talent maposa

Founding director @icodzimtrust.Women& disability rights activist. Women rights is my calling, balancing community work and advocacy 4policy change my mantra

[Millie Marconi @MillieMarconnni]

A Japanese immunologist spent 20 years proving that the chemicals trees release into the air walk into your bloodstream, hunt down your stress hormones, and arm your immune system in ways no therapist or pharmaceutical has ever matched, and most of the data has been sitting in Japanese medical journals for two decades waiting to be translated.

His name is Qing Li.

He is a clinical professor at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo and the president of the Japanese Society of Forest Medicine. The Japanese government has been funding his research since 2004, and the body of work he has produced is the reason forest bathing is now an officially prescribed clinical therapy in Japan and Korea.

The story actually starts in 1982, when the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries coined the term shinrin-yoku to describe the practice of slow, mindful walking in a forest. They did it for a practical reason.

Japan was urbanizing fast, stress-related illness was climbing, and the country had thousands of square kilometers of forest sitting unused. The idea was to give people a reason to walk into the trees... They had no idea what was actually happening to the human body during those walks until Qing Li ran the first proper experiment in 2005.

He took twelve healthy adult men on a three-day, two-night trip to a forest park. They walked for a few hours each day. Nothing strenuous. No prescribed routes or breathing exercises. They simply walked slowly through the trees, breathing the air, looking at the forest.

Li drew blood and urine samples before the trip, on the second day, on the third day, on day seven after returning home, and again on day thirty.

The numbers that came back from the lab were not what anyone expected.

The activity of a specific type of immune cell called the natural killer cell, which is the cell your body uses to hunt down cancer cells and virus-infected cells before they can spread, had jumped by roughly 50 percent during the forest trip. The actual number of natural killer cells circulating in the bloodstream had increased significantly.

Three different anti-cancer proteins that those cells produce, called perforin, granzymes, and granulysin, had all risen sharply. And the effect did not disappear when the men went home. The immune boost was still measurable on day seven and was still partially present on day thirty.

Two hours a day in a forest had upgraded the immune system for a full month.

Li ran the same experiment with women a year later and found nearly identical results. Then he ran it with a control group who took a three-day trip through an urban area with the same amount of walking, the same hotel quality, and the same diet.

The urban group showed no measurable change in natural killer cell activity at all. The forest was doing the work, not the vacation.

The mechanism turned out to be a class of airborne molecules called phytoncides. Trees produce these compounds to defend themselves against insects, bacteria, and fungi. Pine, cedar, oak, and cypress trees release them in particularly large amounts, especially in warmer weather and after rainfall.

When you walk through a forest, you are inhaling those molecules into your lungs and absorbing them through your skin, and once inside your body they appear to directly stimulate the production and activity of the very immune cells Li was measuring in his lab.

Roughly 50 percent of the health benefit of a forest walk, according to Li's data, comes from the chemistry of the air itself. The other half comes from what the forest is doing to your nervous system.

This is where it stops being only about the immune system and starts being about stress.

A separate Japanese research team measured cortisol, the body's main stress hormone, in 84 participants across 35 different forest sites. They drew samples before and after a 30-minute walk in each forest and compared them to control walks in matched urban environments. The cortisol levels of the people who walked in the forest were lower than the cortisol levels of the people who walked in the city by a significant margin. Their heart rates were lower. Their blood pressure was lower.

The activity of their parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part responsible for rest and recovery, had gone up. The activity of their sympathetic nervous system, which is the part that drives fight or flight, had gone down.

Then a researcher at the University of Michigan named MaryCarol Hunter ran the cleanest version of this experiment ever done. She recruited participants from a city and told them to take a nature pill three times a week for eight weeks.

They were free to choose the time, the place, and the duration of the nature experience, as long as it was outside, in daylight, and free of phones, conversations, and aerobic exercise. They sent her saliva samples before and after each session so she could measure cortisol changes accurately and rule out the normal daily drop in stress hormones that happens to everyone.

The result was that participants experienced a 21.3 percent drop in cortisol per hour spent in nature, with the biggest payoff happening between minutes 20 and 30 of the walk.

After that, the cortisol kept dropping, but more slowly. The threshold dose for measurable stress relief was just 20 minutes outside in something that looked and felt like nature.

What none of this means is that nature is a substitute for therapy or for medication when someone genuinely needs them. Therapy treats different things than a walk does, and Li himself has been careful in interviews to call forest bathing a complementary intervention rather than a replacement for clinical care.

But what the research has settled is that the human body has a physiological response to being among trees that operates on the same biological systems modern medicine is trying to reach with drugs and clinical protocols, and that response is fast, measurable, and free.

The strangest part of Li's work is the implication he keeps repeating in interviews. The average person now spends more than 90 percent of their life indoors. Their cortisol stays elevated. Their natural killer cells stay sluggish.

Their parasympathetic nervous system rarely gets a chance to take over. The system that was tuned by millions of years of life under a canopy of trees is being asked to run permanently inside a box made of drywall and screens.

Your body has not forgotten what it is supposed to do in a forest. It is waiting for you to walk into one.

[African Women's Development Fund @awdf01]

Solidarity without funding = symbolism.

Feminist organisations who are also leading survivor support receive less than 1% of international funding.

Our solidarity must come with sustained funding.

#EndSexualViolence #EndImpunity

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

@ChimhamhaZw @crimewatchzw Are you seriously blaming the mom??.

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

@EuropeInvasionn Could be mental health related

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

I hv payments due & failed 2 do internet banking from a usd acc and the bank said , “Kindly note that all digital platforms are currently down you will be able to transact after the conversion process has completed…there are no timelines”.what does that mean 4me & the economy.

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

@icodzimtrust @awdf01 @WCOZIMBABWE @WalpeAcademy @nangozimbabwe @unwomenzw ▶️ Watch this video https://t.co/hETmsXzxYM

Motherhood penalty and 2024 IWDtheme

#InternationalWomensDay

[Afya na Haki @afyanahakiug]

The African Reproductive Justice Litigation Fund will provide financial and strategic support to litigation efforts that advance reproductive justice across the continent.
Submit your detailed project proposal by 1st February 2024, for a chance to secure funding to advance reproductive justice in Africa > https://t.co/53TiC87okD

[K @begottensun]

Parents: I will tweet this once a week. These are the only apps I recommend you let on your kids devices.

1) Khan Academy - Home schooling or extra lessons from baby till university. 100% FREE
https://t.co/PMfwJiKKuq
2) Khan Kids (iOS & Android)
Free learning Games and educational fun
3) Ngano - African Folktales , family reading and fun powered by AI.
https://t.co/05F44kxeBZ iOS & Android.

These will get your kids reading , maths , science, and lots, lots more. All very fun and you can unleash them without guilt coz they will be learning. Non of these apps have ads or super computers trying to influence your kids and make them slaves to consumption.

The owner of TikTok said he absolutely wouldn’t let his kids on the app he built. Bit @CyprianAarons and I are fathers and we built African Folktales to give our kids real entertainment without compromising our values and Africaness. Khan Academy is internationally recognized as one of the best online schools which has thousands of Ivy League graduates that used it from childhood.

[ICOD Zim @icodzimtrust]

The UPR is based on equal treatment for all countries & is an opportunity to declare what actions have been taken to improve the human rights situations in member countries and to overcome challenges to the enjoyment of human rights.
#LeavingNooneBehind
#GreaterInclusion

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

@unwomenzw @UNICEFZIMBABWE @UNHCRSouthernAF @unescoROSA @UNDPZimbabwe @ZimHRNGOForum @zhrc365 @USEmbZim

[ICOD Zim @icodzimtrust]

The ICOD ZIM Director @talentmaposa gives a brief insight into our work in the communities and an overview of the UPR Development program.
@awdf01 @NEDemocracy @AWET_Apostolic @nangozimbabwe @WCOZIMBABWE @YetTrust @ShamwariyeMwana @DeafZimTrust @zhrc365 @GenderZimbabwe

[Patricia Humura @PatriciaHumura]

To achieve #menstrualjustice, we need to stop silencing menstruation.
#WD2023
#MenstrualJusticeForAll

@WomenDeliver @YouthDeliver @ChoonaraShakira @talentmaposa @emswsmith @emmacolehiv

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

@GwiziSoneni & the skin is skinning my dear ndipeiwo routine 🙈

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

@Chumamnrz @SiphoMalunga Also got the Kigali vibes 🤔🙈😂😂

[ICOD Zim @icodzimtrust]

1) Media is vital tool in bringing women and girls' issues to the public domain where they can receive the attention they demand.
2) Women ought to be active in decision making platforms in order to push gender sensitive policy making and service delivery.
#LeavingNoOneBehind

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

Attending the GF In Country Meeting in Bulawayo @icodzimtrust

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

@icodzimtrust CommitteeStage is the critical stage were major amendments are done to the proposed bill .@nangozimbabwe @NASCOHZW1 @healthtimeszim

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

#HappeningNow training of 45 Midlands & Masvingo CSO&CBOs on Law making @NASCOHZW1 @APAWomensAgenda @icodzimtrust @awdf01 @UAFAfrica @AllianceofCBOs @nangozimbabwe @UNAIDS_ESA @UNDPAfrica @FordFoundation @OttoSaki @OxfamEAfrica @amplifyfund @SwedeninZW

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

The facilitator highlighted that the role of parliament include, representing , legislating, oversight& protecting the law constitution

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

#HappeningNow training of 45 Midlands & Masvingo CSO&CBOs on Law making @NASCOHZW1 @APAWomensAgenda @icodzimtrust @awdf01 @UAFAfrica @AllianceofCBOs @nangozimbabwe @UNAIDS_ESA @UNDPAfrica @FordFoundation @OttoSaki @OxfamEAfrica @amplifyfund @SwedeninZW

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

Dear Self I’m sorry for not being kind to you , not choosing you first , not buying you flowers, not being careful in my food choices & settling for less . I have hurt you but let’s try something else in #2023goals #ChooseLife #selfcare #LoveToday #healingjourney I love ❤️ you.

[talent maposa @talentmaposa]

@GreenInstitute2 our conversation last week

[𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 @healthtimeszim]

The Mozambican Ministry of Justice has banned, in the Central Province of Manica, a religious sect called “Johane Marange” for allegedly promoting child marriage and disrespecting health issues. #Zimbabwe #SundayMorning