Speaker 1 00:04
With information on the latest developments in assistive technology and initiatives from the studios of 2RPH in Sydney, RPH Australia brings you AbleQuest.
Speaker 2 00:20
Thanks for watching!
Speaker 1 00:23
Dr. Dimity Williams is a Melbourne family GP who wants more of us to spend more time in nature and fewer hours hooked up to technology. In fact, Dr. Williams tells her patients to aim for a green hour each day.
Speaker 1 00:38
This nature dose is as important as getting five vegetable serves a day or having eight hours' sleep. In a world where increasingly people struggle with mental health issues, she is passionate about integrating nature into health care, urging her patients to take breaks outside.
Speaker 1 00:56
Time in nature lowers feelings of stress and anxiety, lifts mood, and improves focus. And there is scientific evidence to prove it. Dr. Williams is co -founder of the Kids in Nature Network. She is also an author.
Speaker 1 01:12
This interview with Elaine Jontek explores how to spend regular time outside in nature and encourage your children or grandchildren to do the same.
Speaker 3 01:23
Welcome to the program, Dr. Williams. Most of us feel that it does us good to spend time at the beach or in the bush, but you're a family GP who prescribes time in nature to help treat anxiety and depression.
Speaker 3 01:37
In fact, you're so passionate about this idea that you wrote a book, Nature, Our Medicine, How the Natural World Sustains Us. So can you briefly explain how the natural world does sustain us?
Speaker 2 01:51
Yes, I'd be delighted to do that. So the natural world provides us with the foundations for our wellbeing. We call them our life support systems. So fresh air and fresh water and stable climates, and of course healthy soil to grow our food.
Speaker 2 02:04
But Earth's biological richness or biodiversity also offers us medicines and beautiful places to spend time in. But unfortunately we've moved away from nature. We've moved inside to sit down and screen spaces have replaced green places in our lives.
Speaker 2 02:19
And this move away from nature, this disconnection from nature has not been good for us or for our planet actually. And so what we see in the clinic are these lifestyle -related diseases rising and particularly mental health problems which are often overwhelming health systems everywhere.
Speaker 2 02:36
What we know is that spending time in nature is quite therapeutic for us. So certainly encouraging people to spend time in nature is a key part of my approach for people with mental health problems.
Speaker 3 02:48
So how do we make space in our busy lives for nature and unplug from technology?
Speaker 2 02:54
Well, that's a good question, and it's something people find challenging a lot of the time. I often will chat to people firstly about the benefits of spending time in nature, and then together we come up with a nature prescription, which is a way of structuring and making sure people can kind of sprinkle nature throughout their day and their week.
Speaker 2 03:12
So some people who are very pressured and certainly in our culture, there's this cult of busyness, and we often feel we aren't allowed to just sit somewhere under a tree and relax. So together the patient and I would work out how much time they might have and when that might best suit them, so whether that's at lunchtime or before they head out the door to go to work, and where is an accessible, easy to get to place for them.
Speaker 3 03:37
So do you think we've lost our connection with the Earth?
Speaker 2 03:40
think many people have, many people spend a lot of time inside and even when they go outside they might have their earbuds in and be listening to a podcast or having a conversation with someone who's a long way away.
Speaker 2 03:52
So they're not really present even when they're outside in nature. A key part of the approach is encouraging people to turn the phone on silent or take the earbuds out, really paying attention and slowing down.
Speaker 2 04:06
So noticing the various sites around them, the feel of the cool breeze on their skin or the warmth of the sun, just really using a lot of mindfulness techniques to use all their senses to come out and really be in nature.
Speaker 3 04:21
That's a lovely expression that you just use, sprinkling nature throughout the day. Can you tell us about your idea about aiming for a green hour every day? What would that do for people?
Speaker 2 04:33
I came up with the concept of a green hour and it's not that you need to spend a whole green hour at once, but it might be that you have 15 minutes that you can spend at lunchtime or half an hour after work, but I guess it's something kind of aim for, just like we would aim for eating five sets of veggies a day or two pieces of fruit or getting eight hours sleep a night.
Speaker 2 04:52
If we can think about the idea of getting a green hour or if you're lucky enough to live by the beach, a blue hour. And the benefits are really wide ranging actually, so from a physical health point of view and when we're out in nature, we're much more likely to be physically active.
Speaker 2 05:08
That's good for our muscle development and our heart health. And of course we get the exposure to healthy amounts of vitamin D, which is really important for our bone strength and our muscle strength and for our immune function.
Speaker 2 05:22
And you're also more likely to be walking on uneven surfaces when you're outside rather than walking through a shopping centre, for example. So walking across uneven surfaces is really good for developing our balance and what we call our proprioception, which is that sense of our body within space.
Speaker 2 05:39
So when we're outside, we tend to look out into the distance and then we look close up at something very near to us. If we spend more time outside, we have lower rates of shortsightedness. So if you sit inside and look at a computer screen, you're looking at a fixed distance all the time.
Speaker 2 05:57
And when we know that when we're outside in nature, we do look out to the distance and then look close up at things. The other benefits, particularly if you're in a really nature -rich place, so by the ocean or in a forest, is that we get a lowering of our blood pressure and a slowing of our heart rate and the stress hormones in our body, like cortisol, they reduce as well.
Speaker 2 06:20
And then this means that our bodies start to relax and so we have lower feelings of stress and anxiety and elevation in our mood. And studies have found that children who have difficulty with attention or focus, if they go for a walk or spend time outside in a nature -rich area, when they return to class after lunch break in a nature -rich playground, they'll be better able to focus.
Speaker 2 06:43
It kind of refreshes and restores our mind. And I think all of this makes absolute sense when you think that we evolved outside in nature, looking around and moving our bodies. We certainly didn't evolve sitting inside, staring at a screen.
Speaker 2 06:58
So it's kind of not surprising, just from a common sense point of view, that we're seeing a rise in illness as our lifestyle has changed.
Speaker 3 07:07
So I believe your book's got a section about forest bathing. I hadn't heard that expression before. It's nothing about taking your clothes off and walking in a forest, is it?
Speaker 2 07:17
No, but I guess that would make it very, very multi -sensory if you did that. So forest bathing or shinrin yoku is an approach that originated in Japan quite some time ago, actually, in the late 80s.
Speaker 2 07:28
What happens with forest bathing is that you slow down and you quietly walk through a forest and you might spend two to three hours doing this. And the emphasis is on using all our senses. So walking quite slowly, taking deep breaths, you might choose to sit under a tree for a little while and maybe have a cup of tea.
Speaker 2 07:49
It's just a really slow process. And there's been quite a lot of evidence developed around this by Japanese researchers. And they've found that by doing this mindful walking and being in a forest, there is a reduction in the stress hormones, a lowering of blood pressure and heart rate, and even an activation or increased activity of white blood cells called natural killer cells, which are the cells that help fight infection in the body and slow the progression of cancer.
Speaker 2 08:18
So quite a lot of therapeutic benefits from forest bathing.
Speaker 3 08:23
So if we don't have a frost that's close by, it would a park do the job?
Speaker 2 08:28
Well, the more time you spend and the more nature rich the area that you're spending your time in, obviously, the better the benefit and the more mindful the process is. But even small amounts of time in nature are worthwhile.
Speaker 2 08:41
As I said earlier, it's really about that orienting to nature. So, you know, really using the time mindfully to pay attention. So, you know, when you're going to do this, you maybe put your phone on silent.
Speaker 2 08:52
And if you're really worried about time, you could put the timer on. So, you're going to have, say, half an hour out in the nearby park. And the emphasis is on the quality time. So, when you're in the park, really pay attention.
Speaker 2 09:05
Look for the birds and listen to their songs. Maybe even do something a little bit novel, which is what our brain really likes. So, you might choose to take your shoes and socks off and let your feet experience the grass or walk in the sand and paddle in the shallows at the beach or lie on the ground underneath a tree and look up into the canopy.
Speaker 2 09:24
Because it's very restorative for our brain to look at things like a gently swaying canopy, for example.
Speaker 3 09:31
You argue in your book, Dr Williams, that time in nature, climbing trees, playing with sticks is important for children's well -being. I guess most parents try and do that. Is that the childhood you had?
Speaker 2 09:43
Yes, I was very fortunate that even though I grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne, we had some bushland at the end of our street that was in the seventies. And so at that time after school and on the weekends, we just spent time playing outside.
Speaker 2 09:56
So, you know, children of all different ages would play together. And we did all sorts of things outside weeks and some gentle quiet activities like making cubbies and calling each other up on our sick phones and some more adventurous things, you know, like climbing trees or a competition to jump across the creek, for example.
Speaker 2 10:13
And it was this diversity of experiences that really helped shape our childhoods. And the lack of adult direction and outcome focus, which is what we see in organised sport particularly, means that children in these sort of outdoor play experiences are much more likely to have to problem solve and work together cooperatively.
Speaker 2 10:37
And what this helps to do is foster these skills like getting along with others and resilience. Things aren't going quite right, how you can just kind of keep going and work things out for yourself. So these are the sorts of experiences that sadly are lacking for many children today.
Speaker 2 10:54
And of course, we need to be really mindful that we're providing within our cities places for children to play in this way.
Speaker 3 11:03
I guess parents these days are worried about stranger danger or they still have to supervise their children. A lot of time is spent structured.
Speaker 2 11:12
Yeah, I think children today have a much busier, more pressured lives. They're often, they have before school care or after school care or organized activities. They're often not left just to play outside with their friends.
Speaker 2 11:25
But we know that there's a lot of, a great benefit for that. And in fact, quite a lot of children are left unsupervised on devices, for example, which I think many would argue are much less safe for them than playing outside in the park with their friends without an adult directly in sight.
Speaker 2 11:42
Once children get to a certain age, they are quite capable of playing outside without direct adult supervision.
Speaker 3 11:50
So can you give an example, a patient that you've helped with your nature prescription, either the child may be suffering from ADHD or even an adult?
Speaker 2 12:02
Sure, I'd be happy to. So one that jumps into mind quite quickly for me is an adult, a woman who's a lawyer and she's extremely busy and suffering from anxiety. She felt very pressured for time. And so we had a chat about when during the day she thought she might be able to fit some nature in.
Speaker 2 12:20
And I asked her what she did at lunchtime. And at lunchtime she sat outside and there was a courtyard garden at work, but when she was in the courtyard garden at work, she spent her lunchtime scrolling through social media.
Speaker 3 12:32
Mm -hmm.
Speaker 2 12:33
So together we talked about how long she thought she would be able to not do that for. And she thought that would be maybe 15 minutes. You know, that was our nature prescription was that we would start off small with maybe three times a week, three lunch times a week.
Speaker 2 12:47
She would put her phone on silent and just be outside in the courtyard paying attention to nature and enjoying her lunch without scrolling through the screen. So her nature prescription was 15 minutes in the courtyard at work at lunch time, three times a week.
Speaker 2 13:02
And the idea is that you kind of start where the patient's at or what's possible like any new behavior change. And then we aim to build that up. When I saw her afterwards, she few weeks later, she had been trying to do that.
Speaker 2 13:17
And whilst she couldn't do it as often as she'd like, she was starting to feel better. And she had really noticed that when she did do it, she felt calmer and was able to focus a bit better when she went back into work for the second half of the day.
Speaker 3 13:31
that could be a good prescription for all the listeners to spend 15 minutes less on their phone and 15 minutes more in nature. Before you go, Dr. Williams, some of our listeners will want to know more.
Speaker 3 13:42
Where can I buy your book?
Speaker 2 13:45
on my website which is natureourmedicine .com. People will be able to buy the book and they can also download a template which has got more information about nature prescriptions. They can even set about writing their own nature prescription if they like.
Speaker 3 13:59
And that was Dr. Dimity Williams, Family GP and author of Nature, Our Medicine, How the Natural World Sustains Us.
Speaker 1 14:12
You have just been listening to AbleQuest, a program that looks at developments in assistive technology and initiatives. From Elaine Chantec and Barbara Sullivan, thank you for listening, and goodbye till next program.
