Kathy Willis is a Professor at the University of Oxford and the Director of Science at The Royal Botanical Garden in Kew. Found in The Scottish Daily Mail 27/8/24

A few years ago on a visit to the offices of the Department for the Environ­ment, food and Rural Affairs (Defra), I paused to admire a won­der­ful flower­ing plant in a meet­ing room. But when I touched its leaves, I dis­covered it was made of poly­es­ter. Of all the places I might have expec­ted to find fake plants, Defra – the centre-point of our nation’s efforts to con­serve and enhance nature – was not one of them!
It made me won­der whether it mat­ters if plants are real or not with regards to the health bene­fits they’re known to con­fer. Could view­ing ‘fake’ ver­sions be just as effect­ive in redu­cing stress and improv­ing our mood – or do we need the real thing?
I’ve spent a life­time think­ing about plants. Indeed, the Insti­tute I foun­ded at Oxford provides evid­ence for poli­cy­makers to pro­tect the earth’s incred­ible biod­iversity. But even I was sur­prised to find evid­ence which so clearly showed the health bene­fits of real plants over fake.
An exper­i­ment, in 2015, neatly demon­strated that for all the soph­ist­ic­a­tion of mod­ern fake flowers, noth­ing comes close to the impact of real nature on our body and mind.
Research­ers asked stu­dents to view, for three minutes, either a planter con­tain­ing fresh yel­low pan­sies or a con­tainer of poly­es­ter pan­sies, identical in col­our, size and mark­ings to the real things.
The par­ti­cipants’ pulse rates were meas­ured and they also answered ques­tions about their state of mind. Sur­pris­ingly sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ences emerged.
Just look­ing at the real flowers led to a sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tion in stress levels, com­pared with view­ing the fake pan­sies. The stu­dents also repor­ted feel­ing more relaxed when look­ing at the real pan­sies, it was repor­ted in the Inter­na­tional Journal of envir­on­mental Research and Pub­lic health.
we can all identify with this. Because there’s something spe­cial about touch­ing, smelling, hear­ing, rev­el­ling in nature in all its glory.
when I worked at Kew Gar­dens, I was struck by how many vis­it­ors there didn’t just look at the blowsy bor­ders or strik­ing palms, but also stopped to inhale their fra­grances, gently touch­ing their leaves or strok­ing bark. (They ignored those stern signs telling them ‘Do Not Touch’ – I ignored them, too.)
Now I’ve dis­covered how our health really can be turbo-charged by inter­act­ing with nature.
As we will see, the key to liv­ing health­ier lives can be as effort­less as pla­cing a spider plant on your desk, using lemon-scen­ted soap or ensur­ing you always garden without gloves. 

 MANY health bene­fits are rightly attrib­uted to the Medi­ter­ranean diet. But the pos­it­ive impact of smelling the nat­ive Medi­ter­ranean herb rose­mary is less well known.
Rose­mary’s dis­tinct­ive smell is due to an aro­matic com­pound called 1-8-cin­eole, along with pinene and cam­phor. It helps to keep us awake and alert, aid­ing our pro­ductiv­ity.
Although the pre­cise bio­lo­gical mech­an­ism is still under invest­ig­a­tion, research pub­lished in 2022 in the journal fron­ti­ers of Neur­os­cience sug­gests that we may derive men­tal bene­fits from smelling rose­mary because of the way its aro­matic com­pounds affect cer­tain bio­chem­ical path­ways in our blood. exper­i­ments have shown that raised levels of 1-8-cin­eole com­pounds can inhibit the action of two enzymes that nor­mally break down neur­o­trans­mit­ters (chem­ical mes­sen­gers) in the brain respons­ible for alert­ness and arousal. The effect of this is to pro­long the life of these neur­o­trans­mit­ters, mean­ing we stay awake and alert for longer. fas­cin­at­ingly, these enzymes are also implic­ated in con­di­tions such as demen­tia, accord­ing to a 2022 review in the journal fron­ti­ers of Neur­os­cience. These days I always have rose­mary oil dif­fus­ing in my study at home, and it was very use­ful in my teen­age son’s bed­room when he was revis­ing for his exams – it helped to keep him awake! 

 If YOU’VE been in hos­pital, I bet the view from your bed was not inspir­ing. And yet there’s long been good sci­entific evid­ence that this can make a big dif­fer­ence.
As long ago as 1984, US research­ers found that patients in a sub­urban Pennsylvania hos­pital recov­er­ing from gall­blad­der sur­gery who could see trees from their win­dows recovered faster than those who looked out on brick walls. They also had bet­ter post­oper­at­ive men­tal well-being and required less pain relief.
why might this be? One the­ory is that our bod­ies have a bio­lo­gical pref­er­ence to view­ing nature and that this in turn pro­duces a more pos­it­ive emo­tional state.
This means that view­ing nat­ural scenes auto­mat­ic­ally trig­gers a physiolo­gical response, which in turn helps us to recover bet­ter from stress. In con­trast, it’s thought, urban envir­on­ments do not have the same effect, the oppos­ite in fact, and can hamper recu­per­a­tion, espe­cially after stress­ful events.
Since then many sub­sequent stud­ies have also found that a view of nature – even from indoors – can lower blood pres­sure, pulse and other physiolo­gical stress indic­at­ors. 

 The zingy clean smell of lemon is often used in shower gels and hand soaps. Now there’s pre­lim­in­ary evid­ence that a lemon scent could be bene­fi­cial for people with res­pir­at­ory con­di­tions. A lemon’s dis­tinct­ive smell comes from a vOC (a volat­ile organic com­pound, oth­er­wise known as a smell to you and me), called d-limonene.
Stud­ies show that as well as redu­cing stress, smelling d-limonene can reduce the effect of inflam­ma­tion in the lungs, at least in mouse mod­els on which this has been tri­alled.
This type of inflam­ma­tion is char­ac­ter­istic of asthma, bron­chitis and other lung con­di­tions. The poten­tial use of lemon peel scent to ease symp­toms of asthma and other ill­nesses, is there­fore of great interest.
Pre­lim­in­ary stud­ies have also sug­ges­ted that d-limonene could be con­veni­ently given as an inhal­a­tion since it’s eas­ily absorbed and used by the body and there­fore can poten­tially provide dir­ect and rapid reduc­tion of inflam­ma­tion in the res­pir­at­ory tract. 

 A WOODLAND walk can instantly make you feel bet­ter. The sight of majestic trees, the dappled light and the smells of nature all com­bine to trig­ger numer­ous physiolo­gical responses that calm us.
Indeed, such walks, known as forest bathing, have been pre­scribed by the health ser­vice in Japan as a med­ical inter­ven­tion for almost 40 years – and Japan has more than 60 accred­ited wood­land nature ther­apy trails, many of which are stud­ded with cypress trees.
Cypress trees release a woody, pep­pery scent, com­posed pre­dom­in­antly of the molecules ß-cad­inene and ced­rol, along with con­cen­tra­tions of the com­pounds alphapinene, ß-pinene and limonene.
Inhal­ing these scents trig­gers invol­un­tary neural responses, res­ult­ing in sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tions in heart rate and stress hor­mones in saliva.
These com­pounds can also appar­ently increase levels of
lymph­o­cytes in our blood. Lymph­o­cytes are immune cells that seek out and kill malig­nant cells, includ­ing those caus­ing tumours and cells infec­ted with vir­uses, by pro­du­cing pro­teins such as per­forin and gran­zyme.
These pro­teins then kill the tumour/virus-infec­ted cells by trig­ger­ing apop­tosis, a nat­ural pro­cess lead­ing to cell death.
In a 2018 study at the National Taiwan Uni­versity, 25 people who went on a five-day trip to a forest with many cypress trees all had a sig­ni­fic­ant increase in nat­ural lymph­o­cyte killer cells. And these elev­ated levels las­ted for more than seven days after the trip ended.
If you don’t live near a cypress forest, simply dif­fus­ing cypress oil at home will prob­ably pro­duce sim­ilar bene­fit 

 CoN­sIdered one of the easi­est house plants to grow, the spider plant also has health bene­fits.
one study, pub­lished in the journal Fron­ti­ers of Micro­bi­o­logy in 2015, found that pla­cing a single spider plant in a room led to a sig­ni­fic­ant improve­ment in both the num­ber and diversity of bene­fi­cial plant bac­teria. And another study found that spider plants had a pos­it­ive impact on indoor air qual­ity, effi­ciently redu­cing levels of pol­lut­ants includ­ing form­al­de­hyde, tolu­ene and ethyl­ben­zene.
Never before has the spider plant on my desk been so cher­ished; it is not only improv­ing the air qual­ity but also the good bac­teria in the air in my room, which has then been shown to trans­fer onto my skin and very prob­ably into my gut.
In effect, I bene­fit from a ‘pro­bi­otic’ dose sim­ilar to those from drink­ing pro­bi­otic drinks – but delivered in the air, and all thanks to a plant on my desk. 

 Any sur­gery is stress­ful and prob­ably none more so than remain­ing ‘awake’ under local anaes­thetic.
des­pite being clin­ic­ally less risky, many stud­ies show the stress is con­sid­er­able and can last for some time after the oper­a­tion, even pro­long­ing recov­ery rates.
But there’s a nat­ural rem­edy here: tune­ful bird­song.
This has been demon­strated in sev­eral stud­ies, includ­ing a fas­cin­at­ing one at a teach­ing hos­pital in Iran in 2019. sci­ent­ists examined the influ­ence of nat­ural sound on post-oper­at­ive pain man­age­ment in 57 women who had under­gone elect­ive caesareans. The exper­i­ment took place eight hours after sur­gery, when post-op pain is thought to peak.
The women were divided into three groups: one wore head­phones with no sound; a second group had head­phones with sounds of nature, includ­ing bird­song; and the third had noth­ing.
Clear res­ults emerged. The women who listened to bird­song had sig­ni­fic­antly less severe pain than the other groups.
sounds of nature can seem­ingly trig­ger path­ways in our bod­ies that lead to reduced pain.
A big­ger study, pub­lished in the journal Pro­ceed­ings of the National Academy of sci­ences in 2021, ana­lysed data from mul­tiple exper­i­ments involving par­ti­cipants from 11 dif­fer­ent coun­tries.
A stag­ger­ing res­ult emerged: listen­ing to nature sounds res­ul­ted in an improve­ment of 184 per cent in clin­ical meas­ure­ments includ­ing levels of pain, heart rate vari­ab­il­ity, blood pres­sure, anxi­ety and depres­sion, com­pared to those who heard urban sounds or no sound at all.
Listen­ing to bird­song pro­duced the biggest reduc­tions in blood pres­sure, pain and heart rate, while water sounds led to the best improve­ments in mood and cog­nit­ive per­form­ance.
But which birds help most? A 2016 study, pub­lished in the Journal of envir­on­mental Psy­cho­logy, found the best stress-reliev­ing bird­song included black­birds, dun­nocks, blue tits, green finches and robins – those with acous­tic sig­na­tures that were tune­ful but com­plex, with repeated pat­terns and of com­par­at­ively low volume. In con­trast, less tune­ful, repet­it­ive jays, her­ring gulls, sil­ver gulls and kites had the least bene­fit. other stud­ies have also indic­ated that the squawks of crows and par­rots are also less bene­fi­cial and in some cases can raise stress levels when we hear them. 

 There’s clear evid­ence that wood-lined rooms make us feel calmer, reduce eye fatigue and improve our cog­nit­ive per­form­ances com­pared to rooms dec­or­ated with other mater­i­als.
This may be something to do with the smell of the wood along with other visual details, such as how knotty the wood is.
some trees, like con­ifers and soft­woods such as pine trees, have resin ducts – hol­low, tube-like struc­tures from which the scent or VoC is emit­ted – in their trunks. (hard­woods such as oak, sweetchest­nut and beech do not have these ducts.)
even though scent levels released may be too low for us to notice con­sciously, they will be present in low con­cen­tra­tions in the air for a num­ber of years after con­struc­tion.
A 2014 study in Japan com­pared par­ti­cipants work­ing in a room lined with cedar tim­ber to oth­ers work­ing in a room with no wood clad­ding. Clear dif­fer­ences in the air were detec­ted before the exper­i­ment, with high levels of VoCs in the cedar room.
In both rooms, par­ti­cipants took a series of 30-minute maths tests spe­cific­ally designed to induce anxi­ety. They sat behind a screen so that they couldn’t see the mater­ial lin­ing the walls of the rooms. Fas­cin­at­ing res­ults emerged.
Those in the unlined room showed a clear spike in their stress levels (meas­ured by their amyl­ase, an enzyme in saliva that rises when you are stressed) when tak­ing the test. Those in the cedar-lined room showed no increase in stress at all.
But what about just look­ing at wood? some stud­ies indic­ate that, as well as its smell, the vis­ible qual­it­ies of cer­tain woods – the micro­scopic uneven­ness of its sur­face and knot­ti­ness – can also have pos­it­ive health bene­fits.
seem­ingly, this uneven­ness doesn’t only affect how wood appears but also deflects light waves as they hit the sur­face.
As a res­ult, wood pan­els reflect only a tiny frac­tion of ultra-violet rays from UV lights and flick­er­ing com­puter screens, com­pared to those from sur­faces made of pol­ished and smooth man­u­fac­tured mater­i­als, accord­ing to a 2019 study in the journal Wood Mater­ial sci­ence & engin­eer­ing.
research­ers now believe that wood wall lin­ings that reduce glare from com­puters and over­head strip lights can play an import­ant role in stress relief and eye fatigue reduc­tion. 

 research­ers at the Uni­versity of sus­sex examined the effect of dif­fer­ent smells on driv­ing beha­viour and found that inhal­ing rose scent res­ul­ted in the low­est aver­age driv­ing speeds, no crashes and drivers reportedly feel­ing hap­pier and calmer behind the wheel.
The par­ti­cipants were eval­u­ated in a sim­u­lated driv­ing envir­on­ment, and their per­form­ance in speed­ing and lane move­ments was assessed while being chal­lenged with a series of anger­in­du­cing road events, like other cars cut­ting across their path.
other smells assessed included pep­per­mint — which also had a bene­fi­cial effect — and civet (the musky odour used in per­fumes obtained from the anal glands of exotic cats) which pro­duced the worst res­ults with many sim­u­lated crashes and angry driv­ing tac­tics.
The clear take-home mes­sage from this study is that we should all have rose and pep­per­mint scent dif­fusers in our cars – and never car share with a civet! 

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