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'Forest Bathing' Considered Healthful
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that although allergies and the promise of air-conditioning tend to drive people indoors at this time of year, when people spend time in more natural surroundings — forests, parks, and other places with plenty of trees — they experience increased immune function. A study of 280 healthy people in Japan, where visiting nature parks for therapeutic effect has become a popular practice called 'Shinrin-yoku,' or 'forest bathing,' found that being among plants produced 'lower concentrations of cortisol, lower pulse rate, and lower blood pressure,' among other things. Another study in 2007 showed that men who took two-hour walks in a forest over two days had a 50-percent spike in levels of natural killer cells, and a third study found an increase in white blood cells that lasted for a week in women exposed to phytoncides in forest air."
I grew up on a farm, and the only people who had air conditioning were living in town. I didn't even know what allergies were; none of my friends or anyone in their family had them, until I started making friends with people who lived in town and had air conditioning and super clean houses. THEY had allergies.
Also helps allergies:
I've read several studies in Science News that show exposing allergic bodies to the outdoors "trains" the immune system to ignore things like pollen, dust, and so on as simply part of the natural environment.
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No. I even re-read the summary about 10 times in a row, trying to figure out what exactly was harmful about forest bathing.
In the Midwest, our forests are just plain nasty... I would be surprised if the Japanese have anything close to ragweed. My family is originally from up north, so we are all allergic to this, but correlation does not blah blah blah
.I wonder if they have to worry about ticks, with all the fun stuff they carry, as well over there on that island. I'm thinking the plant life just might be different. I grew up playing in a greenbelt full of poison ivy and ragweed, along with scrub trees that put off that layer of pollen that will cover your car, so after RTA, I can't say which side of the coin I prefer I'm afraid.
I grew up on a farm, and the only people who had air conditioning were living in town. I didn't even know what allergies were; none of my friends or anyone in their family had them, until I started making friends with people who lived in town and had air conditioning and super clean houses. THEY had allergies.
Your unscientific anecdote is negated by my own equally unscientific anecdote:
I grew up in a small farming village, a tiny population in a state with one of the lowest levels of air pollution, with no air conditioning whatsoever. I had absolutely terrible allergies, up to and including asthma, eyes glued shut due to "sleep" (secretions), and the need for serious medicine that didn't really help much.
The best thing I ever did was move to a city, get air conditioning, and stay the fuck away from the grass, trees, and other foliage that made my life a living hell. I didn't get allergies from living in the city as you so erroneously imply, I got them from being exposed to pollen in the first place, and short of paving the planet, a large city with relatively little green space is in my experience an ideal environment for those who suffer from Hay Fever, pollution notwithstanding.
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Seems that your allergies are making your posting finger twitchy - or there's a glitch in Slashdot.
My great-grandmother grew up in a farming village. There was a group of people who would always get colds around harvest-time; they were widely suspected of being malingerers, but she realized much later that they just had seasonal allergies.