THE MYSTERIOUS BENEFITS OF LANDSCAPE AND A WEEKEND OFFER

Greetings from the snow and the mountains!

I’m still yomping up and down peaks and valleys, through ice and snow, thanks to my crampons/spikes/yaktrax/cleats.  These wonderful things should be given out to anyone worried about walking (or slipping) on ice.  Hip fractures kill a shocking 20-60% of older adults within a year.  Resistance training can lower fracture risk by 30-40%, but fall prevention should also be part of our personal strategy. My pair of (inexpensive) crampons came from Decathalon online. Slip them over your shoes and off you go!

And yet, despite my best intentions to avoid a hefty Swiss hospital bill by not slipping, I have slipped over – just once. It only takes the tiniest patch of ice. Within a heartbeat, I was on my backside!  I wasn’t wearing my crampons at the time, but I was in sturdy walking boots with good grip and the tarmac road had a generous scattering of gravel. I was being vigilant and walking slowly – which goes to show how easy it is to slip on a spot of ice.

Regardless, I’ve never felt better.  The Swiss people have been an inspiration. I met a couple in their 80s sledging down hill and whopping with glee.  I’ve encountered dozens of ‘older’ Swiss people (yes, in their 70s and 80s) ski-ing, snow-shoeing, langlaufing, tobogganing and hiking mountains.

In the most recent world happiness report, the Swiss ranked ninth. The Brits ranked 20^th while the Americans came in at 23^rd.  The Italians came in at 41, the Japanese at 51 and the Afghans at 143 (just to give you context). Indeed it was really only the hardy Scandi countries (and – a little surprisingly – Israel?) that ranked more highly than Switzerland when it comes to happiness. So I’ve spent my month here watching closely. And the answer isn’t necessarily economic. In the valley where I’m staying there are hundreds of farming families for whom life is extremely tough, particularly as climate change ravages the Alps.

Having spoken to many Swiss people, one factor stands out: the natural beauty of the place and everyone’s determination to be outside, immersed in that beauty.  And (because it’s cold) everyone is moving! The Norwegians have a term for this determination to celebrate the wintry outdoors: friluftsliv (pronounced “free-loofts-liv”), which translates as outdoor or open-air living.  And the Swiss are big advocates…

A recent study of movement and mood could explain Swiss happiness: when researchers analysed 33 studies examining the movements of nearly 100,000 adults using fitness trackers, they found a direct correlation between daily steps and good mood. Participants (aged 18 to 91, across 13 countries) were more likely to feel happy the more steps they took.  Indeed, those who logged at least 5,000 or more daily steps were less likely to experience depressive symptoms, with the greatest effect among those who clocked more than 7,500 steps a day. These walkers were a staggering 42% less likely to feel (or be) depressed.

Moreover, the researchers found that for every additional 1,000 steps the risk of developing depression fell by an extra 9%. No wonder I’ve felt so good!

But what this study didn’t consider was the landscapes in which we walk. Without doubt, walking somewhere beautiful is more joyous and uplifting than pounding a treadmill in a gym, or hot-footing it through a polluted concrete jungle.

In the last couple of years, advances in technology have enabled researchers to scan the brains of walkers while on the move.  Unsurprisingly, they’ve found that not all locations are equal. This is the subject of my next book, The Walking Cure: Harness the life-changing power of landscape to heal, energise and inspire.  The Walking Cure is about the remarkable art and science of place and space to affect our mind, mood and body. Since my early 20s I’d noticed – without really understanding – that I frequently craved particular types of location. Over the years these included desert, mountain, woodland, water of various sorts, as well as more urban environments.  When Bloomsbury, my publisher of 52 Ways to Walk, asked if I had any ideas for another book, I said, a little tentatively, that the tug of landscape struck me as important but I wasn’t sure how or why. And so the project started.

I’m very pleased to say that Waterstones has picked The Walking Cure for a special pre-order discount of 25% for this weekend only (ends midnight Monday).  If you’re interested, please click here and use the code PREORDER25 . The book is officially published on 27 March.

My research uncovered all sorts of extraordinary things: for instance the air we breathe differs according to where we are, and, yes, air contains vital nutrients; our microbiomes are affected by where we spend time not merely what we consume; our bodies produce different hormones according to our location; we move differently according to the land beneath our feet.

Landscapes also affect us psychologically and emotionally in ways we cannot always articulate.  Our distant ancestors were highly sensitive to landscape – after all if they spent too long in the wrong place, death was almost certain. Today many of us have lost touch with our ability to connect with a landscape, but if we pay attention and listen to our bodies, I think we can reconnect with the places – rural and urban – that feed us, both biologically and psychologically.

The idea of nutrients-by-air is still new.  A pair of Australian scientists recently coined the term aeronutrients to describe the multiple molecules we inhale over the course of a day. In forests and by the sea, the air is particularly rich with (quite different) nutrients. Meanwhile our traffic-clogged cities (and some rural valleys) are often deficient in aeronutrients. Instead, the air in these locations can contain chemicals that actively harm us, largely thanks to air pollution.

Where we walk often affects us in surprising ways. Unpicking this has been a fascinating experience and I’m indebted to dozens of researchers who generously shared their thoughts with me as I wrote The Walking Cure. Over the last three weeks, I’ve thought a lot about walking in snow and at altitude.  When we walk at moderate altitude, our kidneys produce a hormone called EPO (erythropoietin).  EPO is still being investigated but experiments with rats showed that EPO helped them sleep more deeply. My sleep has certainly been excellent – although all the yomping may have played a part.

Setting aside the physiological changes prompted by altitude and cold, I’ve found the endless pristine whiteness almost meditative. Hiking in snow has helped empty my mind of clutter. I’ll be returning from my snowy sojourn feeling calm, collected and confident.  With nicely honed muscles, courtesy of the many, many ups and down.  And it’s the muscles that kick-start the hope molecules that make us feel good (there’s lots about hope molecules in the book too).  The space around us then adds to our mood, amplifying the work of our muscles. As one Swiss man said to me, gesturing to the snowy mountains, ‘How can I not be happy in this place?’

Other intriguing things happened as I hiked in snowy forests and up mountains: I found myself recalling large chunks of the books and fairy tales I read as a child, from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (remember snow-draped Narnia?) to Heidi. These were my first experiences of snow and mountains, and to be thrown back to those magical imaginative discoveries was, well, magical. So I was delighted to listen to the recent Zoe youtube/podcast featuring Prof Wendy Suzuki (we’re long-time fans of Dr Suzuki and covered her work on table tennis here) in which she talked about the importance of short brisk walks for keeping our memories razor-sharp and how to keep our hippocampi ‘large and fluffy’ through the retrieval of memories.

Anyway, if you’d like a 25% discount on The Walking Cure, please use this Waterstones online link and add the Waterstones code, PREORDER25, before midnight on Monday.

And if you’ve ever felt the mysterious pull of a place or a landscape, please do share it in the comment box. It may not be as ‘mysterious’ as you thought…

Annabel