Call of the forest – the forgotten wisdom of trees
Story at a glance:
• Forest bathing has psychological and
physiological effects;
• Trees emit compounds that boost the
immune system and provide relaxation;
• 60% of medicines contain tree
compounds;
• Soil contains bacteria that work
similarly to antidepressants;
• Native forests are disappearing due
to deforestation and tree farming;
• Native forests are crucial to land,
air, oceans and marine life.
Most of us have experienced the beneficial
results of immersing ourselves in nature and being enveloped by trees. We experience
an immediate relaxation, an ability to forget our problems and often a profound awe
at nature’s secrets.
The documentary Call Of The Forest –
The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees adds to the scientifically supported
psychological and physiological effects associated with spending time in the woods.
It shows how trees and forests intricately affect the land, sea and air around them
and are essential to flora and fauna.
Experts included in the documentary postulate
that trees were the very beginning of life on earth, which was nothing but a
“rock” until the appearance of trees and the organic matter called
humus.
But Call Of The Forest also shows the
devastating effects of deforestation, removal of native trees, “tree
farming” (in which trees are made into monoculture crops) and the lumber
industry. Luckily, some people like Diana Beresford-Kroeger, a classical botanist,
medical biochemist and author who has studied rare tree species for more than 40
years, are committed to stopping these dangerous trends and instilling in the public
a greater awareness and respect for forests.
Trees have formidable and healing
powers
“We have missed the essentials of what
a tree is all about,” says Beresford-Kroeger at the beginning of the
documentary, which brings viewers to Japan, Ireland and the Redwood forests in the
United States, as well as the Boreal forest of Canada. Beresford-Kroeger says that
in Japan, “forest bathing,” also known as Shinrin-yoku, is a
revered and long-standing tradition. It means taking in the forest through our
senses.
Tree bathers avail themselves of medicinal
properties, says Beresford-Kroeger, as 60% of all medicines use tree elements.
Limonene, produced by trees, is an anticancer compound used in chemotherapy.
Linolenic acids are “essential acids for development and functioning of
the brain” and pinenes are an antibiotic compound. Trees also emit
alpha-Pinene, beta-Pinene, bornyl acetate and camphor compounds, according to the
documentary.
The bottom line, says Beresford-Kroeger as she
forest bathes herself, is that the tree compounds “are giving me a
slightly narcotic effect” boosting the immune system and relaxing the
body. All those positive chemicals “are now in my lungs” she
tells viewers as birds chirp and leaves rustle during her forest bath.
At home on the farm
Beresford-Kroeger, who is originally from
Ireland, keeps a farm in Ontario, Canada, which displays the results of her
steadfast and dedicated devotion to native and rare plants and reforestation. In the
documentary she shows viewers a black walnut tree, known by the genus Juglaus
Nigra, which she says she planted 30 years ago as a seed. It is now
towering.
Showcasing the globe-like fruit of the walnut
tree (which she points out is actually a nut), Beresford-Kroeger says the nut
possesses minerals and other valuable substances “that are scarce in our
food these days.” The compounds protect the myelin sheaths in human cells
and people should eat them three or four times a day, she advises. “These
nuts are better than any beef on the market,” she remarks.
As the author of books like To Speak for the
Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the
Forest, and The Global Forest: Forty Ways Trees Can Save Us,
Beresford-Kroeger sees the development of native species as a crucial tool against
environmental degradation challenges. Native forests are “our cheapest and
best defense against climate change,” she asserts.
Native forests are irreplaceable but
disappearing
Professor Akira Miyawaki, who lives in Tokyo, has
spent 50 years planting and restoring native species forest systems. Building small
city forests is important to offset the effects of the built environment with its
expanses of concrete and pavement, he says. But less than 1% of native forests now
remain in Japan so the battle is far from won.
In the past, Japan cut down mass expanses of
trees to make farmland, only to find devastation produced a barren desert where
nothing could or would grow. According to the documentary, the decimation of trees,
which has occurred in many developed countries, disregards the intricate mineral
interplay that exists between natural forests and the rest of the environment since
iron is the foundation of the food chain.
It is “fulvic acid which attracts and
locks in the iron molecules,” explains professor Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a
marine chemist featured in Call Of The Forest. And where does fulvic acid
come from? Decaying leaves, he says. Moreover, marine life needs and depends on
minerals emitted by natural forests as well as nitrogen. Without forests there are
literally no fish, he warns.
Native forests affect the land, oceans
and air
In addition to their land and marine benefits,
trees also function as “condenser units,” says Beresford-
Kroeger – collecting and preserving potable water. For example, redwood trees,
the tallest conifers on the planet, participate in a crucial environmental cycle
with the Pacific Ocean: They trap mist from the ocean, pull moisture up from the
aquifer (rock which holds groundwater) and then replenish the aquifer with
condensation from ocean mist.
“A redwood is the largest carbon-
bearing living organism on earth,” says Professor Emeritus Bill Libby, a
geneticist at UC Berkeley who was featured in the documentary. “They are
growing faster than they ever have in their life,” yet the ones we see
today are actually smaller and less robust than the redwoods our ancestors cut
down.
To convey their immensity, Beresford-Kroeger says
it would take an entire town of 13,000 people to balance the weight of a redwood
tree if it were put on a scale.
Nature produces a natural
antidepressant
The soil of the forest also has healing powers,
according to a report in The Atlantic: “‘If you hold moist
soil for 20 minutes,’ says Craig Chalquist, chair of the East-West Psychology
Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies, ‘the soil bacteria
begin elevating your mood. You have all the antidepressant you need in the
ground’.”
Chalquist is not the only scientist noting this
additional benefit of forests and trees. A 2007 article in the journal
Neuroscience found soil bacteria called Mycobacterium vaccae can
increase serotonin, so soil works in a similar fashion to an antidepressant:
“We have found that peripheral immune
activation with antigens derived from the nonpathogenic, saprophytic bacterium,
Mycobacterium vaccae, activated a specific subset of serotonergic neurons in the
interfascicular part of the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRI) of mice, as measured by
quantification of c-Fos expression following intratracheal (12 h) or s.c. (6 h)
administration of heat-killed, ultrasonically disrupted M. vaccae, or heat-killed,
intact M. vaccae, respectively …
The effects of immune activation were
associated with increases in serotonin metabolism within the ventromedial prefrontal
cortex, consistent with an effect of immune activation on mesolimbocortical
serotonergic systems.”
More soil benefits
hypothesized
In 2017, it was reported in the same journal that
when mice ingested Mycobacterium vaccae it also reduced anxiety:
“In this preliminary research, we show
that mice fed live M. vaccae prior to and during a maze learning task demonstrated a
reduction in anxiety- related behaviors and maze completion time, when tested at
three maze difficulty levels over 12 trials for four weeks. Treated mice given M.
vaccae in their reward completed the maze twice as fast as controls, and with
reduced anxiety-related behaviors.In a consecutive set of 12 maze trials without M.
vaccae exposure, treated mice continued to run the maze faster for the first three
trials, and with fewer errors overall, suggesting a treatment persistence of about
one week.”
Research in Annals of Oncology even
suggests the soil component may be useful in treating cancer:
“In this non-placebo controlled trial,
SRL172 when added to standard cancer chemotherapy significantly improved patient
quality of life without affecting overall survival times.”
Exposure to trees may have other health
benefits
The widely observed calming effects of trees may
also have a biological component, according to research published in 2015 in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America:
“We show in healthy participants that a
brief nature experience, a 90-min walk in a natural setting, decreases both self-
reported rumination and neural activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC),
whereas a 90-min walk in an urban setting has no such effects on self-reported
rumination or neural activity.
In other studies, the sgPFC has been
associated with a self-focused behavioral withdrawal linked to rumination in both
depressed and healthy individuals. This study reveals a pathway by which nature
experience may improve mental well-being and suggests that accessible natural areas
within urban contexts may be a critical resource for mental health in our rapidly
urbanizing world.”
Recovery from gallbladder surgery was even
hastened when patients viewed trees, according to research in the journal
Science:
“Records on recovery after
cholecystectomy of patients in a suburban Pennsylvania hospital between 1972 and
1981 were examined to determine whether assignment to a room with a window view of a
natural setting might have restorative influences.
Twenty-three surgical patients assigned to
rooms with windows looking out on a natural scene had shorter postoperative hospital
stays, received fewer negative evaluative comments in nurses’ notes, and took
fewer potent analgesics than 23 matched patients in similar rooms with windows
facing a brick building wall.”
A prescription for parks?
With all the benefits of trees and natural
forests will doctors soon be prescribing parks to their patients? It is already
happening, according to a report in The Atlantic. Dr. Robert Zarr, a
pediatrician in Washington, D.C., actually writes prescriptions for parks: He pulls
out a prescription pad and scribbles instructions – which park his obese or
diabetic or anxious or depressed patient should visit, on which days, and for how
long – just as though he were prescribing medication…
Zarr is part of a small but growing group of
health-care professionals who are essentially medicalizing nature. He relies on a
compendium of 382 local parks – the product of meticulous mapping and rating
of green spaces, based on accessibility, safety, and amenities – that he
helped create for DC Park Rx, a community-health initiative.
The Washington program was one of the first in
the United States; there are now at least 150 others. Park prescriptions are a low-
risk, low-cost intervention that, in Zarr’s experience, people are quick to
accept. And sure, people are more likely to move around in a park than they are when
watching TV, but there may be more to it than that. Researchers in the United
Kingdom found that when people did physical activities in natural settings instead
of “synthetic environments,” they experienced less anger,
fatigue, and sadness. A 2015 study in Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences reported that walking in a park reduced blood flow to a part of the
brain that the researchers claimed was typically associated with brooding.
yogaesoteric
March 16, 2020