Vitamin N: Combating 'Nature Deficiency Disease'

Morning Glory
Public Domain

It turns out that folks like Thoreau and Whitman really had it right when it came to extolling Nature's virtues.

Those (i.e., most "civilized" beings) who are suffering from NDD (Nature Deficiency Disease) often don't know what they're missing.  While scurrying through sealed-in environments, they experience vague symptoms that could likely be relieved with just a little green grass and sunshine.  Blankets of snow with cloud-covered skies would also suffice.  As long as it's Nature with a capital N...

This "prescription" isn't just a poetic flight of fancy.  As reported in the July 2009 edition of the AARP Bulletin, 38 research participants were assigned to take a 50ish-minute walk in either the Ann Arbor Arboretum or in that city's built-up downtown section.  Guess whose attention and memory spans improved by 20 percent?  You got it: the Arboretum group's.

The study's lead author, Marc Berman, explained that a Nature walk has enough stimulation to capture the attention, yet not so much as to overwhelm the thought processes.  This beneficial combination lulls the mind into an "active rest" which "tends to be restorative."

Which resonates well with the following quote from Whitman: A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

And with this quote from Thoreau: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. 

Resources

http://www.aarp.org/health/fitness/info-07-2009/nature_science_shows.html