10 Health Benefits of Naturist Camping

We love camping in the buff. Camping on itself is already a great pastime, and we feel that doing so without clothes really adds a lot to the experience. Think about why you like camping. Because you like spending time in nature? Well, there’s probably no better way to connect with nature when there are no textile boundaries between yourself and the outdoors. Do you like spending your days in the campground’s swimming pool? Nothing beats skinny dipping! Do you like the typical friendly campground atmosphere? At naturist campgrounds, the atmosphere is even more friendly!

All of this is probably convincing enough to spend your next free days at a naturist campground, but there’s even more good news. Camping in the nude also has quite some interesting health benefits.

Vitamin D plays a very important role in the body. The nutrient helps absorbing calcium from food, it helps muscles to move, nerves use it to carry information from the brain to the body parts and our immune system needs vitamin D to fight invading bacteria and viruses. To translate this to current times, it’s even said that vitamin D makes you extra resistant to covid.

Unlike most other vitamins, vitamin D is only in very small amounts provided by food. The largest chunk of vitamin D at your disposal has been produced by your own body when your skin was in direct contact with sunlight. It’s easy to imagine that the more skin can be reached by sun rays, the more vitamin D will be produced.

We hate to tell you, but there’s quite some chance that your clock is broken. Your biological clock at least. Humans have a natural circadian rhythm that controls our sleep cycles. This rhythm is highly disturbed by the glow of electronics and artificial lighting. Because naturist campgrounds are often less polluted by light than city centers and the living room of your home, your body will find back its perfect rhythm and allow you to feel more rested in the morning.

If you think that it’s simply the fact that you’re camping in the nude is what makes you happy, we got to tell you a little story about serotonin. This chemical that is produced by your body, and mostly the effect that it has on your brain, is the real reason why you feel happy. Serotonin levels are increased by oxygen intake, increased exposure to sunlight, and increased physical activity. All things that you typically find at naturist campgrounds.

Talking about physical activity, a bit of exercise never hurts. Studies show that a reasonable target for adults is 10 000 steps per day. Something most people rarely reach when they move from the house to the car to the office to the car to the supermarket to the car to the house.

Naturist campgrounds definitely require some walking. The walks to the swimming pool, the restaurant, and the shower blocks all add to your number of daily steps. And then we’re not yet talking about many great hikes that you can often do at or around the campground.

When we planned to go camping in France last summer, we wanted to be prepared. Even though we went for the most basic type of camping, with a tent, we did want to make sure to have some level of comfort. So we bought some new equipment, including a fancy gas stove because we were planning to cook most of our own meals. The stove had absolutely everything, except for a kind of framework for our coffee maker.

Now you have to know, coffee is really important for us. So we started looking for solutions. Eventually, we’ve built a frame with two tent pegs and it worked so well that we kept using it throughout our whole trip. Moral of the story: When you go camping, you have to get creative from time to time. These small wins when you manage to build your own solution to a problem actually boost your creativity overall and increase your problem-solving skills.

Another advantage of our fancy new stove (which we quickly rewarded with the prize of best investment ever) was that we actually cooked our own food most of the time. Not having to go to restaurants every day didn’t just do our wallet a big favor, we also had absolute control over what we ate.

Because we only had a limited number of pots and pans, the urge to make creamy sauces became little to none. Additionally, we also often relied on salads and fresh vegetables because those are a bit easier to produce in the wild than three-course dinners.

One of the most important reasons why people go camping or head out into nature, in general, is to get away from polluted air. Naturist campgrounds specifically tend to be away from towns, cities, and highways and deep into nature. Needless to say that the quality of the air is likely to be much better than most of the places where you normally spend your days.

Because you’re camping, the supply of fresh air is endless. You’re spending a lot of time outside anyway, and even when you’re in a tent or a camper, there’s still lots of air passage.

Many studies have proven that the sight of nature has a relaxing effect on humans, whereas the sight of anything artificial boosts our stress levels. Naturism also has a positive effect on stress levels, in the way that naturists tend to be more relaxed about their appearance and less stressed about what other people might think of them.

You probably did the math already. Camping in nature reduces stress and being naked does so too. Naked camping is basically a double win. Although the bad cellphone reception that is also typical for naturist campgrounds might feel stressful at first. In the end, spending less time on your phone will also decrease your stress levels.

Camping with the family is one of the best ways to strengthen the bonds. The amount of time that we spend with the whole family together during everyday life is surprisingly low. When you’re out camping, you’ll be among your loved ones most of the time. You get the chance to actually do things together, to talk with each other, even to get to know each other better. If an issue would arise, like a coffee maker that doesn’t fit on your newly bought stove, you get the chance to solve it together with the whole family.

On the other side of the spectrum, naturist camping is also great if you’re looking for some alone time. Many people have an exhausting social life and need some time away from everything and everyone once in a while. Although naturist campgrounds are known to be social places, it’s often possible to find a pitch at the back and not see another human being if you don’t want to.

Different studies about earthing or grounding, a therapeutic technique that requires people to touch the ground with bare skin to electrically recharge the body, have shown that the method has several advantages for one’s health. Especially to solve things like inflammation, cardiovascular disease, muscle damage, and chronic pain, but it’s also said to have a positive effect on the mood.

Earthing is typically practiced by walking barefoot in nature. We can only guess the positive effect of spending time with your whole nude body in direct contact with nature, but we can be sure that it will be constructive.