How A Walk Among the Trees Can Boost Your Well-Being

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There is significant evidence from research that shows that spending time in nature, and particularly among the trees, has a significant positive impact on our physical and mental health and well-being.

Although we live in the city in a high-rise apartment, we are close to both the ocean and one of largest urban parks in North America, one that is heavily forested. My wife and I and our dog regularly go for a long walk among the trees in the park and always feel regenerated after the walk.

We were curious about why it had such a positive effect compared to walking the streets in the city, so I decided to do some research to find out if there’s any scientific evidence that showed if it was more beneficial than a walk on the city’s sidewalks.

The isolation of spending a lot of time in offices and high rise condominiums has been linked to psychological disorders including depression, anxiety and a short attention span at work. New York Times article, How Nature Changes the Brain by Gretchen Reynolds, found that people who live in cities spend more time “brooding”, a term meaning a rumination of thoughts in your mind as to what is wrong with yourself and your life. The study compared those who lived in high density urban settings to those who had more exposure to greenery and trees.

It will be interesting if the impact of COVID which saw people spending more time indoors and more isolated from nature has had any negative residual effects. There is some evidence to show that COVID was also an impetus for people to spend more time outdoors in nature, if they had the opportunity.

Research published in The Journal of Environmental Psychology suggests that even small mental breaks viewing nature can help aid off psychological issues such as reduced attention span. The study looked at subjects that viewed either concrete or green spaces and found that the ones who viewed the natural environment made less errors and were more consistent responding to given tasks. Living and working surrounded by thousands of people and concrete drains your mental resources that are critical for attention. While in opposition, viewing trees, parks, and green spaces on a regular basis, helps create a calmer and active mind.

So how does nature help with depression and anxious feelings and give us a greater sense of focus? From a logical perspective it makes sense that being surrounded by thousands of people, heavy traffic, and concrete would make us feel more anxious, and unhappy. But why would nature have such a large effect on our brains? Nature gives the brain a sense of calmness and peace. The presence of trees, water, and open spaces of greenery transitions the mind into feeling an escapement from everyday concerns. It brings the simplicity back into life. Nature literally changes the brain.

And not only are the people who have more exposure to natural settings mentally healthier, but they also enjoy a higher quality of physical health as well. A convincing example was published in the New Yorker, “What a Tree is Worth,” by Alex Hutchinson, showed that patients given hospital rooms that looked over spaces with trees as opposed to a brick wall, recovered faster.

Another study in the journal Scientific Reports by a team of researchers in the United States, Canada, and Australia, led by the University of Chicago psychology professor Marc Berman compares two large data sets from the city of Toronto, both gathered on a block-by-block level; the first measures the distribution of green space, as determined from satellite imagery and a comprehensive list of all five hundred and thirty thousand trees planted on public land, and the second measures health, as assessed by a detailed survey of ninety-four thousand respondents. After controlling for income, education, and age, Berman and his colleagues showed that an additional ten trees on a given block corresponded to an increase in how healthy nearby residents felt.“To get an equivalent increase with money, you’d have to give each household in that neighborhood ten thousand dollars — or make people seven years younger,” Berman said.

Hutchinson reports in his article in The New Yorker: “A county-by-county analysis of health records by the U.S. Forest Service, between 1990 and 2007, found that deaths related to cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses rose in places where trees succumbed to insect infestations, contributing to more than twenty thousand additional deaths during the study period. The Toronto data shows a similar link between tree cover and cardio-metabolic conditions such as heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. For the people suffering from these conditions, an extra eleven trees per block corresponds to an income boost of twenty thousand dollars, or being almost one and a half years younger.”

As unlikely as it is to take a twenty-minute detour for a scenic route or to move to a park surrounded area, there are small changes that you can implement into your life today. Change your desktop background to outdoor scenery or hang visual art of the sky and ocean on your wall. Spend more of your breaks outside, plan more trips to the park or runs along the water. Vote in favor of green roofs, and of course make an effort to get into nature and enjoy it. We tend to complicate the cures for anxiety and depression when in fact being in a calm and natural environment may just be what you need.

Why Trees are so Important for Our Well-Being

Numerous studies in the U.S. and around the world are exploring the health benefits of spending time outside in nature, green spaces, and, specifically, forests. Recognizing those benefits, in 1982, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries even coined a term for it: “” It means taking in the forest atmosphere or “forest bathing,” and the ministry encourages people to visit forests to relieve stress and improve health.

In one recent study, 585 young adult Japanese participants reported on their moods after walking for 15 minutes, either in an urban setting or in a forest. The forests and urban centers were in 52 different locations around the country, and about a dozen participants walked in each area. In all cases, the participants walking in a forest experienced less anxiety, hostility, fatigue, confusion, and depressive symptoms, and more vigor, compared to walking in an urban setting. The results were even stronger for people who were more anxious to begin with.

In another recent study, Polish participants spent 15 minutes gazing at either a wintertime urban forest or an unforested urban landscape. The trees in the forest had straight trunks and no leaves (because of winter), and there was no other shrubbery below the trees — in other words, no green; the urban landscape consisted of buildings and roads. Before and after, the participants filled out questionnaires related to their moods and emotions. Those who gazed at a winter forest reported significantly better moods, more positive emotions, more vigor, and a greater sense of personal restoration afterwards than those who gazed at the urban scene.

While some prior research has shown that green spaces reduce crime in urban settings, it may be that trees are even more effective.

In one recent study, researchers looked at crime data for the city of Chicago, computing a score for each census tract. Then, they compared that to the percentage of tree canopy cover and park space enclosed in each tract. They found that for every 10 percent increase in tree canopy cover, crime rates went down in several categories — 11.3 percent for assaults, narcotics crimes, and robbery, and 10.3 percent for battery. This result mirrors those of other studies in different urban settings — Baltimore, New Haven, and Vancouver. In all cases, areas with more tree coverage had lower crime.

Research suggests that nature experiences help us to feel kinder toward others, and many of those studies involve trees. In one experiment, researchers asked a group of university students to look up at either a tall building or a grove of towering eucalyptus trees for one minute. They found that students who studied the trees experienced more feelings of awe — a sense of wonder and of being in the presence of something larger than oneself. Afterwards, when one of the experimenters pretended to accidentally drop a bunch of pens, the students who had seen the trees and felt awe helped pick up more pens than those who had looked at the building. In another study, researchers found that people were more willing to help someone who’d lost a glove if they had just spent time walking through a park with trees, rather than if they were near the entrance to the park. Unfortunately, this study, like many others, doesn’t specify the benefits of trees versus green space in general. So, we don’t know the exact role trees play in promoting kind and helpful behavior. But there’s a good chance that their presence at least contributes to better social interactions.

Other Ways That Tree Benefit Us

• Trees help clean the air we breathe, filter the water we drink, and provide habitat to over 80% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity.
• Forests provide jobs to over 1.6 billion people, absorb harmful carbon from the atmosphere, and are key ingredients in 25% of all medicines. Have you ever taken an Aspirin? It comes from the bark of a tree!
• Trees help to clean the air we breathe. Through their leaves and bark, they absorb harmful pollutants and release clean oxygen for us to breathe. In urban environments, trees absorb pollutant gases like nitrogen oxides, ozone, and carbon monoxide, and sweep up particles like dust and smoke. Increasing levels of carbon dioxide caused by deforestation and fossil fuel combustion trap heat in the atmosphere. Healthy, strong trees act as carbon sinks, offset carbon and reducing the effects of climate change.
• Trees play a key role in capturing rainwater and reducing the risk of natural disasters like floods and landslides. Their intricate root systems act like filters, removing pollutants and slowing down the water’s absorption into the soil. This process prevents harmful waterslide erosion and reduces the risk of over-saturation and flooding. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Association, a mature evergreen tree can intercept more than 15,000 litres of water every year.
• A single tree can be home to hundreds of species of insect, fungi, moss, mammals, and plants.Depending on the kind of food and shelter they need, different forest animals require different types of habitat. Without trees, forest creatures would have nowhere to call home.
• Trees regulate the water cycle. The water cycle is the process by which water falls to the ground as rain. It’s then absorbed by trees and other plants, then released back into the air as transpiration. Constantly ‘drinking’ whenever it can, a single tree will typically release around 250–400 gallons of water back into the air every single day.
• Trees improve soil quality. Trees play a super important role in improving the quality of the soil around them in numerous ways. As part of their carbon filtering properties, they remove carbon and other noxious substances from the soil, allowing other plants to flourish. Good quality soil should contain no more than 2% carbon. However, in heavily forested areas it can be as low as 0.05%. In fact, land that is surrounded by trees can double crop production thanks to the soil-purifying effect of trees. The better the yield, the less land is needed to feed humanity.
• Trees combat noise pollution. As well as combatting air pollution, trees have a role in combatting the negative impact of noise pollution. A major effect of urbanisation, transport and industrialisation, noise is not just annoying for humans — it can have a devastating effect on wildlife. Not only can the noise pollution caused by humans interfere with an animal’s sonar and navigation systems, it can disrupt whole ecosystems. For example, some breeds of nesting birds will not nest in habitats that are undesirable due to noise.
• Trees combat light pollution. As well as muffling sound, tree foliage also provides a barrier against unwanted light pollution. Like noise pollution, as well as being annoying, city lights can disrupt the habits of animals such as birds and moths (as well as nocturnal mammals like badgers). They rely on the daily cycles of light and darkness to regulate their internal clock, navigate, and source food.
• Trees fight climate change. One of the factors affecting global warming and climate change is the levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is a ‘greenhouse’ gas, known for its heat-trapping properties. In a rapidly warming planet, the excessive levels of carbon dioxide that humans are producing is literally trapping the heat in our atmosphere. As a tree grows, it absorbs carbon dioxide from the air through a process called photosynthesis. It stores the carbon as wood and releases oxygen molecules. For this reason, forests act like a giant filter. They remove the greenhouse gas from the air and only disperse it back into the air if they are burned, or decomposed back into the earth.
• Trees create oxygen. There is truth in the saying that the Amazon rainforest is the green lung of our planet. We’ve already covered the way that trees remove CO2 from the air. It’s an additional bonus that they also produce oxygen as a bi-product. So not only do trees remove unhealthy air, they actually replace it with clean air.
• Exposure to trees boosts our immune system. While we breathe in the fresh air, we breathe in phytoncides, airborne chemicals that plants give off to protect themselves from insects. Phytoncides have antibacterial and antifungal qualities which help plants fight disease. When people breathe in these chemicals, our bodies respond by increasing the number and activity of a type of white blood cell called natural killer cells or NK. These cells kill tumor- and virus-infected cells in our bodies. In one study, increased NK activity from a 3-day, 2-night “forest bathing” trip lasted for more than 30 days. Japanese researchers are currently exploring whether exposure to forests can help prevent certain kinds of cancer.
• Spending time around trees and looking at trees reduces stress, lowers blood pressure and improves mood. Numerous studies show that both exercising in forests and simply sitting looking at trees reduce blood pressure as well as the stress-related hormones cortisol and adrenaline. Looking at pictures of trees has a similar, but less dramatic, effect. Studies examining the same activities in urban, unplanted areas showed no reduction of stress-related effects. Using the Profile of Mood States test, researchers found that forest bathing trips significantly decreased the scores for anxiety, depression, anger, confusion and fatigue. And because stress inhibits the immune system, the stress reduction benefits of forests are further magnified.
• Spending time with trees helps you focus. Our lives are busier than ever with jobs, school, and family life. Trying to focus on many activities or even a single thing for long periods of time can mentally drain us, a phenomenon called Directed Attention Fatigue. Spending time in nature, looking at plants, water, birds and other aspects of nature gives the cognitive portion of our brain a break, allowing us to focus better and renew our ability to be patient.

The Campaign to Reforest the Earth

Planting billions of trees across the world is one of the biggest and cheapest ways of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere to tackle the climate crisis, according to scientists, who have made the first calculation of how many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas.

As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating. New research estimates that a worldwide planting program could remove two-thirds of all the emissions from human activities that remain in the atmosphere today, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”.

There is currently a world-wide effort by countries to plant trees and reforest areas that have been deforested. China plans to plant forests the size of Ireland. Latin American countries have pledged to restore 20m hectares of degraded forest and African countries more than 100m hectares. India is to plant 13m hectares, and on a single day last year 1.5 million people planted 66m trees in Madhya Pradesh alone.

Much of Europe is physically greener than it was just a few years ago. England is to plant 50m trees in a new coast-to-coast forest and newly planted saplings now cover tens of thousands of hectares of former farmland in Ireland, Norway and France. From Costa Rica to Nepal and Peru to Mongolia, tree planting has become a political, economic and ecological cause, and a universal symbol of restoration, regrowth and faith in the future. More than 120 countries promised in 2015 to plant and restore large areas of forest as a response to the climate crisis, and the UN has set a target to restore 350m hectares by 2030 — an area bigger than India.