Seven Resources on Treating Seasonal Affective Disorder with Integrative Medicine
Prescription: Nature
Exposure to the natural world is increasingly recognized as a mechanism for health promotion, disease prevention, and even disease treatment. Contact with nature has been shown to positively affect biomarkers of allostatic load (ie, heart rate, blood pressure, heart rate variability, and salivary cortisol); measures of brain activity (ie, electroencephalogram [EEG], functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI]); and mental well-being, vitality, and quality of life. Presence and use of natural “green spaces” is associated with lower rates of mortality, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, depression, and anxiety. The health benefits of natural spaces are truly holistic and extend beyond physical and mental/emotional benefits to include enhancement of social, spiritual,14 and even environmental health.
This is especially pertinent in an era of simultaneous, epidemic levels of chronic disease, increasingly indoor and sedentary lifestyles, growing social isolation, and ecological destruction. Data support the theory of biologist EO Wilson’s “biophilia hypothesis” that human affinity for the natural world is an intrinsic adaptation resulting from millions of years of co-evolutionary exposure with our surrounding environments. The dearth of contact with the natural world in modern society has been suggested to contribute to a variety of chronic physical and mental/emotional conditions known colloquially as “nature deficit disorder.” Recent events like the global Covid-19 pandemic have demonstrated how essential contact with nature is and how opportunities to access local green spaces benefit individuals’ and community’s physical, mental, and social health.
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