Feeling down?
You can improve your mood with just one sniff.
New research shows flowers can be a surprising solution for reducing stress.
If you’ve heard the expression, “You’ve got to take time to stop and smell the roses,” now you have a big reason to do it.
“In our study, we focused on flowers,” says Dr. Erin Largo-Wight, who led the behavior research study from the University of Florida. “And what we found were women who lived with flowers, even just for a few days, had significant reduction in stress.”
Largo-Wight says flowers have a unique gift to reduce stress, because they allow for contact with nature.
“We know that natural sunlight, a potted plant, even recorded nature sounds have been shown to reduce stress,” Largo-Wight says. “So it makes sense that flowers also reduce stress”
Surveys show 68 percent of Americans report feeling high levels of stress, multiple times every week. And one-third of Americans have high stress every day.
Largo-Wight says reducing stress levels is something everyone should be working on all the time.
“Especially now as schools are starting back up, and we have a lot going on,” Largo-Wight says. “Thinking about the environments where we spend most of our time is one way that we can promote our health and reduce our stress without a tremendous amount of effort and commitment.”
