With unpredictable weather, it's understandable for us to want to stay indoors more often than not. But a large number of recent studies have shown that spending time in nature is responsible for many measurable beneficial changes in the body. Joining us to discuss the benefits is the "People Pro" Barb Bartlein! Barb Bartlein has over 30 years of experience working in teams, leadership and relationships.
Saturday, March 30, 2019
The Healing Power of Nature
With unpredictable weather, it's understandable for us to want to stay indoors more often than not. But a large number of recent studies have shown that spending time in nature is responsible for many measurable beneficial changes in the body. Joining us to discuss the benefits is the "People Pro" Barb Bartlein! Barb Bartlein has over 30 years of experience working in teams, leadership and relationships.
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
10 Reasons Why Nature is the Best Medicine
10 Reasons Why Nature is the Best Medicine
1. The Closer to Nature, the Healthier You'll Be
Recent studies have shown that the closer you live to nature or green spaces, in general, the happier you'll be.
2. Nature Changes Your Brain -- For the Better
When you take a walk in nature, electrochemical changes occur in your brain, producing calming and beneficial results.
3. Sunny Skies Give You Vitamin D...
Vitamin D is crucial to humans, helping to prevent disease and infection and improving bone health.
Sunrays provide plenty of vitamin D, so being outdoors during a sunny day can greatly improve your health.
4. ...And a Good Night's Sleep
While it may sound counterproductive, being out in the sun also helps you sleep.
Sunlight, especially in the morning, helps regulate your internal biological clock, making it much easier for you to get your needed rest when bedtime rolls around.
5. The Outdoors Can Help You Kiss Your Stress Goodbye
Researchers are finding that being out in nature greatly reduces people's stress levels.
Simply taking in outdoor sights and sounds are relaxing to the body and mind, helping to decrease worry and anxiety.
6. Nature has Astounding Healing Properties
Nature has been shown to directly improve people's physical health, including patients who are recovering from a disease or illness.
Patients who are exposed to the outdoors tend to recover more quickly, use less pain medication, and have shorter hospital stays.
Now, how astounding is that?
7. Being Outside is Good for Your Mental Health
Nature can also help curb mental diseases as well, like depression, ADHD, and other psychiatric problems and illnesses.
The relaxing and calming properties of nature greatly contribute to these results.
8. More Outdoor Activity Makes for a Fitter, Healthier You
Being out in nature often involves some form of physical activity, whether it be strolling through the park, biking through the mountains, or an exciting river raft ride.
This activity both improves physical fitness and can help decrease the likelihood of obesity.
9. Nature Heightens the Senses and Memory
Spending time outdoors can also strengthen your senses and memory.
When in nature, you're exposed to plenty of sights, smells, sounds, and touches and have ample amounts of new things to take in.
These experiences help enhance all your senses, and outdoors having also been proven to improve short term memory.
10. Happiness -- Pure and Simple
Let's face it, being in nature just makes people happier in general.
The great outdoors changes brain chemistry in a positive way, improves mood, decreases stress, provides opportunities for fun, and is simply downright beautiful.
All this ends up making for a happier and, thus, healthier you.
Sunday, March 24, 2019
How Nature is Good for Our Health and Happiness
We all intrinsically think that nature must be good for our health and happiness. A recent analysis of a large-scale nature challenge scientifically shows how important feeling part of nature is to our physical and mental health
There are a growing number of studies and campaigns putting forward evidence that a connection with nature makes us healthier and happier people, something that few of us nature lovers would argue with.
And now a recent evaluation of the UK’s first month-long nature challenge, which took place last year and involved people "doing something wild" every day for 30 consecutive days, shows scientifically and statistically how significant it really is.
At the time of the challenge participants were also asked to take part in a survey about their perceived connection to nature and feeling a part of it; how they interacted with nature, and how they felt about their health and happiness, before the challenge started, at the end of the challenge and two months after it had finished.
The analysis has been published in the journal PLOS One.
The study was conducted by the University of Derby and The Wildlife Trusts to try and measure the impact of last year’s "30 Days Wild" campaign, run by the charity.
“Intuitively we knew that nature was good for us as humans, but the results were beyond brilliant,” said Lucy McRobert, nature matters campaigns manager for The Wildlife Trusts.
The study showed that there was a scientifically significant increase in people’s health, happiness, connection to nature and active nature behaviours, such as feeding the birds and planting flowers for bees – not just throughout the challenge, but sustained for months after the challenge had been completed.
Impressively, says McRobert, the number of people reporting their health as "excellent" increased by 30% and this improvement in health being predicted by the increase in happiness, this relationship is mediated by the change in connection to nature. It adds to a growing body of evidence that shows definitively that we need nature for our health and wellbeing.
For example, children exposed to the natural world showed increases in self-esteem. They also felt it taught them how to take risks, unleashed their creativity and gave them a chance to exercise, play, and discover. In some cases nature can significantly improve the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), providing a calming influence and helping them concentrate.
And for people suffering from physical illness or mental health disorders, such as depression and anxiety, interacting with nature can help people control their symptoms or even recover, alongside conventional medication.
“Nature isn’t a miracle cure for diseases,” says McRobert, “But by interacting with it, spending time in it, experiencing it and appreciating it we can reap the benefits of feeling happier and healthier as a result.”
Healthy lifestyle
Dr Miles Richardson, head of psychology at the University of Derby, conducted the study and explains that the results are significant, both statistically and from an applied perspective. It was a large scale intervention, he says, with more than 18,500 people committing around 300,000 random acts of "wildness", framed not as a public health intervention, but rather a fun campaign to take part in.
“The design and evaluation took a proven approach in evaluations of such scale, it’s an important step.”
According to Dr Richardson there is already research evidence that exposure to nature can reduce hypertension (abnormally high blood pressure), respiratory tract and cardiovascular illnesses; improve vitality and mood; benefit issues of mental wellbeing such as anxiety; and restore attention capacity and mental fatigue. But more than that, feeling a part of nature has been shown to significantly correlate with life satisfaction, vitality, meaningfulness, happiness, mindfulness, and lower cognitive anxiety.
“These correlations are of a similar magnitude to those found between wellbeing and other variables, such as marriage and education, whose relationships with wellbeing are well established.”
And, he adds, recent analysis found people with a stronger connection to nature experienced more life satisfaction, positive affect and vitality at levels associated with established predictors of satisfaction, such as personal income.
“There is a need to normalise everyday nature as part of a healthy lifestyle,” Dr Richardson told BBC Earth. The real challenge for the future is how we get more people involved, knowing what we do about the very real benefits of nature.
He explains that an understanding of the pathways and activities that can lead to an increased connection to nature is starting to emerge; where education programmes with creative activities lead to short-term increases, but knowledge-based activities do not.
The University of Derby has identified contact, emotion, meaning, compassion and engagement with natural beauty as pathways that helped people to feel closer to nature. More scientific and knowledge-based activities were not found to help people connect with nature. They also found that activities that related to these pathways significantly increased the connection, compared with just walking in nature alone or walking in, and engaging with, urban environments.
“It’s early days though, and lots to understand about the best pathways for different people – it won’t be one approach fits all,” he told BBC Earth.
Good for nature, good for you
And it’s a reciprocal relationship because as important as nature has been shown for our health and happiness, our interactions with the natural world are just as important for protecting nature and the environment.
“If we can help people to connect with nature, that’s not just good for them, its great news for nature,” said The Wildlife Trust’s Lucy McRobert. Because, she explains, the more people that care intrinsically for their local environment and value the positive impact it has on their own lives, the more they’ll want to protect it from destruction.
So The Wildlife Trusts would like to see nature high up on the political agenda and viewed in the same way as health, security and education, and for businesses and corporations to make meaningful changes that protect our natural resources. And for us as individuals they want us to care for, cherish and protect our environment and wild places.
“We hope that [these] results show how nature isn’t just a nice thing to have – although it has a huge value in itself – it’s fundamentally important for our health, wellbeing and happiness and that ought to be reflected in our education system, in the way we treat the physically or mentally ill, in the way we build infrastructure and houses and in how we access and protect green spaces in cities.
“Ultimately we want to see everyone taking action to restore nature – for nature’s sake and for ours.”
This year there will be a guide to doing 30 Days Wild for care homes and the physically and mentally disabled, focusing on ideas for 30 Random Acts of Wildness that can be easily and safely carried out with this audience, engage them with nature and hopefully improve their quality of life.
So shouldn't we all be spending more time outside interacting with nature?
Article Source: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160420-how-nature-is-good-for-our-health-and-happiness
There are a growing number of studies and campaigns putting forward evidence that a connection with nature makes us healthier and happier people, something that few of us nature lovers would argue with.
And now a recent evaluation of the UK’s first month-long nature challenge, which took place last year and involved people "doing something wild" every day for 30 consecutive days, shows scientifically and statistically how significant it really is.
At the time of the challenge participants were also asked to take part in a survey about their perceived connection to nature and feeling a part of it; how they interacted with nature, and how they felt about their health and happiness, before the challenge started, at the end of the challenge and two months after it had finished.
The analysis has been published in the journal PLOS One.
The study was conducted by the University of Derby and The Wildlife Trusts to try and measure the impact of last year’s "30 Days Wild" campaign, run by the charity.
“Intuitively we knew that nature was good for us as humans, but the results were beyond brilliant,” said Lucy McRobert, nature matters campaigns manager for The Wildlife Trusts.
The study showed that there was a scientifically significant increase in people’s health, happiness, connection to nature and active nature behaviours, such as feeding the birds and planting flowers for bees – not just throughout the challenge, but sustained for months after the challenge had been completed.
Impressively, says McRobert, the number of people reporting their health as "excellent" increased by 30% and this improvement in health being predicted by the increase in happiness, this relationship is mediated by the change in connection to nature. It adds to a growing body of evidence that shows definitively that we need nature for our health and wellbeing.
For example, children exposed to the natural world showed increases in self-esteem. They also felt it taught them how to take risks, unleashed their creativity and gave them a chance to exercise, play, and discover. In some cases nature can significantly improve the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), providing a calming influence and helping them concentrate.
And for people suffering from physical illness or mental health disorders, such as depression and anxiety, interacting with nature can help people control their symptoms or even recover, alongside conventional medication.
“Nature isn’t a miracle cure for diseases,” says McRobert, “But by interacting with it, spending time in it, experiencing it and appreciating it we can reap the benefits of feeling happier and healthier as a result.”
Healthy lifestyle
Dr Miles Richardson, head of psychology at the University of Derby, conducted the study and explains that the results are significant, both statistically and from an applied perspective. It was a large scale intervention, he says, with more than 18,500 people committing around 300,000 random acts of "wildness", framed not as a public health intervention, but rather a fun campaign to take part in.
“The design and evaluation took a proven approach in evaluations of such scale, it’s an important step.”
According to Dr Richardson there is already research evidence that exposure to nature can reduce hypertension (abnormally high blood pressure), respiratory tract and cardiovascular illnesses; improve vitality and mood; benefit issues of mental wellbeing such as anxiety; and restore attention capacity and mental fatigue. But more than that, feeling a part of nature has been shown to significantly correlate with life satisfaction, vitality, meaningfulness, happiness, mindfulness, and lower cognitive anxiety.
“These correlations are of a similar magnitude to those found between wellbeing and other variables, such as marriage and education, whose relationships with wellbeing are well established.”
And, he adds, recent analysis found people with a stronger connection to nature experienced more life satisfaction, positive affect and vitality at levels associated with established predictors of satisfaction, such as personal income.
“There is a need to normalise everyday nature as part of a healthy lifestyle,” Dr Richardson told BBC Earth. The real challenge for the future is how we get more people involved, knowing what we do about the very real benefits of nature.
He explains that an understanding of the pathways and activities that can lead to an increased connection to nature is starting to emerge; where education programmes with creative activities lead to short-term increases, but knowledge-based activities do not.
The University of Derby has identified contact, emotion, meaning, compassion and engagement with natural beauty as pathways that helped people to feel closer to nature. More scientific and knowledge-based activities were not found to help people connect with nature. They also found that activities that related to these pathways significantly increased the connection, compared with just walking in nature alone or walking in, and engaging with, urban environments.
“It’s early days though, and lots to understand about the best pathways for different people – it won’t be one approach fits all,” he told BBC Earth.
Good for nature, good for you
And it’s a reciprocal relationship because as important as nature has been shown for our health and happiness, our interactions with the natural world are just as important for protecting nature and the environment.
“If we can help people to connect with nature, that’s not just good for them, its great news for nature,” said The Wildlife Trust’s Lucy McRobert. Because, she explains, the more people that care intrinsically for their local environment and value the positive impact it has on their own lives, the more they’ll want to protect it from destruction.
So The Wildlife Trusts would like to see nature high up on the political agenda and viewed in the same way as health, security and education, and for businesses and corporations to make meaningful changes that protect our natural resources. And for us as individuals they want us to care for, cherish and protect our environment and wild places.
“We hope that [these] results show how nature isn’t just a nice thing to have – although it has a huge value in itself – it’s fundamentally important for our health, wellbeing and happiness and that ought to be reflected in our education system, in the way we treat the physically or mentally ill, in the way we build infrastructure and houses and in how we access and protect green spaces in cities.
“Ultimately we want to see everyone taking action to restore nature – for nature’s sake and for ours.”
This year there will be a guide to doing 30 Days Wild for care homes and the physically and mentally disabled, focusing on ideas for 30 Random Acts of Wildness that can be easily and safely carried out with this audience, engage them with nature and hopefully improve their quality of life.
So shouldn't we all be spending more time outside interacting with nature?
Article Source: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160420-how-nature-is-good-for-our-health-and-happiness
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Nature Is Smarter Than Us
Nature is pretty damn smart. In fact, many modern technologies get their ideas from nature. Trace explores the awesome field of biomimicry.
Monday, March 18, 2019
Stanford Researchers Find Mental Health Prescription: Nature
A Stanford-led study finds quantifiable evidence that walking in nature could lead to a lower risk of depression.
Friday, March 15, 2019
How Tall Can a Tree Grow? - Valentin Hammoudi
What makes a tree grow tall? And do trees ever stop growing? Explore how photosynthesis and gravity can affect and limit the height of trees.
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Reaching heights of over 100 meters, Californian sequoias tower over Earth’s other 60,000 tree species. But even these behemoths seem to have their limits: no sequoia on record has been able to grow taller than 130 meters. So what exactly is stopping these trees from growing taller, forever? Valentin Hammoudi investigates why trees have limited heights.
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
The Secret Lives of Trees | Short Film Showcase
Take a trip through Spain's breathtaking and diverse scenery in The Silent Friends, which places trees front and center. This short documentary from production company Kauri Multimedia is an ode to these often undervalued but vital members of our ecosystem.
Saturday, March 9, 2019
Dillie the Deer: Love on Tiny Hooves | National Geographic
In summer 2004, veterinarian Melanie Butera received an unexpected patient: a blind, dying fawn named Dillie. Butera and her husband nursed Dillie to health. Now, Dillie—who snacks on lollipops and has her own bedroom in their house in Canal Fulton, Ohio—is a daily source of comfort and love to her adoptive family.
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Get Your Daily Dose of Trees - Health Benefits Video
Trees and forests create numerous health benefits: cleaner air that lowers childhood asthma rates, less heat exhaustion due to decreased summer air temperatures, blocking UV rays that cause skin cancer, and natural calming effect that decreases stress levels and increases focus. So, get your daily dose of trees.
Sunday, March 3, 2019
How Sunlight Affects Your Health
One of the best-known benefits of sunlight is its ability to boost the body's vitamin D supply, but what happens when you can't get outside in the sun? George Washington University's Dr. Michael Irwig explains how sunlight, or lack of it, can affect a person's health.
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