Category: Longevity & Health

If October is that point in the year when your mood and overall health starts to dip a little, then read on. An impact study published this year by the University of Derby, concluded that people who took part in the June 2015 “30 Days Wild” nature engagement campaign, experienced significant increases in levels of health and happiness.

The campaign called on people to “do something wild” every day for a month. Suggestions were given as to how they could engage with nature in a variety of activities, ranging from momentarily stopping to notice a wildflower or picking and eating a wild berry, to letting a patch of lawn grow longer or going for a walk in the woods. The researchers point out that happiness in the UK has previously been observed to remain constant between May and October, with 1% variations in late autumn and early spring. It was therefore reasonable to assume that any changes reported by participants, were due to their regular engagement with nature. Participants were surveyed at baseline, in July and at follow-up in September.

There were statistically significant increases in participants’ connection to nature, health, happiness and conservation behaviour, and these improvements were sustained at the September follow-up. The researchers suggest that the reported health improvement was related to the improvement in happiness, mediated by the increased nature connection. They also say their findings suggest that connection to nature may provide people with resilience to meet the challenges of everyday life, while also facilitating exercise, social contact and a sense of purpose.

(30 Days Wild: Development and Evaluation of a Large-Scale Nature Engagement Campaign to Improve Well-Being. PLOS One, 18 February 2016.
Summary at Devon Wildlife Trust accessed October 2016.)

A very large international study led by the US National Institutes of Health, has concluded that people with the highest levels of leisure-time physical activity have a reduced risk of 13 of 26 types of cancer studied.

Data was pooled from 12 studies that together followed a total of 1.44 million people over time. Participants were 19 to 98 years old and from the United States and Europe, 57% female, and with no history of cancer. The studies assessed physical activity by using surveys that asked about time spent in moderate to vigorous leisure-time physical activities, such as walking, running, or swimming. The median level of activity was about 150 minutes of moderate-intensity work per week. This is comparable to the minimum level of physical activity that experts recommend. Participants were followed for a median of 11 years.

The researchers found that people with the highest level of leisure-time physical activity had a reduced risk for 13 of 26 types of cancer compared to those with the lowest level of activity. People with the highest activity had a 20% lower risk for 7 cancer types: oesophageal adenocarcinoma, liver, lung, kidney, gastric cardia, endometrial, and myeloid leukemia. They also had a 10-20% lower risk for myeloma and cancers of the head and neck, rectum, bladder and breast.

Factors such as age, sex, smoking, alcohol, diet, education, ethnicity and body mass index (BMI) were controlled for. Ten of the 13 associations remained after adjusting for BMI. This suggests that for the majority of cancers, physical activity reduces risk through mechanisms other than lowering body weight.

(Association of Leisure-Time Physical Activity With Risk of 26 Types of Cancer in 1.44 Million Adults. JAMA Internal Medicine, online 16 May 2016.)

A review by Natural England of projects which set out to achieve greater involvement by people, in the natural environment, has identified a number of key benefits for participants’ mental health. The review spanned activities such as therapeutic gardening, food growing and environmental conservation work. Groups taking part were drawn from both the general population and those who were already experiencing mental health problems.

Benefits identified included: improvements in depression, anxiety and stress related symptoms; improvements in dementia-related symptoms; improved self-esteem, confidence, happiness, satisfaction, mood and quality of life; increased attention capacity and cognition; sense of peace, calm or relaxation; increased social contact, sense of belonging and personal achievement.

(A review of nature-based interventions for mental health care. Natural England Commissioned Report NECR204, uploaded 9 February 2016.)

Researchers at the University of Glasgow have shown that olive oil exerts protective effects on the heart and circulatory system. The key has been their development of a test which can detect subtle changes in heart health over a period of only a few weeks. The new test is simple to undergo because it is based on changes in the patterns of proteins excreted in the urine.

The BBC television programme “Trust Me I’m a Doctor” exploited the new test in taking the question one step further by asking whether extra virgin olive oil was more beneficial than normal olive oil. Seventy volunteers were split into two groups, and in a double-blind trial, given either extra virgin or normal olive oil at a dose of 20ml per day for six weeks. Urine samples were taken at baseline and again at 3 and 6 weeks. Both oils proved to have a significant and equal effect on reducing markers for coronary artery disease, so the extra plant compounds present in extra virgin oil are probably not key to the cardioprotective effects.

(New perspectives on bioactivity of olive oil: Evidence from animal models, human interventions and the use of urinary proteomic biomarkers. ResearchGate, 22 July 2015.
Trust Me I’m a Doctor, BBC Website, accessed January 2016.)

Research commissioned by the National Trust has found that walking, and coastal walking in particular, can significantly increase sleep quantity and quality.

A total of 109 participants were recruited for the study. Ages ranged from 21 to 82 years. Measures of mood and sleep quality were recorded using a questionnaire, both before and after either a coastal or an inland walk. The coast was walked by 54 participants, whilst 55 walked inland. The average walk across was 7.24 miles long and lasted three hours and 40 minutes.

Across coastal and inland walkers combined, sleep quality significantly improved the night after a walk in comparison to the night before the walk. This did not vary significantly between the two groups, although there was a slight trend towards greater sleep quality amongst coastal walkers. Alertness on waking the next morning displayed the same characteristics, with coastal walking again having a slight advantage. The average number of night time wakings was significantly reduced after a walk, across both groups. As regards sleep quantity, coastal walkers slept on average 47 minutes longer after a walk compared to the previous night, whereas the figure for inland walkers was 12 minutes. Both groups felt significantly happier and more calm after their walks, with a sense of reflection, freedom and escape being commonly reported.

(Sleep, Mood and Coastal Walking: A Report Prepared for the National Trust by Eleanor Ratcliffe, August 2015.)