We’ve discussed this before and the evidence keeps coming.
Visiting green spaces regularly shows a 33% lower use mental health meds, 36% lower for blood pressure meds and 26% lower of using asthma meds.
Frequent visits to green spaces in cities such as parks and community gardens may be linked to lower use of certain prescription meds, suggests research conducted in Finland.
Exposure to natural environments is thought to be good for health, but until now, the evidence has been inconsistent, wrote 10 researchers from the department of health security at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare in Kuopio.
They published their findings in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine under the title “Cross-sectional associations of different types of nature exposure with psychotropic, antihypertensive and asthma medication.”
The team wanted to find out if the amount of residential green and blue space, frequency of green-space visits and views of green and blue spaces from home might be associated separately with the use of certain prescription meds.
Green areas were defined as forests, gardens, parks, castle parks, cemeteries, zoos, herbaceous vegetation associations such as natural grassland and moors and wetlands. Blue areas were defined as sea, lakes and rivers.
Finland has a large number of forests, while Finnish cities are relatively green, making it easy for those willing to use green spaces to access them with minimal effort, they added.
They chose prescription drugs as a proxy for ill health focusing on prescription medication for anxiety and insomnia, depression, high blood pressure and asthma in particular because they are used to treat common and potentially serious health conditions.
