ack your bags and move to the countryside.

Living closer to open fields and trees reduces your risk of being obese or depressed, research suggests.

After reviewing hundreds of previous studies, scientists claim it can even slash the chance of an early death
by 16 per cent.

And the benefits can be seen even in poor neighbourhoods where risks of both obesity and poor mental health
are known to be much higher.

The new study, funded by Friends of the Earth Europe (FoE), also showed that the great outdoors had
benefits for pregnant women.

Those living in close proximity to trees and open fields, considered a 'natural healer' by the researchers at the
Institute for European environmental policy, gave birth to children of much healthier sizes. 

It is believed that the increased opportunity to be active and breathing in less air pollution may explain the
reduced death rates and obesity prevention.

While the green spaces also reduced depression by allowing for people to meet others and get away from the
hustle and bustle of a city, experts claim.  

Robbie Blake, a campaigner for FoE, told The Guardian: 'The evidence is strong and growing that people and
communities can only thrive when they have access to nature.
'We all need nature in our lives, it gives us freedom and helps us live healthily; yet deprived communities are
routinely cut off from nature in their surroundings and it is suffocating for their well-being.' 

The findings back up an array of evidence that shows setting up a home in a heavy polluted city can be
damaging to someone's health.

Harvard University researchers previously found those who live in an 'urban jungle' have a 12 per cent higher
death rate than those with access to green spaces.

After studying the well-being of nearly 110,000 women, they found living in cities also increased the risk of
cancer and respiratory illnesses. 

Those in the greenest areas had a 34 per cent lower rate of respiratory disease-related mortality and a 13 per
cent lower rate of cancer mortality.  
Read more:

Trees and green spaces are unrecognised healers offering

benefits from increases in mental wellbeing to allergy
reductions, says report
Arthur Neslen
Tue 21 Mar 2017 14.08 GMT
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168

People living close to trees and green spaces are less likely to be obese,
inactive, or dependent on anti-depressants, according to a new report.
Middle-aged Scottish men with homes in deprived but verdant areas were
found to have a death rate 16% lower than their more urban counterparts.
Pregnant women also received a health boost from a greener environment,
recording lower blood pressures and giving birth to larger babies, research
in Bradford found.

Overall, nature is an under-recognised healer, the paper says, offering

multiple health benefits from allergy reductions to increases in self-esteem
and mental wellbeing.

A study team of 11 researchers at the Institute for European environmental

policy (IEEP) spent a year reviewing more than 200 academic studies for
the report, which is the most wide-ranging probe yet into the dynamics of
health, nature and wellbeing.

The project first appeared as an unpublicised 280-page European

commission literature review last autumn, before being augmented for
Friends of the Earth Europe with analysis of the links between nature-
related health outcomes and deprivation.

“The evidence is strong and growing that people and communities can only
thrive when they have access to nature,” said Robbie Blake, a nature
campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe, which commissioned the
analysis.
Wild things: how ditching the classroom boosts children's mental health
Read more

“We all need nature in our lives, it gives us freedom and helps us live
healthily; yet deprived communities are routinely cut off from nature in
their surroundings and it is suffocating for their well-being.”

The report makes use of several studies that depict access to nature as being
inextricably linked to wealth inequality, because deprived communities
typically have fewer natural environments within easy reach.

The study cites research that 26% of England’s black and minority ethnic
populations visit natural environments less than three times a year,
compared with 15% of the rest of the population.

Patrick ten Brink, the IEEP’s director, praised cities such as Oslo and
Victoria-Gasteiz for taking steps to make nature accessible to all.

“We should be inspired by this and work together so that all Europeans
have nature within 300 metres of their homes in the next 10 years,” he said.

Previous US research has found that that hospital patients with tree views
from their windows were discharged a day earlier than those whose rooms
faced walls.

An extra 10 trees on a Toronto city block provided health benefits to

residents equivalent to a $10,000 increase in annual income, or being seven
years younger, another study in 2015 found.

After remaining relatively stable in the 1960s and 1970s, the prevalence of obesity among
adults in the United States increased by approximately 50 percent per decade throughout the
1980s and 1990s.15 Two thirds of adults in the United States today are obese or overweight. In
the United States, 28 percent of men, 34 percent of women, and nearly 50 percent of non-
Hispanic black women are currently obese. The distribution of body-mass index (BMI, the
weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters)16,17 has shifted in a skewed
fashion such that the proportion of people with extreme obesity has increased at an especially
rapid rate. These trends have affected all major racial and ethnic groups, all regions of the
country, and all socioeconomic strata,18 with the largest increases in obesity occurring among
children and minorities.19 It should be noted, however, that data from studies on the relation
between BMI and mortality have been interpreted by some to suggest that current tables of
ideal height and weight and, by extension, ideal ranges of BMI should be adjusted to include
lower ideal weights for height or BMIs before age 40, as well as higher ideal weights for
height or BMIs after age 40.20 Redefining ideal weights for height in this way would increase
the projected negative effect of obesity on life expectancy because of the large increases in
obesity now observed among people under age 40.
Obesity is a multisystem condition associated with an elevated risk of type 2 diabetes,
coronary heart disease, cancer, and other complications.21,22 The effect of body weight on
mortality has been studied extensively. In a study of more than a million U.S. adults, the
lowest death rates were found among men with a BMI of 23.5 to 24.9 and among women with
a BMI of 22.0 to 23.4.23 Death rates from cardiovascular diseases were substantially elevated
among people with higher BMIs. A prospective study of 6139 subjects in Germany found the
greatest obesity-associated excess mortality to be among the young24 — the standardized
mortality ratio for people 18 to 29 years of age with a BMI of 40 or over was 4.2 in men and
3.8 in women. Fontaine et al. estimated the effect of obesity on years of life lost across the
lifespan of adults.25 For any degree of excessive body weight, young age was associated with
greater years of life lost. Allison et al. used data from six cohort studies in the United States to
determine that obesity causes approximately 300,000 deaths per year,26 although a study by
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)27 may have overestimated deaths due to
obesity.
Being overweight in childhood increases the risk among men of death from any cause and
death from cardiovascular disease; it also increases the risk of cardiovascular morbidity
among both men and women.28 The lifetime risk of diabetes among people born in the United
States has risen rapidly to 30 to 40 percent — a phenomenon presumably attributable to the
obesity “epidemic.”29 Having diabetes in adulthood increases the risk of a heart attack by as
much as having had a previous heart attack,30 and the life-shortening effect of diabetes is
approximately 13 years.31 Evidence also suggests that at younger ages, disability rates have
risen and fitness levels have declined dramatically in the United States, with both trends
attributed, at least in part, to the rise in obesity.32,33 The incidence of type 2 diabetes in
childhood in the United States has increased many times over in the past two decades, an
increase that is due almost entirely to the obesity epidemic34,35; shockingly, life-threatening
complications, including renal failure, may develop by young adulthood in at least 10 percent
of children with type 2 diabetes.

Recent research has revealed that eco-driving is capable of reducing fuel consumption by an amount
ranging from 15% to 25% and GHG emissions by at least 30% [8,10,15,16]. In contrast, the total fuel
savings achieved by engines and vehicles of the latest technology is estimated at about 10–12%,
which is significantly lower [8]. According to other researchers, an overall ecological behavior,
including the purchase of the vehicle, as well as its usage, and ecological decision-making concerning
mobility, are considered to lead to fuel consumption reduction of the order of 40–45% [17]. More
formally, eco-driving refers to the adoption of a driving behavior that maximizes the efficiency of the
vehicle’s engine [18]. It should be made clear that the notion of eco-driving is a multidimensional
one, that integrates driving behavior, as well as all decisions directly or indirectly related with fuel
saving and GHG emissions reduction, e.g., the choice of vehicle. An ecological driving behavior, i.e.,
accelerating smoothly and maintaining a constant speed, plays a very important role [19], but it has
to be combined with other actions, like the prudent use of the air-condition, in order to lead to
maximum fuel saving [9]. All the pieces that constitute the notion of eco-driving are summarized in
Figure 1 below. In this paper we focus on the driving behavior, without underestimating though the
effect of other parameter