Forest Bathing Effects on Stress Markers in Brazilian Adults

A quasi-experimental study compared eight forest bathing sessions to guided urban exposure for adults in Brazil's Federal District. Primary outcomes included systolic and diastolic blood pressure, salivary cortisol, and psychological symptoms measured by PSS-10 and DASS-21. The dataset, shared by Guilherme Franco Netto under a CC-BY-4.0 license, shows significant reductions in cortisol and stress levels among the forest bathing group.

Use Cases

• Analyze physiological stress reduction based on systolic and diastolic blood pressure measurements.
• Compare psychological symptom changes based on Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) scores.
• Evaluate biomarker response based on salivary cortisol level data.
• Assess intervention efficacy based on perceived stress scale (PSS-10) results.

Strengths

• Includes specific physiological metrics such as systolic blood pressure (119.50 → 108.00 mmHg) and salivary cortisol (0.29 → 0.16 μg/dL).
• Reports statistically significant psychological outcomes, including an increase in low-stress participants from 17.4% to 52.2%.
• Provides a direct comparison between an intervention group (forest bathing) and a control group (guided urban exposure).

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset is very small (19.4 KB), indicating limited scope.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

A quasi-experimental study with two parallel groups conducted in the Federal District, Brazil.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-11 14:49:58; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Federal District, Brazil, specifically the Cerrado biome.