After long years of research, the Japanese immunologist Qing Li says that going for a walk in the forest, what he calls "forest baths", boosts the immune system and prevents cancer, in addition to other "great benefits" for the health.
Qing Li, who has just published in Spanish his new book 'El Poder Del Bosque' How to find happiness and health through the forest '(Roca Editorial), has explained to Efe that the' Shinrin-yoku '(Forest Baths), - a term created by the Japanese Forestry Agency in 1982 - and a trend that is beginning to be known in Spain, is to connect with nature through the five senses while you are in the forest.
The expert tells in his book the results and the research process, in which he took on several occasions groups of twelve people - men and women - to several forests in Japan and during two nights he checked "by averages of blood and urine extractions" that being there benefited them in many aspects of health.
For example, he found that they reduced their blood pressure and stress, improved their cardiovascular and metabolic health, reduced their blood sugar levels, improved their concentration and memory, fought depression, recharged energy, helped lose weight and they were in a better mood.
Qing Li says that as remarkable benefit trees prevent diseases such as cancer, "because they are able to de-stress and enhance and defend the immune system."
In this sense, Li says that when you give yourself a 'forest bath', NK cells - cells that can kill cells infected by a virus or tumor cells - increase considerably, so it is possible to prevent the disease, "although don't cure it."
He also explained that they increase the production of anti-cancer proteins.
"The presence of granulysin, anti-cancer protein, increased by 48% and other proteins such as granzyme A, granzyme B or perforin also increased considerably," sums up his experiment.
In the study he did in the forest of Iiyama (Japan) he noticed that after spending three days and two nights in the forest, the NK cells of the participants had gone from 17.3% to 26.5%, that is an increase of 52.6% and the cell count went from 440 to 661.
Preventive effect, not curative
Despite this statement, Li wanted to make clear that the 'forest bath' serves to prevent diseases, "but it doesn't serve to cure them."The book explains that if you can't go to the forest you can go to the mountain or to the beach, but Li defends that the only and best way to "live the experience of the forest bath is to go to a forest", better if it is with abundant and tall trees, because it is the true way to obtain "more effects on health".
"If you go to the beach, you will get the effects that relaxation produces, but not the effects that are achieved in the forest, because, among other differences, there are no odors," he remarked.
"If you want to boost the immune system it is important to spend two nights in the forest. Thus, the effects on health will last one month, "Li has advised, which also recommends that if there is not enough time, go once a week - the effect would last a week or, in the case that it doesn't possible, "try to be two hours a day".
According to the Japanese immunologist, the three conditions to achieve a good effect are "The density of the forest, that is to say, that there are many trees, that the trees are large and that they are within a large area".
It is also important that the temperature of the forest be temperate, "so that there are more phytoncides" - a chemical that the plants emit go "after it has rained" and it doesn't matter if you go alone or in a group, but what it does advise is "relax and walk slowly".
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