Inner cities, while a fantastic opportunity to find more jobs and activities, can have an effect on your health. Depending on where you live, how close to the major road systems you are, and what kind of lifestyle you lead, these effects can stack over time. Of course, does this mean you can only be healthy if you live in an idyllic plain with the perfect crops and the best access to spring water? Of course not.

That being said, it can be that working with certain techniques will help you mitigate the intensive effects of living in the midst of a city. In small, subtle ways, they do have an effect on us. In fact, researchers have found that they can accurately predict how many people live in a city, close to the nearest ten thousand people, by how quickly people walk and how short their conversations are with each other on the street. This goes to show that even if we don’t agree, we are heavily affected by our environment.

So - how can you mitigate the health effects of inner-city living? With the following advice:

Get Into Nature

It’s important to get into nature if you can. This will help you breathe fresh, clean air, connect with the wildlife and plants around, and help you reduce your stress. This isn’t a placebo either, it turns out that city folk who live within a mile of a large green space encounter less stress than those who live further within the inner-city. Getting into nature can help you reconnect with the actual world, not the world human beings have constructed for themselves. If anything, it’s good to just get a change of scenery from time to time.

Take Care Of Your Mental Health

Mental health is just as important as physical health, and if not, perhaps more so. In a city with all of its chaos and busyness, it can be hard to appreciate this or take care of yourself. Meditating, exercising, keeping good close social links that you see regularly (although Covid has proven this tricky), delving into your hobbies, avoiding overuse of social media or video games - these things can help preserve your mental state. But more than anything, be sure to speak up if you need help. 

Care For Your Diet

It’s very important to care for your diet. City living gives you access to a wider array of indulgences, from booze stores around every corner to fast food joints advertising through delivery services. Supplements such as those offered by Made by Hemp, eating good, fibrous green vegetables, eating at your calorie limit most days and drinking large quantities of water is essential to feel your best self day after day. If you can do that, you will offset some of the potential hazards of inner-city indulgence, or be strong enough to subvert it entirely. That can be a great help.

With this advice, we hope you can more easily mitigate the health effects of inner-city living.