Too much stress can be damaging to both your mental and physical wellbeing. That’s why it’s important to find ways to help manage and lessen the stress that you might feel. One way to do this is through nature. Studies have shown that being in nature, or even simply seeing natural spaces, helps to reduce feelings of anger, fear and stress. Nature doesn’t just help you feel better emotionally, it can also positively impact your physical health by reducing blood pressure and muscle tension and helping to naturally balance your stress hormone levels.

It’s sometimes easy to forget how important fresh air can be to our overall health. The air in natural spaces generally has higher levels of oxygen, which not only helps to clear out the lungs but can also have a relaxing effect on your body and mind. Fresh air can also help with your energy levels and concentration, as exposure to higher levels of oxygen means more is circulated to the brain. By spending more time in nature we can not only manage our stress levels, but we can also clear our heads and boost our energy.

Even modern medicine acknowledges the importance of nature in aiding with a patient's recovery. One of the earliest studies on this was published by Roger Ulrich in 1984 who conducted a study using patients recovering from gallbladder surgery at Pennsylvania Hospital. They found that patients with a bedside window, and therefore access to scenes of nature, healed (on average) a day faster and needed less pain medication than those patients who could not see outside. Nature can be so healing to both the body and mind that another of Ulrich’s studies found that even just looking at pictures of nature helped reduce a patient's stress and lessened their need for pain medication. Science agrees that stress can have deteriorating effects on a patient’s recovery and multiple studies have found that nature can help reduce a patient’s pain and their mental distress. And it’s not just patient’s in recovery who benefit from seeing or being in natural spaces. 

A recent Cornell study about the growing scientific field known as ecotherapy or “Nature Therapy” has found that as little as 10 minutes in a natural space helped college students feel happier and lessened the effects of their mental stress. One study in 2015 compared the brain scans of healthy people who had spent 90 minutes walking in nature to those who had walked in an urban area. Researchers found that those who had walked in nature had less activity in the area of the brain that handles repetitive negative thinking. Participants of the study also reported that their minds felt clearer while those who walked in a busy urban area did not show these effects. This suggests that it’s not just about getting outside, we need to spend time experiencing nature to help manage our stress.  

It’s easy to get distracted by our screens and technology and to get caught up in the busyness of everyday life until we feel like there’s never any time to do anything else. It’s easy to get swept away by anxieties and stress, until we can’t sleep and we just don’t know how to make it feel better. Well, we’re here to tell you that nature can help. Spending time outside in nature is free and it’s a great way to help manage your stress and improve your health.

If you're still finding it hard to believe that it's worthwhile spending time in nature, here are five reasons why getting outdoors can help:

1. Improves your mood

One of our first reasons for why nature can help with stress management is because spending time outdoors can help improve your mood. We’ve mentioned already how studies have found that people who walked in nature have reported feeling happier and less stressed. A change of scenery, like going outside, can offer a distraction to repetitive negative thinking that might be getting you down. Walking outside can also help improve your mood by raising levels of those feel-good hormones, dopamine and serotonin, in your body, which can help improve your sense of wellbeing and reduce your stress.

2. Helps you Connect

One great way to help reduce stress is to spend time with the people you love. It’s important to reach out to those around you when you need help and an easy and cheap way to do that is to spend time in nature together. Whether it’s meeting up for some outdoor sports or taking a walk in the woods together, nature is a great facilitator to help us connect or reconnect with the people we love the most. Studies have also found that spending time in nature together can have positive effects on social relationships as well.

3. Helps with Productivity

One cause of your stress might be because you’re working too hard. Studies have shown that working non-stop is not just inefficient, it can actually be damaging to work that you’re trying to get done. It’s essential to take breaks, and where better to do that than outdoors. Spending your breaks in nature could be a great way to give yourself a rest and spark your creativity at the same time. In fact, research has found that looking at something green, whether that’s while you're outside or through a window, can help improve your attention and performance at work.

4. Encourages Creativity

We know all too well how overwhelmingly stressful having a mental block and an imminent deadline can be. Well, nature can help. Studies have found that our problem-solving skills and creativity actually increase after spending time in nature. One study in Utah used people’s Remote Associates Test results (a test that measures creative potential through word association) to support the theory that nature encourages creativity. They compared the results of people before they went on a 4-day hike, and after and found that the time in nature had helped people improve their results (and therefore their creative potential) by 50%.

5. Provides Balance

Spending too much time indoors looking at a screen has been found to contribute to feelings of stress, anxiety and depression. Going outside and spending time in nature can help provide a balance of work and relaxation in your life that can greatly improve both your mental health and your efficiency at work. That could mean going for a walk outside everyday or finding an outdoor hobby like gardening or cycling. Studies have found that hobbies can help get your mind off problems that are causing mental distress and provide an instant stress relief. Making an effort to spend time in nature everyday can help introduce a balance of work and self-care in your life that can be instrumental to your stress management.

Inspired by Nature's influence The Naturality Lab have created a range of supplements and vitamins that could give your body and your mind that bit of extra resilience to mitigate the stress of life plus we have pledged to contribute an annual donation to The Wildlife Trusts to help protect and care for our nation’s precious countryside, coastline and wildlife.

Ashwagandha Destress Formula

 

Ashwagandha is one of the most important medicinal herbs in Indian Ayurveda and is thought to increase energy by enhancing your body’s resilience to physical and mental stress. In one study, people given ashwagandha showed 28% lower levels of cortisol (our stress hormone) compared to those given a placebo. By reducing mental and physical fatigue this will have a positive effect on your energy levels. Our ashwagandha formula is combined with 14 other roots, herbals, reishi mushroom and vitamins to boost your energy and wellbeing.

Ginkgo B+ Energy Formula 

 

This is an energy boosting and stress reducing super blend of all 8 essential B vitamins plus ayurvedic herbs. B Vitamins including biotin and folic acid work together to make sure our body’s systems are functioning efficiently. They're essential for transforming the food we eat into nutrients and energy that our cells use, including vital oxygen carrying red blood cells to combat tiredness and fatigue. Because B vitamins are water soluble, we cant store them so its important to have a regular intake. Ginkgo biloba has been used as a traditional remedy for many hundreds of years to increase energy levels by helping oxygen rich blood flow more freely around our bodies.

Sources: Genevive M R et al (2020) Minimum Time Dose in Nature to Positively Impact the Mental Health of College-Aged Students, and How to Measure It: A Scoping Review; Ulrich R (1984) View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery; Ulrich R S, Lunden O & Eltinge J L (1993) Effects of exposure to nature and abstract pictures on patients recovering from heart surgery; Bratman G N, Hamilton J P, Hahn K S, Daily G C & Gross J J (2015) Nature experience reduce rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation; Atchley R A, Strayer D L & Atchley P (2012) Creativity in the Wild: Improving Creative Reasoning through Immersion in Natural Settings;