🔋The Forest: Your Medical Doctor & Therapist (ATP#29)

Last week, I attended a conference dedicated to regreening the planet, from regenerating landscapes to the healing power of green environments.

One presentation stood out: a talk by Dr. Qing Li, who has spent decades studying the benefits of forest bathing. He was unable to attend in person, so he presented remotely from his gorgeous home office, captured in the photo below (sorry about the image quality!).

He’s one of the most active researchers on the benefits of forest bathing for mental and physical health, and he founded a new branch of medicine in 2012: forest medicine.

I’ll summarize the key takeaways from his presentation in this newsletter.

What is forest bathing?

Forest bathing, or Shinrin-Yoku, was first proposed in Japan in 1982. It involves immersing yourself in the forest environment and engaging your sight, sound, touch, smell, and even taste. You’re not literally bathing because you’re not in water; the word “bathing” here is used in a metaphorical sense.

Fortunately, the method didn’t stay in Japan but has spread worldwide, allowing more people to benefit from its effects.

The healing power of forest bathing

The idea is straightforward: forests aren’t just pretty. They have real healing power and engage the psycho-neuro-endocrino-immune network (the interplay of the mind, the nervous system, hormones, and immune responses). They can be both your medical doctor and therapist.

Dr. Li’s studies have found that forest bathing:

• Reduces the activity of your sympathetic nervous system (associated with the fight-or-flight response) and increases the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system (the division that calms you down).

• Lowers your blood pressure and heart rate, and Dr. Li reported a study where the effects of forest bathing were comparable to the effects of antihypertensive drugs in patients with high blood pressure.

• Reduces the stress hormones adrenaline (epinephrine), noradrenaline (norepinephrine), and cortisol.

• Lowers subjective feelings of stress, reduces negative emotions, and promotes vigor.

• Boosts the activity of natural killer cells, a marker of immune system strength, which could be protective against cancer and infections.

• Raises serotonin levels, linking it to improved mood.

• Improves sleep duration and quality.

Dr. Li attributes these benefits mainly to phytoncides, the substances that trees release into the air and that you inhale when you’re in a forest. There are likely many more mechanisms at work because even watching videos of forest environments improves health despite the absence of phytoncides.

If you want to read the whole article he based his presentation on, I’m linking it here.

Some practical implications

Dr. Li recommends forest bathing sessions of at least 2 hours, but if you don’t have that much time, the beneficial effects begin after just 20 minutes. So, even shorter forest visits are good for you. The benefits from longer sessions can last for up to one week.

Remember: don’t just walk through the forest—immerse yourself in it and explore its sights, sounds, scents, tastes, and textures.

If you don’t live near a forest, it’s good to know that similar benefits have been shown in urban parks and tree-rich green spaces, which might be an alternative.

Final thoughts

It’s worth noting that most research on forest bathing to date comes from Asian countries, especially Japan. Forests vary globally, and tree species differ in the phytoncides they release. So we’ll need more research from different parts of the planet to get the complete picture.

Still, the research is very promising. Dr. Li’s presentation was truly inspiring and showed that we should all immerse ourselves more in natural environments. His gorgeous home office also motivates me to make my office space a lot greener than it already is. 😉 

What else I’ve been up to:

This article on Medium is my most viral piece on the platform so far! Check it out if you haven’t yet (friend link included at the beginning so you can read it for free if you’re not a Medium member):

That’s it for today!

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Until next time!

Best wishes,

Patricia (Dr. Schmidt) from creatorschmidt.com.