P is for Phytoncides

Nature is medicine, like actually medicine.

I love the smell of a pine forest, or a rainforest. It turns out it’s actually medicine. The essential oils rising from the plants around you are called phytoncides, and research has shown that inhaling them lowers cortisol levels, reduces blood pressure, and meaningfully stimulates the immune system. The Japanese have a name for this practice Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing and it has become a legitimate field of therapeutic research.

If you’re in Australia, you’re extra lucky. Our native eucalyptus forests are among the most phytoncide-rich environments on earth, with some gum species emitting exceptionally high concentrations of volatile organic compounds compared to forests elsewhere in the world. Key active ingredients are well-documented for their anti-inflammatory and antiseptic properties. A compound called pinocembrin, found in high volumes in certain Australian species, is even being investigated as a treatment for severe lung fibrosis including scarring caused by long COVID. And the immune benefits are striking: time spent in these forests significantly increases the activity of natural killer cells, the body’s frontline defence against infection.

*My spicy brain writes these for the dopamine hits I get from external validation. Please hit like and keep me off of the dating apps x Catie

Australia’s Indigenous peoples have always understood the power of these plants and this land. Their relationship with country is grounded in an intimate, generational knowledge of our synergy with nature. What Western science is now carefully measuring and publishing, they have always known. In that sense, research like this isn’t a discovery so much as a verification a slow, roundabout acknowledgment that nature and humans are, and have always been, symbiotic.

There’s something almost romantic about all of this. That pull away from the city. The need for open air and the earth, to feel small amongst the wisdom of these ancient trees. Maybe it’s not just a call to nature, but more a call from nature.

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