reactions within the wood and leaves. Evergreen forests smell
strongest in midsummer, which is also when pests are busiest. The so-
called “pinosylvin” in pine trees and the terpinoids of cypress trees
both stimulate respiration and act as mild sedatives, relaxing us.
Although aromatherapy is the most popular alternative treatment
for anxiety worldwide, it hasn’t been well studied in large, clinical
trials. A review of the literature in 2011 found that while most studies
showed beneficial effects, it was hard to tease out the power of the
placebo effect in most of them. Nonetheless, the authors concluded
it’s “a safe and pleasant intervention.” Since then, a large study found
that 80 percent of cancer patients in the National Health Service of
the U.K. reported significantly less anxiety while using
“aromasticks.” That’s bigger than just a placebo effect, but the
authors didn’t know how the smells might be working. Other studies
have reported that scents like lavender and rosemary cause both drops
in subjects’ cortisol levels and increased blood velocity to the heart (a
good thing).
If you believe something can make you feel better, it sometimes
does. The imagination is a powerful healer. Moreover, what if it’s not
necessarily nature that’s helping us, but the absence of something
else? Walking around sniffing the fresh hinoki forest, I had to wonder
if some of the benefits attributed to these mystical woods are the
simple result of not being in the city. If air pollution is so bad for us,
getting out of town, even if it means sitting inside an aluminum box
on a rural parking lot, might look pretty beneficial by comparison.
Regardless of whether people know exactly how polluted their
neighborhoods are, their psyches seem to know. In one survey of 400
Londoners, “life satisfaction” fell significantly—half a point on an
11-point scale—for each additional 10 milligrams per square meter of
nitrogen dioxide pollution.
If less pollution makes us feel better, the same could be said of a
reduction of noise, crowds, unwelcome distractions and, sometimes,