A new study has shown that watching your favourite nature documentary or looking at wildlife can physically ease your pain.
Academics at the University of Exeter and the University of Vienna have found that exposing your brain to nature can change the way your brain processes pain.
Scans monitoring the brains of 49 people showed that pain was reduced in intensity when participants were shown videos of nature rather than a city or office scene.
Participants were given minor electric shocks while viewing videos of the various settings, with scans revealing the pain-reducing effects of those watching nature scenes were about half as effective as typical painkillers.
University of Vienna PhD student Max Steininger, lead author of the study, explained: “Numerous studies have shown that people consistently report feeling less pain when exposed to nature.
“Yet until now, the underlying reasons for this effect were unclear. Our study is the first to provide evidence from brain scans that this isn’t just a ‘placebo’ effect – driven by people’s beliefs and expectations that nature is good for them – instead, the brain is reacting less to information about where the pain is coming from and how intense it feels.
“Our findings suggest that the pain-relieving effect of nature is genuine, although the effect we found was around half that of painkillers. People in pain should certainly continue taking any medication they have been prescribed. But we hope in future alternative ways of relieving pain, such as experiencing nature, may be used to help improve pain management.”
The research, titled ‘Nature exposure induces analgesic effects by acting on nociception-related neural processing’, has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
The findings offer potential for developing alternative pain management strategies, the researchers said, and participants also reported experiencing less pain while immersed in the natural scenes as well as watching them on screen.
Dr Alex Smalley, a co-author from the University of Exeter, added: “This study highlights how virtual encounters can bring the healing potential of nature to people when they can’t get outside. But we hope our results also serve as renewed evidence for the importance of protecting healthy and functioning natural environments, encouraging people to spend time in nature for the benefit of both the planet and people.
“The fact that this pain-relieving effect can be achieved through a virtual nature exposure which is easy to administer has important practical implications for non drug treatments, and opens new avenues for research to better understand how nature impacts our minds.”
