How Does Nature Impact Our Wellbeing? | Taking Charge of Your Wellbeing (2024)

FAQs

How Does Nature Impact Our Wellbeing? | Taking Charge of Your Wellbeing? ›

Being in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear, and stress and increases pleasant feelings. Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it contributes to your physical wellbeing, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones.

People with good nature connectedness tend to be happier

Nature can generate many positive emotions, such as calmness, joy, and creativity and can facilitate concentration. Nature connectedness is also associated with lower levels of poor mental health, particularly lower depression and anxiety.

Being in nature or having access to natural surroundings can promote relaxation, restoration, and a sense of calmness. On the other hand, living in environments with high levels of noise, pollution, or other stressors can have negative impacts on mental health and well-being.

These studies have shown that time in nature — as long as people feel safe — is an antidote for stress: It can lower blood pressure and stress hormone levels, reduce nervous system arousal, enhance immune system function, increase self-esteem, reduce anxiety, and improve mood.

Perhaps most importantly for health, the environment can create or reduce stress, which in turn impacts our bodies in multiple ways. This is because our brain and our nervous, endocrine, and immune systems are constantly interacting.

Biological factors, e.g. physical health, genetics, diet, sleep, age. Psychological factors, e.g. beliefs, mental health diagnoses, perception, addictions. Social factors, e.g. relationships, family, culture, work, money, housing.

Wellbeing is not just the absence of disease or illness. It's a complex combination of a person's physical, mental, emotional and social health factors. Wellbeing is strongly linked to happiness and life satisfaction. In short, wellbeing could be described as how you feel about yourself and your life.

Your home and work environment can: Influence your mood. For example, research studies reveal that rooms with bright light, both natural and artificial, can improve depression and anxiety.

Environmental pollutants can cause health problems like respiratory diseases, heart disease, and some types of cancer. People with low incomes are more likely to live in polluted areas and have unsafe drinking water. And children and pregnant women are at higher risk of health problems related to pollution.

Our forests, rivers, oceans and soils provide us with the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we irrigate our crops with. We also rely on them for numerous other goods and services we depend on for our health, happiness and prosperity. These natural assets are often called the world's 'natural capital'.

What are the benefits of nature? ›

Natural areas help clean our air, purify our water, produce food and medicines, reduce chemical and noise pollution, slow floodwaters, and cool our streets. We call this work 'ecosystem services'.

It comforts us and calms our nervous system. Being outside renews our spirits, encouraging us to look beyond our immediate circ*mstances. It also allows us to process difficult feelings in a judgment-free zone, playing a particularly important role with emotional regulation. Quite simply, nature is restorative.

A person's biological nature can affect a person's experience of the environment. For example, a person with a genetic disposition toward a particular trait, such as aggressiveness, may be more likely to have particular life experiences (including, perhaps, receiving negative reactions from parents or others).

Being in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear, and stress and increases pleasant feelings. Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it contributes to your physical wellbeing, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones.

Nature can help decrease your anxiety levels and can help lessen stress and feelings of anger. Exercise can also help this, but it's even better when you're outside. Regular access to green spaces has been linked to lower risks of depression and improved concentration and attention.

From a stroll through a city park to a day spent hiking in the wilderness, exposure to nature has been linked to a host of benefits, including improved attention, lower stress, better mood, reduced risk of psychiatric disorders and even upticks in empathy and cooperation.

It underpins our economy, our society, indeed our very existence. Our forests, rivers, oceans and soils provide us with the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we irrigate our crops with. We also rely on them for numerous other goods and services we depend on for our health, happiness and prosperity.

Nature refers largely to our genetics. It includes the genes we are born with and other hereditary factors that can impact how our personality is formed and influence the way that we develop from childhood through adulthood.

Humans impact the physical environment in many ways: overpopulation, pollution, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. Changes like these have triggered climate change, soil erosion, poor air quality, and undrinkable water.