Forest bathing can increase physical health, not only mental well -being

So -called “forest bathing” is known for having psychological benefits, including reducing stress and anxiety, but now research suggests that it also increases physical health by lowering blood pressure and inflammation.

Also known as Shinrin YokuThe Japanese practice of forest bathing involves spending time in nature, unsalted while taking deep breathing and being aware of the sights, sounds and smells around you.

Iwao Uehara at Tokyo University of Agriculture and his colleagues wanted to better understand the benefits of this practice, looking at 36 adults aged 60 and 80 with high blood pressure.

Twenty-four of the adults spent three days and two nights in a forest setting in Qianjiangyuan National Park, about 3.5 hours by car from Hangzhou City in China, participating in 3 hours of gentle hiking every day and a 1-hour group memorial session days.

They also participated in an hour of qigong — a traditional Chinese exercise that uses slow and precise body movements with controlled breathing every day along with a 1-hour teepemony. We did these to help the participants become more aware so that they could be more submerged in forest bathing.

The researchers also had 12 people staying in the city and made a similar clean of walking along the streets near their hotel along with a group memory meditation on one of the days.

Both groups followed the same activity and sleep plans and ate the same diets. They were also cut off from using electrical devices, smoking and ingestion of alcohol or caffeine during the examination.

The researchers measured the participants’ heart rates, blood pressure and levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, before and after the intervention.

They found that they had meaningfully improved blood pressure in the forest bath group and C-reactive protein levels compared to the urban group. They had also had higher heart rhythm variation, a measure of the variation in time between each heartbeat where higher score was linked to greater heart health.

“Forest therapy is cheap and reasonable therapy for those with high blood pressure,” says Uehara. The researchers believe that forest bathing can soothe the nervous system and help regulate heart and circulatory health.

The forest group also reported greater reductions in anxiety and stress and improved the energy level compared to the city group.

But Julia Gohlke on Virginia Tech says the study did not measure how many steps the two groups took. If the forest bath group took more, it could explain the improved results.

The study still backs up earlier evidence showing that the “decreeed stress -related physiological and emotional reactions are in a forest setting,” says Gohlke.