Florence Williams set out to discover whether there is any credence in the idea that being outside in Nature is good for us - physically and mentally. Country folk have always claimed it to be true. So have many pagans and natural healers. But could the idea be scientifically proven or unproven?
The perhaps not surprising truth is that yes, it's very good for us.
Her research takes her all over the world where she discovers that science is now starting to 'catch up' with what people close to the land have know for millennia - that Nature really is healing.
For example, we all have NK (natural killer) immune cells in our bodies. They protect us from illness and can even send self-destruct messages to virus-infected cells and tumours. Immunologist Dr Qin Li of the Nippon Medical School tested groups of stressed, middle-aged businessmen for their NK cell levels. They were then taken for a couple of hours of forest hiking every day for three days. At the end of each experiment the participants’ NK cell counts had increased by around 40%. A month later, their NK counts were still 15% higher than they had been before the experiments started. The same effect was not achieved by three days of walking in the city. These tests have since been repeated many times and also in Canada and the results were the same.
What Williams asks is this: Are we becoming too divorced from the planet we live on? And is there a cure for much of what ails us right on our doorsteps and for free?
This is not a New Age book. There are no crystals or faith healing. This is pure empirical science.
But it seems to confirm my own long held belief that we need to spend more time among the trees and less time on our screens.
A very worthwhile read.
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