A walk in nature can reduce negative thoughts

A vigorous five mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world - Paul Dudley White

A researcher at Stanford has studied the reduction of negative thoughts in the brain of people that have had a walk in a park, surrounded by nature. The result of the study found evidence that walking in nature could lead to a lower risk of depression.

The benefits of nature never cease to amaze while those of walking are also well known for a long time. If we simply put them together, walking in nature, we can reduce significantly our negative thoughts.

A vast array of physical and chemical changes take place in your body and brain when walking outdoors. There is a large difference between nature walks and urban walks. As researcher Adam Atler explains, man-made landscapes will stimulate your brain, but not replenish exhausted mental resources, whilst open natural green spaces will allow far more mental health benefits, by allowing the brain the restorative process that it needs to function correctly.

Green is a colour that predominantly affects our thinking process and studies show that those living in areas with a high amount of green space capabilities had lower levels of cortisol, known as the stress hormone. Cortisol is the hormone that ignites many other mental disorders on the back of stress and can be debilitating, to say the least.

Changes take place in the parts of the brain that have a direct effect on both the thinking process and the memory of each individual when taking a walk or light exercise and taking in the surrounding natural environment.

The parts of the brain that control these processes are the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal cortex, as explained by Dr. Scott McGinnis, a neurologist and teacher at Harvard Medical School. “Even more exciting is finding that engaging in a programme of regular and moderate intensity over a period of 6 months to a year is associated with an increase in volume of selected brain regions.”You can more or less kick stress into touch, with regular walking and embracing all that nature has to offer, without resulting to pills or other chemicals.