What Are the Health Benefits of Camping?

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Woman sitting by her tent drinking some coffe and enjoying the benefits of camping

Everyone has reasons they might choose to spend their weekend at a campsite. There are many benefits that camping could bring you. Some people need a mental break away from the stresses of work. Others use it to get a ‘digital detox’ or spend more quality time with the family.

Table of Contents

The ultimate list of the top 33 benefits of camping

There are many reasons why camping benefits your health, so let’s go through the top 33 reasons why you need to start camping and how it can benefit your health overall.

1) Improving your overall mental health

Camping can help to improve your overall mental health by reducing your stress and improving your mood, which in turn has a positive impact on brain functions and your metabolism. According to studies conducted on mental health, it was found that 71% of participants found a reduction in depression after they went on a walk outdoors (University of Washington, 2024 and Anon, 2007).

2) Promotes physical fitness

Camping is an active activity that can help to increase your daily activity levels. This comes in the form of carrying a heavy tent, setting it up, gathering firewood and going for a hike. 

Camping can be very beneficial for your health can be a surprisingly good form of exercise and can leave you feeling much more energised during the day. Whether it be the long hike to get to your destination, actually setting up your tents or even just carrying your items on your journey, you’ll be getting a good amount of physical activity that your body needs.

It’s not just the increased activity that you will gain. Moving around constantly during the day will naturally tire your body out. This means that you will want to recharge with a good night’s sleep. Even being tucked away in a sleeping bag in a small tent will feel like a dream come true at that point. Getting better sleep is incredibly important for us and can be one of the many additional health benefits of camping.

3) Receive better sleep quality

Camping can improve your sleep quality because it creates the opportunity for you to unplug from technology, get away from everyday city distractions and help expose you to natural yellow light that helps your body align with the natural sleep-wake cycle. 

4) Group camping improves relationships with social time

Camping as a group is a shared experience that can create strong memories and strengthen your relationships with the people you camp with. You can talk with them and visit your friends or family without any distractions, and even socialise late into the night. If you camp with your children, they’ll also notice an improvement in your behaviour. A study conducted by the camping and caravanning club found that when camping as a family, children notice that their parents have more time for hugs than usual (Real Richness Project, 2015).

5) Opportunity to connect with nature

Camping in the wild provides a range of health benefits including fresh air, sunlight, and a peaceful atmosphere to relax in. You can experience campfire romanticism, hear the birds singing, and listen to the wind blowing as you relax under the afternoon sun. 

6) Learning to appreciate the basics

Camping is a great way for you to see the benefits of “less is more” and that you don’t need all the material things that you think you do to be happy in life. 

7) Provides the opportunity to bond with family

Camping is a great way for families to learn how to work together and solve a greater problem. It can also be a great time for kids to learn from their parents or for parents to pass down lifelong skills. 

Camping can be a great way to bond with those around you. Especially if you plan a trip together over the weekend. There’s nothing more amazing than having a conversation whilst roasting marshmallows at a campfire or exchanging scary stories in a tent at night-time. It is these little moments that tend to bring us together and make us feel more connected to each other.

Also, if something can go wrong, it probably will. This is especially true with true camping. Being able to overcome these challenges through teamwork makes it more memorable. It also gives you a funny story and a fond memory to laugh about in the years to come.

8) Your brain appreciates green spaces

Your brain loves to be surrounded by nature and being in green spaces helps to improve general cognitive functions such as improving your attention span, memory, and creativity.

9) Improved Memory

Camping and being in nature help to improve memory by providing the brain with an increased level of oxygen and encouraging the production of serotonin.

10) Helps to reduce your stress levels

By escaping the chaos of everyday life, you are able to get into a relaxing space where you no longer have to focus on the pressures of life in the city, helping to bring down cortisol levels and overall stress.

It has been well-documented that being exposed to greenery can put you in a better state of mind. Research conducted by the Mind, Mental Health Association (2007)*, found that 71% of individuals recorded an increase in their moods after being exposed to greenery and nature outdoors.

If you’re the type of person who suffers from a lot of stress in their everyday lives or has a job that can be very demanding and mentally draining, perhaps you should look to camping to help ease your stress.

11) Getting away from the hustle of everyday life

There are so many things that call your attention in your daily life and having the opportunity to leave it all behind is a great way to decompress and stop thinking for a short period.

12) Chance to unplug with a digital detox

By going camping, you provide yourself with the opportunity to ditch your phone and technology in general. No emails, no social media, just you, yourself and your thoughts. A great way to reconnect with reality and not the bubble of pressures caused by socials.

Whilst the power of the internet has brought many opportunities and a source of entertainment like never before, some may say that it has completely taken over our lives. With technology such as our mobile devices and the connections that social media provides us with, you might feel compelled to constantly check your phones for the latest updates.

A study conducted by RescueTime has found that on average, we spend up to 3 hours and 15 minutes using our mobile phones. This amount of time rises with 20% of smartphone users exceeding screen times of 4.5 hours (RescueTime, 2018).

The benefit of camping is that it can help to bring us back to a point in time without technology. It provides us the much-needed space from social media. It helps us to connect with nature and the world around us for a short period. I think we could all do with a good digital detox!

13) Developing new life and survival skills

There is no doubt that some camping tasks require a level of skill that will be difficult to learn normally. Certain survival skills can be developed on your trip as you will be forced to do certain things. You might also be put in certain scenarios that you may not have had to experience in your everyday life. This can be especially true if you decide to start solo camping for the first time.

These can include things like being able to build a fire from scratch when setting up your campfire, being able to keep your water clean through purification methods, being able to orient yourself outside and even taking care of first aid should anyone get injured.

14) Growth opportunity for children

Young kids often get bored easily if their minds are not being stimulated. This can become especially true if you live in a large city surrounded by nothing but buildings. Children need to be surrounded by nature and be allowed to run wild and explore. It can help them to better appreciate life’s gifts. Not only this, it may inspire an affinity towards environmental conservation. This is just one of the great benefits of camping for children.

Another benefit is that the experience can be even more enriching if their time is spent outdoors with other kids of a similar age. This can help them to become more social and better strengthen their relationship-building skills. The benefits of camping for youth can be endless, they just need to be given the opportunity to unplug and enjoy the wilderness.

15) Improves your confidence

Knowing that you can temporarily relocate to a completely remote area, set up your own home base and cook your own food with your own tools can provide you with a level of confidence in yourself and your own ability that is unmatched.

16) Provides access to fresh air

It’s not new knowledge that trees provide us with much-needed oxygen, but a whole forest can provide the clean air that you would not get in a polluted city.

17) Chance to explore remote areas

Rarely when you think of a holiday, do you think about going exploring some forest or a remote part of the country. Camping is your opportunity to explore places that you would never normally go and expand your horizons.

18) Provides the opportunity to enjoy great food

Whilst camp food may not be as glamorous as what you might find in a restaurant, the fact that you are cooking it from scratch means you can be sure of the ingredients that are put into it. This will inevitably make it a much healthier option to store-bought food containing a lot of unnecessary additives.

19) Develop your problem-solving skills

You will naturally encounter problems when you are camping. As the saying goes, if something can go wrong, it probably will. Whether that be sudden rain, something breaking or you accidentally leaving something at home. You will learn how to overcome those problems when you go camping helping you to develop your problem-solving skills.

20) Educational and learning opportunities

Camping provides a wonderful learning opportunity as you learn about the world around you, whether that be observing the way that wildlife lives in an ecosystem, how ingredients combine to create a delicious meal or even learning about yourself. Camping can provide a wonderful educational experience that you will remember for life.

21) Lower-cost holidays

Camping tends to be much cheaper overall than other kinds of holiday experiences, usually a combination of low-cost accommodations such as tents, home-cooked meals or no-cost activities such as chilling in your hammock.

22) Inexpensive accommodation

Camping tents are relatively inexpensive, you can generally find budget-friendly tents that cost between £100-300. This price dramatically decreases if you then decide to purchase second-hand camping tents which can offer high-quality tents for a very low price if you look hard enough.

23) Greater chance for self-reflection

Being alone with your thoughts can really help you to take the opportunity to reflect on your life and choices and also get creative with some much-needed solutions that you would have otherwise never been able to come up with if you were in the city constantly thinking.

24) Increased self-awareness

Leading on from self-reflection, you will be able to get to know yourself much more. The things you like, and dislike, things that you want to achieve in life and things you want to try to avoid repeating. This all leads to an increase in self-awareness you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

25) Exposure to vitamin D

Being outside gives you much-needed exposure to the sun and therefore a higher intake of vitamin D. An incredibly important vitamin that helps improve your bone health, immune system, muscle health, nerve health, reduce inflammation, improve your gut health and also hair health. Overall an incredibly important boost to your overall physical health.

26) Reset your biological clock.

Found yourself struggling to sleep naturally recently? Camping can be a great way to reset your body’s natural circadian rhythm, as you wake and fall asleep with the night and daytime. One study found that just a weekend of natural light exposure during camping shifted participants’ melatonin timing earlier and as a result prevented social jet lag (MacLean, 2017).

27) Discover more of your backyard.

Who said that camping must be done in the wild? Backyard camping is a great way to combine the benefits of the outdoors with the comforts of your own home. A great way to see your home and backyard in a completely different light.

28) Encourages an appreciation of nature

Spending time in nature can help you appreciate its beauty. It’s not often that we get the opportunity to spend time in a field of grass and listen to the calls of the birds early in the morning. It’s the perfect opportunity to truly relax your mind and thoughts.

29) Exposure to scientific concepts

Being in nature also allows you to experience scientific concepts such as the lifecycle of plants and how they fit in with the ecosystem of insects around them, concepts of astronomy as you stargaze and also things such as creating chemical reactions to build a fire. All particularly a way to explain science to your little ones in a more hands-on way.

30) Exposure to new challenges and adventures

Camping allows you to really test your skills giving you the opportunity to overcome new challenges such as trying to pitch a tent in stronger than normal winds or keeping yourself dry in the night when the weather takes a turn for the worse and rains heavily. These are all opportunities to develop as an individual and make memories to which you will continue to tell stories for time to come.

31) Stimulates creativity

Camping can help to stimulate your creativity with things such as starting a fire without matches or a flint lighter. Even extending to clever ways to prepare food if you don’t quite have the right materials to create things out of.

32) Makes you grateful for your home comforts

Whilst camping has amazing benefits, sometimes sleeping in a sleeping bag in a cold tent can make you appreciate having a hot shower after a warm long day and a warm bed and a duvet to get back to in the night.

33) Provides a new focus

Due to the ease of being able to focus a lot more clearly when you are out in nature and away from total distractions, you will often come back from your trip with a newfound focus ready to take on the world once you are back from your trip away.

Enjoy the Benefits of Camping Today!

Very few activities can provide you with as many benefits such as being able to clear your mind, destress and come back feeling a renewed sense of purpose as camping can. Whether you make camping your regular hobby or just a once-in-a-lifetime experience, you are sure to create a lifelong memory.

So now that you know all the health benefits that you can receive from camping, why not plan your next camping trip today?

FAQs about the benefits of camping

What are the pros and cons of camping?

There are many pros to camping such as being able to relax, feel better connected to nature and also being an affordable hobby that anyone can get into. Camping does have a few cons such as the unpredictable weather in certain locations such as the UK, limiting comforts and potential safety concerns from wildlife or isolation. 

What are the positives of camping?

There are many positives of camping such as the ability to immerse yourself in nature, keeping yourself fit and active and also providing a digital detox. When camping in groups, helps to develop strong bonds through shared activities like cooking or storytelling around a campfire. Camping can help you to reduce stress, increase your mood, and promote mindfulness, making it a rewarding choice for improving your mental and physical well-being.

What is the value of camping?

The value of camping is that it allows you to reconnect with other people and yourself through nature by providing an escape from tired routines and technology. Camping promotes health through outdoor activities, relaxation, and social interactions. These experiences create a strong sense of achievement and adventure, whilst teaching you basic survival skills, ultimately creating a greater appreciation for nature.

What do you gain from camping?

You gain many things from camping but the main areas of development are improvements to your physical fitness, resilience, and mental well-being. You will improve your self-reliance, as you learn how to manage resources and adapt to outdoor conditions. Additionally, camping can help you gain a stronger appreciation for nature, develop your problem-solving skills, and experience more meaningful moments with friends and family, helping to create lasting life memories.

Why does camping make people happy?

Camping makes people happy as it offers a break from stress and mundane routine which are often the causes of unhappiness in everyday life, simply offering a chance for people to connect with nature and enjoy the simple pleasures. Being in a natural environment helps to reduce cortisol levels, promoting calm and positive well-being. According to a study conducted by the OutJoyment Report, 97% of campers say happiness is their top motivator for going camping (Bragg, 2022).

Why do people love camping?

People love camping for its simplicity, the chance to experience a brand new adventure, and the connection it provides to nature. Creating a unique form of escape from the demands of modern life allows for relaxation and an opportunity for personal growth. Campers often appreciate the slower pace, time spent with loved ones, and the opportunity to explore new environments, which combine to create a sense of freedom and fulfilment.

How does camping make you feel?

Camping often evokes feelings of peace, joy, and rejuvenation. Being surrounded by nature often creates a calming feeling, while physical activities release endorphins, enhancing mood and later tiredness helping to promote better sleep in the night. The challenges and rewards of camping also create a sense of accomplishment. This combination of relaxation and satisfaction makes camping a deeply fulfilling experience.

Is camping good for the body?

Yes, camping is good for the body. Hiking and trekking, two activities that are often paired with camping and putting up a tent, all work together to increase physical fitness, while fresh air and natural sunlight boost vitamin D to improve overall respiratory health. Being in nature has been shown to reduce stress and promote relaxation, making camping a holistic way to support physical health.

Why is camping so relaxing?

Camping is relaxing because it removes the distractions and pressures of daily life. Being surrounded by nature lowers stress levels by reducing cortisol, and combined with activities like stargazing or sitting by a campfire helps to promote mindfulness. With fewer digital distractions, camping can help you to live in the present moment leading to a state of calmness and a feeling of rejuvenation.

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