February 6, 2023 – City dwellers who steadily visited parks, community gardens or other green spaces were less prone to need medication for depression, hypertension or asthma than those that didn't, a brand new study from Finland shows.
The association between frequent visits to green spaces and lower use of those medications didn't rely on household income or other social or economic aspects, although obesity appeared to cancel out the advantages of frequent exposure to nature.
Increasing scientific evidence of the health advantages of spending time in nature is prone to result in more high-quality green spaces becoming available in urban environments and to encourage their use, says the study's lead writer, Dr. Anu W. Turunen of the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare in Kuopio, Finland.
The results were published online January 16 within the Journal Occupational and environmental medicine.
The researchers surveyed 7,321 randomly chosen residents of three major Finnish city centers – Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa – about how often they visited green spaces and blue spaces (bodies of water) inside a one-kilometer radius of their homes and whether or not they could see green spaces or blue spaces from any window of their homes.
Green areas were defined as forests, gardens, parks, castle grounds, cemeteries, zoos, grassland, moors and wetlands. Blue areas were defined as seas, lakes and rivers.
Respondents were also asked whether or not they take medications for anxiety, insomnia, depression, hypertension and asthma.
Compared with individuals who visited green spaces the least, those that visited green spaces probably the most were a few third less prone to need one among these medications.
Specifically, those that reported visiting a green space three to 4 times every week were 33% less prone to take psychotropic medications, 26% less prone to take blood pressure medications, and 26% less prone to take asthma medications.
“These results are important because they add to the growing body of evidence showing that proximity to nature is good for the health of our patients,” says Dr. Jochem Klompmaker of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who was not involved on this research but has worked on this area.
“We should encourage our patients to walk more. If they live near a park, that could be a good starting point to become more physically active and reduce stress levels,” he says.