Two Hours a Week Outdoors Increase Health Benefits

While it’s no secret that spending time outdoors has a number of different benefits, including lowering a person’s stress levels, decreasing blood pressure, and reducing the risk of asthma, allergies, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, while boosting mental health and increasing life expectancy. Now, according to a paper recently published in Scientific Reports, we know how much time we need in the great outdoors the experience these benefits; about 2 hours each week.

The study examined data from 20,000 people in England from 2014 to 2016. It found that people who spent two hours or more outdoors per week reported being in better health and having a greater sense of well-being than people who didn’t get out at all, The New York Times reports. 

“What really amazed us was that this was true for all groups of people,” said Mathew P. White, an environmental psychologist at the University of Exeter Medical School, who led the study. “Two hours a week was the threshold for both men and women, older and younger adults, different ethnic groups, people living in richer or poorer areas, and even for those living with long term illnesses.”

The exact cause of the health benefits is still unclear, but The Times reports that “nature prescriptions are growing in popularity” and researchers hope this study is a major step toward developing concrete guidelines for nature prescriptions 

“This study will help clinicians like me better advise patients,” Dr. Nooshin Razani, a pediatrician at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland, California, who has taken to prescribing time outdoors to her patients who come from low-income settings.