An hour of walking in the countryside reduces the risk of mental illness

Living in the city increases the risk of suffering from mental illness, study shows that an hour of walking in nature reduces the stress that causes these disorders

After a 60-minute walk in nature, the activity of brain regions involved in stress processing slows down. This is the conclusion of a recent study by the Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Posted in Molecular Psychiatry.

Living in a city is a known risk factor for developing a mental disorder, while living close to nature is largely beneficial for mental and brain health. A central region of the brain involved in processing stress, the amygdala, has been shown to be less activated by stress in people living in rural areas compared to those living in cities, pointing to possible benefits from nature.

This is something that we intuitively understand, but so far we have not been able to unravel the chicken and egg problem, that is, whether nature really caused the effects on the brain or whether individuals more or less susceptible to these diseases chose to live in rural regions or urban.

To provide causal evidence, the researchers examined brain activity in regions involved in processing stress in 63 healthy volunteers before and after an hour-long walk through the Grünewald forest or along a busy shopping street in Berlin, using imaging. functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Study results revealed that activity in the amygdala decreased after walking in nature, suggesting that nature has beneficial effects on stress-related brain regions.

Read Also:  AI as a compass in the sea of ​​investments

Not only do the results support the previously assumed positive relationship between nature and brain health, but this is the first study to demonstrate a causal relationship. Interestingly, brain activity after urban walking in these regions remained stable and did not increase. This refutes the theory that urban exposure causes additional stress.

The authors show that nature has a positive impact on brain regions involved in stress processing and that this can be observed after an hour of walking. This contributes to understanding how our physical environment affects brain and mental health. Even brief exposure to nature decreases amygdala activity, suggesting that a walk in nature can serve as a preventative measure against developing mental health problems and cushion the potentially disadvantageous impact of the city on the brain.

The results are in accordance with a previous study showing that city dwellers living near the forest had a physiologically healthier amygdala structure and were therefore presumably better able to cope with stress. This new study reaffirms the importance of urban design policies creating more accessible green spaces in cities to improve the mental health and well-being of citizens.

To investigate the beneficial effects of nature on different populations and age groups, researchers are currently working on a study examining how a one-hour walk in natural versus urban environments affects stress in mothers and their babies.

REFERENCE

How Nature Nourishes: Amygdala activity decreases as a result of a one-hour walk in nature

Recent Articles

Related News

Leave A Reply

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here