In some countries, such as Japan or Finland, it is recognized that contact with trees can have therapeutic virtues. This practice has a name: sylvotherapy. However, the influence of trees on physical health remains difficult to demonstrate scientifically, because they constitute only one parameter among others, such as genetics, social origin or lifestyle.
American researchers from the University of Drexel, Pennsylvania, sought to question, as part of a study published in the journal Science of The Total Environment, The link between a pregnancy carried out near green spaces (trees or parks) and a so-called “healthy” birth, that is to say an infant born almost in the long term, of normal and healthy build.
New trees: an asset for newborns
To do this, they concentrated their research around Portland, Oregon, where nearly 36,000 new trees were planted between 1990 and 2020. Taking an interest in an urban area where the vegetation is relatively recent is judicious, because this makes it possible to widen the sample of women – to varied profiles – and therefore that of the children concerned by the study: around 3,000 newborn babies.
The results are surprising. The more the number of trees planted less than 100 meters from a mother’s home in the ten years preceding the beginning of pregnancy is high, the more the weight of the child at birth too. When a mother lives near at least ten trees, her child weighs on average 50 grams more.
-“Fifty grams, it may seem little, but if each baby in our sample gained 50 grams at birth, this would represent 642 babies less considered small for gestational age, and therefore at higher risks to know a less good development later in their lives“explains Yvonne Michael, professor responsible for the study, in remarks reported by Phys.org.
Health allies
The newly planted trees, and by extension the already existing trees, thus seem to influence three key parameters of the health of newborns: a higher birth weight, a reduction in the risk of early births and a decrease in premature births (that is to say before the eighth month of pregnancy).
By helping to reduce air pollution, attenuating road noise, and by reducing stress, a non-negligible factor in the risk of premature delivery, trees appear as real health allies.
The planting of trees is therefore essential as an easy, inexpensive means, to take care of our health, from the very early stages of life.
Related news :