Speaker 1: Gooday, Hello, thank you for joining us on Healthy Ish
Speaker 1: Dally Podcasts from Body and Soul. I am your host
Speaker 1: of Felicity Harley. How much time do you spend outdoors?
Speaker 1: Perhaps you go a day and you barely walk outside,
Speaker 1: and then you spend an hour or so the next day,
Speaker 1: and how much time should we really be spending outdoors
Speaker 1: each week? Well, today we have the answer. I am
Speaker 1: joined by lifestyle medicine physician doctor Jenny Brocketts. She's written
Speaker 1: a new book, she's the best selling author by the way.
Speaker 1: This new one is called The Natural Advantage, and she's
Speaker 1: here today to remind us why spending time outdoors is
Speaker 1: wondrous for well being and what is the minimum amount
Speaker 1: required each week. Make sure you're listening to Jenny on
Speaker 1: Extra Healthy Ish, where she discusses how to create your
Speaker 1: own personal nature prescription. You can grab that one wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Jenny, Welcome to you Healthy, Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us today.
Speaker 2: My absolute pleasure, Felicity just.
Speaker 1: Joining us off the back of a walk, no doubt,
Speaker 1: that seems very fitting.
Speaker 2: Is you can't keep me out of the outdoors.
Speaker 1: It's just even the word even you're saying the word
Speaker 1: just fills me, you know, fills me with joy. I
Speaker 1: need to we need to get outside. But tell us
Speaker 1: why you're spending time in nature. Nature beneficial for us.
Speaker 2: Well, there's been a lot of research looking into this,
Speaker 2: and I think lots of people recognize that we feel
Speaker 2: better when we go outside, but the research says it's
Speaker 2: actually good for us on so many different levels. It's
Speaker 2: good for our mental wellbeing. It helps us to recover
Speaker 2: if we've been unwell, you know, if people are suffering
Speaker 2: from anxiety or depression, or just feeling a bit overwhelmed
Speaker 2: by life in general. But it's also super important for
Speaker 2: maintaining mental wellbeing, so it keeps you buoyant, to you
Speaker 2: able to manage all the stresses of life more effectively.
Speaker 2: We're more resilient if we go outside more regularly, so
Speaker 2: that's one benefit. The other benefit, which I think gets overlooked,
Speaker 2: is that when you spend more time outside, you're often
Speaker 2: more physically active, which actually gives you the physical benefit
Speaker 2: of you're going to be a little bit more physically fit,
Speaker 2: perhaps especially if you go walking or hiking or cycling
Speaker 2: or running or any of those sort of things. And
Speaker 2: the third benefit is the cognitive benefit when you go outside.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if you ever do this felicity.
Speaker 2: I do it quite often. If I'm stuck on something
Speaker 2: and I'm chewing it over, chewing it over, cheering it over,
Speaker 2: and I just can't find the solution, going outside for
Speaker 2: walk will often lead to that insight. Aha, I know
Speaker 2: what the answer is now. So it really does clear
Speaker 2: our head, allows us to resolve issues and challenges more easily.
Speaker 2: Plus it boosts our level of cognition. We're actually more
Speaker 2: open to new ideas, we're more creative, we learn more effectively.
Speaker 2: What's not to love about being outside?
Speaker 1: How does it do this? Why does it do this?
Speaker 1: Is it evolution? Is it the fact that we spent
Speaker 1: millions and millions of years outside and then we came
Speaker 1: inside and we're on screens and I've got too freaking busy.
Speaker 2: I think essentially that probably is the answer. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's what's being proposed. We evolved in nature, and up
Speaker 2: until the last couple of hundred years, we spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time outside, and now we've all moved towards
Speaker 2: city life, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean,
Speaker 2: city life can be absolutely great, but as a consequence,
Speaker 2: because of all the stresses that you've mentioned and the
Speaker 2: frantic pace of life, we've lost sight of the fact
Speaker 2: that we do better when we go outside a bit more.
Speaker 2: And I think the statistic that really blew my mind
Speaker 2: was one that came out from the States saying that
Speaker 2: majority of Americans spend ninety three percent of their time
Speaker 2: indoors eve every single day. And I'm thinking, crikey. If
Speaker 2: it's true for the Americans, is it true for us?
Speaker 2: And it actually is. We've become indoor dwellers, if you like,
Speaker 2: because if you think about it, we live in a house.
Speaker 2: We might work from home, we might go to an office,
Speaker 2: but we sit in the car, we sit on public transport.
Speaker 2: We don't actually go out and walk places very much
Speaker 2: anymore for whatever reasons. And that's what's causing what's called
Speaker 2: the nature deficit.
Speaker 1: I think you've read about this in the book, but
Speaker 1: it was interesting because the pandemic almost made us all
Speaker 1: realize this. You know, we can talk about the science,
Speaker 1: but when we all were forced to go for the
Speaker 1: walks once a day within the five ks, well, not
Speaker 1: in Perth, but the rest of us to earlier.
Speaker 2: Yes, less so in Perth. We were just constrained to
Speaker 2: stay in West Australia. Wouldn't got allowed to get anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we probably truly realized we didn't need the
Speaker 1: science to tell us how good nature was for mind,
Speaker 1: body and soul.
Speaker 2: We were desperate to get out. And I think that's
Speaker 2: that was the realization that we hate feeling constrained and
Speaker 2: not able to move outside when we want to. And
Speaker 2: people suddenly got the idea of, oh, let's take the
Speaker 2: whole family out for a walk, let's get a dog,
Speaker 2: let's do something outside. And I was really hoping that
Speaker 2: after the pandemic that we would maintain that healthy attitude.
Speaker 2: But of course we went back to our usual way
Speaker 2: of doing things, and so we didn't always maintain that
Speaker 2: that happened, even though we recognized how much of a
Speaker 2: difference it made at the time.
Speaker 1: Now, I was almost horrified to read this and equally
Speaker 1: horrified to ask you the question. But there is a
Speaker 1: current minimum recommendation for time you should spend outside, Yes,
Speaker 1: there is.
Speaker 2: What is it? It's one hundred and twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: Oh goodness, a week, a week.
Speaker 2: Week a week?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 2: So nothing, it's nothing. No, it actually breaks down to
Speaker 2: seventeen minutes and a few seconds a day. So the
Speaker 2: question is do you have seventeen minutes and a few
Speaker 2: seconds to spend outside? And I would suggest you do,
Speaker 2: but we sometimes need to make that conscious choice to
Speaker 2: get outside, to open the door, open the window, do whatever,
Speaker 2: escape and step outside.
Speaker 1: It's a great formula or a rule in your book
Speaker 1: that you that I particularly liked, and it's from doctor
Speaker 1: Rachel Hotman, twenty five to three rule. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us more about this?
Speaker 2: I like the rule too because it's simple and I
Speaker 2: can remember it. So it's twenty minutes, five hours and
Speaker 2: three days. So her suggestion is that we should all
Speaker 2: be getting outside for twenty minutes three times a week,
Speaker 2: regardless that we spend five hours once a month doing
Speaker 2: something a bit more extensive, like go for a long
Speaker 2: walk or a drive to a national park or something
Speaker 2: like that, and then once a year go off grid
Speaker 2: for three days. Now, the three days is actually important,
Speaker 2: and I don't know if you've ever done this, but
Speaker 2: if you go off grid, there's no phones, no laptops. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's wonderful. It can take you three days for your
Speaker 2: brain to really unwind from all the busyness. Of life
Speaker 2: because we've got our phones with us all the time
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven and we don't go anywhere without them,
Speaker 2: and so it's actually been shown that it takes about
Speaker 2: three days to stop looking for the phone and wanting
Speaker 2: to connect. Isn't it interesting?
Speaker 1: Gosh? That is interesting and also horrifying. How do we
Speaker 1: work out our own nature prescription? And perhaps you can
Speaker 1: talk about yours, and how do we actually go about
Speaker 1: doing it.
Speaker 2: I think it's important to work out what your own is.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's great to have a rule like Rachel's
Speaker 2: rule of twenty five and three, but I think it's
Speaker 2: better to have a daily habit, something that you put
Speaker 2: in place that just becomes part of what you do
Speaker 2: naturally without having to really think about it, like brushing
Speaker 2: your teeth. So for me, I know I'm going to
Speaker 2: have a good day when I've been outside, especially in
Speaker 2: the early morning. There's nothing I love more than stepping
Speaker 2: outside when my first cup of tea. I'm English, so
Speaker 2: I always drink tea first.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, not coffee like the rest of us.
Speaker 2: It comes later. But I just love stepping outside and
Speaker 2: just looking up, looking at the clouds, just noticing what's
Speaker 2: around me and just engaging. The Japanese have this beautiful
Speaker 2: word called com or ab. I don't know if I've
Speaker 2: said that right. The Japanese listening was saying, oh, she
Speaker 2: can't say that would but it means scattered light through trees.
Speaker 1: Oh, And I think, what a beautiful word that.
Speaker 2: I think it's we need a word like that, don't we.
Speaker 2: And to me, it's all about com rab. I just
Speaker 2: love seeing that dappled light as it comes through and
Speaker 2: the shadows being cast. It immediately makes me feel calm.
Speaker 2: So it's great for me to lower stress, get me
Speaker 2: ready for the day, go outside, especially in the early morning,
Speaker 2: because that early morning light resets your circadian rhythm and
Speaker 2: all this sort of stuff, so you're bright eyed and
Speaker 2: bushy taid, ready for the day ahead. And then so
Speaker 2: I aim to do something every day. It's either walking
Speaker 2: or I jump in our back pool, which I tell
Speaker 2: my husband, do not turn the heating on. I want
Speaker 2: it cold.
Speaker 1: Do you want the cold plate?
Speaker 2: I like the cold plunge. Or I just take the
Speaker 2: dogs out. Just something. And so some people tell me
Speaker 2: they go for a meditation, but that's what I do.
Speaker 2: Then every week I go for a long walk with
Speaker 2: some friends. So we've got beautiful national parks around us,
Speaker 2: so we choose a different place to go and explore.
Speaker 2: At the moment, we've got beautiful spring flowers out, so
Speaker 2: we're out in beautiful spaces. We're looking at what's around.
Speaker 2: We're noticing the flora and the fauna and having a
Speaker 2: great time and having a bit of a chat as
Speaker 2: we go around. So that's what I do. I also
Speaker 2: love kayaking once a week, that's my other go to.
Speaker 2: So my five hours is actually something I sort of
Speaker 2: semi morph into my weekly thing. And then once a
Speaker 2: quarter I try to encourage my husband to come away
Speaker 2: with me, so we just go away for a long weekend.
Speaker 2: And the other thing is we do love to go remote.
Speaker 2: We go remote camping, far away from the madding crowd.
Speaker 2: We pack up the car, we just take all our food,
Speaker 2: all our water, everything we need and we go off
Speaker 2: the grid literally into the great outdoors, the great sandy desert,
Speaker 2: wherever it is, and we just love it. We absolutely
Speaker 2: adore it.
Speaker 1: A great reset. Jinny, thank you for coming Unhealthy my
Speaker 1: absolute pleasure. Thank you, thank you. Well. If you are
Speaker 1: not listening to this episode outside, I encourage you. I implore
Speaker 1: you to get outside today and get that nature prescription. AH.
Speaker 1: Just makes you feel better, doesn't it. And hey, we've
Speaker 1: just heard about all the science. Jenny's new book is
Speaker 1: called The Natural Advantage. It is out now. If you
Speaker 1: did enjoy this chat, jump on at rate and review it,
Speaker 1: or you can subscribe to this podcast. Of course, anything else,
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Speaker 1: your local Sunday paper, and until tomorrow, stay healthysh