Top 5 Health Advantages of Outdoor Activities Mother Nature Can Offer

In all honesty, Mother Nature may occasionally find it difficult to compete with the interior environment. Nature cannot provide WiFi, air conditioning, or flat-screen TVs, after all. Mother Nature, however, can provide something even more significant: enhanced health, as evidenced by a boosted immune system, improved sleep, and decreased stress. Here are some benefits of spending time outside.

#1. Breathing Fresher Air

A study from 2016 examined the relationship between the mortality risk and local greenery, followed by 108,000 women for eight years. Compared with individuals who live in neighborhoods that don’t have a lot of greenery, people with more plants and flowers around them were 34% less likely to suffer from respiratory diseases. With more greenery around you, you will find the freshest air that can help you breathe more easily.

Usually, the internal clock in your body follows the sun. This makes you feel awake during the daytime and sleepy at night. Even though your indoor lights can mimic natural light, real sunlight has 200 times the intensity of the lights than an office setting. That said, sunlight can affect your circadian rhythm and improve your health more than artificial lighting.

#2. Reduced Risk of Depression

Sunlight can help improve your health and ease depression symptoms like fatigue and low mood. It’s called light therapy, and it can help treat both seasonal and major depression. If you have seasonal depression, you can notice improvement after a few days. Specialists still are not completely sure, however, how sunlight can affect depression. Some people think sunlight has a protective effect because it can help your body produce vitamin D.

If depression lowered your energy, you can easily get sunlight by absorbing a daily dose while eating lunch, or doing some sunbathing. Just don’t forget to put on some sunscreen.

#3. Improved Health for Those Who Exercise Around Greenery

Working out around greenery could improve your health and also help boost your motivation to exercise more. Outdoor exercise can offer a nice change of pace from regular gyms and can make physical activity more enjoyable. Outdoor exercise can also make it easy to socialize because many gyms have unspoken rules about not talking with the person on the treadmill next to yours.

#4. Prevention of Short-Sightedness

There is evidence that suggests kids who spend plenty of time outside have a lower chance of developing nearsightedness or myopia. A study from 2020 included 10,743 children between the ages of 9-11 in Taipei. The research found that kids who spent more time outside were 22% less likely to develop this condition. Increasing the eye-work distance when doing work from a close-up and taking a break after 30 minutes of close-up work can offer protection.