Living close to a park makes you ‘younger’, new research shows | Health

Get rid of all those expensive skincare products to look younger: spend a little more time in parks instead. “Living near more greenery can help you to be younger than your actual age,” Kyeezu Kim, lead author of the study, told Euronews. This new knowledge allows us to look at the better integration of “green infrastructure” in cities in a different way, according to the researcher.

The team analyzed a type of chemical modification of our DNA known as ‘methylation’ to determine biological age. Certain methylation patterns change as we age. These changes are used to estimate a person’s biological age on a molecular level and is referred to as the ‘epigenetic clock’. By examining this ‘clock’, scientists can predict, for example, how likely a person is to have a heart attack, cancer or cognitive decline.

Their research shows that spending time in a green environment can turn that epigenetic clock back a bit. One group of respondents lived in a place that was surrounded by 20 percent green within a radius of five kilometers. The results showed that they were biologically about 2.5 years older than those whose homes were surrounded by 30 percent greenery.

More social interactions and exercise are partly responsible for this difference in biological age, according to the researchers. In addition, the link between epigenetic aging and greenery was even more pronounced in people from poor neighborhoods.

Living near urban green areas has many health benefits. A Finnish study in January showed that visiting green spaces reduces the risk of taking asthma or high blood pressure medication by a third and a quarter, respectively. This would also reduce the use of antidepressants by 33 percent.