A Green Garden or a Forest Can Relieve Pain and Help Healing

The Disconnect with Nature

How much are we away from nature, and how much do we suffer from that? Is Nature Deficit Disorder a real disease? Our urban spaces and even rural spaces are full of concrete, steel, glass, and electronic gadgets. We do not get to notice a tree or a flower or a blue sky in our busy lives. We do not get to breathe the air of natural vegetation or catch the scent of a distant flowering tree in our urban dwellings. Now, scientists say that this hurts our mental health and deprives us of our chance of natural healing.

Well, the cynics would say it is not clinically proven. Since Richard Louv, in his sensational book, ‘Last Child in the Woods’, coined the term “nature-deficit disorder”, a new window had opened to look at our relationship with the biosphere. The biosphere encloses us, and still, we perceive it as outside us. Actually, we are also nature; nature is not something apart from us. However, being self-conscious, we tend to see nature as something separate from us.

Each one of us knows deep inside that ‘nature’ makes us happy; happy to just look at, to touch, to inhale, and even to think about. In my early childhood, we, the kids of a rustic village bordering the rice fields and sacred groves, used to roam around without wearing chappals. Eventually, time and again, everyone would have a thorn pierced and stuck in the soles of their feet. Kids would approach adults to remove the thorn, and often, the tool of choice to accomplish this feat would be a simple safety pin. As the parent or an adult member of the family removes the thorn from the foot of the child, the child would be asked to look at some green leaves.

The adult would say, assuming a wise air, “Look at the greenery, and you will not feel the pain when I remove the thorn.” And all the children believed that. As a grown-up and an environment enthusiast, I sometimes wondered if the colour green can reduce pain. Then, I started searching for studies about green healing and found a few.

Can Greenery Heal Us?

There is an interesting study by the University of Arizona about the ability of the colour green to reduce migraine pain; this study is ongoing. Dr Mohab Ibrahim, who leads this study, got this idea of using green light to reduce chronic migraine pain from his brother, who incidentally told him that sitting in the green garden helped him to combat his migraine pain.

In 2016, a Harvard University study also found that the colour green would not exacerbate a migraine when compared to other colours. Migraine is a disease that makes people photosensitive (sensitive to light), and often, Migraine patients experience increased pain and discomfort in response to light.

Some other studies suggest that nature is a welcome distraction for pain relief. A 2009 study by Grace A Kline showed that audio-visual stimuli related to nature (nature sights and natural sounds) served as a distraction and relaxation method for patients suffering from acute pain. Jessica Stanhope, Martin F Breed and Philip Weinstein conducted another study exploring the connections between “green space exposure and pain outcomes”. The major outcome was that green space exposure is related to the reduction of pain by “phytoncides, negative air ions, and sunlight exposure”.

Phytoncides and the Immune System of the Human Body

Phytoncides are airborne chemical compounds that are related to certain aromas that emanate from certain trees. These chemicals help these trees fight insect, fungal, and bacterial attacks and, when inhaled by humans, improve our immune system. The phytoncides emitted by Cedar, Pine, Locust, Cypress, and Oak are especially found to be beneficial for human health and well-being. They could be called the sentinels of green healing.

The phytoncides are observed to produce NK cells (natural killer cells) in the human body. Kobayashi et al. (2009) have published a research report that explains how NK cells are produced in the human body when walking in the woods. NK cells are cells of the innate immune system of the human body and are lymphocytes belonging to the same family as T cells and B cells. These cells can detect and control early cancer cells, and they kill cells that are infected by viruses. Through this, NK cells protect the body from cancer and other infections.

Impact of Negative Air Ions on Human Health and Green Healing

Air ions are electrically charged atoms and molecules, and negative air ions are ions that get electrically charged by receiving an electron. There are many sources present in Nature that emit negative air ions, and they include sunlight, cosmic rays, thunder and lightning, the force of water, and plant-based energy sources. Sea shores and waterfalls emit negative air ions to the atmosphere by mere shearing of water and its force. Trees emit negative ions during their different growth processes. These negative ions sometimes kill harmful bacteria and can reduce air pollution by speeding up the precipitation and removal of Particulate Matter (dust) from the air.

How Nature Will Help Reduce Mental Pain?

Pain is not only physical but can be mental as well, the term used to describe that pain being anxiety, stress, depression and so on. Richard Louv’s book that talks about Nature-deficit Disorder tells hundreds of anecdotes as narrated by adults about how they had a childhood in rich contact with nature and how they miss it in their adulthood, increasing their stress levels. The author says that there is a generational break that has happened from nature. Early humans were indeed an outdoor species, but now we have transformed into an indoor species.

Forest bathing (Shinrin-Yoku) is a Japanese concept developed by Tomohide Akiyama, who was the then director of the Japanese Forestry Agency in 1982. In simple words, forest bathing is just walking slowly among the trees and is a method of green healing. The proven benefits of forest bathing are as given below:

Enhanced immunity

Improved relaxation

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Stress reduction

Reduction in blood pressure

Increased sense of well-being

Citing the journal, ‘Frontiers in Psychology’, Harvard Health Publishing reported in 2019 that spending a minimum of 20 minutes in nature reduces stress hormones. This study revealed that after spending 20 minutes with nature, cortisol, the stress hormone, was considerably reduced in the human body.

Immersing oneself in nature, walking among the woods, standing on a seashore, looking at the greenery, and inhaling the different aromas of the plants constitute a complex and holistic experience. Bathing in artificial green light or aromatherapy is just part of this whole and will have its natural limitations. Nature, in its myriad and minutiae-level sensations, can only provide the total healing processes to our body and mind, leading to pain relief and better well-being.

References

Researchers Explore a Drug-Free Idea to Relieve Chronic Pain: Green Light, December 15, 2019, npr.org

Does a View of Nature Promote Relief from Acute Pain?, Grace A Kline, September 15, 2009, Sage Journals, Vol.27, Issue 3.

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-deficit Disorder, Richard Louv, Atlantic Books, London.

A 20-Minute Nature Break Relieves Stress, July 1, 2019, Harvard Health Publishing.

Shinrin-Yoku: The Japanese Way of Forest Bathing for Health and Relaxation, Yoshifumi Miyazaki, 2018, Octopus Publishers.

Exposure to Green Spaces Could Reduce the High Global Burden of Pain, Jessica Stanhope, Martin F Breed and Philip Weinstein, August 2020, Environmental Research, vol.187.

Natural Killer Cells, Philipp Eissman, British Society for Immunology.

Effect of Phytoncide from Trees on Human Natural Killer Cell Function, Kobayashi et al., 2009, International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology, 22 (4).