A research group led by Assistant Professor Masashi Soga, Department of Biosphere Systems, Graduate School of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the University of Tokyo, said that gardening in direct contact with plants improves people's health and reduces stress levels such as depression. It was clarified for the first time in the world by "analysis".
In today's urbanized society, promoting the health of urban inhabitants has become an extremely important issue.In addition, although it has been pointed out that contact with plants through gardening contributes to people's health, there is little scientific evidence to show its effectiveness, and it has not been possible to obtain confirmation.
Against this background, the research group verified the effectiveness and consistency of the health promotion effect of gardening using the research method "meta-analysis" that collectively analyzes existing research data.The meta-analysis used was a systematic and comprehensive search of English papers published in the academic paper databases "PubMed" and "Web of Science" by January 2016, and dealt with the relationship between gardening and health. 1 exams.
Integrating the individual test results reported in each study showing the differences in health improvement between non-gardening and those with gardening, a statistically significant relationship between gardening and health promotion By verifying sex and participating in gardening, various measures related to people's physical and mental health such as lowering depressive symptoms and stress levels, improving quality of life and ties with local communities, preventing obesity, etc. It turned out to be useful for improving.
In addition, as a result of scrutinizing the 76 tests used in this analysis, mental health (depression / anxiety symptoms, life satisfaction, etc.) is stronger than physical health (obesity, bone density, etc.) with gardening. It was also shown to be related.However, this study did not elucidate the detailed causal relationship between gardening and health promotion, so in the future, we will discuss the "relationship between natural experience and health promotion" including gardening in a more detailed mechanism. We will continue to elucidate and carry out research so that we can make concrete proposals from various perspectives such as city planning and health promotion.
