Benefits of Green Exercise with Dr. Mike Rogerson
Welcome to episode 054 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and interiors.
I’m your host, Matt Morley, Founder of Biofilico -a healthy buildings consultancy based in Barcelona and London.
In this episode I’m in Essex to the east of London talking to Dr. Mike Rogerson of the University of Essex.
Mike has a PhD in Sports and Exercise Science, his research interests include the links between exercise, the environment and wellbeing as well as what is known as ‘green exercise’ that involves an element of nature combined with physical activity.
We collaborated together back in 2017 on a research study into the benefits of biophilic design in a gym environment, exploring the additional mental health benefits of training in that type of nature-inspired indoor environment. The link to that study is in the show notes.
In this discussion though, we’re looking at green care and the benefits of nature exposure for seniors in care homes, different types of natural settings and how they ca impact our mental wellbeing, social exercise vs solo exercise and of course more on the green exercise theme.
Mike has a conspicuously well trained mind, he is able to handle multiple threads in an argument simultaneously, seamlessly nudging various arguments forward, piece by piece, making it I believe a remarkably easy conversation to follow despite the academic depth and obvious rigor that lies behind his thoughts.
FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI - EXCUSE TYPOS!
Matt Morley
Mike, thank you for joining us on the podcast. I'd really like to establish the scene with a little bit of background on your connection to nature. How did that become part of your career within the sports and exercise science space?
Dr Mike Rogerson
Yeah, good, good place to start, I guess. So first of all, I've always been not extremely so but like an outdoors appreciator, an outdoors kind of person, I spend a lot of outdoor time as a child just with friends at the local park to be honest, so I say nothing too extreme.
But then in terms of my professional nature connection, my my undergraduate dissertation, during my my first degree in Sport and Exercise Sciences, focused on what was at the time very new strand of research called Green exercise.
So I did projects that sounded interesting to me. And then through the process of doing it, I had my own kind of methodological and research related thoughts about it.
So so that sparked my interest. And then when I decided after a few years after university, when I'd been living in London, a few other places doing various things, came back around to it and then decided wants to do a master's in psychology because I was interested in that kind of stuff.
But always with an eye on returning at some point to to address the issues, I thought there were with the green exercise kind of research area. So that's how my professional nature connection kind of got started.
Benefits of green exercise in a natural environment
Matt Morley
Okay, so let's loop back round that the green exercise bit, I wanted to lay a baseline in terms of the benefits and the why. And I think perhaps the root in for that could be the concept of green care, which is arguably, perhaps more extreme in a sense, but also, if you're able to make an impact there.
How interesting that the idea of a dose of vitamin nature for people, for example, living with dementia could genuinely improve their quality of life.
So I'm wondering if you could just talk to us a little bit about that. And also considering things like, you know, whether there are certain ages where nature exposure can can be more or less beneficial?
Dr. Mike Rogerson
Yeah, the first thing to say is definitely a universal thing in that, from what I've seen, certainly in the research, most people can get some kind of benefit. But the benefit each individual gets will be down to things like age or previous experience.
And, and also potentially, the reason why they are engaging with the nature environment in the first place for that acute experience will lead into it. So there's research showing that nature, type, time spent in nature, as a child can can buffer life stresses, both as a child and then into adulthood, as well, we have this thing called placemaking, where if somebody gets a connection with particular placement of that nature or not, then that can be a powerful tool that they they then use that to almost serve a function of finding a mental space when they visit there to to address problems they might be having and feel restored.
And of course, then it's theoretical reasons why a nature environment might be additionally useful if you do pick nature environment, as the place to make. Whereas then, yeah, put the kind of green care end of things which tends to be older adults, not always. A lot of it is with older adults, then yeah, obviously, they've got the often they've got the aspect of reminiscence.
So if they spent time in nature as a child, for example, in the countryside or on a farm, then if a care provider takes them to a farm or other type of outdoor environment, they've got that reminiscence factor and it brings old memories back that otherwise wouldn't have done and then you sometimes find that they they are readily able to talk easily about old old memories because of the environment they're in.
Whereas otherwise they don't. They don't open up at all when they their memories very bad. So I've seen that. For example, in adults living with dementia, and the environment when they spend time in it a farm environment for example, seems really powerful tool and then momentarily cutting through some of those that kind of cloud that dementia is placed on them.
So it's a really powerful thing to witness. But But yeah, researchers also kind of touched on that and started to bear it out a bit more numerically. And with some some wonderful work qualitative insight to. So I'd say that the benefits are not universal in the sense that everyone gets the same thing all the time, or to this all to the same extent, but universal in the sense that most people, most of the time should be able to get some kind of benefit from from engaging with nature.
So establishing the benefits of exposure to nature. And we were doing that via Green care. But we can look at that in the next piece in group exercise. And then the ages whether it was Yeah, kids or adults, but I think we could okay.
Green exercise in nature for biophilia
Matt Morley
So let's use that as a springboard then and really get into your area of expertise around green exercise. So let's establish, first of all, what it is and and from there, how it can facilitate well being.
And perhaps if you could talk a bit a little bit about the potential that you identify with green exercise in terms of particularly that study you did from 2020, around regular doses of nature.
Dr Mike Rogerson
Okay, yeah, they, the term green exercise, just quite simply is referring to some kind of physical activity, whilst experiencing nature in some way. So, most regularly, you could think of a walk in the park, for example, however, don't have to be experiencing nature. In terms of being there in the place, it might just be a case of looking at images of nature. So some kind of nature experience and some kind of physical activity.
So on the physical activity side of stuff that could be what you consider exercise or even sport.
Or it could just be more kind of activities based in nature, like horticulture, or allotment tending to an allotment, that kind of thing, or doing some kind of task at the farm, even. So there's different types of green exercise. So I don't believe to be put off by the term exercise, it's just just the umbrella term that's kind of used so so both kind of influences of an environment on an exercise behavior or outcomes of exercise.
And things like green care could both be considered under the green exercise umbrella. So that's kind of what it is and what's underneath that umbrella and in terms of the the outcomes that have been reported by the research in terms of exercise more in terms of walking and cycling.
The classic findings are, exercise improves your psychological well being and in the short and the longer term. But exercise in nature might offer additional boosts to that so even bigger, improvements in mood or self esteem or restored levels of attention. That kind of thing.
And on the green care side, there's lots of kind of evaluative work been done, which I'll come on to, in relation to the 2020 study in a second. And a lot of the time, that kind of mood or other wellbeing related questionnaires.
So the borrower can have a wellbeing scale, for example, in the UK, and then some some interview. So qualitative insight into what difference Greencare experiences seems to be making to people, both in short term and over things like 12 week programs, or longer than that.
So yeah, in the 2020 study, you mentioned, Matt, the point is, I had lots of data from those kinds of valuations where it's a well being targeted project for a specific, vulnerable group of some kind, whether that's older adults living with dementia, or youth risk, or homelessness and lots of different vulnerabilities, where they would use the environment in some way as the base or as a really key component of that wellbeing program.
So I mentioned already the dementia wellbeing project, but it's based on a farm, I looted to that already. There's also another organization, we work with a lot locally, called the wilderness Foundation, which is a youth at risk related projects to do with wellbeing and recovery from other serious issues. So essentially, it's a it's a therapy program, but the environment is key to it. So they take them to wilderness environments, including up to up to the cane gardens in Scotland. And that that, that space they go to becomes a key component of the therapy.
So what I did is I pulled the data from lots of different projects like that, because on their own, there wasn't enough data to properly analyze it statistically. But together, there is a method where once you pull that data, you can do a proper statistical analysis of the data.
So So did that. And unsurprisingly, probably, it came out that these projects seem to be benefiting people's mental well being as measured by the Bar Academy for Wellbeing Scale, which right now in the UK is the kind of the go to, for overall mental well being. And I split that analysis in one part by by how long the project was. So was it 12 weeks? Or was it I think 26 Weeks was, was the other group. And both of those groups showed improvements over time and mental well being.
The slightly longer projects showed slightly larger improvement, but most of the improvement was gained after only 12 weeks. And then another finding of of that particular paper was that for for different types of people, there were different extents of the benefit that they they seem to gain from going on these projects.
So although everyone showed some kind of not everyone, but overall, most people showed improvement in their mental well being score, the people who started off with the lowest scores showed the biggest improvement. So that's a real demonstration of the kind of leveling up ability of of these nature based wellbeing projects. And it shows that maybe the most vulnerable could get the most benefit.
Matt Morley
So when you say that the lowest scores, so is that in terms of current mood, in current sort of self esteem, sense of vitality, what were the markers in that?
Dr Mike Rogerson
So this particular project I've just been talking about was the only data that I had that was from the same measure across all of the projects was the Warwick Edinburgh mental wellbeing scale. So that's a measure of kind of globe, a superficial and overall measure of somebody's mental well being. So that that can be categorized into high, medium and low in relation to the UK national kind of average.
So when I'm talking about people with low mental well being made the greatest improvements, more more definitely speaking, I mean, people that were in the low category of mental well being at the start of a project made the bigger improvements compared to people who started from average to high category, so they really caught up, which was amazing.
Matt Morley
It's interesting, you know, I'm thinking back to our 2017 study, you know, at that point, the concept was effectively and Jim and I was assuming it was going to be a pretty standard fitness studio gym for your average gym goer. But since then, so much interest has come from perhaps slightly more peripheral areas of the market. I mean, you've mentioned disadvantaged kids
Kids recovering from trauma. I've had requests come in, like, could you create a green jungle gym type space for us within this NGO office? For kids to be able to play in anything? Oh, yeah. What a wonderful idea. Or in an old people's home in a care home, could you create a space for training, mobility and balance, but then it's all biophilic and green?
You know, increasingly, I see the benefits there for perhaps groups that, that need it even just that little bit more. And they might be, as you say, in that lower segment, right? Because you can just make that such a big leap from from one mental state to another.
Dr Mike Rogerson
Yeah, absolutely. And then the, yeah, unfortunately, rightly or wrongly work, work in kind of like pharmaceutical terms, if you like, don't be with them with well being. And often it obviously is treated with with pharmaceutical medications. And in that kind of language, if we're talking about where's the biggest bang for our buck?
It's bits with the people who will make the greatest improvements and have the most catching up to do if you like, in that sense, so. So yeah, I think it's, that's in terms of the research pointing towards that, which previous research of other types has done.
So there was a study by a researcher by the surname Mitchell up in Scotland, two, who showed number of years ago that access to green space can can essentially lessen the socio economic disadvantage on on people's mental health. So there's that discrepancy between socio economic groups, but the access to green space that somebody has can then can minimize that discrepancy. So, so that kind of leveling up is a real thing.
Biophilic design in luxury wellness spas gyms
Matt Morley
So, you know, that's it, I think, just to sort of sort of round that piece of interest in the the other area, we're now seeing some interest is arguably in the very highest upper percentile, where they're just trying to like in a Wellness Center in a in a fairly prestigious corner of London, for example, where they're just trying to squeeze every last drop of wellness and wellbeing and happiness and mood enhancing benefits from a space.
So you're already going in having a spa treatment and the like, Okay, well, if we layer in biophilic design, and we bring that outside world in and we bring in some nature to this space, can we get a little bit more bang for our buck?
So it's interesting, in a sense, the market bifurcates and sort of splits into I think, perhaps the, you know, arguably, the area in the middle is perhaps the area where you don't want to be I think it's perhaps if anything, either in the sight to disadvantaged area, or in the area where there's, there's more budget, and there's more interest in just getting every last drop of wellness, but it does raise the question, then, what type of, of nature or natural settings we're talking about?
You know, I might, in my mind, we often did things along the green lines, right, it was it was forest scenes and what have you, but I know that in 2015, you looked at some different versions of that of the types of natural settings. So what were the outcomes from that piece of work?
Dr Mike Rogerson
Yeah, so we did that study, because of the point you've just raised what what kind of nature and and just to backtrack very slightly, when we look at Green exercise we choose we've chosen that color. I mean, you can argue it's because because we coined the term in the UK, University of Essex and and nature to us looks largely green in color.
However, when we talk about green excise, that that really the word green pertains to nature, it like we could have chosen another color, you know, and then there is the blue exercise group that has very similar idea but focuses more predominantly on on water.
You go to Australia, and there's much more orange in in nature environment. So yeah, great green is really pertaining to that. So we, we looked at just looking at real green excise happening in the real world, which A popular example of that is now parkrun events, so a 5k, run or walk how have you found it in a local park?
So I selected four different Park run events, which varies in terms of the amount of water they had, and it's a very predominantly a kind of environment. It was some of the grasslands are a heritage site park built around culture to castle or along the beach. Just to see do we get different findings from different green excise environments?
And I guess positively, the answer was no, not really. Problem. It's all good. So that was the kind of the short answer and then and go beyond that. We we measured a bunch of factors about individuals. So like age, gender, about their, about their exercise I did. So how fast did they run the 5k, Park run event and things like that. And then stuff about the environment as well. So was it cloudy Was it raining.
And obviously, in fact, there were four very different types of environments. So to see how much of the benefit, the psychological benefits of exercise that we measured, which was self esteem, mood, and perceived stress, could be explained by those factors we measured.
And what we found, again, I think positively, is that we couldn't explain more than 10% of the improvement people showed in those psychological outcomes. Which terms tells me that the vast majority, somewhere around 90% or more was due to stuff we didn't measure.
So it doesn't matter who you are, or how fast you run park around, or whether it's raining that day, or which type of green environment you go for, you should be able to get most of the benefits of green exercise experience. So actually see that is a really, really positive result, it turns that universality of retaining psychological benefits of a green exercise.
And just to round that off, I think it's important to say, we didn't include an alternative type environment, like an urban environment or a non green environment. And that was because most other green exercise research does make that comparison is green versus non green.
So whether that's outdoors versus in a gym, or in a green environment, like a park versus in the inner city center. And predominantly, those those studies are showing that green can give you those boosts. So so we didn't include that comparison. In our study I've just talked about we just compared within our kind of spectrum of, of popular green exercise environments.
Social exercise vs solitary exercise
Matt Morley
Okay, so that study then was looking at what we might classify as a social exercise setting. So it was, to some extent, I mean, obviously, you're running alone, or you may be running with a friend or your or your husband or wife or your kids in the background. It's always quite a sort of, but it's a collective experience, right?
Then you look at a gym, the majority of people are training in the gym, or if you look at trail running, for example, that can be pretty solitary. And there can be beauty in that too. I find certainly that something about that that connection with nature and having the time to think and reflect and or listen to audiobooks, or whatever it is that you do is part of the experience.
But I know that you've also looked at this in a much more rigorous and scientific way in the past. And I wondered how you what the outcomes were from that process of looking at group versus lone green exercise participation.
Dr Mike Rogerson
So yeah, we we got people to do a typical grid excise experience. So a joke around the kind of green space on our university campus, actually, in this case. And they did that either on their own or as as part of a group.
And what we found, again, at the kind of like my superficial level was that the exercise experience elicited improvements in in the psychological variables that we measured, which was self esteem and mood, and also seem to increase people's reported level of connection to nature in both conditions, which sounds surprising, because it was in the same green space each time.
But we didn't find a difference in the psychological outcomes between our two groups or two conditions. So doing it on your own versus doing it with other people. So although superficially that that suggests, it doesn't make any difference, whether you do it on your own or with others, just from that study alone, it it doesn't really tell us about the potential nuances.
So for example, when you're doing green excise on your own, you might be more frequently attending to the environment. So focusing on on a tree blowing in the wind, for example, that kind of thing. Whereas when you're doing a social experience, you might not notice that as much, but you might get alternative benefits to those psychological outcomes from having a conversation and enjoying the social interaction.
So we don't really know whether the social setting makes no difference to the influence of green on you the influence of the environment, or whether it just kind of diminishes that and gives you a different benefit instead, which is more of a cup comes from that social experience. So, so it kind of raises more questions than answers.
But that was certainly a first step in trying to get one of those nuances of, of the green exercise experience and the outcomes, I think it's a positive thing, certainly from my perspective, because it means I think it leaves the door open to, to use a term I know that you've coined but the idea of exercise squared, so like doubling up with with extra benefits from indoor or outdoor green exercise in a collective group.
So whether it's CrossFit or hit training, whatever it might be, but equally, if it's a one on one session, and you're in a green exercise environment, you can still get similar type benefits. So I think it's not closing anything, it's sort of, it's allowing opportunities for all kinds of goodness, maybe with some distinctions between the type of hormone releases that we're getting, and the ones that we're getting from into connection with other people.
And that social engagement versus as you say, just Yeah, breathing in all those phytoncides sides in the forest and breathing fresh air and sort of connecting with nature is slightly different, but still, goodness, right. And I think often come to this philosophical point, when it comes to research findings, and the point is, sometimes does it matter how it works?
Dr Mike Rogerson
And, and for most people, most of the time, I think it's the latter. For me, as an academic, I'm very interested. So I want to know how it works. And many other people do too. Indeed, that that is key to in terms of that pharmaceutical language and bang for your buck.
Well, if we can make tweaks to the, to the experience, like they make tweaks to a medication to try to make it work better and give you more benefit from it, that's when we need to know how it works. So I do think it's important, but in the acute experience of doing it, and getting the benefits on that occasion, is probably the latter, it's just that it works.
Matt Morley
I think there's another angle to as well, which is about automaticity, and finding ways that people can actually start enjoying it for themselves on some inner level, and therefore keep going and repeating and make it a habit. And for some people, that solitary exercise thing is just not happening.
It's just not in their psyche to get out of bed at six in the morning and hit the workout and reach those peaks. But but if there's a group of people or your best buddy around the corner, waiting for you on the corner of the park, then then you're good.
And you know, you have to has to adapt, I think that's the positive message that I take, what you're saying is that, you know, exercise is very personal. I think some people it is a solitary experience, and it's just you go deep into the cave, and you knock it out and you get the job done and other people, they need that interaction and then need accountability, and so on and so forth. What you're saying is great exercise works in both cases.
Dr Mike Rogerson
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I agree with everything you've said there. And it's why a lot of health interventions, now they, they, they're interested in the amount of kind of social support around the person who's going to be doing it. And we often hear about somebody's doing a particular, whether it's a diet or physical activity intervention, and a family member says yeah, I'll do it with you. I'll do it with you. And that makes a huge difference to many, many people. So yeah, I totally agree.
Matt Morley
When you're looking ahead, and we're talking before we started recording, but around where this can all go. If you if you look 3—5 years into the future in terms of what you're doing around the Green Expo space at what what's left to be done, or what would you like to see in terms of further evidence based research coming through that you think can make a real impact? He has a lot lots of things to be totally honest with you.
Dr Mike Rogerson
From across the research field, excused upon trying to make everyone's research more rigorous, also, starting to more more so use the same measures each other across different institutions, different countries, so we got more comparable results, and then we can pull the results easier like I did in in the doses Nature paper we talked about earlier. So there's that.
To be honest, the research area in the modern day started in 2000 to 2003. I feel like there's a lot of very, very interesting early findings, but now we need to increase that rigor. Wherever we can start getting at the mechanisms more so we can say more fine tune the experience for certain people. And in terms of my my particular kind of next steps I think exciting is the virtual reality use without Reality.
So yeah, that's what I mentioned earlier, isn't it? I think that we need to use virtual reality. Not instead of every other type of research, but where we do lab based research. Previously, we've shown people big screens with images of different environments on.
And in fact, the benefit of doing it in labs, you control the exercise, and understand the exercise rigorously. But now we've got this wonderful virtual reality technology, we can make that exercise experience more immersive and hopefully slightly more like the real thing.
So that then when we compare our lab based results to our more ecologically valid comparisons of indoor versus outdoor exercise, and things like that, then then it will marry up easier. And we can understand these mechanisms better through the control and rigor it offers.
Matt Morley
Nice. I look forward to following along for another five years or so. See what you're up to.