How Working with Soil Can Improve Your Health Within Weeks
Image source, BBC/ Serenity Strull
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Working with soil, grass, trees, or bushes offers various benefits to our skin and overall immune system.
I often take walks in a garden near my home where diverse trees grow, and enchanting flowers bloom through spring while birdsong enlivens the air. Although my shoes often get muddy, I usually return home with clean hands.
Research shows that simply touching soil, moss, or plants benefits our skin’s microbial community. Mira Gronroos, a nature health researcher at the Finnish Environment Institute, conducted an experiment where participants rubbed their hands with soil, peat, and moss for 20 seconds. After washing their hands with water, the diversity and abundance of microbes on their skin increased. “Their hands looked clean to the naked eye but had undergone significant microbial changes,” she explained.
Though seeing many bacteria on our skin might be concerning, microbial diversity helps maintain balance by controlling harmful pathogens, thereby protecting us against diseases. Emerging research highlights that contact with natural elements like soil and plants is an easy way to enhance this microbial variety, boosting both skin health and the immune system.
Twenty seconds is not much time – during my walks, I often enjoy touching tree trunks or sitting on grass. However, Gronroos notes that longer and more frequent contact with nature yields better effects. In her study, skin microbes quickly returned to their pre-exposure state, suggesting that repeated and extended exposure is necessary to bring lasting changes to skin and body.
Playing in Soil
Image source, Credit: BBC/ Serenity Strull
At Arinkolinna Day Care Center in central Finland, children regularly have muddy hands. Every day, they spend several hours in a playground surrounded by trees, running among bushes and climbing ropes, building sand houses, splashing in puddles, and collecting pieces of soil and wood.
By the day’s end, their heads to feet are covered in mud. Scientists are studying how this environment benefits their health by analyzing samples from their skin, saliva, stool, blood, and hair over the past three years to understand its impact on their immune systems.
Arinkolinna is one of 43 daycare centers across Finland participating in the Biodiversity Project. Led by environmental scientist Marja Roslund, the study has been ongoing for two years.
In 2016-17, Roslund created a natural ‘forest floor’ environment in the daycare playground with peat and planting boxes. After children played there regularly for 28 days, researchers analyzed changes in the bacteria on their skin, saliva, and intestines, then conducted follow-up tests a year later.
Compared to children playing on hard, sterile surfaces, those exposed to the forest floor environment showed increased microbial diversity in their skin even after one year.
Healthy Skin, Healthy Body
Caring for skin brings numerous benefits beyond its surface. Skin health affects hormone activity, cardiovascular conditions, as well as mental and cognitive functions. Studies increasingly show that contact with diverse skin bacteria influences immune responses.
In one experiment, some young children played in sand mixed with microbially rich soil, while another group played in similar-looking but microbe-poor sand.
The children playing in microbially rich sand showed an increase in certain beneficial bacteria on their skin. They also exhibited immune markers in their blood that helped protect without triggering excessive immune activity.
These findings inspired the Biodiversity Project, which strengthens the concept that a variety of microbes in our natural environment affect the body’s microbial communities and promote health.
It has long been recognized that diminishing biodiversity in our surroundings contributes to the rise in immune-related diseases. This research helps clarify why and how this occurs.
Benefits Extend to Adults
These health benefits are not limited to children. One study involved adults growing vegetables indoors during winter, some using soil rich in microbes and others using soil with fewer microbes but the same appearance.
Participants handling microbially diverse soil showed greater bacterial diversity on their skin and higher levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines in their blood, while the other group showed no such changes.
Gronroos applies these findings in her own family as well. “When I go outside with my children, if they want to pick up some fruit, sticks, or small items, I do not stop them. I let them bring those home to play with,” she says.
She emphasizes the need to implement similar ideas in urban settings.
“Cities should be connected as closely as possible with natural environments. This approach brings people into contact with nature effortlessly as they go to school or work,” she explains.
More research is needed to understand how close contact with nature affects our immune system. “The risks are low,” she adds, “and the potential benefits are many without significant harm.”
These facts may encourage us all to touch tree bark, sit on grass, enjoy nature, and not fear a little mud.