Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Why Living Indoors Is Making You Sick, Tired, and Burned Out | Dr. John La Puma - EP 776

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

In this episode of Passion Struck, John R. Miles sits down with physician, bestselling author, and lifestyle medicine pioneer Dr. John La Puma to explore what he calls the Indoor Epidemic—the growing disconnect between the environments humans evolved to live in and the environments where we now spend nearly 93% of our lives.From artificial light and screen saturation to poor indoor air quality and the loss of daily contact with nature, Dr. La Puma explains how modern indoor living may be quietly contributing to fatigue, burnout, brain fog, poor sleep, chronic stress, and declining well-being. He argues that many of the symptoms we blame on mindset, aging, or productivity pressures may actually stem from environmental dysregulation.Together, John and Dr. La Puma explore the science behind morning sunlight, outdoor exercise, forest bathing, healthy soil, immune function, cognitive performance, and why nature may be one of the most overlooked forms of medicine available today.In this episode, you'll learn:• Why burnout may be an environmental problem—not just a psychological one• How indoor living disrupts sleep, energy, focus, and recovery• The surprising cognitive costs of poor air quality and excessive screen time• Why morning sunlight is critical for deep sleep and long-term health• How forest bathing strengthens immunity and reduces stress• Simple ways to turn everyday outdoor moments into powerful health interventions This conversation is ultimately about alignment—whether the environments we've created are supporting the biology we've inherited, and what happens when we reconnect with the natural rhythms that help us thrive.Passion Struck is the #1 Health and Wellness Podcast and personal growth podcast dedicated to helping people live intentionally, unlock human potential, and create lives filled with meaning, purpose, and mattering.Limited Time Offers:FODZYME: Get 30% off your first order when you go to: ICanEatAgain.com/PASSIONSTRUCKShopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at SHOPIFY.COM/PASSIONSTRUCKFull Show Notes HereDownload the companion Substack Article and WorkbookLearn more about  Dr. John La Puma:Website: https://www.drjohnlapuma.com/Get the book: Indoor Epidemic Connect with John Pre-Order The Mattering Effect: https://matteringeffect.com/Book John to Speak: https://johnrmiles.com/speaking/Keynotes, books, podcast, and resources: https://linktr.ee/John_R_MilesChildren’s Book — You Matter, Luma: https://youmatterluma.com/Substack: https://www.theignitedlife.net/Support the Movement: https://startmattering.com/. Every human deserves to feel seen, valued, and like they matter. Wear it. Live it. Show it.DisclaimerThe Passion Struck podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Passion Struck or its affiliates. This podcast is not a substitute for professional medical or psychological advice.

Coming up next on PassionStruck. In the last couple of generations, we've moved inside as a species and never left. We spend as 93% of our time inside in buildings or in vehicles, 86 and 7, if you're doing the math. And that means we spend our time in the office or in a classroom. Our commute is in a vehicle of some type, almost always. our wind down rituals at night, what are those? Those are screens for the most part. We're watching TV, we're doing something on a tablet or a computer, or on our phone.

For us, the environment made a choice for us to be inside before we knew that there was a choice to be made. Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with change makers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention.

Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to be a life. to live like you matter. Hello, friends, and welcome back to episode 776 of Passionstruck. Earlier this week, we launched our brand new series, The Connection Crisis, with entrepreneur and bestselling author Eric Reese. Together, we explored how institutions lose trust when they drift away from the people they were created to serve and why the erosion of trust contributes to the growing sense of disconnection that many people feel today.

Today, we're examining a different dimension of the same problem. When we think about connection, we usually think about relationships. We think about family, friendships, community, and belonging. There's another form of connection that often goes unnoticed because it operates quietly in the background of our daily lives. It's our connection to the environments that shape us. For most of human history, our lives were spent outdoors. Our days were shaped by natural light, movement, changing seasons, fresh air, and regular

contact with the natural world. These weren't lifestyle choices. They were simply the conditions under which human beings evolve. Today, many of us spend the overwhelming majority of our lives indoors. We wake up indoors, commute indoors, work indoors, exercise indoors, shop indoors, and relax indoors. We move through highly engineered environments that offer comfort and convenience, but often separate us from many of the biological conditions that help shape human health for thousands of years. At the same time, rates of burnout, anxiety, sleep disruption, metabolic disease, and chronic stress continue to rise.

We often search for explanations and productivity systems, supplements, apps, and optimization strategies. Yet a growing body of evidence suggests we may be overlooking something far more fundamental. What if many of the symptoms we associate with modern life are also symptoms of environmental disconnection? What if the places where we spend our time are quietly influencing our energy, attention, mood, resilience, and overall well-being in ways we barely recognize? My guest today is Dr. John Lapuma, physician, best-selling author, and a leading voice in lifestyle medicine. His work explores what he calls the indoor epidemic and examines how modern life may be pulling us

further away from the conditions that support human flourishing. In our conversation, we discuss nature, movement, sunlight, longevity, mental health, chronic disease, and why reconnecting with the natural world may be one of the most overlooked opportunities for improving our health and well-being. This is ultimately a conversation about alignment, whether the environments we've created are supporting the biology we've inherited. I think you'll find it both eye-opening and deeply practical. Before we dive in, if this show has helped you feel less alone or given you language for your unseen battles, I'd be grateful if you share this episode with one person who, who's in the middle of their own messy transition.

You can find us on YouTube and taking 60 seconds to leave writing a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts makes a huge difference. And if you want the accompanying workbook for today's episode to help you map these ideas into your own life, you can grab it at theagnatedlife.net. And now, let's dive in, Dr. John Lapuma. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me

to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin. I am absolutely honored and thrilled today to welcome Dr. John Lapuma to PassionStruck. John, it is so good to have you here. Yeah, it's great, John. I'm glad we're here together. So you have pioneered culinary medicine for a long time by helping people see food as medicine long before that ever became mainstream. Now you're taking another provocative leap. You are arguing we don't just eat ultra-processed food.

We now are consuming ultra-processed food. We now are consuming ultra-processed. processed time, which I found to be such an interesting concept. What is ultra-processed time doing to us? Ultra-processed time, like ultra-processed food, is artificial, not nutritious, easily consumed, and ubiquitous. When time slips away like that, when you're scrolling, particularly doomed scrolling, that's like high-fructose, corn syrup. In many ways, pixels are the new calories. When you're consuming time that quickly,

you don't value it, it evaporates, you don't know what happens, the time goes away, and all of a sudden it's time for bed. Where, by the way, you might still be scrolling. And I think screens and their overuse are in large part responsible for this. But the pace of American life is so fast now that unless we deliberately take time for ourselves to re-center and to improve our biology and to, with that, both improve well-being and performance and productivity, life just evaporates. When I think about it, I actually take it back all the way back to the Industrial Revolution, because prior to that, we spent most of our life outside in different capacities. And that was really the advent of factories and more mechanical type of work.

And then I think as time has gone on, we've gone into not only more factories, but more office environments that have driven a lot of this. And then the digital stuff that you've just talked about to me is the icing on the cake. Do you see that lineage as well? I do see that. I think in the last couple of generations, we've moved inside as a species and never left. We spend 93% of our time inside in buildings or in vehicles, 86 and 7, if you're doing the math. And that means we spend our time in the office or in a classroom. Our commute is in a vehicle of some type, almost always.

are wind-down rituals at night? What are those? Those are screens for the most part. We're watching TV, we're doing something on a tablet or a computer, or on our phone. For us, the environment made a choice for us to be inside before we knew that there was a choice to be made. And my book, Indoor Epidemic, explores this to ask

why we spend 93% of our time inside and what it's doing to our sleep and focus and memory and mood and insulin resistance and immune problems and aging in a way that gives people back some of that agency, that I think this evolution of going inside and never leaving has really called into question. I was at my yearly physical yesterday, and I happened to do this at the VA since I'm a veteran, and I went in to the facility and all the offices that the doctors work out of. None of them have windows. They're all these little box cubes. And I had been listening to some of the episodes preparing for our discussion today.

And I just kept thinking about how much I would hate working in this environment where you spend the entire day looking at white walls all the way through it. because one of the things that I love about working from home is that I get to pick the environment that I work around, but so many people don't get to do that. And I know in my corporate career, I spent almost the entire day either in a cubicle or in a conference room. And when I look back now, I just think to myself, what the heck was I thinking? But we don't necessarily think about that environment because we've been so conditioned to just accept it as normal. Where do you think that acceptance comes from? Is it just because that is what society now provides us, is our only avenue?

I think in the drive towards efficiency, employers want employees to focus strongly on the work. And of course, because there's so much of our work is digital now, that's where the screens are. Having white walls, and this is particularly true in medical environments where not having a window or even a poster of a nature scene, specifically landscape, water, or a meadow particularly, can be antitherapeutic. There have been studies in the graphic design literature. And as I reviewed over 2000 studies for the book, Indoor Epidemic, to try to figure out why it was that we are so much inside and what sorts of differences being outside deliberately in green and blue spaces can make. But even indoors, there's striking data that in medical circumstances, every doctor ought to have a poster, at least a poster, if there's

no window, of nature scenes and not abstract art, because that's actually more dissettling to the mind than landscape or nature scenes. And in hospitals, the study that kicked all of this off, in many people think, in 1984 by Roger Alreg, who was the landscape architect at Texas A&M, was of 46 patients inside of a hospital in Pennsylvania where they'd all had colostosestectomies, but used to be in the hospital when you had your blood or call blood or out. And he studied people on different sides of the hallway. Some had a window, but a view of a brick wall, which is not unlike the places you're were just in in cubicles. And on the other side were patients who had a view of trees.

The patients who had views of trees used 22% less opiate medications. Got out of the hospital 0.8 days, almost a full day sooner. And the nurses thought that their hospital days were smoother and went better than the people across the hall who had only a view of a brick wall. A corporate America is much the same. When you confine people, and I call this a confinement tax, indoors without any view towards outdoors, then what happens is not just that the CO2 builds up in the room. And that's a cognitive tax and can lower cognitive performance by 15% or more. The higher, it's a dose response relationship, actually. The higher goes, the less clear thinking you get.

But also, you make their world smaller. And in America and critically in work life, we want workers and leadership to be able to see the horizon quite literally. There's a lot of data for how it is that staying in that cubicle environment, not just narrows your focus, which you might think as an employer, I want that, but actually you don't because it, like too much sugar burns out your metabolism, too many pixels burn out your brain. And that's what we're seeing a lot in workers. I do have to say they had a nature scene in that cubicle. It was a picture of a lily, but unfortunately it was only like 12 by 12.

I guess they were on the right step. They're going in the right direction. But you needed to be able to go to a window once an hour and see a sky view. You don't need to see the horizon. You don't need to see a forest. You need to see distance. Your eyes need distance.

Your lungs need oxygen. Because when you're doing this near work, I don't have my phone with me. When you're doing near work and your phone is like this, your eyes physically, elongate. You're about 24 inches away, the camera, your eyes physically elongate. That's what happens in myopia or near-sightedness. And we're seeing this in epidemic proportions in children. In Singapore, 90% of kids are myopic because of near work. In California, where I live,

it's 40%. And it's increasing. It's changing the anatomy of our children. Anybody, who's near-sighted knows that near work makes your eyes scrunch up more. And you can alleviate that by looking out just for a minute, at the furthest point you can see at a window anytime during the day. The light quality doesn't matter, the distance matters. And if you have myopia or near-sighted is, five minutes a day can stall it, not reverse it, but can stall it. So five minutes, I said five minutes a day, I meant five minutes an hour,

where you get up and you look at the furthest point you can see and you just relax. You watch the leaves move if you're watching a tree. You see the wind-shaped things. You get a sense of different light. And what happens is that there are ciliary muscles around your eyes, stop going like this, but relax. And this feels tight and is tight.

your headache diminishes. And your cognitive fatigue and attention fatigue actually diminish as well. You reset your brain in a literal way. Do you think one of the things I find when I'm doing a ton of computer work, and I'm not religiously doing that as much as you're suggesting, which I know I need to do, is I also find my eyes get very dry.

And I wonder if that's because I'm also not blinking, is much. That can be the humidity of the room. It can be omega-3 fatty acid can take. It can be lots of different things. The quality of the air indoors is almost always poorer by a factor of five than the quality of air outside. Indoor air is actually polluted.

We don't think of it that way. But the off-gassing of paints, of molds, there are mites and dusts and sprays that we spray inside that actually causes a mild level of the increased chronic inflammation. And that's one of the two pillars that has been so powerful in upsetting our biology and being indoors 93% of the time as much as we are in this indoor epidemic as I've described it in the book. This dry eye, this poor quality air, all add up to feeling less than you are.

smaller than you are and actually make us sicker than we need to be. In fact, we don't really need to be sick at all if we have the right dosage of outdoors near at the right time of day and at the right frequency. Before we continue, thank you for supporting Passion Struck and for sharing these conversations with others. One of the themes running through today's discussion is that well-being is shaped not only by our choices, but also by the environments in which those choices take place. The conditions around us influence how we think, feel, connect, and flourish.

Those same questions sit at the heart of my upcoming book, The Mattering Effect, which explores why so many people feel disconnected, overlooked, and exhausted, and what we can do to rebuild connection, belonging, and significance in our own lives. For weekly insights, companion resources, and practical tools, visit the ignitedlife.net. Now a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show. You're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck network.

Now, back to my conversation with Dr. John Lepuma. Thanks for addressing that, John. And one of the things on this podcast is we have a lot of high performers who come to this, trying to up level where they are at work and in life. And one of the things I've talked a lot about is people who feel exhausted, feel like they're burned out. And one of the things that you talk about is burnout is actually, environmental dysregulation.

Right. I was hoping you might go into that a little bit more because this was really an interesting aspect to me. I'm glad to do that. Many of your listeners built a life that's substantial, but it still doesn't feel right. I think the most under-recognized factor in burnout, in fatigue, and frankly in personal health overall, And the one that doctors have not been trained to ask about is where people spend their time.

And when we spend our time as much as we do indoors, without deliberate dosages of outdoor time, it breaks four cycles, it breaks your master clock, it breaks your mitochondria, it breaks your gut brain access, and it breaks your brain cleaning system. And you break one of those and you're tired all the time. You break all four and you're actually sick.

And sick in workers often looks not just like the development of diabetes and hypertension and chronic back pain and many of the other causes of absenteeism and frankly reduced presenteism. But reduced presentism can be directly linked, I think, to how much, not cognitive work, but how much digital saturation workers have. And I think burnout is actually an environmental problem of being indoors too much. It's not mindset. It's not a character flaw.

That's blaming the people when we should be blaming the environment. It's actually sensory deprivation. and a light deficiency, but specifically focused sensory enhancement and exposure and specifically focused light dosages. Man, it'd be interesting. I had Christina Maslack on the podcast a couple years ago

who termed the whole burnout thing. It'd be so interesting to have you and her to an interview together and talk about the different aspects of this and how much they correlate. I used her scale in a pilot I did in Santa Barbara with the company to try to reverse burnout. And of course, that's the gold standard. She's a pioneer. And we looked specifically, I gave people four different interventions.

I gave them time outside, just five minutes during the day. I gave them three funny texts for a week, for four weeks about the environment and about work. I gave them a house plant to take care of, an office plant that you could not kill. I potted them all myself. I know that. And I gave them a different sensory switchouts, rosemary instead of air fresheners for household chemicals. The only thing that had statistically significant improvement in the markers of absenteeism and that people swore they wanted to keep doing was the five minutes outside.

The house plant, the office plant, actually I expected to be best and it wasn't because people worried about killing it. And what happened is that they all overwatered it because it's very easy to do with houseplants if you're not used to taking care of them. House plants, by the way, office plants that are of one gallon size need six ice cubes every two weeks. Not more than that. If you want, you can take the whole plan out, put it in the sink, rinse it. just let it all flush through and then put it back every two weeks. But don't overwater them. And lots of these people did.

The time outside had value that I didn't even realize at the time. But it was addressing these indoor life breaks. It was addressing the master clock break, the mitochondria break, the gut brain access break, the brain cleaning system break. Not the brain cleaning system as much because it was often in the middle of the day and you need morning light for that. But it gave people a lot of what are the missing inputs for high performance.

It gave morning light and movement. Sometimes it gave soil contact. It always gave distance and vision. And it always gave fresh air. And those four missing inputs, I think, not only helped people in our trial, But it would help the burnout exhaustion fatigue that we're seeing across America, people are exhausted. And employers want people to come back to work and not work remotely because they want better performance.

They want more productivity. And you can still in the office institute some of these. And I'll give you an example of how we did that. I'd love to hear you do that. I just want to make one funny comment about the plans. One of the Fortune 500 companies I worked in actually put plants throughout the offices and in our offices, if you were lucky enough to have one. And I remember when I had it, I would water it. And the thing they never told me is that at night they had a professional crew who was coming by just to take care of plants.

So I was watering it and then they were watering it. I realized it when the plant started to die and one day the arborist came into my office and said, are you watering the plants? You know that's what we're here to do. And I had no idea. I love that about you because it shows caring. It's an act of caring to water to tend to a plant. And we told people how to interact with the plants when we gave them plants.

Put your hands in the soil. And that's still a good idea. I work and live on an organic regenerative farm in Santa Barbara. and its landscape, I designed it as a teaching campus, and I taught the first skills-based nature as medicine course for practicing physicians in continuing medical education last year for UCLA. And we did it here.

They co-sponsored it here. And we had everybody do the same thing. We had everybody pot a plant, and we taught people how to water it. And I gave them actually rosemary seedlings because they are so difficult to kill. But we gave them the same advice. I just gave you about how to care for them.

And having your hand in the soil, by the way, organic potting soil, good organic potting soil, is a serotonin intervention. Gardening is a serotonin intervention. Why? Because there's a bacteria called mycobacteria. It's called microbacterium baxi in all healthy soil. And there are a trillion organisms of healthy, of a in a tablespoon of healthy soil, many more than you can see,

many more than there in you. That bacteria, mycobacteria vacci, causes serotonin stimulation and manufacture in your brain and in your gut. Where serotonin is manufactured. It acts, it's an original SSRI. Oh, wow. But it acts in the other way.

It's not an inhibitory. It actually stimulates serotonin release. So that's one theory behind why gardeners have 37% less dementia than non-gardners, lifelong gardeners. But no wonder it makes you feel better to have your hands in the soil. No wonder it actually changes your microbiome, the protective bacteria on your skin, in your respiratory tract and in your GI tract. So healthy soil is actually a powerful.

medical maneuver. But it doesn't work if you use commercial standardized soil that's been zapped with glyphosate and other chemicals and you just feed it and pK, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, because healthy soil has lots of living networks underneath it. And those are the networks that not just communicate with roots, but also engender bacteria like microbacteria of oxide so it can thrive. John, I've been telling people for the past four or five years that we need to move to a new leadership style, and I call it the Gardner leader. I didn't realize that it went deeper than the way I was explaining it. I love it. So one other thing before we we get into your outdoor prescriptions I wanted to ask you about is I think you've just done a masterful

job talking about the fatigue, the exhaustion, the burnout, and it's linked to this. One of the things that is on everyone's mind these days is the loneliness epidemic as well. And it's easy to say that we need to be a little bit more social and that's part of the reason for it. But I also have to think that our preponderance of being inside in many ways is always also a link to this. What did your research find? Loneliness, as you know, I'm sure, has the mortality risk of 15 cigarettes a day.

That's really sizable. And one of the things that people don't understand about being outside is that it is a social environment. When we think of outside, we think of the Pacific Ocean. We think of the terrific documentaries on Netflix and Amazon Prime. We think about how, Richard Attenborough shoots things,

but nature is closer than you think. And when you walk your dog, or if you walk somebody else's dog, you are likely to run into somebody else who has a dog. And you interact with maybe the dog. I've seen lots of people do that rather than the person. But, and somehow that's easier. But when then the dog leads to the person

and all of a sudden you meet eye to eye and you have this contact because you both have dogs, Everybody knows this. Nature is supposed to be social, and it ameliorates loneliness. It improves loneliness. It makes loneliness better. You feel less isolated. That's another consequence of being indoors 93% of the time.

Our indoor epidemic, as I've called it, creates loneliness. Because we are isolated, and both you and I work from home, and you know that it's just as easy to talk to someone like you and I are talking now, talking now through remotely through a camera, then as it is to go get a snack from the kitchen or to go to the next project, going outside seems to take more effort. But what I'm here to say is that effort is actually a medical intervention that makes you feel better, makes you feel not so alone in the world. And that outdoors has that kind of potential where you know, meet people and you feel not just not so alone, but like your life has more meaning.

And that's because you are present with someone else, because you are connected in some way with someone else, because you can have a positive interaction with someone. And in these days when polarity and the political spectrum is so common and there's actual war, knowing that you have common things with. anyone else and feeling together in a moment is a powerful personal enhancement of who you are and what it is to be not alone in the world, to feel like it's not that your problems are smaller than they seem. And that's what we're going for, that we're part of nature, not apart from it. And being outdoors in the deliberate ways that I describe, whether it's green exercise or

gardening or using the sea and sky and stars or forest bathing or watching the sunset at night and using more evening light in a purposeful way, any of these ways or any of the two and other ways that I describe about how to be purposeful outside to improve your biology makes you feel less lonely. I have to tell you, you and I are both lucky that we live by the coast. And one of my favorite things to do is, and we're in prime boating season now, is to get on the golf when I can. And I have to tell you, if I can just get out one day a week, oh my gosh, does it have a huge impact on me mentally and how recharged I feel for the next week? It is such, and I'm a water sign as well. But man, it certainly impacts me in so many positive ways.

And I notice, and I try every single day to do a walk in nature for about an hour. And I tend to do it, which leads into your first outdoor prescription. I do it first thing in the morning because I like to start it in the dark, but then have this transition to morning light because I know if I book in my day for or Kiddian rhythm, it has had as such a profound difference in how soundly I sleep. Yeah. So what is this importance for listeners of meeting the morning sun? Man, you're a model, John.

I love that. So it's about deep sleep. One of the reasons you sleep so well, I think, is that your sleep is restorative. And you only get that if you get deep sleep or non-REM sleep and you only get adequate deep and non-rent sleep, same thing in the first half of the night, in the first two or three cycles of deep sleep. And those of us who are interested in tracking and I am get a read out about deep sleep and non- and REM sleep, both of which are restorative cycles. But what happens in the morning is if you get out within 60 minutes, as you do, of the sun rising, that's the time where the back of your eye, the retinal,

retinal receptors are the most receptive to the bright blue label lengths of morning light. You want those because it both makes you feel more awake. It gives you a big cortisol activation response of up to 100 percent. So you have a brightness on the inside. And I call this daytime before screen time, by the way. And secondly, what it does is set your melatonin for that evening so that you can release it that evening if you don't stop it with screens before bed. And I'll talk about that screen curfew as well. And thirdly, it gives you

during deep sleep the glymphatic system or the brain cleaning system. When you stop the cleaning, the trash piles up, right? But that happens in the brain, too. The glymphatic system is the brain's cleaning system. It was discovered in 2013. The Nobel Prize was given for it in 2017. The brain actually shrinks a little bit up to 40% during deep sleep. And the spinal fluid CSF washes over your brain and takes out the beta amyloid and tau, which are proteins that accumulate during Alzheimer's disease. So other good things happen during deep sleep too. Your muscles repair from strain during the day and you build bone.

Especially important, this is the only time that you build bone during the day. Women who affected by osteoporosis lose bone is resorbed throughout the day, but they can build bone during deep sleep. But again, only set with morning light, best within an hour, 10 minutes bright light better, cloudy days count, sunglasses don't count, don't wear sunglasses, doesn't work through a window, you block out the wavelengths. So deep sleep is the benefit of morning light plus the big cortisol. activation response. And as you point out, the effects and sleep, if I had one thing to do for

America's sleep, this would be it. It's not, by the way, more sleeping pills. Zolpidim Ambien knocks you out. Excellent. I've prescribed it many times. But that's before I knew, before most of us knew, that it also suppresses deep sleep. And it's not the right medicine. That class of medicine, not the right medicines if you need a sleeping pill. Melatonin is better, but melatonin is not really a sleeping pill in the same way. You can't take it 20 minutes before bed and expected to put you to sleep. It needs three hours. And also people take too much of it. take five milligrams or 10 milligrams, it actually works the opposite way. For many people, it doesn't improve sleep at that dosage or quality of sleep.

So you need really tiny doses, 10th of the milligram, three-tenths a milligram, at most half a milligram. And so what you're doing is a model. That's fantastic. And if I could have written that in indoor epidemic, get out during dark walk and see the sunrise, I would have. It's even better than what I wrote. I love it. And your second prescription I've already mentioned when I was talking about getting on the boat on the weekend because this all is immersing yourself in this feeling of awe. And you know, one of the most interesting things I found is not familiar. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Dak or Keltner in his work at UC Berkeley. It was so interesting to me that awe is produced.

even more frequently by acts of kindness and witnessing either others perform them or us doing them ourselves. But this whole awe that you talk about, whether it's walking in a nature park, going out on a boat like I do, just getting exposure to the horizon, these different things, it certainly does create a different type of regulation for you. I think that is an important one. And then this thing that you mentioned, forced bathing prescription, you mentioned inhaling immunity. How does this impact our nervous system and perform as immune medicine? Forest bathing was described in 1982 in Tokyo by Dr. King Lee, who was an immunologist. And he identified a number of Japanese executives, actually, who needed some, who had hyperboats,

hypertension and were stressed out and took them into the forest for three days and gave a two-hour session on each day, I believe, to try to re-center them. And he measured not just their blood pressures and stress levels, but also chemicals in the forest that were, he thought, immunologically active. And he was right. He took them to Japanese Cyprus forests because that's the forests that were nearby. But this actually works in many different types of tree gatherings. It doesn't have to be a Japanese Cyprus forest or anywhere else that's classically described. These chemicals have been identified in Cyprus. They're alpha-pineine and beta-pinine in citrus.

They're delimining, also present in lots of citrons, the predecessor of citrus, like Buddha's hands. And the way it works is that these aromatic chemicals, they're fightensides, chemicals that trees make to communicate and to ward off predators that will eat their leaves or damage them, have this immunologic activity in people so much so that your natural killer cell count, which is the kind of navy seals of your white blood cells, that go out and zap cells that are affected by tumors,

are affected by viruses and kill them, before they can do harm to you, goes up 56%, both in count and in activity. And that effect lasts for a month. One two-hour session did this. It's been documented for even less. So forest bathing, which really should be called something like parasympathetic activation or green environmental hormonal reset or given some other real

scientific name instead of a woo-woo name just for those of us who are scientifically oriented and analytically oriented and want to know exactly how it's affecting our immunological chemistry. Forrest bathing is offered from everywhere from the Harvard Arboretum to the Santa Barbara Botan Garden to hospital systems and many progressive businesses. And there are guides for forest bathing who can help you and take you through the steps. I hired a forest therapist to teach the UCLA physicians forest bathing and the how-to at our UCLA CME course last year for clinicians. And it was very instructive. People loved it because not only did they get 30 days of immune benefits,

that I assume, but also because you learn again to use your senses. And as you're a nature fan, that's how you understand nature. We don't understand it through cognitive work, like we do notifications and texts and projects and AI. We understand it through touch, listen, see, smell, taste. We use our senses. And sensory deprivation is, I think, not only at the core of burnout, but also, and light deficiency,

but that sensory deprivation is what we're often missing when we're overwhelmed by pixels, when we're saturated by pixels, when we forget that there's a touching-feeling world out there, It actually makes performance better to reset. I was going to tell you that I gave a talk at Edelman PR in New York City last month and at their town meeting for all the Edelman PR agencies in New York. And they announced right after the talk that because of the book, Indoor Epidemic, they were going to have a walking Wednesday. They were going to have go to pocket parks and other parts in the inside of Manhattan, downtown Manhattan, where there are corridors, so that everyone got outside during the work day.

And is that beneficial if you're not seeing as many trees as a forest? Yes, it is. It's still beneficial because you're still getting better air than you are inside. You're still not looking at a screen. You're getting your brain to rest. you're not eating lunch at your desk. You might be eating lunch outside in this walking Wednesday. You're still having the social interaction with your peers,

which is actually a good thing and makes you feel less lonely when instead of just looking at a screen or at your projects. You're still getting the benefit of looking at distance. Remember, horizon or distance is one of the inputs that we're missing. And that can be solved even in Manhattan. Now, what if you wake up in Manhattan and you have a doorman, you're on the 20th floor? How am I supposed to get outside? You can still look outside for the furthest point you can see, even if you're on the first floor, the furthest point you can see.

And you don't need a forest for forest bathing. You just need a sky view to relax your eyes. You don't need a retreat. It's fun to go on, is immersive, is cool. But if you're working every day, you need a doorway. You need a fire escape. You need a threshold. You need something so that your eyes get distance.

And you feel less alone and like the world isn't just your computer screen. I love that. One of the jobs I had was at this company called Catalina Marketing. And it's down here in the Tampa Bay area. And it happened to be adjacent to a little pond. bigger than a little pond. It was probably a half a mile walk around it. And I had a direct report who asked me if we could start doing our one-on-ones and do a walk. And it had so many benefits that I started to do it with all my direct reports because I found one, it got you outside. Two,

even when you're in the office and you're having a discussion, there's so many things that can distract you. And I learned that it kind of gave you a loan time where you could be completely present with the other person. And I found it improved your health too because you're moving. So to me, it was something simple that we don't even think about that really anyone can do. And what your work proves is it has multifaceted benefits that you don't even realize are happening and something that is really enjoyable. It really is. You can't bottle of sunrise, right?

You can't out supplement an indoor life. You've got to get outdoors and engage. And when you are outdoors, as you've just pointed out, and this can be incorporated in a workday, not only do you focus more on the problem rather than on the individual, which is a real benefit of walking side by side. And walking meetings are part of what Edelman does now.

And even in Manhattan. But you can also just have your lunch outside. It changes your dynamic instead of sitting in front of your desk and thinking you're going to squeeze in two more things before the next meeting. A lot of people feel like, well, I already get vitamin D. Why do I need to be outside? And that's not at all the point of the book,

but it is a really important point to make because we do need vitamin D. But it only covers one aspect of light. as a bioactive source because you need infrared light for your mitochondria. You need blue light for your morning waking response. You need UV light for nitric oxide release in your skin, which actually lowers your blood pressure. And you need full spectrum light,

and that's what you were talking about during your walking meeting, for your mood to improve mood. This is powerful even on cloudy days, even on cloudy days in the, the morning, you get enough bright blue light to reset your circadian rhythm if you spend just 10 minutes, even better 15, but just 10 minutes within that first hour. And then you can get the rest of your 17-minute minimum effective dose throughout the day. If you're an optimizer, and many of our listeners are, and we are as well, you want to get at least 43 minutes a day.

Because the data top out at 300 minutes a week of intentional time near green or blue spaces used for prevention and sometimes treatment, but certainly prevention of chronic disease. And I believe treatment of problems like burnout, sleep disorders, mood disorders, memory problems, insulin resistance, and immune problems. John, another thing I wanted to hit on

was, and I'll use myself as an example, prior to getting into this routine that I've gotten into doing this walk, I used to love to do an early morning spin class. But the problem with the spin class was I'd miss that circadian moment. So I'd supplement it by going outside for eight to 10 minutes without sunglasses on and just trying to let myself get the morning ambient light. But what I found was that when I did the spin class,

And on the mornings, when I skip the spin class and take a bike ride and experience the sunrise, it's like my whole outlook on the day felt completely different. And I know for a lot of people, the natural inclination is we go to the gym instead of exercising outside. What's the difference? And what was I experiencing? Because there's certainly a difference in how I felt between that spin class and riding outside. These kinds of exercise are complementary. You actually need both for maximum all-cause mortality benefit. So a study done at Harvard that was published just in the last few months

that identified in their nurses health study and physician health study of now 34 years, how which activities reduced mortality the most. Number one was walking, the vast majority of which is done. outside. The gym or strength training was like fifth after tennis, after soccer. I've forgotten the other two. But when you combined walking with one of the other activities, people who did both outdoor exercise and indoor exercise, the all-cause mortality benefit rose to 19% from 17 from walking outside alone. I think there are many reasons for this mortality benefit, including the cycling outside, microbally rich air, bright light for all the reasons I just mentioned,

the full spectrum for mood and blue light to reinforce your cortisol to tell you're awake, your infrared light for your mitochondria. I think activity outside feels is easier than activity inside. It's been shown that it experienced, if you do the same cycling or running inside versus outside, it feels like 20% less perceived exertion outdoors. And that might be because the brain finds the forms of outside, the fractal patterns of leaves, the way that the wind moves, trees, the what's around you.

And I'm talking about exercising in a nature environment, not in an urban, dense urban environment, riding down the street. in New York City or Chicago or LA is not at all the same as riding on a trail. So that less perceived exertion is because of the green environment and its many benefits. Or blue environment. We both live near water. The blue environment actually changes your brain waves from agitated beta to alpha and theta waves. So you're more relaxed.

One of the reasons that having a fountain in nearby, and this happens even, even in the shower. And there's a great Stanford study to document this, that having running water is a powerful tool for creativity and actually save money over time. A Cornell study documented it was $100,000 over 100 workers to have improved creativity with better outdoor engagement and window views of both greenery and blue.

So there's extraordinary data for both these things. After we get off this call, I'm going to the gym. I, straight training is a powerful longevity tool. And we all should be doing it at our ages, especially. But it doesn't replace outdoor exercise. It complements it. It improves our mitochondrial count. It makes us feel good and confident we should do it.

Cycling outside, you should do. Cycling indoors, okay. Strength training indoors, definitely. But the combination of the two is what actually reduces mortality, improves longevity. And there is fantastic, very good data to show that even living near green spaces, within 500 meters greenery improves longevity,

stabilizes telomeres. Telomeres, by the way, are the protective N-Capson chromosomes. that fray as we age, but can be stabilized for a two and a half year benefit from the literature that I reviewed to when you actually live near a green space. John, the last thing I wanted to cover with you is one of the big wake-up things for me in the book was that most people spend nearly 12 hours a week already in fragments. And that's like walking to a car, walking from the car to your office, dog walks, lunch break. breaks, errands we do. So how do we convert all these things, these scattered minutes into medicine? How can the normal listener do this? Very good. So that's an incidental time that we're spending outside and repurposing this time is a secret to giving your minimum 17 minutes effective dose a day.

You don't need to add time because you've already spent it outdoors, as you said. So what does that mean effectively. It means that when you're walking, you're not scrolling. You're not on your device. It sounds dumb. But I have a friend who broke his leg going up a stairway looking at his device at the beach. And he's in great shape. He recovered in four months, but he's almost my age and he like, why four months in the chaos? I don't get it. So when you're outside, get off your device. is the first way. That alone frees up the time. Second in the morning when you have coffee,

light first coffee second, or like coffee and dog all at the same time. What does this mean? Almost everybody drinks something in the morning. Go outside and drink your coffee. Don't scroll when you're outside. Remember the first rule. Just drink the coffee

and either if you want, plan your day or just notice what's in the environment. Take your dog with you, let him or poop, if that's what's on the day, what's first in the morning. And already you're gaining benefits of the morning light that I've discussed. In the evening, when you're outdoors, if you're coming home from work or coming home from school,

what you want to do is not just get off the subway or get out of the car and get inside. and do whatever you're going to new flip on the TV or whatever. You want to flip a switch and take the time that you would get from in your home to, rather your vehicle to home commute and look at the sky deliberately for two minutes. Because that time, which is an extra two minutes on your commute from your home, from your vehicle to your home, resets your brain knowing that you're going somewhere different

and out of a work mode and out of things to do. Again, what you're not doing is looking at your device. When you are outdoors with a dog or me, know that nature is social. Engage that time when you're outdoors, if you happen to be with a dog, or if you happen to be in a garden, a community garden or a park,

Use that time if you happen to be there to say hello to someone else. This sounds weird, I know, but it reduces isolation. It improves oxytocin release. When you walk, because everyone does, try to walk with someone else, whether it's at work or at home. Sometimes you feel like taking a walk by yourself. Okay, great. But if you have the opportunity to walk with,

with someone else in the walking meeting that you did, the walking meetings now are corporate policy at Edelman, in part because of my book, Indoor Epidemic, then you not only improve oxytocin release, but you improve creativity, you improve idea generation, and that should translate to better performance and better productivity. There are probably studies for it.

I haven't identified them because I'm in this role instead, But know that even the extra effort of morning sunlight, of getting out in that morning, as I described, reduces depressive symptoms by 50%. An hour of sunlight during the day, reposes depressive symptoms by 50%, which is the same result in a randomized control trial against an SRI Prozac.

So walking outside even can lower blood pressure, almost like the initial dose of Beta Poker, the data are at 7mmystolic and 4 millimeter diastolic, if you do it deliberately in a green or blue space for enough time. So we can repurpose the minutes that we have in the morning, at lunchtime or during the day, and in the evening to turn those minutes into medicine

by being intentional, by being near a green and blue space, and know that the prescription is a window, a walk, a screen, not necessarily more another wellness app, not more corporate wellness spending. It's a window, a walk, and screen curfew. That's what we want. And that screen curfew, by the way, ought to be at least an hour, preferably three hours,

but at least an hour before bedtime, because bright blue light at night suppresses your melatonin release by you. 80%. So repurpose that time indoors by giving yourself an hour wind down. I described this in the book about half a dozen different ways to do this, but one of the easy one that actually engages your brain in a new way is by writing in a journal. Handwriting takes a lot more of a neurological symphony than tapping on a screen. Tapping on a screen is just tapping or clicking. But handwriting, is a neurological workout.

You've got to coordinate all kinds of things. And plus, you get to document what it is that went well during the day. Maybe a gratitude terminal, maybe Camille tea, maybe a hot shower, a warm shower, actually improves sleep because your body temperature drops right afterwards. So there are hundreds more of these ideas in the book, Indoor Epidemic, for how to make your incidental time intentional. and to escape this indoor epidemic because you're not burned out, you're indoors too much. John, I came away from reading the book, feeling that it's really not a book necessarily about going outside.

It's a book about recovering the biological and essential rhythms modern life has pulled away from us. And I think that's what I hope the listener will take away from today's discussion. and some of the things we didn't even get to explore that are bonuses in this comprehensive book are companion animal connection, birding, houseplants, immersion, nature art, etc. So, John, thank you so much for coming on today. If a listener wants to learn more about you and your work, where's the best place for them to go? It's our website, Indoorepidemic.com, or my personal website, which is Dr. John Lapuma.com. There's actually a free seven-day outdoor RX reset that listeners can get.

And just go to Indoorepidemic.com to get it and we'll send it to you free. It's a good start. And from there, there are a lot more resources that we're happy to provide. And when I give talks about this, I usually give away a coaster. I don't know if I have one here. This is fun. It's a seed coaster. And inside are paisal, parsley, and chive seeds.

It has my face on it, you can plant me. And there's a QR code like how to plant it in case it's not easy. But I gave everybody at Edelman these as well. And all you have to do is get good organic potting soil. Plant it, put another half inch of good organic potting soil. And this you can't overwater. So you just need a pot to fit it. And in about three weeks, you'll get sprouts.

It's a way to connect with easy things. to grow. They're high antioxidant, high anti-inflammatory herbs, as all herbs are, and they're flavorful. You can add them to salads and frittatas and lots of foods. And it really connects you, especially if the weather isn't good. So try it and see. John, such an honor having you today. Thank you so much for joining us on PassionStruck. My pleasure, John. That brings us to the end of today's conversation. One of the ideas that stayed with me, is how often we try to solve biological challenges with cognitive solutions.

When we're tired, we search for better productivity systems. When we're stressed, we look for new coping strategies. When our focus declines, we search for another app, another tool, or another technique. Those approaches can certainly help. But today's conversation reminds us that human beings are not separate from their environments. Our bodies respond to light, movement, fresh air, temperature, nature, and rhythms that have shaped human life for thousands of years. When Connections weekend, our health often suffers in ways that are easy to overlook because the changes happen gradually. Earlier this week, Eric Reese helped us understand what happens when institutions become disconnected from the people they were built to serve. Today, John Lupuma challenged us

to reconsider what happens when people become disconnected from the environments they were designed to thrive within. Next week, we'll continue our exploration of the connection crisis with best-selling author, Brad McCohen. In a conversation that surprised me in all the best way, is Greg and I explore what may be one of the deepest forms of disconnection in modern life, the growing gap between being surrounded by communication and actually feeling understood. If this week's episodes focused on reconnecting with the environments that support human flourishing, next week's conversations explore reconnecting with the people around us and perhaps with ourselves. For 10 years, I have been asking the question,

what is the primary bottleneck to living out essentialism or effortless ideas? in practice in the world of relationships, teams, organizations, what's the primary bottleneck? And the answer to my surprise is that it isn't talent, it's not strategy, it's not execution. The primary bottleneck is like confident misunderstanding. We are wrong, we think we're right, and we act upon that. And that's it. That's it. Remember that flourishing is rarely found by adding more to our lives.

Often it begins by reconnecting with what has been there all along. I'm John Miles and you've been passion struck.