How Spending Time In Nature Helps Our Health

0:00Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at hewlett.org.

0:21If you're feeling stressed, let's pause and take a listen to this soundscape and take some deep breaths.

0:39How do you feel? Maybe a little more revived, more focused? Our next guest has made a career out of understanding exactly how nature affects our well-being. He found that just listening to nature sounds can lead to cognitive benefits. Mark Berman is the pioneer of environmental neuroscience, and he's out with the new book, Nature and the Mind, the science of how nature improves cognitive, physical, and social well-being. Berman wanted to know exactly how our physical environment affects us and why. Through his research, he found how nature improves our focus, reduces depression, and even improves our physical health.

1:15But you don't have to move to a scenic home in the country for all these advantages. Mark Berman joins us after the break to talk about his findings. I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. Back with our guest in just a moment. Stay with us.

1:33Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at hewlett.org. Mark, it's so great to have you on the program today.

1:50Marc Berman:Thank you for having me on the show. Let's start with these voicemails we got from some of you.

2:22It's where I go to revitalize. It's everything to me. I recently moved to the coast of Delaware from a big city, and nothing calms me more to be in the presence of the ocean. Alisa in North Carolina, Dee in Nashville, and Susan in Delaware, thank you for those messages. Mark, how did you become interested in this area of study?

2:46Marc Berman:It's a good question. It was kind of a long route. I think directly I had an advisor in graduate school, Steve Kaplan, who talked a lot about how interacting with different environments and in particular interacting with more natural environments can be really beneficial to our attention and our memory. And I just thought that was a really interesting idea that I hadn't really heard about, about how the actual physical environment that's around us can have a big impact on our behavior and on our health. And in particular, that interacting with natural environments could be so beneficial. And I think humans, we have so much control over the physical environment.

3:30Marc Berman:I think sometimes we forget that the physical environment really affects us. And I think this kind of, you know, it really made me think about that and that, you know, a lot of environments that people are in are not very beneficial to their health and their well-being. But with some of these ideas that interacting with nature can be so beneficial to us, I thought, you know, maybe we could actually design environments using some of this knowledge to really improve human well-being. You coined the term environmental neuroscience. How do you define it? it it it means that it's how the physical and even social environment affect brain and behavior and that we have these bi-directional relationships between our brains and the environment so the physical environment that's around us affects our brains deeply and there were studies that were done in the 1960s with rodents and they looked at rodents interacting with different environments, rodents living in environments that had toys and rich social interactions versus rodents kind of just living on their own in very sterile cages.

4:36Marc Berman:And that had significant impacts on these rodents' brains, that the rodents' brains that were in the more enriched environments had more synapses. Their brains were sort of richer than the rodents that were growing up in the depleted environments. And I think a lot of that research kind of sat for a while, and people didn't really connect it too much to humans. But the same thing is true of humans, that we're not immune to the physical environment and the physical environment that's around us has deep, deep causes and changes to our brains and to our physical health. The other thing that I think is important too is that with our brains, we're also changing the physical environment.

5:18Marc Berman:And so it's kind of this cyclical relationship that we have where the physical environment is affecting us, but we also have the power to sort of change the physical environment in this loop. Unfortunately, it doesn't really seem like in current times that you don't often hear people say, well, you know, we designed this school so that kids would be more cooperative and that they would have better working memory. Or we designed this office so that people would have less stress, they would interact more with each other, and they'd have lower rates of depression. We've kind of designed the physical spaces that we're in in cities to sort of move goods efficiently, to house people efficiently, but not really to promote human flourishing.

5:58Marc Berman:And I think that's something that we're trying to get across in our research, but also in my book, that we really, really need to take this research seriously about how the physical environment affects our brains. And then also, too, that one physical environment that we find that's really, really good for our brains are more natural environments. and how can we get people to be more exposed and interacting with more natural environments on a regular basis. Well, it's so interesting because what you're describing, it's very intuitive. I mean, when we're growing up, when your parents want you to calm down, it's just like go outside, go play.

6:38I think about the young people nowadays who tell each other, look, you need to go touch grass, right? There's something deeply intuitive about being outside, being in nature, and that it does something for us. But what I hear you saying is that the scientific connection, the way that the environment changes our brains, it rewires things, the impact on the way our hearts and our lungs are operating, that's understudied. It's something we need to better understand.

7:08Marc Berman:That's right, Jen. And sometimes, too, our intuitions aren't always correct. And what I think, you know, one of the more counterintuitive findings that we have from our work is that you don't even really have to like nature to get some of these benefits. So we do studies where we bring participants into the lab. We give them some challenging cognitive tasks that test their attention and their memory. And then we have them like go for a walk in a park for 50 minutes, so five, zero minutes, have them come back to the lab and take these memory and attention measures again. or we have them walk in a more urban environment for 50 minutes and then have them come back to the lab and take these memory and attention measures again.

7:51Marc Berman:And it's true, like in the summer months, people really enjoy the walk in nature and they show really strong improvements in their memory and attention. But we've also had people walk in January in winter months when it's cold outside and participants that went on the nature walk didn't really enjoy the nature walk very much, but they show the same memory and attention benefits as the people that walked in June or in the summer months. So to get many of these psychological benefits, you don't even have to really enjoy the nature to get the benefits. And I think too, one other thing, while I think, you know, our parents and grandparents had the right idea that we need to be spending more time in nature and to get outdoors, they didn't really know why it was working.

8:38Marc Berman:And I think if we want to design hospitals better or design homes better or design schools better, to design workplaces more efficiently, we really have to understand what it is about nature that's leading to these benefits. I want to get into that in a moment, but I want to focus in for a moment on what you say is an attention crisis, that our modern world creates a competition for our attention. What does that competition mean for our mental health? Yeah, and it's something that one of my mentors, Steve Kaplan, used to talk about that for modern humans, the problem is not finding information.

9:19Marc Berman:The problem is managing all the information that's bombarding us, and that requires a lot of attention. And there's been another recent book out called The Siren's Call about how new technologies are just trying to just capture our attention and not let it go. you know, to either sell us things or to keep us on devices for a long time. And we think that's causing a lot of problems. And when we talk about attention, we think it's more than just, you know, kids wiggling around in their seats at school, not being able to pay attention. We actually think that our ability to pay attention and one kind of attention we call is directed attention.

10:00Marc Berman:That's where you as an individual person are deciding what you're paying attention to, we think that this ability to direct attention underlies a lot of other behaviors like our ability to have self-control, our ability to have good social interactions with each other, our ability to be less aggressive, that all of that requires attention. And in modern society, with so many different devices and technologies vying for our attention, we kind of have less of this attentional store in the bank. It's getting depleted. And that's one thing, too, that we talk about directed attention, that this ability of humans to direct our attention, to choose what we're paying attention to, we can't do it forever.

10:46Marc Berman:We become mentally fatigued and we can't focus anymore. And I think we've all had that sensation at the end of a long workday where you're kind of just staring at the computer screen and it's hard to focus, we call that a directed attention fatigue state. You also might be becoming irritable at the same time you're lacking patience. And that's the time that we think you should be taking a break in nature and not sort of scrolling your social media feed as your break. We're talking to Mark Berman. He's director of the Environmental Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago. He's also the author of the new book, nature and the mind.

11:23I want to touch on what you call soft versus hard fascination and how that comes into play. Yeah.

11:31Marc Berman:So we think that humans kind of have these two main forms of attention. One is the directed attention, which I just talked about, whereas you as an individual person are deciding what you're going to pay attention to. That's different from another kind of attention that we call involuntary attention, or sometimes it's called bottom-up attention. And that's the kind of attention that's automatically captured by interesting stimulation in the environment. So bright lights, loud noises, those things automatically capture our attention, and we don't really have a lot of control over it. And it's thought that that kind of attention is less susceptible to fatigue or depletion.

12:09Marc Berman:So you don't often hear people say, oh, I can't look at that beautiful waterfall anymore it's just so gorgeous i have to take a break or oh i can't watch this really interesting movie anymore it's just so interesting i'm just tired out i have to shut it off so the idea with this attention restoration theory which is this theory about how we can use nature to restore our directed attention is that if you can find environments that don't place demands on directed attention while simultaneously having interesting stimulation to activate involuntary attention, you could restore or replenish this precious directed attention resource.

12:45Marc Berman:And natural environments are one sort of example. Now, to get directly at your question, Jen, about the soft versus hard fascination, let's go back to the waterfall example. When we look at that beautiful waterfall, it captures our attention. It's interesting, but it doesn't really capture all of our attentional resources. We can kind of mind wander and reflect while we're looking at that beautiful waterfall. So we say it softly captures our attention. If we're walking around in Times Square, that's also super interesting. Lots of stimulation to capture our attention, but Times Square kind of captures our attention in a very harsh way and doesn't really let go.

13:21Marc Berman:You can't really mind wander, think about other things in Times Square. That attentional grab in Times Square is just all-consuming. So we think that the kind of stimulation that can capture your attention in a softly fascinating way is going to be more restorative of your directed attention. And we think a lot of natural stimulation kind of meets that criteria, like going to your local park where you feel safe, that it doesn't tax directed attention and has softly fascinating stimulation to activate your involuntary attention. Well, it makes me wonder whether our experience or the benefit of being in nature changes if we add stimulation to that experience.

14:01So I can note a difference if I go for a walk between the walks I do in just silence, where I'm just walking and listening to the birdsong, the occasional car passing by, you know, saying hello to neighbors, or when I have my earbuds in and I'm listening to a podcast or making a phone call, you know, really maximizing the efficiency of that time. does that have an effect on on how beneficial that space can be for us yes absolutely and

14:33Marc Berman:we would definitely recommend that if you want to get the most bang for your buck and then and the nature uh experience or the nature walk you want to take the earbuds out you want to leave the smartphone at home and just let all of your senses be be captured by the stimulation in nature if you're listening to a podcast you know that's going to require directed attention and And you're not going to be attending to the bird song or the different kind of stimulation as well in nature. So we definitely recommend that if you want to get the most restorative experience in nature, you want to kind of eliminate all other kinds of distractions and just be able to let your mind and your involuntary attention be captured by all that stimulation in nature.

15:18Vents emails, nature is where I go to feel happy and where I go to feel sad. My wife is currently battling breast cancer, and when time allows, I run far into the mountains of western North Carolina. And when I'm alone, I sob and scream and breathe. Then I feel better and can more adequately care for my wife. And Mark in Massachusetts says, I'm listening to you now while hiking the Appalachian Trail in New Hampshire. I have a chronic disease, depression, and anxiety. I've hiked 600 miles on the Appalachian Trail this year, and it has taught me to rethink my fears before letting them take control.

15:52Moving beyond attention, Mark, how does nature affect our mood and even those experiencing depression?

15:58Marc Berman:Yeah, and those are very powerful stories. And, you know, in my book, we talk about how there are many people that use nature as a way to help with grieving and to help us when we're under mental distress. You know, we've done studies where we've taken participants who have been diagnosed with clinical depression, and we find that brief walks in nature can be very beneficial to them, both for their attention, but also for their mood. So I think, you know, there's a lot to unpack here. We definitely think that nature, its ability to improve our attention actually can improve with mental health, because you can imagine when people are grieving or if they're having a strong depressive episode, it's very hard for them to concentrate and focus.

16:52Marc Berman:So if nature can help to increase our ability to focus, it kind of helps us to deal with the issues that are bothering us. Let's head to a quick break. When we return, we get into how nature affects how we think and what we think about.

17:11Now back to the conversation with these messages we got from you. I enjoy spending time in nature because it's one of the few moments that I feel like I don't have to compromise. When I'm fully present and I'm in a wild space, I feel like I get to just bring my own awareness and who I am to that moment. For most of my life, since I was 16, I'm now 66, I've worked outside. It's very freeing. It exposes you to really what's going on around you and nature. My family just recently got a puppy and a bonus that I did not expect was the amount of early morning walks I would be taking. And it's really been a new rhythm to my week to start my days outdoors.

18:00It's just a beautiful, nice way to wake up every day. Holly, Diane in Maryland and Holly in Ohio, thanks for those messages. Mark, what does the science tell us about how long we need to be in nature or in connection with nature to experience a positive effect?

18:18Marc Berman:It's a great question, and we don't have all the answers yet. There have been studies that suggest you want to try to get about 120 minutes per week, so maybe about two hours per week, maybe spread out throughout the week. In some of our original studies, we found that the walk was, we found benefits after a 50-minute walk, so a 5-0-minute walk. Although we've found you can even get benefits from just looking at pictures of nature or listening to nature sounds. And there we had people view the nature scenes for about 10 minutes or listen to nature sounds for about 10 minutes. Other researchers have found that kids with ADHD, if they go for about a 20-minute walk in nature, they can show improvements that are about equivalent to a dose of Ritalin, which is pretty amazing.

19:11Marc Berman:So I think we don't yet know everything, the dose response relationship yet. I think many of us would say the more, the better, but it also might matter the kind of nature that you're being exposed to. If you can be in a more immersive natural environment, that's probably going to produce stronger effects that maybe last longer than say, looking at a picture of nature or looking out the window of nature. So we don't know yet. I would kind of say the more you can get, the better, but also being kind of mindful about when you take the break. So if you're a morning person and you're very energized in the morning, maybe you want to take your break later in the day when you're starting to feel mentally fatigued.

19:53Marc Berman:If you're somebody that has a really hard time getting started in the morning and you feel kind of mentally groggy in the morning, maybe you want to take that nature walk or have that nature interaction at the beginning of your day to get refreshed. So I think that's another thing that we want to be mindful of is monitoring our own mental health and our own directed attention to try to figure out when the best time for us would be to take that break in nature. We got this question from Carl who asks, does what you do in nature matter, walking versus biking? Yeah. So we know that you don't want to have the earbuds in or be on the cell phone that we think that and other people have shown that that can kind of cancel some of the benefits.

20:40Just sitting in nature can have benefits. And definitely we've tested walking in nature. Biking or running in nature can also be beneficial. I would just say that if you're biking and you're going much faster, you know, you're zooming through nature much more quickly and your brain then might not have as much of an ability to digest the nature that you're being surrounded by.

21:04Marc Berman:And depending on the difficulty of the biking, you know, it might require some focus as well. So, you know, we do think that to get the biggest benefit, you kind of want to be able to take it slow and just be able to go slow and let all that nature be seeped in by all of your senses that we think that will lead to the biggest benefit. But if it's running in nature, biking in nature versus no nature, we would definitely recommend you definitely go for the bike ride in nature, go for the run in nature to get that extra exercise in nature. But if you do have a little bit more time. We do think the slower you can take it, you might actually get more of that mental brain boost.

21:50Well, I'm wondering about the many people who don't live in or maybe even have access to a quote-unquote natural environment, right? There may not be a park nearby. There may not be, you know, an arboretum where you can go for a hike, but there may be birdsong or some trees on your block. How much do we benefit from pieces of nature? Yeah, we can benefit a lot from just pieces. And it's a great point that you're making, Jen, because many of us don't have access to nature. Or what's even more depressing is some of us do have access to nature, but that nature may not be well-maintained or people may not feel safe in that nature, and then the nature is not going to have the benefit that it was intended to have.

22:42But there's just incredible research showing that, yeah, just having pieces of nature can have these benefits. And there's this one seminal study by Roger Ulrich in the 1980s where he was studying a single hospital corridor in a Philadelphia hospital, and he was looking at patient's recovery from gallbladder surgery. And Roger looked at the views out of people's windows on this hospital corridor, and some of the hospital rooms had views of modest nature, like a patch of trees and maybe some grass. And other hospital rooms had views of like a brick wall, like the other side of the hospital. And it turned out the patients that had the views of nature out of their hospital window, they recovered from gallbladder surgery a day earlier, and they use less pain medication than the people who had the views of the brick wall.

23:35And, you know, you might be thinking, well, maybe wealthier people or more educated people or younger people got the rooms with the nature view. But no, that wasn't the case. Patients are just randomly assigned to these different rooms. So it's just amazing that just this view of nature out of your window could have these healing qualities. And there again, like you were mentioning, that's kind of piecemeal. We're not actually having people walk in actual nature. It's just a view out of their window can have these effects. And we even find, too, again, that just looking at nature pictures or listening to nature sounds can have some of these, not necessarily the health benefits, but it can have some of the attention benefits.