This study did a really good job reinforcing the idea that spending more time with our environment can help us reduce stress. Even though the experiment took place just in Finland, it did include three locations, which helped the study be more comprehensive in a way because a park is really not truly 100% nature when compared to the forest that the participants also visited. The results obviously showed massive amounts of improvement in stress levels for many of the participants when they visited the park or the forest compared to just sitting on the street observing the flow of the city. One thing mentioned in the study was that the participants usually underwent the study around 3PM after work, which in my opinion was a smart time because people usually are stressed out during work or after work, which made measuring the changes in stress levels a lot easier. One area of concern is the lopsided number of female participants compared to the male participants, which should raise some alarm to a study like this because there are always significant differences in the body between males and females.
Now, even if people see these results of the increasing amount of studies done to prove the health benefits of the environment, will that motivate them to spend more time outside and with nature. The chances are that not many people are reading these scientific studies on their spare time, and even if they knew that the environment can get them healthier in terms of stress and other benefits, are they willing to give up their other activities to spend time outdoors. A lot of people constantly enjoy doing negative things to their bodies such as drinking, smoking, and other drugs, so we have to wonder if the human population is actually striving to become healthier. Many people obviously will say they are trying to live a healthier lifestyle, but many people who say this don’t take the necessary steps to becoming healthy. Death to most people is a long term problem that is unsolvable and will eventually claim everybody, and since humans are already so short term in their thought processes, what makes us think that they don’t want to live a happy, crazy 5-10 years of life and then suffer the consequences later. Sure, they might reflect in the future when they have suffered all the consequences to their health, but most people would choose the path of fun for a few years than living a full healthy life without doing the actions that give them the fun and excitement for a couple of years in their lives. People will continue to keep complaining about their stress, but they probably will also keep doing other activities like watching TV or something else that they think reduces their stress than spending more time with mother nature.
