Nature, Home & Longevity: How Our Environment Shapes Our Health
Our Environment Is Key to Our Health
We often think of health in terms of diet, exercise, and genetics.
But increasingly, scientific research is showing that where we live, the home and built environment around us, plays a huge, often under-appreciated role in our wellness, longevity, and capacity to withstand chronic disease.
A recent article, “Home Environment as a Therapeutic Target for Prevention and Treatment of Chronic Diseases…” (Huntsman & Bulaj, 2025) argues that our homes are ripe for interventions: through design, nature exposure, self-care, sensory enrichment, sleep, and more.
Meanwhile, traditional healing systems like Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) have long held that harmony with nature — with the elemental forces, seasons, energy flows — is essential for health and lifespan.
What Modern Research Tells Us: The Home as Medicine
Here are some of the key ideas from the MDPI article:
High burden of chronic disease. Many in the U.S. live with conditions like depression, anxiety, migraine, cardiovascular disease, and chronic pain.
Our Home environment is frequently overlooked. We spend many hours per day at home; the physical, chemical, sensory, social, and emotional environment of home can either exacerbate disease or promote healing.
Biophilic design and exposure to nature (views, plants, natural materials, natural light etc.) are powerful “non-pharmacological ingredients” that can reduce stress, improve mental health, reduce blood pressure, improve cognitive functioning, and help with pain.
Multisensory, environmental enrichment, along with habits like good sleep, nutrition, stress reduction, physical activity, music, social connection, help to modulate systems like the autonomic nervous system, and neuroplasticity etc.
Poor environmental exposures (pollution, toxic materials, bad air, noise, unnatural lighting) contribute to poor health.
How TCM Sees Nature & Environment in Health
We are a Part of Nature
TCM has for millennia emphasized that human beings are not separate from nature — we are embedded in the cosmos, the seasons, qi (氣), yin and yang, the Five Elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water).
Balance is Key
Qi and Balance. Good health in TCM means free flowing qi, not blocked, not excessive or deficient. Environmental stressors (noise, light, pollution, crowding, harsh built surroundings) can disrupt qi and cause stagnation.
TCM emphasizes balance: rest (yin) vs activity (yang), shelter vs exposure, cool vs warm. For example, rest and sleep (yin) are fundamental for rejuvenation. A home that doesn’t allow restful sleep (bad light, noise, artificial lighting) undermines yin restoration.
Five Elements and Seasons
Each element corresponds to organs, emotions, environment, seasons. For instance, Wood corresponds to growth, spring, liver; Fire to summer, heart; Earth to late summer, spleen; Metal to autumn, lung; Water to winter, kidney.
TCM gives advice to adapt habits, diet, exposures to match seasonal changes. A home environment that neglects seasonal variation (e.g., too hot, too cold, poorly ventilated) breaks that adaptive alignment.
Feng Shui and Bringing Nature In
While perhaps sometimes over-simplified or mis-represented, Feng Shui is about orienting dwellings, spaces, paths of energy flow, light, vistas, to support harmony. It’s analogous to biophilic design in some ways: giving good light, flow, natural materials, views, ventilation.
TCM traditions often involve use of nature, plants (herbs), natural sounds (wind, water), visual beauty, scents — all to balance mind & body. Our sensory environment matters.
Improve Health With Mother Nature
Imagine a person, perhaps YOU, with chronic anxiety and insomnia. Western medicine often treats with medications; but the environment at home may be contributing: harsh lighting, noisy neighbors, blue light exposure at night, poor ventilation, no opportunity for calm, views of nature etc.
From a TCM lens, anxiety manifests as Liver qi stagnation, or Heart fire, or deficiency of yin. Bringing restorative nature into home (plants, wood tones), reducing heat (both physical and emotional), ensuring restful night, restoring yin through diet and herbal teas, calming mind via movement / meditation can be root treatments.
Modern research supports that exposure to nature, improved sleep, reduced pollutants & stress all reduce physiological markers of stress, help mental health, lower blood pressure, and joy.
A walk in the woods can often do more for our health than any prescription.
Practical Tips for Designing Your Home Environment
Design your Home to Support Yin (Rest, Rejuvenation)
Good lighting that mimics natural daylight; darkness at night; minimal artificial glare.
Quiet zones, refuges for peace, natural sounds (running water, wind, birds).
Optimize your bedroom to restore yin: ensuring darkness, cool temperature, quiet, good mattress/materials.
Bring Nature In
Indoor plants, natural materials (wood, stone, bamboo), textures, views of greenery.
Use seasonal cycles: open windows in spring, let fresh air flow; adapt décor to seasons.
Manage Environmental Stress
Reduce pollutants: clean air, water, minimal use of toxic synthetic materials.
Reduce noise/light pollution, avoid constant exposure to devices/screens.
Cultivate Self-care Practices Aligned with Nature / TCM Rhythms
Seasonal eating (TCM emphasizes adjusting food to seasons); using herbs/teas.
Movement practices like qi gong, tai chi, yoga; breath work; mindfulness.
TCM places importance on emotional balance; environments that induce stress or anxiety affect health. Mindfulness, meditation, connection with nature help modulate stress.
Living our Best Lives
We’re waking up to the fact that health is not just what we eat, how much we exercise, or which pills we take, it’s also where we live, how we sense, and how closely we’re aligned with the rhythms of nature.
Our homes can be therapeutic if we design them, inhabit them, and care for them with intention.
Traditional Chinese Medicine, for thousands of years, has taught that human well-being depends on natural harmony: of qi, season, balance of yin and yang, and engaging all senses.
Marrying the insights of modern science with TCM perspectives gives us a powerful framework to live longer, healthier, more luminous lives.
