As early as the 4th century BC, the famous Greek physician and philosopher Hippocrates spoke of the importance of nature for human health and the treatment of diseases. In ancient Greece, too, there were clinics with landscaped gardens for their patients, where stays in nature were also prescribed as an integral part of the treatment. Doctors even prescribed their patients the experience of nature after leaving the clinic. These hospitals were called clinics. These hospitals were called Asclepieia, after Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of the art of healing.
Gardens and nature also played a significant role in medical training centres. The medicine of the future will once again be oriented towards these ancient models and the relationship between man and nature will be an integrated feature of therapies for treating physical and mental illnesses, but above all in preventive health.
Modern science has made enormous progress in discovering the origins of diseases. However, many “common diseases” do not fit into easily explained patterns. 60% of the causes of poor health, chronic diseases and premature death are not traced back to clear triggers such as pathogens, environmental pollutants or genetic factors. And the search for causes in the case of mental disorders is even more complex.
Just as human beings are complete in their diversity, the processes in our bodies and minds are also very complex. The complex relationships we establish with other people, animals and plants are comparable to those we maintain with our living space and with nature. And those on the psychic and physical level are no less so. We are exposed to toxins, we suffer from stress, pressure to perform, psychological and social problems and perhaps we smoke or drink too much alcohol or we do not eat a balanced diet. On the other hand, the air is part of the environment in which we move and we absorb substances from nature that promote health, through the lungs and the skin. We also absorb healthy substances from food products, which are increasingly contaminated with pesticides and artificial fertilizers and genetic techniques are being perfected. In short, we are subject to an almost unfathomable network of positive and negative influences on all levels of life that should not go unnoticed. Therefore, being healthy or sick is not something that can be attributed in general to a single factor.
The extent to which our interconnection with nature, plants, animals and landscapes is complex has become evident. Healing means making everything anew. If we intend to achieve this in the future, we cannot neglect the natural vital spaces of our environment and our relationship with them.
Understanding the human being as part of nature, as part of the intricate web of life, means opening up new perspectives and possibilities for other types of treatments in the fields of medicine and psychotherapy. The immune system is the basis of our health; and its responses constitute one of the most complex phenomena of the human body. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the influences of nature are indispensable agents for the proper functioning of the immune system and, evidently, for the human organism. The human body is modeled in union with nature and has worked since the appearance of our species, in interaction with it. Therefore, we are not only part of nature, but it is also part of us.
The boundaries are blurred; the human being does not end at the surface of the skin, as has already been seen in general medicine and the body's immune system. A relatively new scientific discipline has emerged, psycho-neuro-immunology, which aims to investigate how the psyche influences the immune system and vice versa: how the immune system affects the psyche. The nervous system is here the mediator between body and mind. Hence the concept of psyche "neuro"-immunology.
If we start from the idea that the human body does not end at the limits of the body, then we would need to add three more letters: “eco”. I can easily imagine that the science of the future could be called eco-psycho-neuro-immunology. It would deal with the study of the extremely complex system between the mind, the immune system and nature. These three pillars form a functional network that must be understood as belonging to the whole.
Physicians and psychotherapists could apply this knowledge accordingly, understanding the human being as part of the system of “nature”, with which he is linked to the origin of the species, and also nature as part of man, that is, forming a reciprocal functional unit. In this way, the alignment of nature and its influences would be seen as another factor likely to influence the contraction of diseases and disorders, because this alignment implies that a part of the person is practically “cut off” by being deprived of what is really needed for the functioning of what he needs. The origin of many diseases is easier to understand when we deal not only with the negative influences that are seen, but also with those positive influences that are necessary for life and proper to the nature from which we grow.
Author: Clemens G. Arvay . Book the biophilia effect
