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Japan being 68% forest is an astounding stat.
Japan being 68% forest is an astounding stat.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_cover_by_state_and_terr...
Hmm, I'm also wondering about studies about overly sanitized environments for children being correlated with higher allergy rates. I guess poking around for a good representative study, it's actually low diversity of microbial exposure, not "cleaning" per-se that is correlated - e.g this is one reason why households with dogs have lower allergy rates. A monoculture of certain tree species also implies less microbial…
1. The immune system is not being exposed enough to wild or even infectious content, and it needs more threats to fight off.
2. ("Old Friends") The immune system is not being exposed enough to commensal or even symbiotic organisms that we co-evolved with, throwing off its calibration and tuning.
I instinctively prefer the second, the first seems a little too simple, like some some scaled-down version of "tough love" and "spare the rod[-bacteria], spoil the child."
Urban developers who make the mistake of using male trees, because they don't drop fruit/berries/seed pods, will make the residents suffer pollen. Sugi and hinoki apparently are not gendered -- they're monoecious.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pollen allergies have definitely skyrocketed in Sweden. We used to be able to sit in an office and work all year without hearing people sniffle and sneeze. Now it's like an epidemic, at least half the office is affected.
Probably we can blame higher hygiene standards, or some other environmental factor for it. Forests haven't changed much in past decades. Here in Finland I've never been affected by any kind of tree pollen at all, but somehow timothy grass pollen gives me horrible symptoms, forcing me to take antihistamine most of the summer. I lived my childhood near farmland and forests, so definitely got exposed to both forms of po…
I first read about this in The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence by Gavin McCormick. Really good read.
Hmm, most German forests are also vast monoculture 'tree farms' and have been for the last 250 years (also caused by large scale deforestation in the centuries before). In the Ore Mountains we also have those yellow clouds of pollen coming off spruce trees every few years, covering everything with a thin yellow dust layer, yet I'm not aware that the number of people with pollen allergies is exceptionally high (oth, m…
Japan being 68% forest is an astounding stat.
This article could have been summarized in three paragraphs. I'm really hating this trend of diluting content by giving useless testimonials, random anecdotes and delaying the resolution of the subject as much as possible.
You could summarise all of Ender's Game in a couple of sentences but, guess what, that wouldn't be particularly pleasurable.
Not everything has to by hyper-efficient. More importantly, not everything has to be tailored specifically for you. It's OK that other people like reading long-form content.
Hmm, most German forests are also vast monoculture 'tree farms' and have been for the last 250 years (also caused by large scale deforestation in the centuries before). In the Ore Mountains we also have those yellow clouds of pollen coming off spruce trees every few years, covering everything with a thin yellow dust layer, yet I'm not aware that the number of people with pollen allergies is exceptionally high (oth, m…
My aunt in Poland has terrible allergies now because of yellow pollen from spruce, but I'm not sure how that translates to larger population, other than it does happen