Nutrition Videos

Through this channel, I've repeatedly talked about the therapeutic effect of a healthy diet on your health, and I've talked relatively much about the effect of exercise. I've also mentioned other forms of treatment more rarely. But the form of treatment I'm talking about today has never been mentioned by me, and it's a shame, because it's a free treatment and anything we've studied with regard to our health has shown that it significantly improves your health. This treatment is our contact with nature. Humans have existed on Earth for six million years, and they've lived 99.9% of their history in nature. However, over the last decades, the vast majority of people in Europe and the US has lived in an urban environment, which many experts believe has a negative effect on our health. So, in the '90s, studies started being carried out, mainly in Japan, which attempted to find out if contact with nature improves our health. Contact with nature doesn't mean that you have to travel to the virgin forests in Rhodope nor climb the tops of Mount Olympus. A walk in a local park, the cultivation of indoor plants, even pictures of nature on our PC may have a positive effect on our health. Let's see some conclusions of these studies that have been published. A 15-minute walk in nature, in a local park or garden, seems to dramatically reduce stress. This has been shown by studies that measure the cortisol levels in the saliva. Cortisol is the stress hormone and it should be low. Such studies prove a reduction of 10-20% in cortisol in the saliva, which is rather remarkable. The effect on blood pressure is also impressive, because studies have recorded a reduction of systolic pressure by 1.5 units and a reduction of diastolic pressure by 1 unit. These results are rather impressive, because this reduction is comparable with the effectiveness of the best drugs we have right now for the treatment of high pressure, without the relevant side-effects. If you've been told that you have an increased heart rate, which is not good for your heart, you should know that you don't have to take some drug, but you just have to introduce contact with nature in your daily life. A 15-minute walk can reduce your heart rate by approximately 10 units, after you finish walking, of course, compared to your heart rate before you started walking. This makes sense, because our heart rate depends on the cortisol levels, which significantly reduce when you're in contact with nature. Blood sugar is better regulated too when you're in contact with nature, as some studies have shown that a 15-minute walk reduces blood sugar by double the amount than a 15-minute walk in an urban environment does. Finally, since much is being heard now about the significance of the proper function of the body's immune system both for the treatment of infection and for the treatment of cancer, you should know that contact with nature significantly strengthens the immune system, increasing, among others, the cells that kill both germs and cancer cells. These were just some of the benefits of our contact with nature. I don't have the time to mention all the benefits, because they're too many. In general, wherever a study has been carried out, it has been shown that contact with nature significantly improves your health. Let me remind you that you don't need to do something extraordinary. A few plants inside the house or on the balcony, or a walk in the local park suffice for you to enjoy the benefits of this "drug". Thank you very much.