Healthy Trees - Healthy Humans

Connect with nature - your health depends on it

When I say that if I weren't around trees I would die, you may think I am exaggerating. But am I? A growing line of research is revealing the importance of trees to human health.

It is vital for us to remain connected to healthy natural areas, like our old growth forests. Our own health depends on it.

In an article called When Trees Die, People Die Lindsay Abrams writes about "the entanglement of our health with that of nature."

"Roger Ulrich demonstrated the power of having a connection with nature, however tenuous, in his classic 1984 study with patients recovering from gall bladder removal surgery in a suburban Pennsylvania hospital. 

He manipulated the view from the convalescents' windows so that half were able to gaze at nature while the others saw only a brick wall. Those with trees outside their window recovered faster, and requested fewer pain medications, than those with a "built" view. They even had slightly fewer surgical complications. 

Environmental psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan attributed nature's apparent restorative ability to something they termed "soft fascination": Natural scenes, they theorized, are almost effortlessly able to capture people's attention and lull them into a sort of hypnotic state where negative thoughts and emotions are overtaken by a positive sense of well-being. 

Indeed, an analysis of numerous studies in BMC Public Health found evidence for natural environments having "direct and positive impacts on well-being," in the form of reduced anger and sadness."

Healthy, happy trees means healthy, happy humans.

Take a walk in the forest today, and get connected.