My mother’s warning; “You are going to rot your brain out...” still rings through my mind whenever I spend too much time in front of
television set.I grew up in a time when mothers shooed their children out - rain, snow or shine - to get a breath of fresh air. Our television set tuned in to only four or five channels and those channels signed off at midnight. It would be years before cable television, satellite dish, VCRs and Nintendo would debut. Lazy summer days were spent riding bicycles for hours because there wasn’t much of anything better to do.
This period of time was also a few decades before Ritalin and Attention Deficit would become commonplace terms.
I have long believed that inactive hours spent indoors has contributed to increased incidence of Attention Deficit Disorder. A recent study, published in September 2004 issue of “American Journal of Public Health,” validates that believe.
University of Illinois researchers studied nature as an ADHD natural treatment. This study showed that children with ADHD benefit from time outdoors enjoying nature with a significant reduction of ADHD symptoms.
Researchers of this nationwide recruited parents of 322 boys and 84 girls, all diagnosed with ADHD, through ads in major newspapers and Internet. Participants, ages 5 to 18, spent time in a variety of settings which varied from big cities to rural settings. Some activities were conducted indoors, others in outdoor places without much greenery such as parking lots and downtown areas and other activities were in "green" areas such as a tree-lined street, back yards or parks. The parents were interviewed and asked to report how their children performed after participating in a wide range of activities.
The researchers found that symptoms were reduced most in green outdoor settings, even when same activities were compared across different settings. Researchers believe that simply incorporating nature into a child’s day could be widely effective in reducing ADHD symptoms.
