Tim Jarvis AM Archives - FIFTY+SA

It’s in our nature

Tim Jarvis AM — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 03:42:53 +0000

Exercise, clean air, adventure and a healthy dose of Vitamin D from the sun for musculo-skeletal wellbeing are givens. In recent years medical research has even revealed that microbes in plants, soil and fungi are beneficial to our immune system’s development and health. In short, the physical benefits are well-known and being increasingly well-documented. What is less well known however are the links between nature and mental health. Take cortisol – a hormone linked with stress that decreases dramatically when people spend time outdoors. We now know this response is genetically inbuilt, making sense when you consider that humans have

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Why explore?

Tim Jarvis AM — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 01:35:25 +0000

The question of adventure versus exploration would have been entirely academic in days gone by, when large tracts of the planet remained uncharted, and exploring and adventuring were synonymous. But being a child of the 60s has relegated me to a world that has already been discovered – hasn’t it? That we have explored more of our world than we had 50, 100 or 200 years ago is beyond dispute. When you set off nowadays your goal might be to find somewhere beyond the range of a mobile phone rather than an uncontacted tribe or new river. But even a

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Wood for the trees

Tim Jarvis AM — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 01:48:31 +0000

WORDS: Tim Jarvis AM With the Forktree Planting season fast approaching, I thought I’d take a moment to recognise the importance of trees in our lives (not forgetting plants and grasses). For starters, trees and plants are the engine room of the global food chain, converting sunlight into glucose via photosynthesis. Photosynthesis also produces oxygen, with 7 or 8 trees providing each of us with the roughly 550 litres of pure oxygen we breathe every day[1]. Put another way, without them there would be no us. Forests also provide habitat and food for innumerable animals, birds and insects, with tropical

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Weathering the storm

Tim Jarvis AM — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 16:26:01 +0000

The Christmas break offers a rare opportunity to reflect on the challenging year that was. Global conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, a new COVID variant raising its head, and the repercussions of the Aboriginal voice to parliament referendum, all set against the backdrop of a world facing the twin threats of runaway ecosystem decline and climate change, with the latter manifesting in the form of record-breaking extreme weather events that auger a terrifying new ‘normal’. In times like these it is very easy as an individual to feel overwhelmed by an issue like climate change and become paralysed into a

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