Introduction

Blue spaces may benefit mental health and promote physical activity, although the evidence is still scarce. And benefits on physical health are less consistent. The objective of this randomized crossover study was to assess psychological and cardiovascular responses to blue spaces’ exposure.

Methods

A sample of 59 healthy adult office workers was randomly assigned to a different environment (i.e. blue space, urban space, and control site) on 4 days each week, for 3 weeks. For 20 min per day, they either walked along a blue or an urban space or rested at a control site. Before, during and/or after the exposure, we measured self-reported well-being and mood, blood pressure, and heart rate variability parameters. For well-being, we also assessed the duration of these potential effects over time (at least 4 h after exposure).

Results

We found significantly improved well-being and mood responses immediately after walking in the blue space compared with walking in the urban space or when resting in the control site. Cardiovascular responses showed increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system, both during and after walking along the blue and urban spaces. However, cardiovascular responses measured after the walks, showed no statistically significant differences between the blue and the urban space environments.

Conclusions

Short walks in blue spaces can benefit both well-being and mood. However, we did not observe a positive effect of blue spaces for any of the cardiovascular outcomes assessed in this study.

中文翻译：

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在蓝色空间环境中反复短暂步行对身体和心理健康的影响：一项随机交叉研究。

介绍

尽管仍然缺乏证据，但蓝色空间可能有益于心理健康并促进体育锻炼。而且对身体健康的益处也不一致。这项随机交叉研究的目的是评估对蓝色空间暴露的心理和心血管反应。

方法

每周4天，3周中，将59名健康的成人上班族的样本随机分配到不同的环境（即，蓝色空间，城市空间和控制场所）。每天20分钟，他们要么沿着蓝色空间或城市空间行走，要么在控制地点休息。在暴露之前，期间和/或之后，我们测量了自我报告的幸福感，情绪，血压和心率变异性参数。为了幸福，我们还评估了随时间推移（暴露后至少4小时）这些潜在影响的持续时间。

结果

我们发现，与在城市空间中行走或在控制场所休息相比，在蓝色空间中行走后立即改善了幸福感和情绪反应。沿着蓝色和城市空间行走期间和之后，心血管反应均显示出交感神经系统的活动增加。但是，步行后测得的心血管反应表明，蓝色空间和城市空间环境之间没有统计学上的显着差异。

结论

在蓝色空间中短暂漫步可以有益于身心健康。但是，我们没有观察到蓝色空间对本研究评估的任何心血管结局均具有积极作用。