With spring on the agenda, your mood isn’t the only thing blooming. All throughout the East Coast, flowers are opening up, the grass is growing greener as each day passes, and whether or not you’re a fan of pigeons, there they are again harassing you as you go down University.
Your steps are lighter, smiles more forthcoming—even beer tastes better!
Growing up in Canada (or anywhere else with four seasons) means we are not strangers to the effects of the weather on our mood. So what is it about the trees, the sound of running water, the sight of mountains in the distance and the chirps of birds—and everything else in between— that affect us so profoundly?
David Strayer, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Utah, says the effects of urban life on our psyche—the low hum of stress, the harsh pounding of agitation, the pervasive squealing of impatience—can be stifling, and can harbor a chronic state of stress. As students in urban dwellings who spend months at a time in a restless city environment, it is useful, I think, to know that a whole cache of the cognitive abilities that make us effective students in the first place, like our attention, ability to retain information, and creative problem solving abilities are somewhat compromised when nature becomes little more than the backdrop of our routes while running errands. Strayer says that the antidote to modern life is nature, and he demonstrates this in what he calls the Three Day Effect.
- The Three-Day Effect
It only sounds simple because it is so simple: simply gather up a group of friends, pack up your camping gear, head out to the camping grounds for three days.
Here’s the catch: leave the smartphone and laptop behind. Technology, as it turns out, is not on the packing list.
While we might think of it as a sort of ‘unplugging’, Strayer likes to call it ‘recalibrating [his] senses.’
What’s supposed to happen after three days? Here it is in a nutshell:
1. Mental performance is improved
2. Performance on creative problem solving tasks improve by as much as 50%
3. “Profound” changes in measurements of stress hormones, heart rate, and brain waves are seen as a result
- Green Spaces: An Antidote the Pharmaceutical Companies Won’t Tamper With
The benefits of the three-day effect can be extrapolated to where you live too. Recent findings from the University of Exeter Medical School reveal that people living near more green space report less mental distress and lower incidence of diseases like depression, anxiety, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and migraines. Closer to home, it was found that Toronto residents who live on blocks with more trees show a “boost in heart and metabolic health equivalent to what one would experience from a $20,000 gain in income.”
According to the Harvard School of Public Health, the average American adult spends less than 5% of their day outdoors. Yes, it sounds shocking. No, they’re not kidding. It’s no wonder chronic stress, anxiety, depression, and obesity are rampant in today’s developed countries. So how much time should we spend outdoors?
The Natural Resources Institute Finland recommends a minimum nature dose of five hours a month to “ward off the blues”.
For more acute needs of stress relief, Kalevi Korpela, a professor of psychology at the University of Tampere, says that “just a 40 to 50 minute walk seems to be enough for physiological changes and mood changes and probably for attention.”
Next time you’re stressed out, wound up a little too tight, or just plain burned out—keep this mind. Forget Netflix, forget retail therapy. Put that tub of Ben & Jerry’s away. It’s an antidote that’s accessible, costs nothing at all, and has no nasty side effects: perhaps for the only time in your life, it really is just a walk in the park.
All information in this article is based on the original January 2016 edition of National Geographic’s ‘This Is Your Brain On Nature’, by Florence Williams.