Two Hours of Nature Time Each Week Boosts Wellness | Everyday Health

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If you’ve ever felt the call of the wild, you now have a permanent excuse to answer it. New research led by the University of Exeter in England and published in Scientific Reports on June 13, 2019,has found that people who spend just two hours a week in natural settings such as town parks, woodlands, state parks, and beaches report better health and a greater sense of well-being. People who spent less than two hours in those settings reported no such benefits.

The good news is that you don’t have to spend the two hours all at once; a total of two hours made up of shorter visits over the week also does the trick. “Benefits do continue up to around five hours, where it levels out,” says the lead author of the study, Mathew White, PhD, a senior lecturer at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter Medical School.

This study builds on previous research led by Dr. White and published in Psychological Science, which discovered that “on average, individuals have both lower mental distress and higher well-being when living in urban areas with more green space.”

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A study published in Nature in June 2016 confirmed that “people who made long visits to green spaces had lower rates of depression and high blood pressure, and those who visited more frequently had greater social cohesion.”

The University of Exeter research team looked at data provided by the government of the United Kingdom. “We’ve been working with the government organization Natural England for some years and suggested they add the health and well-being questions. They do the actual data collection in at-home interviews with people,” White explains. (The study did not include data from people who spent time gardening in their yards or out and about shopping.)

The study used data from nearly 20,000 people in England and found that the results didn’t vary among age, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, occupation, or relative health. The positive effects were found even among people with long-term illnesses or disabilities.

If you need more convincing, another study, published in Social Science & Medicine in January 2018, found that “greater neighborhood provision of public parks from childhood through to adulthood may help to slow down the rate of cognitive decline in later life, recognizing that such environmental associations are always sensitive to individual characteristics.”

What people did out in nature didn't seem to matter on the key visits the University of Exeter team looked at. “However, we don’t know what people were doing on all visits, so we’re a little nervous about overstating this case. Most people by far are walking and relaxing, so that’s the default activity, if you like,” says White.

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A walk in the woods can do more than help you de-stress. There are several hypotheses as to why being in the natural world ups the good stuff in your body, says White.

Two hours each week works out to a little more than 15 minutes each day. (Five hours a week means closer to 40 minutes each day.) The team have not discovered why, exactly, two hours is the critical number, but as White says, “it’s a neat excuse. It’s practical for people to fit into busy lives.”

How much time have you spent in a natural setting this week?

Don’t wait for a holiday to get to a beach, park, or forest. Just tell yourself, “Doctor’s orders!”