The Wellness Scoop - Eco-Anxiety and The Healing Power of Nature

Episode Date: March 10, 2020

Does our cultural move away from the natural world impact our mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing? Does it really change things in our brains, guts and our ability to heal? What does the science say? Our guest is the science journalist Lucy Jones – looking at the most recent studies on our relationship with nature and how it interacts with human biology, neuroscience and psychology, as well the impact of pollution and the concept of eco-anxiety and how our disconnect from nature impacts on climate change.    Lucy Jones: Loosing Eden   Deliciously Ella Live: https://www.fane.co.uk/our-shows/deliciously-ella-live/about-the-show#book   Bristol, 11th May - Gelong Thubten  How to Find Genuine Happiness    How do we find peace, presence and happiness in the business of the world around us? Can we make happiness an internal quality rather than something we’re on a constant quest for and that needs external validation to happen? We’re looking at compassion, discipline, the science of meditation and how to navigate the modern world with Buddhist monk Gelong Thubten.      London, 13th May, Dr Rangan Chatterjee The Quick and Easy Ways to Create a Healthier Life   Can five minutes make a difference to our lives? Can we really create healthy habits that impact our mental and physical wellbeing in that time, lower stress and boost our relationships. Dr Rangan Chatterjee believes we can, and that’s what he’ll be able to tell us all about.      Edinburgh, 17th May, Dr Megan Rossi  The Power of Our Gut Health   How can what we eat, our stress levels and the way we move impact the gut and why does that matter? How does the gut brain connection work and how can I make it all work a little better? We’ll be delving into the science behind our gut health and how that impacts on almost every part of our physical and mental wellbeing with Dr Megan Rossi, a leading expert in the field.      Cardiff, 19th May, Gelong Thubten  How to Find Genuine Happiness    How do we find peace, presence and happiness in the business of the world around us? Can we make happiness an internal quality rather than something we’re on a constant quest for and that needs external validation to happen? We’re looking at compassion, discipline, the science of meditation and how to navigate the modern world with Buddhist monk Gelong Thubten.      Dublin, 21st May, Shahroo Izadi  Making Positive, Long Lasting Changes   How many times have you tried to break a negative cycle, give up a habit that doesn’t help you or make a change in your life only to find yourself back at square one a week later? We’re talking to behaviour psychologist Shahroo Izadi about making these habits stick, about creating true change in our lives and allowing the healthier habits that we know may help us become an easy, enjoyable part of our every day.      Manchester, 26th May - Amelia Freer Healthy Eating 101   Healthy eating can feel very confusing - what to believe and what not to? With contradictory headlines in the media almost daily it can be hard to get a clear sense of what we should be doing to feel our best. We’ll be talking myth versus fact and breaking down what really matter and what doesn’t when it comes to balanced, healthy, sustainable, delicious eating habits with nutritionist Amelia Freer.      Leeds, 27th May, Shahroo Izadi  Making Positive, Long Lasting Changes   How many times have you tried to break a negative cycle... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Hi, and welcome to the Deliciously Ella podcast with me, Ella Mills. I am afraid for the second week running, we are missing my co-host. Life at Deliciously LA HQ at the moment is a bit of a joke with how busy it is.

All good busy, but it seems never, ever, ever to stop right now. And Matthew very much is caught in the cycle of that. But I'm thrilled to say he will be with us again next week. And before we get into today's episode, I just wanted to let everyone know about Deliciously LA Live, which is coming this May and into June. So we're going to be coming to eight different cities around the UK and Ireland, places like Manchester, Leeds, Dublin, Edinburgh, London, Hove, lots of different places. And each event is going to have a special guest and an expert in anything from finding peace and happiness to managing our stress levels, getting to grips with healthy eating, what healthy eating really

means, how to actually do it, looking at gut health and the way the gut interacts with the brain, and things like making true, lasting, genuinely sustainable changes in our lives by breaking negative cycles and becoming who we really want to be. So, so much to talk about. It's going to be absolutely brilliant. I've put all the details, the cities, the dates, the guests, the titles in the show notes below and hope to see you there. So moving on to today's episode. So many of us are living very urban lives. We're now spending the majority of our time indoors at our desks, probably eyes glued to a screen. And it subsequently means that we're spending increasingly little time outdoors in nature. Today's episode explores whether that actually matters. Does our cultural move away from the natural world impact on our

mental, emotional and spiritual well-being? Does it really change things in our brains and what does the science actually say about it? Our guest today is the acclaimed journalist Lucy Jones who's been exploring exactly this in her book L Losing Eden, looking at the most recent studies on our relationship with nature and how it interacts with human biology, neuroscience, and psychology. So welcome, Lucy. Thanks so much, Ella. I'm thrilled to be here. So I guess before we get started, I am just going to pick out a couple of stats from the book that really resonated with me, just to give a little bit of context to our episode. I knew that we were obviously distancing ourselves from nature, but I was kind of a little bit struck context to our episode. I knew that we were obviously distancing ourselves from nature,

but I was kind of a little bit struck actually by some of these. I think the thing that struck me most was that in the UK at the moment, 75% of children aged five to 12 spend less times outdoors than prison inmates. And just for reference, prison inmates are required to spend at least one hour a day exercising in the open air under UN guidelines. And then following on from that, right now, 84% of North Americans and 74% of Europeans live in urban areas. And we're currently spending between one and 5% of our time outdoors. So literally just like a teeny, teeny fraction. And that's obviously on the human side then in the kind of wildlife animal side over the last 50 years the population of

mammals birds reptiles and fish across the world have fallen by 60 percent and in 2007 the words acorn magpie and buttercup were taken out of the oxford children's dictionary in favor of words like broadband and cut and paste. It's really sad reading that. It is, isn't it? Really sad, because those aren't niche things like a magpie or a buttercup or an acorn. I know, they're magical things. So yeah, so I think that gives a nice kind of context for us to start a conversation in terms of like quite how far we've moved away from nature.

Exactly. And so you've said kind of your journey to explore this topic has taken you, you know, far and wide from conferences in Germany on the latest research to interviews with academics at the forefront of their fields, to neuroscientists in California, microbiologists in Eastern Europe. I mean, what have you learned? Well, I think the kind of overarching thing that i've learned is that the evidence is robust and varied and that connecting with nature affects us from our heads to our toes our brains our minds

our guts our nervous system our immune system and even if we're not people who would consider ourselves outdoorsy you know some people just aren't that into nature they might you know find their restoration elsewhere what I found was that background nature in our urban areas is crucial for individual mental health and population health at the beginning of my journey I had a personal bias because I'd had a personal experience with nature that had helped in my recovery at a time of illness. But I also was, you know, a science journalist at the time and I was just blown away over the last few years at this kind of quite new and emerging cutting edge field of science that is aiming to empirically prove that this is something that we can't do without,

that it's not a luxury, that it's not an option, that it's not a frill. It's something that impacts our health in measurable and significant ways. And by overlooking it, we're doing ourselves a disservice. And was there anything in particular that stood out? Were there one or two facts that you learned where you thought, I can't quite believe it, that's insane, how actually just being outdoors could genuinely impact on my brain or my body to that extent?

Yeah, I think, I mean, there were so many. There were so many things. And actually, at the beginning when I set out, I kind of thought there might be a silver bullet piece of evidence. You know, I kind of approached it a kind of an inquiry and an investigation and I wanted to find what is the mechanism by which connecting with nature affects our minds but I started to realize that actually what was surprising was kind of the really wide variety of it you know it's a real as one academic put it to me a club sandwich of effects. But just to drill down to a few surprising findings I had.

So as you said, many of us live in urban areas. And what I was really interested in at the beginning of my research was how walking through a park or a woodland could affect the brain. I'd had a period of mental ill health and addiction. And I found that in my recovery recovery I was very drawn to connecting with nature so I was really fascinated to find out what was actually going on in my brain when I was walking in nature. One of the things I found out was that if you're in a green space and then you move into a really busy loud urban area, a in edinburgh found that the time spent in the

green space can actually act as a kind of buffer against that stress so people in this study group who who walked from a park to a busy street were found to have more activity in the brain associated with relaxation and calmness and there are a myriad studies which support being in a green space allows us to recover from stress more quickly and more completely than in a built environment so that's a kind of example of you know something that may i may have intuitively felt you know lots of us think oh you know going by a beach or being in the countryside or in a wood it feels good doesn't it in some way but we don't really know what exactly is happening it's an interesting one as well about how one of the things we really focus on in here is how like there are so many small i mean as you said everyone's pretty stressed like our lives are

really stressful this week for me i feel like my diary is like scheduled to like to the minute but it's really interesting how there are just those like teeny tiny little things that you can do that have such a big impact. And actually what's interesting exactly is getting into that science on the fact that actually if you could do one call on a walk or listen to kind of one thing you need to listen to or take notes on or something, then actually that would genuinely impact on your brain. It's not kind of wishy-washy. There's like it actually will help protect your brain and that's going to help us against like basically the reality of life exactly the evidence that I found about the nervous system was quite interesting because I think a lot of our kind of

stress-related illnesses and conditions at the moment are related to an overactive sympathetic nervous system which is when you know we're in flight or fight, and we have more inflammation in the body, which can lead to illnesses and depression and disease. And studies show that being in nature activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the kind of one in charge of all the rest and digest processes. And crucially, that allows our immune system to do the work. You know, our bodies and our minds are connected with the earth and the natural world, I think so much more than I realised. I think that we overlook that. I was interested in that about how, as you said, like, there's a little

part of us that's kind of, I think, even as someone that lives in a city, and I love living in a city, but like, every time you go into the countryside, you kind of breathe and you think oh my gosh it like it feels so clean and it feels so nice and I think you do sometimes just take the edge off a little bit and it's interesting you talked about the roots of all of this about human connection to nature and it goes back to like you know writing and kind of drawings and stuff from like the Byzantine Empire, medieval China, the Romans, Florence Nightingale like there's a human history is basically kind of littered with a connection between man and nature. Exactly.

And one of the things I write a lot about in Losing Eden is this concept of biophilia, which you might have heard a bit about recently because kind of biophilic cities are becoming quite interesting and biophilic architecture. And this is the idea that was popularized by the biologist Edward Wilson. The biophilia concept is Wilson's notion that humans have an innate and emotional affiliation to life so us for example being drawn to going for a walk by the sea or even bringing a Christmas tree into our home or choosing a picture of blossom for our screensavers Wilson argues is an expression of evolutionary need to

connect with the natural world for cognitive mental emotional and spiritual development and you know that kind of makes sense to me but it all basically supports the idea that it's so nurturing to us so nurturing yeah and also the flip side of that and something that when I set out on my journey I went to the Arctic to the Svalbard seed vault and I went to this ancient forest in Poland so the Svalbard seed vault is do you know about it no it sounds so exotic and brilliant it's amazing it's this but it's also kind of sad so it's also called the doomsday vault and um not such positive yeah it kind of leers out of the arctic tundra which is just incredibly beautiful place to be

and it's a safe hold for the world's seeds to safeguard the genetic diversity of seeds and plant life in case of climate change nuclear war apocalypse ecological collapse all the positive things yeah all the good things so that felt to me like a symbol of our disconnection from the natural world that we have to um have this kind of weird doomsday vault in the arctic to keep things safe because we can't seem to do it ourselves. And also I was going to this ancient forest in Poland, the oldest, the most primeval forest, which was being logged at the time. So I was writing all about, as you say, why nature is nurturing and the evidence which explains how and why it works. But I was also going to these kind of pretty depressing places and

as the years went by I realized that um of course the flip side to all this good news is as you started the interview with that our disconnection and you know the absence of these things that you know they are all out there but we are we are losing we're overlooking the therapeutic potential of connecting with the natural world and actually as I continued researching and writing there seemed to me like a real urgency and a real I almost felt kind of panicked by looking around and seeing you know street trees being removed in Sheffield and you know the fact that the children in our society aren't getting opportunities to play outside you know I'm the same I get sucked into my screen and and I'm inside most of the

time like we all are but I think that there's an imperative for us as a society to consider this evidence and to to realize that we need the world, not just because it supports our lives, but, you know, for our sanity. But then interestingly as well, because it really made me think about it when I was looking at it again this morning, is that obviously we're also, like, a really serious issue in terms of climate change as it stands, and that's obviously, like, a fundamental conversation

that's happening all around the world at the moment but part of me wondered as I was thinking about this now as I was thinking about this topic is whether that disconnection is really not helping our sense of genuine urgency to change the way that we're living in order to protect it because it's the desire to protect it becomes harder the further removed something feels from us and obviously I'm sure there's no one in the world you know well I'm sure there are some people unfortunately but I think if we went out onto the street now most people say yeah let's talk to climate change but most of us aren't actually taking the actions that we need to do that and

we're saying that we're protesting but we're not necessarily changing our lives interestingly and I want to touch on that I'm kind of that idea of like eco-anxiety as well because I think it's really interesting as you start to get into the science of this and you realize like okay wait like actually just being outside and not you know going on a huge hike and not going to like the middle of nowhere but like literally just going to like a park in a city or like just going outside of a city for a day and going on a walk like literally just half an hour even just like getting outside has such a huge impact on us and it's it's very you know it's really kind of scientifically back now both mentally and physically and but then we're getting this kind of sense of like genuine

panic about the fact that this is going and it's going at such an extraordinarily rapid rate I think so then you said in the UK, it's in the last 80 years, we've lost half of our ancient woodlands and now one in 10 species in this country are now facing extinction, which is just kind of completely terrifying stats. We're not appreciating it,

but we're equally kind of completely petrified about losing it. Exactly. I think your point kind of gets to like the core of the matter and shows how connected all these things are, that we are in a climate emergency, in a nature emergency, partly because of our disconnection, because we kind of think that we're separate from the land and the human hubris takes that we can kind of, with our technological inventions, survive without the insects and the trees who actually provide the air and the plants and the food that we need. So I think I think they're all kind of part of this kind of dysfunction between humans and the earth. But, yeah, in terms of eco anxiety, there's kind of two strands of that isn't there there's the people at the front line of climate chaos you know even in Britain with the flooding who are already suffering you know

mental health problems that you know are spreading around the world we've seen the scale of that now in Australia and the Amazon and you know these things are only going to increase and then other people who are kind of having eco anxiety and fear of the future and what I found was I also fell into a state of ecological grief as I reconnected with nature but I also found and I still do today that the antidote to that is to go back to nature you know it is to kind of spend time with the trees and go bird watching and and take my my daughter out um you know into the wild and kind of plant trees or be involved in kind of community collective action in order to try and do something to help in some small way yeah but the small ways add up don't they i mean that's

always that's always the thing i feel like we always think we're so powerless but actually like every little impact every little thing has a genuine impact yeah and look at like Greta and the school strikes and you know that I feel like there has been a real consciousness change and what I hope and actually what my research for losing Eden kind of suggested to me was like the separation of physical mental and mental health and kind of separating social factors from that just doesn't really make sense like the biopsychosocial model of health care especially in the context of kind of our relationship with the environment just makes so much sense like you know more and more we realize how air pollution of course is affecting our physical health but it's also you know like

rates of for example i can think psychosis is higher around areas of polluted air you know all these it's all interconnected and I'm hoping that this research field which I look at will lead to a bit of an opening of the doors in that way. Yeah it's interesting as well on that sense of pollution that you said and it makes complete sense and I have to be honest I'd never even thought about it before like I'm you know all the kind of gut health experts say you know you should eat 30 different plant-based foods a week because that's really good for your gut microbiome and diversity and strengthening your well-being and all the rest of it and I'm always thinking about those sorts of things like if I had different nuts and different lentils and like different seeds and things but then obviously

I live in central London I work in central London I'm on the tube every single day, walk down Oxford Street, which is like one of the most polluted streets every day. And, you know, as you said, like the gut microbiota of people who live in urban areas and develop countries in general are less biodiverse than those of people who still have a profound and kind of daily contact with the natural world which again is really scary and it's really interesting because we're always thinking about those like basic things like let me have my kale salad i'll just plug into a meditation and then i think we're so often missing those like big health factors right in front of us it's kind of screamingly obvious like inhaling fumes all day every day isn't necessarily the best thing for our body so true i think that kind of speaks to the idea that there's this amazing american ecologist called paul shepherd who said something like we think our you know our skins are kind of porous but actually you know we're the epidermis of the human body it's like it's almost like a forest you know we have these microorganisms who live within us you know they even live on our on our faces. And we know more and more about how they interact with our brains and our mental health. We're not alone. We have creatures who live inside us. And as you're saying, the diversity of microorganisms around us absolutely impact on our health and our moods. one of the first things I started looking at was the macro bacteria in the soil because I moved

out of London while I was writing this book and I got an allotment and I just got so into it and I felt so good after plunging my hands deep in soil and you know at first I kind of thought this must be about growing food and being outside and that kind of magic of growing it's like like if you've ever grown potatoes it's like finding treasure it's like unbelievably cool but then i saw something on a facebook group and someone has talked about like uh the antidepressant like effects of soil and i thought that that sounds sounds wishy-washy sounds wishy-washy but i looked into it and i um i interviewed a few of the leading experts in the area. And I found out that there is a species of bacteria in the soil called M. vacci.

And in studies, it's been shown to have antidepressant-like effects and stimulate the brain to create more serotonin, which led one of the leading experts, Dropher lowry to say we should all be spending more time in the dirt so you know well now since that point now i know through doing my research like when i have soil on my hands or my little daughter's covered in mud you know i know that there's like there are these tiny tiny creatures in there which might be you know making us feel happier and yeah i just think that's remarkable and it's kind of the antithesis of cleanliness of the modern world where we like love to death all spray everything and like remove you know and we've we've touched on that on kind of episodes on the gut and things but it's just interesting again how I think so often we just don't see all

these aspects of our health linked together but actually like they're so fundamentally linked it's unbelievable exactly and I but I think it's kind of cultural isn't it like when I was researching forest schools and outdoor nurseries and there is like a really exciting growing movement of trying to get kids outside to kind of counteract this kind of creeping you know shutting them all indoors and like a lot of the forest school practitioners said to me that there is this feeling that mud is dirty. And like, you know, parents might just don't want their kids to get covered in soil and mud. You know, it's kind of seen as like, you know, out there, not us. Obviously, kids love playing in mud.

But I think that also speaks to this sense that, you know, as humans, we're disconnected from the earth. And what we do and how we live isn't in relation to the rest of nature. And, you know, the climate crisis is showing that it is, you know, in major, major ways. But also in these health ways, we are overlooking the soil that we've evolved in. These bacteria, these old friends, as they're called, that we've evolved with over millennia, old friends as you know they're called that we've evolved with over millennia you know we need them yeah there was one study that you included which i thought was absolutely kind of astonishing which was after a certain illness patients with views of trees had shorter post-operative hospital stays fewer negative evaluative comments from nurses

as well as slightly lower scores for complications than those that didn't have views of trees which I thought was just like kind of mind-blowing and almost hard to believe that that tiny difference or something you would think had no relation whatsoever to something kind of hospital-based could really be true. Totally. So that is one of the kind of major studies. That was one of the earliest studies done by this guy, Roger Ulrich, who's kind of the don of, like, healthcare and nature research. And, yeah, I mean, he conceded that a brick wall

probably isn't as exciting as looking at something beautiful like you know there are obviously beautiful cityscapes that you could be looking at um but you know the evidence was was unequivocal that you know these people were getting better and they were their moods were different because of looking out onto a tree and i think actually ulrich himself had suffered from kidney disease in his teenage years and he'd considered his view of a pine tree while he was bedridden to have aided his recovery and in fact that's something that Florence Nightingale used to write about as well and you know what in a way we kind of know it don't we like we bring flowers to people that are well although I don't think you can actually

do that so much anymore they don't like it no I'm not sure you're allowed to I don't think you're allowed to exactly but but that's how we say thank you it is exactly you know and so there is part of us that kind of intuitively you know we we associate nature with with healing and certainly Ulrich had influence because he worked with the NHS over years and you know you do see in hospitals and healthcare buildings a bit of nature. But I think in this country, certainly, it's not quite enough. Like there's this hospital in Singapore called Kutek Prat Hospital. And it's a really radical idea where they integrate forest-like nature with an understanding that while their patients and staff

need the natural world for their healing and recovery, they also need to conserve and protect species. So there is 83 species of butterfly living in the grounds of the hospital. And anyone in the community can visit the hospital as well and enjoy nature. And the balconies are kind of filled with scented flowers and plenty of natural light and this biophilic design has been cited as the reason it's preferred to the other older hospitals so that's an example of a kind of biophilic city and biophilic design incorporating nature and Roger Ulrich's study was between 1972 and 1981 and yes it has had influence that study you know it is probably the most cited study in the nature health kind of nexus but we're still not quite incorporating nature into healthcare

I mean it's still seen as a bit of a fringe area you know there is the area of ecotherapy is growing but I think generally we still think that contact with nature is a kind of like nice extra frill you know like an add-on yeah rather than something central to good mental health it's so interesting I mean somehow all four episodes that I've been researching we've basically ended up in all completely different topics but have basically ended up in the exact same place which is about the brain and mood and so much about mental health because obviously this is like one of the biggest problems facing the world today like diseases of the brain and increasingly alarming problems with our mental health, especially among the young, it just kind of feels like it's getting out of control.

And the thing that's so interesting, and this isn't to belittle it by any means, it's so serious and I've seen lots of friends and family struggle with it and I appreciate that 100%. I had a few kind of challenges with it myself and definitely one after Sky as well. So I really don't mean to belittle it at all. But it is just so interesting because we look so much at the big picture and we look at all the drugs and we focus so much on that.

And at the same time, we have so much evidence about all the little things we can do. And I'm not saying that little things are going to be all and ends all and it's going to change anything in a 24-hour period. There is no magic bullet for anything. She said that's what you looked for initially and like it doesn't exist it'll never exist probably with anything but yeah we are understanding that like exercise makes a big difference how we eat makes a big difference getting outside makes a big difference and yet basically we're not doing it we're so busy we're so kind of I don't have time for this I don't have time for that I don't have time for this but yet we have time I think you said kids today spent over four hours a day on a screen so it's like we do have time to play video games and we do have time to spend gosh

knows how long like scrolling Instagram stalking like our cousins cats girlfriend playing you know ending up in so many weird places and we have time to drink and we have time to do all this but we don't have time to kind of nurture those basic needs. And it just, I guess to me, it just started to feel really sad when the science is out there, and yet we keep dismissing it. It's kind of wishy-washy and weird and like, you know, you're like a tree hugger. Yeah.

A kind of a bit of a strange, like, left field kind of person for talking about the fact that, like, nature can be, like, genuinely healing and not healing in a kind of alternative sense like actually kind of mentally and physically healing yeah and it's frustrating in so many ways to be like faced with these serious serious serious issues especially in the UK where the NHS is so beloved and struggling so much and we can all see that so so clearly that we're not doing these like free things to try and make ourselves feel better yeah I think that's so interesting what you say about the tree hugger image like yeah I was thinking the other day about how like when I was growing up do you remember like that guy swampy

in like Newbury was like in a there was like I think it was like the Newbury bypass there were all these hippie people there was this guy swampy he was kind of like a bit seen as a bit of a joke I remember Prince Charles was being like dissed for talking to his plants and i feel like that kind of seeing like environmentalism is like a bit cringe and a bit like left field it it's so different to like the very serious scientists who i have been talking to over the last few years these are people who are like really serious physicians and like psychiatrists and, and, you know, studying this relationship, but still environmentalism and the idea of nature as an important thing for wellness is seen as a bit of a kind of wishy idea. I mean, I think that there are so many issues in like our late capitalist end times

aren't there? And, you you know mental health is so complex and I mean I would say that you know in my periods of mental illness over the past psychiatry and psychotherapy and my support of my friends and family has been really crucial but contact with nature and contact with nature I would not advocate as a cure-all yeah of course it maintains my mental health so I find that I have to go out you know I live in an urban area I'm not going into kind of like the wilds every day and you know now I've done the research so I understand why it works but just going into a green space kind of daily kind of can maintain

my mental health and it's so easy to overlook that isn't it there's so much to distract us and we're so also busy like you say and kind of it feels like there's an element of denial as well often with these things because it's easier not to because it's easier to sit on the tube and it's easier to sit on the bus than it is to maybe get up like half an hour earlier and walk and try and walk through some kind of green space on the way and i think it it's the same it's like we don't have time to cook and we don't have time to do this and it's just and i so appreciate it like we run a business we have a tiny we're currently moving house like i i get it we are so busy i mess this up all the time but i think it's

just it's just interesting that if we can make time for these things, it's quite plausible they could have like a profound impact in the long term on our like actual health, which ultimately is what we all want good health because we want to be here. We want to be on this planet. Exactly. Hopefully the planet's here for us. Exactly. research I looked at this concept of equigenesis which was I think actually one of the most surprising and in a way kind of beautiful areas that I learned about and that is an idea by a professor called Richard Mitchell. So Professor Mitchell at Glasgow University's research suggests that greener neighbourhoods that offer a connection with nature might actually reduce the health gap between rich and poor and lead to a better, more equal society.

So he did a study that was published in The Lancet in 2008, which found that it was possible for greener neighbourhoods to mitigate the negative effects of income deprivation on health potential benefits of nature connections seem more powerful to the researchers for people who are from poorer backgrounds and under more stress so you know this has kind of serious consequences for like government and policymakers and the people who are kind of making decisions about access to nature and kind of programming in parks. Because if nature can reduce that inequality gap, which is a stain on our society, I mean, that seems like a really, really big deal to me. You know, I might have said before, nature isn't for everybody, or maybe only individuals who kind of have grown up with nature

might benefit from it. But, you know, that evidence is just kind of unequivocal about how, you know, more nature, more access to nature would improve society. And, like, you know, the worst parts of our society, which is inequality. Yeah, it's kind of equal parts fascinating and frustrating, isn't it? For anyone listening to this thinking,

gosh, this is kind of equal parts fascinating and frustrating isn't it for anyone listening to this thinking gosh this is kind of really profound actually like there again it's just looking at all those small ways that we can help improve the health and happiness of our lives and the lives of those around us on a day-to-day basis like how do you make small realistic changes because obviously as we said like everyone's busy we so appreciate the fact that like modern life is stressful people have jobs and kids and hobbies and commitments left right and center first of all how much do we need like is that evidence saying you know we need two hours or you know whatever else and then how do you have any kind of recommendations about how you start to actually try and implement some of this into a kind of realistic life in a realistic sense sure so there are various different studies looking at dosage yeah and like what a good dose of nature looks like

there's a ton of studies that were done around the practice of forest bathing in japan by a scientist called dr lee and just to confirm forest bathing it's not wild swimming or anything like that it's literally just going into a forest and's not wild swimming or anything like that it's literally just going into a forest and kind of being in nature and soaking that up without being on your phone or anything yeah so forest bathing is getting out into nature or forest or woodland and engaging the five senses so kind of tasting the fresh geosmin on your tongue, which is the smell of earth after rain, listening out for birdsong, touching the plants, the leaves or the bark of a tree,

looking for different colours. So being really present in nature, basically. Yeah, being really present, really mindful. And this guy, Dr Kingley, found so much evidence to suggest that this has benefits. So he found that the forest boosted the immune system by increasing the number of natural killer cells. He found that psychological benefits include decreased level of anxiety, depression, fatigue, and increased vigor and energy. If you

want to decrease your stress, go to the forest is basically what he said but he also says you should be there for at least two hours that's quite a long time i think that in terms of small changes people can make my research has suggested to me that even if you're not someone who's like obsessed with david attenborough documentaries or like go wants to go tree climbing on the weekend if you maybe had the opportunity to take a route to work or you know wherever you're going that's through like a tree-lined avenue or through a park you know that is going to have potentially therapeutic benefits for you something that helped me was a kind of it's almost like a radical noticing so kind of like slowing down which actually I was I was lucky that you know having a young child really helped me do that kind of like slowing down which actually I was I was lucky that you know having a

young child really helped me do that kind of get down on the ground and look at the spiders and and look and see what was going on but I think you know if you if you start looking to see what's going on looking at the plants looking at the you know the lichen and the you know all the different ecosystems that live around us then you can kind of benefit from that so ultimately at the moment there's not one clear prescription other than the fact that we know that some is better than none yes and i mean obviously humans are all really different and you know i i interviewed a lot of eco therapists and doctors working in this field and you know if you're someone who you know has had a bad experience in a wood going to like a woodland or being like told to go to

woodland by a doctor is not going to be a good idea or like you know if you're someone who suffers with like OCD maybe like as one academic said to me like doing a litter pick on a beach is not going to be something that you find therapeutic so there's not like one size fits all yeah you know there are lots of like minority groups which find countryside or parks hostile or unwelcoming so the experience is different for different demographics different people the overwhelming evidence is that something some contact with nature is going to benefit every single person yes yes and without it we suffer without you know

conversely the disconnection the like winnowing green spaces the decreasing of biodiversity so you know the more biodiversity of birdsong for example studies show that you know, the more biodiversity of birdsong, for example, studies show that that increases your stress recovery. You mentioned like the species decline. It's all interconnected. So if you were going to give our listeners three things to remember from today's episode, three take-homes, what would they be? So if you smell the earth after it's rain do you know what i mean that smell it's delicious yeah like geosmin is the the name for the compound you know when

it's rained and you can just smell the earth it's incredible now that smell activates areas of the brain linked with calmness and relaxation so definitely like sniff that smell if you ever have you next time you smell it um secondly seek out moments of awe and wonder so the science of of awe um looks a lot at how moments of awe wonder and beauty in nature um can impact our health so they can promote healthier levels of an inflammation biomarker which is a pretty big deal for our physical and mental health so seeking all through like a waterfall or even for me like i love taking my pocket microscope out and looking in like the lichen and the moss for little creatures you know that's awesome to me those things aren't luxuries or frills they're

things that have like an actual measurable impact on our health if you're a keen gardener or you like just kind of planting or being out and about in the soil you might like to know about the species of bacteria which is found in the soil which is found to impact the brain and increase our stress resilience and you know which explains why we might have a buzz after gardening yeah and I think also if we feel if anyone's feeling ecological grief and eco-anxiety which I think is increasing I would say that collective action and I did some tree planting the other day and it just made me feel so much better just getting together with people to kind of try and make a difference and

like you said earlier it's easy to think we're powerless but we're not and we to kind of try and make a difference. And like you said earlier, it's easy to think we're powerless, but we're not, and we can kind of fight and fight for nature. And that can help. Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Lucy. I honestly was reading your book this morning again, and I was like, I'm going to walk home from this. I'm going to get outside, and I'm going to do exactly that. Thank you so much for everything today.

Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you so much for everything today. Thanks so much. Lucy's book is Losing Eden. I'll pop it in the show notes below. And again, with all the details for Delicious Yellow Live in May and June this year. Have a lovely day, everyone. We will be back again next week. And my co-host, Matthew Mills, will be back with me. Thanks so much.

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