Spending 10 Minutes in Natural Environment would Lower Stress

American researchers have shown that spending just ten minutes in nature helps relieve the stress and anxiety experienced by young people aged 15 to 30. Spending ten minutes in a natural environment would lower stress A meta-analysis shows the benefits of the natural environment on student stress. For this new research, a team from Cornell University reviewed 14 previous studies that looked at the effects of time spent in the wild on students aged 15 to 30. These studies had been carried out in Japan, Sweden and the United States. They had recorded times of treatment (the number of hours and minutes spent in nature) and changes in well-being and mental health before and after these outdoor sessions. They also assessed the participants' mental well-being based on time spent in an urban or natural environment. Their results, reported in the journal Frontiers in Psychology , showed that spending between ten and 50 minutes in a natural environment seemed to contribute to an improvement in mood, student concentration and physiological markers of stress such as blood pressure and heart rate. " The beneficial effects do not take long to be felt - we are talking about 10 minutes spent in a natural space ", commented the author Gen Meredith. " We firmly believe that each student, regardless of specialty or workload, has such a length of time available to them every day, or at least a few times a week ." Regarding the maximum limit of 50 minutes for enjoying the benefits of time spent in the wild, co-author Donald Rakow explained that " there is no decline after 50 minutes, but rather that reported physiological and psychological benefits tend to level off after this period . " Researchers have also found that students can simply sit or walk in a natural environment for it to have a positive effect on their health. " We wanted to keep this access to nature as simple and achievable as possible, " notes Professor Rakow. " Although there are many studies on programs where we spend more time outdoors, we wanted to quantify the doses in minutes, not days ." But Professor Meredith adds that " it is an opportunity to question our conception of nature. It really surrounds us: trees, a flowerpot, a patch of grass or a wooded area ". The team notes that their results show that spending time in nature could be "prescribed" as a form of treatment to prevent or improve stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions. how the students feel. The new meta-analysis even suggests the "dose" of treatment needed to produce an effect. " Prescribing a dose can legitimize the doctor's recommendations and set a tangible goal ," adds Professor Meredith. " It's different from just saying, 'Get out!' There is something specific that the student can strive for