Green spaces give longevity

 

 Living close to a green area will prolong your life.

The greatest investigation ever conducted on the connection between environment and human longevity has a straightforward conclusion to make.
Eight million individuals.
seven nations.
The study, which was co-published in The Lancet Planet Health with the World Health Organization, had one clear conclusion: "When you are exposed to greenery or greenness around your home, your probability to die... is less compared to those with less green-ness around their home," says David Rojas, researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and Colorado State University and lead author of the study.
In particular, the research team discovered that your chance of dying decreases by 4 percent for every 10% increase in vegetation that is located within 1,600 feet of your residence. 

These precise figures came from a big meta-analysis that examined nine distinct longitudinal studies about health and green space that examined how and how long people lived over extensive periods of time.
Australia, Canada, China, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States were among the international nations represented among the subjects.

According to Rojas, the results were the same everywhere.
Living close to more green space was associated with a longer lifespan than living close to less.
Grass, trees, or gardens may make up this green environment.
It may be either a public or private area.
The study didn't make any distinctions between different plants, nor did it have the data fidelity to make that assertion.
(Vegetation around houses was precisely measured using satellite photography.) 

Why do individuals who have greater access to green places live longer?
Rojas makes no claim to expertise.
He suggests that there are various options and that they might even be cooperating.
Stress is known to be reduced by simply staring at plants, which reduces the blood's level of harmful cortisol.
Our immune systems may be strengthened and the microbiome on our skin may be affected by touching plants.
The benefit of good air quality is another:
Four persons can breathe oxygen produced by a single tree.
Even more, Rojas draws attention to how vegetation reduces the urban island heat effect, keeping some parts of cities colder and more comfortable than others.
Simply put, plants provide a ton of quantifiable good.
It almost seems as though humans have somehow evolved to live around them! 

What then should we do with this knowledge?
Perhaps the more obvious advice is to increase and encourage more greenery close to your home rather than relocate to an area with greater greenery, adds Rojas.
That would be the most obvious conclusion and would apply to everyone.
 

Rojas contends that in order to achieve their goals, urban planners should make every effort to use low-maintenance native plants and to push their budgets as far as possible.
He says, "Less concrete, more green."
Any tree or plant will begin to produce this transformation, or if you have a tiny area in the roadway, you can replace some concrete with grass. 

Rojas then wants to discover ways to maximize green space to increase these palpable health advantages.
Maybe some plants are more enduring than others.
Perhaps a single 40-foot tree positioned in the middle of a sidewalk could have the same impact as a manicured half-acre of lawn.
We simply don't know right now.
A straightforward maxim to remember is to "go green" as much as you reasonably can until we do.
Because it genuinely could mean your life.