” – for their patients. Even a “green” view from a hospital room can help patients recover faster.

So get outside!  Enjoy nature’s restorative qualities!

Special thanks to Mason Turner, MD, Director Outpatient Mental Health and Addiction Medicine, Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, California

Sources:

• PubMed, the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM)
• New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
• Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
• U.S. Forest Service
• Journal of Evolution, Medicine and Public Health