I'm Mat White, Lecturer in Environmental Psychology at the University of Exeter
The work we've been doing recently is focusing on how much time you should
spend in nature each week to be good for your health and well-being there's lots
of work now showing that it's good for people the big question is how much do
you need and we've been working with Natural England
on a two-year study with over 20,000 people to look at how much time
you're spending in nature and is it good for health and well-being. So what we
found was basically there seems to be a threshold of about two hours or
120 minutes so compared to people who don't get out to nature at all those who do
two hours a week or more have higher well-being and their health is generally
better so doing 60 or 90 minutes didn't seem to have the same benefits at all it
really needed to be at least two hours a week. What really amazed us was this was
true for just about every group we could think of it was true for people who
lived in cities people who lived in rural areas it was true for people who
lived in high versus low deprivation areas it was true for men women old
adults younger adults the rich the poor different ethnicities and it was also
true for people who had long term illness or sickness or disability so
just getting out in nature, it doesn't have to be physical exercise it could be
just sitting on a bench seemed to be good for just about everybody in the
population what really amazed us about the 120 minute threshold or two hours is it
doesn't seem to matter how you get it you could go on one long walk for two
hours on a Sunday or you could go for for lots of 30 minutes during lunch
times during the week the benefits seemed to be just the same it didn't
matter where in nature you went either it could be on the beach it could be on
an urban park or it could be in the woodlands again it didn't matter
whereabouts it was happening. This is the biggest study of its kind anywhere in
the world with over 20,000 people over two years but it's still a snapshot in
time what we really need is what's called a prospective longitudinal study
that follows people over several years and experimental work where we ask people
to spend different amounts of time in nature each week and follow them over a
period of three or four weeks to look at their health and well-being and that's
work we've been conducting with the BBC's
Trust Me I'm a Doctor program and the results of that study are going to be
aired in the autumn