MYM — Nature

I think one of the things goes back to your comment about the downside, perhaps how alienated we are from nature or even I would say our own physiology in the modern world and the downside of that.

So I guess there's two things there.

There's a binary yes, no question, then there's why.

Is being in nature, whether it be total immersion for a number of days like you or the more accessible thing for people... who live in cities or even towns, just spending a bit of time walking along a river or a park.

We went to the theatre last night and we walked, we got a ferry across the harbour, Sydney Harbour, and then walked around from Milsons Point to the Ensemble Theatre in Kirribilli, just walked around this beautiful bit of harbour through lots of parks.

And even that... felt fantastic.

So is just being in nature good for you? And my understanding is that the evidence suggests it is.

And if that's right, then we get to the more complex question of, well, it sounds kind of intuitive, but what's actually going on? Does the evidence stack up that nature is generally a positive thing for mental health?

Well, it's not as well investigated as you might think.

So the anecdotal side of things and people's experiential side, people who do it, people who are feeling low and non-energetic, alienated, who do it report very positive personal benefits.

But in a more systematic way- it's far less clear-cut because, you know, although geographical things are studied a lot, like urban settings versus rural settings versus regional settings, they're not really about being in nature.

They turn out to be much more about socioeconomics and access to education, healthcare, and they turn out to be about a whole lot of other issues.

And a lot of them in those situations, people in rural and regional settings do worse.

They don't do better.

But if you take the other way around and say, okay, if you could control for all those other factors.

And I guess the other factor, sorry, is that it'll be hard to control for is generally when you're in nature, you're exercising.

And we know exercise is good for your mental health.

So I was thinking you could do an experiment where, you know, 10 people sit in their homes and 10 people go and walk around the park, but you'd have to control for the exercise too.

Yeah.

Right.

So this is very important fact.

So the two bits that I think we have much stronger evidence about are the degrees of physical activity and the degrees of physical activity during daylight, not to dismiss your walk around the harbour at night, which is a beautiful thing, but the sort of daylight exposure bit plus the physical activity, how you spend your day.

And its effect on your mood or well-being or sense of energy.

And my favorite topic, what's its relationship with your circadian system or your body clock? How does that actually change? So I think there are two aspects of this which have very strong evidence.

And to some degree, they're somewhat linked.