Newsletter #71: 🏞 6 Eye-opening studies on nature, awe & wellbeing
Recent evidence supporting intentional living
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Every month, I send a curated Research Roundup exclusively to the Stewards community. My goal with these roundups is to break down the latest published science across metabolic health, longevity, and human flourishing—distilling complex studies into actionable, real-world takeaways so you can make informed decisions for yourself and your family and stay up to date on the latest peer-reviewed research on topics I think are really important (and sometimes overlooked!).
As someone passionate about bridging intuition with evidence, I love this particular roundup because it gives us biological proof points to show that simple practices—like getting out in nature or cultivating awe—profoundly change our physiology. Today, I wanted to give everyone in our broader community a peek at what our Stewards receive.
Below is a preview of a this month’s Research Roundup covering 6 eye-opening studies from the past year that connect nature, brain health, the microbiome, and human purpose.
Enjoy, and have an incredible week!
Dr. Casey
The link between nature and wellbeing is moving from intuition to measurable, peer-reviewed biology, and this issue lays out some of the mechanisms. We are living in such a fascinating time, when high-tech modalities like fMRI and microbiome testing can help “prove” timeless, intuitive wisdom—that practices like forest bathing and cultivating awe can meaningfully support health. And those proof points may help these practices become incorporated into clinical care and medical education. This is great news!
In the following research roundup, we’ll review 6 papers from the past year: a neuroimaging review shows nature reliably lowers stress and self-referential brain circuits; a green-space study finds dose-like thresholds for benefit in older adults; a forest-immersion pilot ties improved mood to shifts in the nasal microbiome (whoa! 👃); a mindfulness trial in nurses lowers inflammatory markers in the blood; and two studies on meaning, that "wondering awe" mediates nature's mood boost, and that loneliness hurts lifespan largely by eroding life purpose. Together they treat green space, awe, and purpose as modifiable public-health resources.
Here's what the latest studies found.
📖 How to use this guide: All of these studies are from the last 8 months or so. If you want the high level quick summary, just read the “Super Simple Summary (What You Need to Know!).” This is the key point to expand your understanding of where the science is going. Reading all 6 summaries will give you a ton of eye-opening info in 5 minutes. If you want to go deeper, check out the Overview, Authors’ Conclusion, and Why It Matters sections!
1️⃣ Your brain on nature: A scoping review of the neuroscience of nature exposure
April 2026 · Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
Super Simple Summary (What You Need to Know!): Brain scans show that time in nature reliably reduces activity in the brain's stress and self-focused rumination circuits and shifts it toward a more restored, attention-replenished state, and this turns up as a consistent pattern of brainwave changes (more alpha and theta, less beta). The evidence is still mostly correlational, but the neural fingerprint is becoming clear.
Overview: This scoping review synthesizes 108 neuroimaging studies, spanning EEG (electroencephalogram, which records electrical activity of the brain), fMRI (an MRI that looks at brain activity), functional near-infrared spectroscopy (looks at brain blood flow), and structural MRI across real-world settings, controlled labs, and virtual reality, to map how exposure to natural environments changes brain activity. A consistent EEG signature emerged: nature exposure increased alpha and theta oscillations (rhythms tied to relaxed, inwardly-directed attention) while decreasing beta activity (a marker of cortical arousal and cognitive load). On fMRI, nature exposure was associated with reduced activity in stress-related and self-referential circuits, the networks tied to rumination and worry.
The authors propose a cascading model: because the fractal geometries common in natural scenes are processed more efficiently and demand less perceptual effort than dense urban stimuli, they may trigger a downstream shift into attention-restorative states, with natural environments effectively acting as "spontaneous regulators" of the nervous system, promoting “calm awareness and self-regulation.” Fractal patterns most amplified the alpha/theta response, and blue spaces (e.g., rivers, lakes, oceans) conferred comparable stress buffering. The authors caution that the underlying studies are heterogeneous, often correlational, and vulnerable to confounding.
Authors' Conclusions: Natural environments are reliably associated with reduced stress-circuit activity, attention-restorative brain states, and beneficial long-term brain structure; future longitudinal and mechanistic trials are needed to confirm these candidate neural mechanisms and their moderators.
Why It Matters: This consolidates fragmented evidence into a coherent neuroscience basis for nature's restorative effects on the brain, strengthening the case for green space access as a biologically grounded public health and wellbeing intervention.
2️⃣ Green space activity exposure and linear/non-linear associations with multidimensional health among older adults: evidence from a generalized additive model
April 9, 2026 · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Super Simple Summary (What You Need to Know!): For older adults, there seems to be a "sweet spot" of outdoor physical activity, roughly 7–12 sessions a week, that delivers the biggest health benefits. Social wellbeing, though, just kept improving the more time people spent active in green spaces.
Overview: Researchers surveyed 744 older adults across five urban parks in Fuzhou, China, to examine how the frequency, duration, intensity, and total volume of green space activity relate to psychological, physiological, social, and overall health. Using a generalized additive model designed to detect non-linear patterns, the team found that most health benefits showed threshold effects rather than simple straight-line relationships, with benefits appearing most pronounced around seven to twelve activity sessions per week, fifteen to twenty-two hours of total weekly activity, moderate exercise intensity, and a specific cumulative activity volume. Notably, social health stood out by improving steadily and consistently as green space activity increased, without an apparent plateau.
Authors' Conclusions: Green space activity exposure shows threshold-based, non-linear associations with most dimensions of older adult health, while social health uniquely shows a consistent positive linear relationship, offering exploratory evidence that structured green space activity could be calibrated to specific frequency and intensity targets to maximize multidimensional health benefits. In this sample, moderate levels of green space activity exposure of 7–12 weekly sessions, 15–22 hours, and 40–90 MET-hours ("metabolic equivalent of task" hours – a measure that combines duration and intensity) were associated with more pronounced positive health outcomes.
Why It Matters: This offers a practical, dose-like framework for prescribing nature-based activity in older adults, reinforcing green space as an ecological determinant of health that can be optimized rather than simply encouraged in general terms.
3️⃣ Associations of forest vs. urban environmental exposure with well-being and nasal microbiome composition: An exploratory pilot study
February 15, 2026 · Environmental Research
Super Simple Summary (What You Need to Know!): Students who spent eight weeks living in the forest felt happier and less anxious than those who stayed in the city, and the bacteria in their noses shifted too, gaining more "good" bacteria linked to wellbeing. It's a small study, but it hints nature might improve mood partly through bacteria living in your nose.
Overview: In this exploratory pilot study, thirteen University of Washington students (five relocated to remote forest field sites in western Washington, eight remained in urban Seattle) were followed over an eight-week period. Researchers measured mental well-being through validated surveys and collected nasal swabs before and after, profiling participants' nasal microbiomes via 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Compared with the urban group, the forest group showed significantly greater increases in positive mood and larger drops in negative mood and rumination. These psychological shifts paralleled biological changes: the forest group showed higher post-exposure bacterial richness (at a marginally significant level) and significant enrichment of genera including Bifidobacterium and Akkermansia, previously linked to immune-regulating and well-being-associated effects; increases in these taxa were in turn associated with the mood improvements.
Authors' Conclusions: Eight weeks of immersive forest exposure was associated with significant improvements in psychological well-being relative to urban exposure, accompanied by increased nasal microbial diversity and enrichment of health-linked taxa, suggesting nature exposure may influence mental health partly through the nasal microbiome; this is a small, hypothesis-generating study, and replication in larger, controlled studies is needed.
Why It Matters: This pilot study offers a plausible biological mechanism, the nasal microbiome, connecting time in nature to mental well-being, adding a concrete psychoneuroimmunological pathway to the long-observed link between ecological exposure and human flourishing.
The leading author, Connor Lashus, shares more about the study in this article: Breathing Nature In: How Our Environments Shape The Nasal Microbiome and Human Well-Being
4️⃣ Impact of Mindfulness Meditation on Perceived Stress, Somatic Symptoms and Inflammatory Biomarkers Among Clinical Nurses
January 2026 · Journal of Nursing Scholarship
Super Simple Summary (What You Need to Know!): Nurses who did eight weeks of mindfulness meditation felt less stressed and had lower levels of certain inflammation markers in their blood than nurses who didn't meditate. Calming your mind can produce real, measurable changes in your body's stress and immune chemistry.
Overview: In this randomized controlled trial, 102 hospital nurses were assigned to either an eight-week mindfulness meditation program or a non-meditation control group. The intervention consisted of eight weekly 60-minute mindfulness meditation sessions delivered in a private, quiet hospital setting, following Smith's standardized protocol, which trains participants to nonjudgmentally observe the breath, bodily sensations, thoughts, sounds, movement, and ultimately their moment-to-moment experience.
Researchers measured perceived stress, physical stress symptoms, trait mindfulness, and blood levels of interleukin-6 (inflammatory marker), leptin (a hormone that helps regulate appetite), and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (inflammatory marker) before and after the intervention. Nurses in the meditation group showed significant reductions in perceived stress, somatic (body) symptoms, interleukin-6, and leptin (all p < 0.001) compared to controls, along with a marked increase in trait mindfulness (p = 0.003); tumor necrosis factor-alpha did not change significantly. The trial directly links a behavioral practice to measurable shifts in circulating inflammatory biomarkers in a real-world, high-stress occupational setting.
Authors' Conclusions: Mindfulness meditation efficiently reduces perceived stress, somatic symptoms, and inflammatory biomarkers in nurses, highlighting its potential as a holistic intervention to improve both psychological and physical well-being in high-stress healthcare environments.
Why It Matters: This trial provides direct psychoneuroimmunological evidence that a low-cost mental practice can measurably lower inflammatory markers tied to chronic disease risk, in a population enduring chronic occupational stress.
5️⃣ Wondering Awe Is the Mediator of the Link Between Experience of Nature and Psychological Wellbeing—Relevance for Public Health
November 5, 2025 · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Super Simple Summary: People who spend time in nature tend to feel better mentally, and the main reason is the sense of awe and gratitude it sparks. Awe was the single best predictor of wellbeing.
Overview: The authors surveyed 491 participants (74% women; mean age 51) to test how contact with nature translates into psychological wellbeing. They found that experience of nature (r = 0.56) and nature-relatedness (r = 0.55) were strongly associated with feelings of awe and gratitude ("wondering awe"), which in turn were moderately related to wellbeing (r = 0.42). The relationship between nature experience and wellbeing was significantly mediated by wondering awe and gratitude, meaning nature appears to boost wellbeing largely by evoking awe. Among all variables, awe/gratitude was the strongest single predictor of wellbeing, followed by dispositional gratitude and spending time exercising outdoors. The authors frame these emotional-spiritual experiences as accessible, modifiable public-health resources rather than purely private states.
Authors' Conclusions: The authors conclude that wondering awe and gratitude are the key psychological mechanism linking nature exposure to wellbeing, and that fostering nature contact and awe-evoking experiences could serve as a meaningful, low-cost public-health strategy to support mental and emotional flourishing.
Why It Matters: It offers an empirical bridge between ecological determinants of health, spirituality, and human flourishing, showing awe as a measurable pathway from nature to wellbeing.
“The best predictor of wellbeing in this study was Awe/Gratitude, followed by gratitude as a disposition, and further by outside sporting activities.”
6️⃣ Loneliness predicts mortality risk via the erosion of purpose in life
January 23, 2026 (published online; print March 2026) · Social Science & Medicine
Super Simple Summary (What You Need to Know!): Loneliness shortens lives largely because it drains people's sense of purpose, and that loss of meaning, more than being alone itself, is what most strongly predicts earlier death. Helping people hold onto a sense of purpose may matter even more than simply increasing social contact.
Overview: This study examined whether loneliness predicts earlier death because of the feeling itself, or because of what loneliness erodes over time, specifically a person's sense of purpose in life. Drawing on 8,351 adults from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, with 11 years of mortality follow-up, the researchers found that purpose in life statistically explained an estimated 88 percent of the association between loneliness and mortality risk, driven in particular by loneliness-related declines in purpose over time rather than baseline levels. The effect held after adjusting for depression, social isolation, and neuroticism. In other words, loneliness appears to predict death largely because lonely people experience a parallel erosion of meaning and direction in their lives, and it is this loss of purpose, more than the social isolation itself, that carries the greatest weight in predicting earlier mortality.
Authors' Conclusions: The erosion of purpose in life is a primary mechanism linking loneliness to increased mortality risk, and interventions aimed at sustaining or restoring a sense of purpose may be more protective than addressing social contact alone.
Why It Matters: This reframes purpose in life as a measurable, modifiable biological lever connecting psychological and spiritual well-being to physical survival, not just a soft or secondary aspect of mental health.
Extra note from paper:
“Purpose in life is defined as the extent to which an individual perceives their life as having personally meaningful goals that they are committed to that guide them and give their life direction.
Purpose is “very important in satisfying the fundamental need for relatedness, that is the state of being related or connected, a critical deficit intrinsic to the experience of loneliness.””
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