Beating stress outdoors? Nature group walks may improve mental health

Large scale study says consistent walking in nature linked with significantly lower depression and perceived stress, enhanced mental well-being

2014-09-23

(Press-News.org) ANN ARBOR, Mich. — They are common suggestions to remedy stress: You just need a breath of fresh air. Walk it off. Get out and see people.

Turns out all those things combined may in fact make you feel better – a lot better – a new large scale study suggests.

Group nature walks are linked with significantly lower depression, less perceived stress and enhanced mental health and well-being, according to the study conducted by the University of Michigan, with partners from De Montfort University, James Hutton Institute, and Edge Hill University in the United Kingdom. The findings appear in a special issue of Ecopsychology devoted to 'Ecopsychology and Public Health'.

People who had recently experienced stressful life events like a serious illness, death of a loved one, marital separation or unemployment especially appeared to see a mood boost after outdoor group walks.

"We hear people say they feel better after a walk or going outside but there haven't been many studies of this large size to support the conclusion that these behaviors actually improve your mental health and well-being," says senior author Sara Warber, M.D., associate professor of family medicine at the U-M Medical School and member of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

"Walking is an inexpensive, low risk and accessible form of exercise and it turns out that combined with nature and group settings, it may be a very powerful, under-utilized stress buster. Our findings suggest that something as simple as joining an outdoor walking group may not only improve someone's daily positive emotions but may also contribute a non-pharmacological approach to serious conditions like depression."

Researchers evaluated 1,991 participants from the Walking for Health program in England, which helps facilitate nearly 3,000 weekly walks and draws more than 70,000 regular walkers a year.

"Given the increase in mental ill health and physical inactivity in the developed world, we are constantly exploring new, accessible ways to help people improve their long term quality of life and well-being," Warber says.

"Group walks in local natural environments may make a potentially important contribution to public health and be beneficial in helping people cope with stress and experience improved emotions."

INFORMATION: The lead author of the study was Melissa R. Marselle, Ph.D., M.Sc., of the Department of Psychology at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, UK and the Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK.

Warber's long-time collaborator, Katherine Irvine, Ph.D., a graduate of the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment and Senior Researcher of the Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences Research Group at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, UK, also contributed significantly to this study.

Disclosures: None

Funding: Marselle was supported by a De Montfort University Ph.D. Studentship. Irvine was supported by the Scottish Government's Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS). Warber was supported by a Fulbright Scholarship from the US-UK Fulbright Commission.

Reference: "Examining group walks in nature and multiple aspects of well-being: A large scale study," Ecopsychology, DOI: 10.1089/eco.2014.0027.

[Attachments] See images for this press release:

Beating stress outdoors? Nature group walks may improve mental health 2

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Paraffins to cut energy consumption in homes

2014-09-23

Thermal energy storage is a common strategy in energy production systems in which the period of production does not coincide with that of consumption. This happens with the production of hot water by means of solar thermal panels, for example; here, hot water is produced during sunlight hours when demand is lower. It is also the case in residential cogeneration, where heat and electrical power are simultaneously generated but not so demand. In both cases, storing the heat allows production to be decoupled from demand, thus making the integration of these technologies into ...

Advancing the understanding of an understudied food allergy disorder

2014-09-23

Investigators at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center have published the first study to extensively characterize eosinophilic gastritis (EG). The study, published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, found that EG is a systemic disorder that has high levels of eosinophils in the blood and gastrointestinal tract, involves a series of allergy-associated-immune mechanisms and has a gene expression pattern (transcriptome) that is distinct from that of a related disorder, eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE). Eosinophilic gastrointestinal disorders are chronic ...

Gene mutation discovered in blood disorder

2014-09-23

An international team of scientists has identified a gene mutation that causes aplastic anemia, a serious blood disorder in which the bone marrow fails to produce normal amounts of blood cells. Studying a family in which three generations had blood disorders, the researchers discovered a defect in a gene that regulates telomeres, chromosomal structures with crucial roles in normal cell function. "Identifying this causal defect may help suggest future molecular-based treatments that bypass the gene defect and restore blood cell production," said study co-leader Hakon Hakonarson, ...

NASA sees Tropical Depression Fung-Wong becoming more frontal

2014-09-23

Tropical Depression Fung-Wong skirted the coast of mainland China and is moving through the East China Sea. NASA's Aqua satellite captured cloud top temperature data that showed strongest thunderstorms were stretched out as the storm continues to look more frontal in nature. When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Fung-Wong on Sept. 22 at 1:23 p.m. EDT, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument read cloud top temperatures. AIRS detected strongest, highest storms, those with the coldest cloud tops stretched out from northwest to southeast giving the depression ...

New research suggests sleep apnea screening before surgery

2014-09-23

Scheduled for surgery? New research suggests that you may want to get screened and treated for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) before going under the knife. According to a first-of-its-kind study in the October issue of Anesthesiology, the official medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists® (ASA®), patients with OSA who are diagnosed and treated for the condition prior to surgery are less likely to develop serious cardiovascular complications such as cardiac arrest or shock. "OSA is a common disorder that affects millions and is associated with an increased ...

Recreating the stripe patterns found in animals by engineering synthetic gene networks

2014-09-23

VIDEO: Researchers at the CRG try to understand how networks of genes work together to create specific patterns like stripes. They have gone beyond studying individual networks and have created computational and... Click here for more information. Pattern formation is essential in the development of animals and plants. The central problem in pattern formation is how can genetic information be translated in a reliable manner to give specific spatial patterns of cellular differentiation. ...

Airway muscle-on-a-chip mimics asthma

2014-09-23

The majority of drugs used to treat asthma today are the same ones that were used 50 years ago. New drugs are urgently needed to treat this chronic respiratory disease, which causes nearly 25 million people in the United States alone to wheeze, cough, and find it difficult at best to take a deep breath. But finding new treatments is tough: asthma is a patient-specific disease, so what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another, and the animal models traditionally used to test new drug candidates often fail to mimic human responses – costing tremendous ...

Eating five a day may keep the blues away

2014-09-23

Fruit and vegetable consumption could be as good for your mental as your physical health, new research suggests. The research, conducted by the University of Warwick's Medical School using data from the Health Survey for England, and published by BMJ Open focused on mental wellbeing and found that high and low mental wellbeing were consistently associated with an individual's fruit and vegetable consumption. 33.5% of respondents with high mental wellbeing ate five or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day, compared with only 6.8% who ate less than one portion. ...

Southampton scientists grow a new challenger to graphene

2014-09-23

A team of researchers from the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) has developed a new way to fabricate a potential challenger to graphene. Graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms in a honeycomb lattice, is increasingly being used in new electronic and mechanical applications, such as transistors, switches and light sources, thanks to the unprecedented properties it offers: very low electrical resistance, high thermal conductivity and mechanically stretchable yet harder than diamond. Now, ORC researchers have developed molybdenum di-sulphide ...

Search for better biofuels microbes leads to the human gut

2014-09-23

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists have scoured cow rumens and termite guts for microbes that can efficiently break down plant cell walls for the production of next-generation biofuels, but some of the best microbial candidates actually may reside in the human lower intestine, researchers report. Their study, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to use biochemical approaches to confirm the hypothesis that microbes in the human gut can digest fiber, breaking it down into simple sugars in order to ferment them into nutrients that nourish ...