Outdoors exercise important for health

We do have health clubs. And winter kicks off the mall-walking season. But some suspect we need more than just physical exercise to stay healthy. We need the emotional healing benefits of green exercise.

Also known as eco-therapy, green exercise simply means doing something, almost anything, outside. You won't necessarily burn more calories in nature's green gym. But you can get substantial mental health benefits — reduced stress, depression and anger and enhanced mood and self-esteem — simply by seeking out the natural world, according to growing evidence from researchers in the United States, Scandinavia and Britain. . . .

Or green exercise could mean sitting in a park, biking to work, walking, fishing or digging in the dirt. The stress-reduction benefits of healing gardens in hospitals (which we could now call "green care") date to the Middle Ages. And some say our modern hospitals, which focus on treating disease, have abandoned the healing properties that the connection to nature can bring. . . .

"Clearly nature delivers important health benefits if we reorganize lifestyles and behaviors," Pretty recently wrote in a commentary published in New Scientist.

The biggest challenge, Pretty said, is redesigning cities to get people to walk more during normal working days. "Fifty years ago, an average adult ran the equivalent of a marathon a week more than an average adult does today — and that was not running, just walking, cycling, being more active in the home," said Pretty, author of "The Earth Only Endures: Reconnecting With Nature and Our Place in It" . . .