How Trees Calm Us Down

[dixiegrrrrl]

In 1984, a researcher named Roger Ulrich noticed a curious pattern among patients who were recovering from gallbladder surgery at a suburban hospital in Pennsylvania. Those who had been given rooms overlooking a small stand of deciduous trees were being discharged almost a day sooner, on average, than those in otherwise identical rooms whose windows faced a wall. The results seemed at once obvious—of course a leafy tableau is more therapeutic than a drab brick wall—and puzzling. Whatever curative property the trees possessed, how were they casting it through a pane of glass?

That is the riddle that underlies a new study in the journal Scientific Reports by a team of researchers in the United States, Canada, and Australia, led by the University of Chicago psychology professor Marc Berman............
Snip
After controlling for income, education, and age, Berman and his colleagues showed that an additional ten trees on a given block corresponded to a one-per-cent increase in how healthy nearby residents felt. “To get an equivalent increase with money, you’d have to give each household in that neighborhood ten thousand dollars—or make people seven years younger,” Berman told me.
Snip
The health benefits stem almost entirely from trees planted along streets and in front yards, where many people walk past them;
trees in back yards and parks don’t seem to matter as much in the analysis.

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/what-is-a-tree-worth?intcid=mod-most-popular

Much more intriguing info at the article, well worth the read.

[pinboy3niner]

1. I knew you wood say that

[treestar]

3. Good they got to leaf the hospital earlier

[pinboy3niner]

5. Doctors always said more fiber is beneficial

[treestar]

6. those docs are in a very important branch of the medical field

[pinboy3niner]

7. I don't understand those who will have no trunk with them

[valerief]

12. People who lived near a dog's constant bark died five years earlier than those living near

tree bark.

[the_sly_pig]

13. I guess we've discovered the root of the problem....

Disbelievers responses were oaken....

[pinboy3niner]

15. Poor saps

[treestar]

19. They are chestnut getting the benefits

[treestar]

17. Doctors log a lot of hours

as do a lot of STEM graduates.

[pinboy3niner]

18. Fittingly, many hospitals still record those hours...

...on paper.

[Eleanors38]

26. Damn. I was pining for that.

[Mira]

2. Well worth reading

and does not surprise me one little bit. I get better and happier the minute I'm in the midst of trees.

[BeyondGeography]

4. Boy did I miss the trees when I lived on 1st Ave in NY

for a decade. The sound of the wind rustling leaves before a storm, or the rain hitting them. The sight of those exposed mature limbs in winter. Try living without it...brutal. i believe these findings wholeheartedly.

[Warpy]

9. I lived on a nasty, treeless street on Beacon Hill

The redeeming part of that apartment was the bedroom in the back with a picture window that faced out on the top of a scrub tree. Even that poor, scraggly little tree changed the whole feel of that apartment, leafy in summer and snowy in winter.

All the other windows were crammed with potted plants, anything to bring some green into my life.

[Uncle Joe]

8. The Memory of Trees

Thanks for the thread, dixiegrrrrl.

[ellennelle]

10. thx for this!

did you also read michael pollen's piece - also in the new yorker - from last dec. 23? if not, you'll love it; a lot longer, but totally fascinating. ez to google; free online.

also too, where in AL are you?? i graduated from huntsville hi, and my brother lives in arab. he always believed he was the only liberal in the state!!

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. I know where your brother lives. No. ala. is pretty but sure can be cold in the winter.

I am in the SW corner of the state.
The place was once described in a book as ..."Maycomb".

[nuxvomica]

11. Fascinating. Thanks for posting.

I've been working on a sci-fi story about a post-Apocalyptic world with few humans left. They live in a climate scoured of vegetation save for ghostly, white, leafless trees that evolved similarly to the Indian Pipe flower. The sky is always cloudy in that world and the trees sustain themselves from underground fungi feeding off the corpses from a long-past global war. When my characters travel north and see real green trees and open sky for the first time, they feel dizzy at first, can't tear their eyes from the sight of gentle breezes ruffling the numberless, sunlight-dappled leaves. I've wondered whether the impact of such a sight would be so intense so I'm happy there's some research in that direction.

[arikara]

25. Sounds interesting

If you're writing about fungi, have you read Mycellium Running? It talks about how fungi can actually detoxify stuff like oil and chemical contaminations.

Lovely article about the trees dixiegrrrrl, thanks for posting!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

14. For dogs....

[Throd]

20. Fuck trees.

Tweekers of the plant world. Trees will steal your wallet and help you look for it.

[pinboy3niner]

21. Time to call the copse

[dixiegrrrrl]

24. lol...very good.

Leaf it to you to come up with the best ones.

[Kali]

22. reminds me of this

[closeupready]

30. Thanks, saving to listen to later.

[pinboy3niner]

23. They don't call them 'whispering pines' for nothing

[Eleanors38]

27. There's a drive south of Gainesville, Fl where the moss-draped oaks will put you to sleep.

Rolling along a two-lane, past an old cemetery, and at a curve the oaks hang their hair in the Payne's Prairie breeze. And you could pull over and nap your way back to childhood.

[dixiegrrrrl]

31. I have been there!!!!!!!

That balmy air is very lulling, I agree.

[Eleanors38]

32. A walk through the cemetery is revealing; one antebellum governor, old settlers

some of whose descendants I went to school with. It's the secondary road which runs north from Micanopy, and bends around and across the River Styx, and on to the road that leads to Cross Creek. Before hunting regs got more stringent, in the 60s we pulled off the road and parked under those mossy oaks, then trudged back to the prairie and hunted snipe against the setting sun. Things which go into your memory and stay there.

I've begun to consider what final arrangements I might make, and I like the idea of crating up one's carcass and buying into a preserve in which you are buried, unmarked. Turns out, one of the earliest of these preserves is right there!

As you die out, a nature preserve is born.

[Tree-Hugger]

28. More people should

Hug trees.

[Big Vincenz]

29. How Trees Calm Us Down

thc

[raouldukelives]

33. K&R Saddest Charlie Brown looking tree rivals any skyscraper in beauty. nt