The Indoor Epidemic: Why Your House is Accelerating Aging | Dr. John La Puma

0:00 Every hour you spend sealed inside is

0:03 an hour your body quietly and prematurely ages.

0:07 What's the cost of this 93% of our time that we're spending indoors?

0:14 Isolation, immune deficiency, insomnia, um attentive fatigue,

0:20 cognitive deficits, myopia, increased sedentariness, uh obesity.

0:27 It's just kind of the list goes on.

0:29 And it's actually, I think,

0:32 a root cause of a lot of those chronic diseases that we simply have

0:37 not been able to identify and there really hasn't been a prescription until now.

0:42 That's a pretty bold statement coming from a physician.

0:46 Do you think that a lot of your colleagues in this space, you know,

0:50 you're we're here recording in Santa Monica, you did your residency at UCLA.

0:55 if we went to them is a root cause of that.

0:57 The amount of crazy amount of time that we spend indoors, what would they say?

1:02 80% of heart disease is preventable.

1:04 50% of depression and anxiety are preventable.

1:07 40% of all cancers are environmental and preventable.

1:11 It's at least a co-actor for each of those conditions.

1:16 And I think that they would say, "Show me the data." Okay, where's the data?

1:22 And I would say, you know,

1:24 I read 2200 studies in the peer-reviewed literature to put this together.

1:30 studies that referenced everything from light and air to gardens

1:35 and forests to try to put together a thesis

1:41 for why it is we've seen so much chronic disease

1:46 accelerate and what the indoor environment is doing to us.

1:53 So, this isn't just me saying this.

1:56 I'm reflecting what the research shows and I'm formulating it

2:02 in a new way because I think it needs a name.

2:06 We haven't really had a name for this and you know since co

2:11 it's become normal to have a screen centered life but it really isn't normal.

2:17 We evolved over 200,000 years out outside and we're kind of living

2:23 in a 50-year built environment and we're the first generation I think

2:28 to move indoors and stay there and that's impacting our biology

2:35 in the kind of serious medical ways I think that the literature supports.

2:41 Um, what's new about this is not just

2:44 the formulation that there is an indoor epidemic

2:47 and that it hurts us and that inside isn't

2:52 nearly as safe as we've been led to believe.

2:55 but that there is a fix and that the fix

2:59 is actually much simpler and much more accessible

3:04 and less expensive than a lot of traditional solutions

3:09 to these medical problems which certainly have their place.

3:12 I prescribe pharmaceuticals, I prescribe devices,

3:15 I prescribe uh operative procedures, I send people to surgeons.

3:20 I'm saying that outdoor prescription outdoor

3:24 prescriptions in general and my outdoor

3:27 RX which I uh point to and describe in indoor

3:31 epidemic are easy that there are protocols that they anyone can

3:37 implement them and that they're easier to do than you think.

3:42 You know going back to your colleagues you know

3:44 you said that they would say show me the data.

3:47 Sure.

3:47 And often in medicine, if you study the history of medicine, the data,

3:52 sometimes that's um you know clinical experience,

3:57 sometimes that's you know controlled studies, case studies, other things.

4:04 The data is often there, but it takes somebody to come in and connect

4:06 the dots because if you weren't taught about it, you may not know about it.

4:12 Exactly.

4:12 Right.

4:13 that just like you know I got two hours of nutrition in cooking school,

4:18 I got about two hours of nutrition in medical school.

4:22 Now nutrition is going to be taught more broadly.

4:24 We taught the first culinary medicine course in the country.

4:28 Michael Royen and I founder uh the Cleveland Clinic Wellness

4:33 Institute and now culinary medicine is taught in 80% of schools.

4:38 uh I think that this is starting in the same way that we have a chance

4:44 to introduce the kind of research that's needed

4:49 and I think many clinicians rely on peer-reviewed trials.

4:52 It's not enough just to have experience of another doctor.

4:54 Not enough to have case reports, not enough to have them as anecdotal evidence.

4:59 Not enough to have your own observations in practice.

5:02 We want to take those observations and then

5:05 put them in research protocols and and test them.

5:10 What I'm saying is that much of that data actually already

5:13 exists and it's coming online very fast since I've reviewed the literature.

5:17 There literally, you know,

5:20 700 more articles than when I reviewed them for this even last year.

5:25 And that's because there's intense interest in this space,

5:29 in the space that suggests that light can be a nutrient,

5:33 that air can be a nutrient, that you can change your biology with specific

5:40 intentional exposure to blue and green spaces.

5:44 Yet, you need to be really specific about what the science is.

5:47 You need to be specific about natural killer cells

5:51 activity going up 56% with a 2-hour forest exposure.

5:56 You need to be specific about um blue light suppressing melatonin

6:01 at night by 21% when you have that exposure within 60 minutes.

6:05 Some people think within 90 minutes of sleep.

6:09 Um and then that effect lasting an hour and a half

6:12 of suppression not being able to get to sleep.

6:14 You need to be specific about gardening and long-term

6:18 gardeners having 37% less dementia than than uh non-guarders.

6:25 And the act of gardening itself uh lowering hemoglobin A1C

6:29 by 0.5% the same as an initial dose of metformin.

6:34 You need to be specific about circadian biology works,

6:38 how the mitochondrial system works,

6:40 how the lymphatic system works, how the gut brain access works.

6:46 And when you do that, when you put these four things together,

6:49 you have a protocol that begins to make sense to scienceoriented clinicians.

6:54 green exercise.

6:55 I mean, I could talk for hours about this, but you know,

6:57 green exercise is essential for what I

7:00 know you're especially interested in mitochondrial mitochondrial action

7:04 and uh and flexibility and um movement improves

7:09 mitochondrial action when movement is outside and mitochondrial biogenesis.

7:14 These are cellular mechanisms that result in clinical

7:17 effects and that's what people care about.

7:20 What do I do?

7:21 Yeah.

7:21 you know, you're talking about what people care about

7:23 and to really bring home this idea of the indoor epidemic.

7:28 You know, there's this um idea that you share in the book pretty

7:30 early on and it's this idea that what if the reason you're tired,

7:34 anxious, and not sleeping well isn't your diet, although diet's important.

7:39 It isn't your supplement or it isn't your routine necessarily,

7:42 but the fact that you're spending 93% of your life indoors.

7:47 Do pe do people actually know when you

7:50 talk to individuals or patients or former patients,

7:53 do they actually know that, hey,

7:54 the reason that I feel like crap or have that afternoon

7:57 slump especially might be because I'm spending way too much time indoors.

8:04 Is that is that connection being made?

8:05 I think it's going to be made.

8:07 I think people like you are helping to make it frankly.

8:10 And I think one way to understand that is

8:14 this concept of digital obesity that I introduce.

8:17 That's not my original term,

8:19 but it's a term that I found in the literature that describes

8:22 what happens when people are in front of screens too long.

8:26 Because when we're inside, we're not we're often in front of a screen.

8:31 Whether that's your phone and you know when when your phone's in your hand,

8:35 your brain thinks it's time to work.

8:38 Whether that's at night or in recreation

8:40 or on the beach or walking down the street, some people walk that or at a car.

8:44 Too much sugar burns out your metabolism.

8:47 Too many pixels burn out your brain.

8:49 Susan Magnuson at Johns Hopkins who a neuroscientist

8:52 there said just yesterday that we used

8:55 to have cognitive attention of up to 90 minutes and now it's only 20 minutes.

9:02 So, when you're fagging out at the end of a 60-minute meeting at work,

9:07 it's not because you're lazy or you have a character flaw

9:11 or because you just can't pay

9:12 attention because you're distracted by something else.

9:15 It's because your brain is overloaded.

9:18 And yet, and you need to restore your attention, which you can do.

9:24 One of the things I describe in the book is a way to do that.

9:27 You look at the horizon.

9:29 I think everybody should look at the horizon.

9:31 If you can't see the horizon,

9:32 you look as far away through a window is fine as you can.

9:36 Rooftop, uh, the sky, 1 minute, an hour.

9:41 It's really all it takes to reset your attention,

9:44 which has been too focused on a screen on sometimes something this far away,

9:49 sometimes 18 to 24 in away.

9:52 Distance vision allows your brain to reset.

9:56 It's a safety signal.

9:58 and allows you to engage the relaxing signals

10:03 in your brain to then go back and refocus.

10:07 It's super important because what you're talking about here is that, you know,

10:10 the idea of the book is that we're spending 93% of our time

10:14 indoors and we'll do a breakdown of where that time is.

10:16 Of course, it's the home, but it's other things, too.

10:19 But the silver lining is that we don't have to all move to a lifestyle

10:24 where we're spending all of our time outside.

10:27 We need to take that 7% of the time that we are spending outdoors and tweak

10:33 it so that we get the maximum value of the healing power of the environment,

10:40 nature that's that's around us.

10:43 Is that correct?

10:44 Exactly.

10:45 So what we're spending outdoors now is incidental time.

10:48 Give an example of that.

10:50 What's the incidental time that people are finding in that 7%.

10:52 The incidental time is like you go outside to pick up the Door Dash.

10:56 You walk down the street to a coffee shop.

10:59 You um go from your car to the office.

11:04 You go from a parking lot to another parking lot.

11:10 You have time that is not intentionally deployed

11:16 in a blue or green space to change your biology.

11:20 And that's what the prescription is.

11:22 Our 93% is 86% in buildings and 7% in vehicles.

11:28 And the buildings can be office,

11:29 can be home, can be restaurants, can be businesses.

11:34 And the 6% in vehicles can be depending on where you live.

11:37 I was in Manhattan last week, a subway, uh a car, um a bus, a train.

11:45 When you're in those indoor environments, you don't get any biologic signal.

11:52 You could be really virtually anywhere and not

11:56 receive any of the light cues you need,

11:59 any of the air cues you need, any of the visual cues you need,

12:04 uh even any of the aroma cues you need.

12:09 And that's what's special about the 7% that's

12:11 incidental that you're going to repurpose as intentional time.

12:15 And by the way, the minimum effective dose is only 17 minutes a day.

12:21 It's not the whole 7 to 12 hours that you might be spending instantly outside.

12:26 It's only 17 minutes a day.

12:27 And in fact, the the clinical benefits top off at 5 hours a week,

12:32 which is about 42 minutes a day.

12:35 So I I spend more than that.

12:37 I know you do as well,

12:39 but we're talking about most people who spend 93% of their time indoors.

12:46 Even here in Southern California where we're both privileged to live, you know,

12:51 it's like an hour a day that people

12:53 spend outdoors maximum and it's not intentional.

12:57 It's not in a blue or green space.

13:00 And I talked to somebody on a podcast who another podcast

13:03 who phoned in from Chicago who hadn't left his apartment in 36

13:07 hours and he was feeling really anxious and a little bit pissed

13:11 off that he was getting emails that he had to respond to.

13:14 I mean, he's digitally burned out and and just burned out overall.

13:19 And this actually is a great reset for anyone who's feeling burned out.

13:23 So, I you know, the first thing to do was to help him uh teach him the dive

13:28 reflex so that he could bypass his cortex

13:32 and not freak out at the email he was getting,

13:35 not get pissed off the person who was sending

13:37 the email because it wasn't an angry email or anything.

13:39 It was just doing work.

13:41 But his brain was so overloaded that he couldn't handle it.

13:44 So splashing water, cold water in his face

13:47 for 15 seconds triggers his trigeminal nerve,

13:50 the fifth cranial nerve that innervates your face,

13:53 bypasses the brain and helps you just force quit your stress response.

13:57 I like that.

13:57 That's a great tip.

13:58 You know, you mentioned something a little bit earlier and this is

14:02 about sort of taking the things that we do normally,

14:06 but what happens when they become much more intentional,

14:08 which sometimes maybe means it could be a little bit extra time for that thing.

14:13 Like you're talking about Door Dash, for example.

14:15 Yeah.

14:15 Right.

14:15 People go out in the morning, maybe they're ordering something from Door Dash.

14:18 People literally get coffee Door Dash to them.

14:20 That's always funny to me.

14:20 A through line inside of the book and a starting place of one of the ways

14:24 that you can start to radically reset your internal

14:28 environment with the outdoor environment is light, right?

14:31 So, let's give that example of like Door Dash.

14:33 Somebody's getting Door Dash in the morning.

14:35 They're getting breakfast.

14:35 They might just pop out really quickly, grab it,

14:37 and then dash right back inside, you know, to consume it.

14:40 How could they use some of the teachings of light

14:43 and the power of light to help regulate our health, our mood, how we feel?

14:51 How could they use that, especially in the morning,

14:53 to be a little bit more intentional?

14:55 So, I like to think about this as uh light first, coffee second.

14:59 Um, but an easy intervention is to take that Door Dash breakfast and have

15:04 it outside and have it outside without

15:08 sunglasses and have it outside enjoying it,

15:13 preferably off your device because, as I said,

15:17 when your phone's in your hand, your brain thinks it's time to work.

15:21 And what we want is to let the light hit the back of our retinas,

15:26 which it will, no matter where you are.

15:29 Don't look at the sun.

15:30 See, please look at the sky.

15:34 Look at the different colors of green.

15:36 Look at the wind.

15:37 Look at your sandwich if you like.

15:39 Look at anything outside because the rays

15:43 of the light will find the back of your retina,

15:46 which sends a a signal to the back of your brain, the super chaismatic nucleus,

15:51 which is your master clock, which regulates your circadian rhythm, as you know.

15:56 And the circadian rhythm sets the time in all of your organs.

16:01 So what light does when you get it in the morning, light first,

16:04 coffee second, having breakfast outside, 10 minutes, I think, is a minimum.

16:10 15 if you can swing it.

16:11 More is probably better.

16:12 But we're going from no light to 10 minutes.

16:15 That's a big deal.

16:16 So what that does, as you know, is all kinds of good things.

16:19 It gives your cortisol in the morning a big 50 to 100% response.

16:23 So you feel awake from the inside.

16:26 instead of just you know giving you a boost this way

16:30 you they're complimentary actually you get a boost from your cortisol

16:33 so you it's your brain's a awake alert signal you

16:37 only get that with morning light and it also helps

16:41 to set melatonin for 14 to 16 hours later so

16:44 that your brain releases the melatonin and you can go to sleep

16:49 easily and you can get deep sleep and deep sleep

16:54 is as you You know the phase of deep of sleep,

16:57 a slow wave sleep in which a lot of good things happen.

17:00 You build bone.

17:02 It's the only time that you reform bone.

17:04 Especially important for women who are worried about osteoporosis.

17:08 You repair muscle that you might have injured during the day,

17:12 maybe during a workout, maybe in another way.

17:15 It's a great place to repair muscle.

17:17 You consolidate memory.

17:19 And maybe most important for us, the glimpmphatic system kicks in.

17:25 And as you know, the glimpmphatic system which was identified in 2013 and Nobel

17:30 was awarded for it in 2017 is the system in the brain which takes out

17:35 the toxins that have accumulated in the brain

17:38 including beta amalloid and tow proteins which

17:42 are in the brain normally but are part of waste products and flushes them out.

17:48 If they don't get flushed out, they stay there.

17:51 And during in Alzheimer's disease especially, they accumulate.

17:57 And although there's not a causal relationship known,

18:00 it is known that we don't want them to accumulate.

18:03 So light in the morning does all these good things.

18:07 Cortisol boost, melatonin released, bone building,

18:12 muscle repair, lymphatic system, deep sleep.

18:16 you know, from the outside it could look like great,

18:18 those are all things that we would want for everybody.

18:21 And then just to build on a little bit further,

18:23 taking some studies that you talked about,

18:25 like if anybody knows anybody in their family, friends, other stuff who

18:32 has anything from like the blues, right?

18:34 We all get the blues at some point

18:35 in time or actually dealing with like depressive symptoms.

18:40 Yeah.

18:40 Interesting.

18:40 some some data that you have in your book,

18:42 morning light exposure can reduce depression symptoms by 50%.

18:47 That's crazy.

18:48 Yeah, light as an anti-depressant is powerful

18:51 and I would say often complimentary to prescription medication.

18:56 One of the magic things about this, and I

18:59 probably use that term a little loosely,

19:01 but it does seem like everything that I've been able to identify about light,

19:08 about distance, about air, all of these things work together,

19:14 and there's seven steps in the book to do this.

19:17 Amplify everything else good that you're doing for your health.

19:20 You don't have to stop taking medication or be medication averse.

19:25 these are things that are going to supercharge

19:26 everything else in your life that you're doing.

19:29 I believe so.

19:30 And and that's been my experience and that's what the the literature says.

19:36 And it's kind of unbelievable to me that we

19:38 haven't really been able to focus on this until now.

19:41 It's also understandable.

19:42 There's there's a lot else going on.

19:45 But I find though that the results of these kinds of steps,

19:49 particularly light, as we've been talking about,

19:51 seems to change sleep patterns within several days for some people up to a week,

19:58 but within a few days people feel they're all

20:01 of a sudden getting more sleep than they have.

20:03 They all of a sudden can go to sleep more easily.

20:05 These two ideas, morning light, as we've talked about,

20:09 and avoiding blue light at night within 60 minutes of night,

20:13 improve sleep problems more than almost anything

20:16 else I've seen in 30 years of practice.

20:18 And there are other things that interfere with sleep, don't get me wrong.

20:22 you know, uh the wrong sleeping with a pet often not helpful.

20:27 Um the wrong partner often not helpful.

20:30 Uh bright light at night or loud noises or hot temperatures not helpful.

20:34 Alcohol not helpful for sleep.

20:36 But these two things,

20:39 morning light and avoiding screens and bright blue light within

20:43 60 minutes of bedtime and and getting purposeful amber light,

20:47 which we haven't talked about to cool the brain

20:49 and to allow you to relax and maybe having a ritual

20:53 as many people do before bed that's more analog than

20:57 digital improve sleep patterns almost more than anything else I've seen.

21:00 You know, in the book you talk about how so many people

21:03 think that even if they have really great lighting in their home,

21:06 super bright lighting.

21:08 They have no idea how not bright that lighting is from a lux capacity.

21:15 That's, you know, we're in a bright studio.

21:17 I have a lux meter on my phone.

21:18 I actually haven't ever measured it,

21:20 but I'm guessing even with, you know, four, five, six lights inside of here,

21:24 we're barely going to probably get to like 100, 200 lux.

21:31 Yeah.

21:29 Right.

21:29 And I say it might be three, but

21:33 it's 25 to 50 times brighter outside no matter where you are.

21:37 And on a cloudy day, it's still 10 to 15 times brighter than anything indoors.

21:43 A bright department store,

21:45 a bright uh grocery store is a bright grocery store is maybe maybe a,000 lux.

21:55 Probably not.

21:56 Outdoors, it's almost never less than 5,000 lux and it's usually 10, 15, 20, 25.

22:04 On a super bright day outside, it's 100,000 lux.

22:06 And that kind of light stimulus to your brain continuously

22:13 throughout the day is important because it keeps you alert,

22:16 which you don't get from the inside of a conference room.

22:20 And you also don't get through a window because the window

22:24 blocks the wavelengths of light that your brain needs to be alert.

22:29 So that's why it's important to go outside.

22:31 You don't have to, as we're lucky in California,

22:34 go outside and, you know, stay on the lawn.

22:37 If you have a doorway, if you have a threshold,

22:40 if you have an open window, that's enough.

22:44 If it's cold outside or super hot outside,

22:47 I'm not talking about doing crazy things.

22:49 I mean, don't stand in the doorway if it's 20 below zero and you're not

22:52 bundled up and it's not something you welcome or like um or if it's 110°.

22:58 Don't do that.

22:59 It It's harmful.

23:00 When it's not that and you can get morning light, you need to.

23:06 It's a powerful health intervention that we've just that's so accessible to us

23:11 and so easy to teach and so easy to see results from.

23:15 Everyone should do it.

23:16 And as you say, it supercharges everything else

23:19 that you're doing well and doing good for your health.

23:22 Sorry to interrupt, but memory loss is on the rise.

23:25 And that's why I've created a free guide

23:27 that you can get right now featuring the top

23:30 brain boosting foods that you can include

23:33 into your diet starting today to help you combat this.

23:37 I've worked with a few of my friends to feature five foods in this free guide.

23:41 And guess what?

23:42 A couple of them will probably surprise you.

23:45 Make sure you're one of the people that focuses

23:47 on keeping your brain sharp by downloading this guide today.

23:51 Just click on the link below or scan the QR

23:53 code and I'll send you the guide right away.

23:56 I think if you go to a lot of people and you say that, hey,

24:00 all this time you're spending indoors.

24:04 Yeah.

24:03 Is supercharging your aging.

24:05 We're all going to be aging.

24:07 But this is an accelerated aging that's happening.

24:10 It is.

24:10 It actually literally frays your telomeres.

24:13 So there are two things that are important about this.

24:15 One is that even ex passive exposure to green

24:20 spaces and by green of course I mean

24:22 anything with trees or shrubbery or uh dense

24:27 greenery improves telomere length by 2 and 1/2 years.

24:31 That's not an interventional trial.

24:33 That's an observational one.

24:35 an epidemiologic one actually where they compared people

24:39 who were close to green spaces versus people

24:42 who were very far away from green spaces and close means within 500 m and found

24:47 that there and measured and showed their telomeirs

24:49 compared telomeirs for both that the telomeirs

24:52 of people who are age matched and otherwise

24:54 matched were less degraded than those further away.

25:00 So passive what's been shown about longevity

25:03 and telomeres and green space is that passive works.

25:07 What's been shown about the biology is that active work the kind

25:13 of engagement that I described in the book gardening and forest

25:17 bathing and looking at the stars and the sea that kind

25:20 of act engagement has other types of physical action that uh impacts longevity.

25:29 exercise as you know is particularly uh moderately

25:33 vigorous exercise that Eric Tol describes in super

25:37 aers uh and that has been described

25:39 in the literature elsewhere um improves telomeir integrity

25:45 uh up to 9 years um what I describe as indoor aging is in part because

25:54 of the cognitive tax when we're indoors

25:57 for long periods of time in sealed modern buildings, CO2 develops and builds up.

26:04 And there are a number of companies that now are forward thinking,

26:07 have CO2 meters to gauge that.

26:09 We have one here right in the office.

26:11 There you go.

26:11 There you go.

26:12 I mean, you could often improve the IQ of the room just by opening a window.

26:16 And that's because outdoor air is actually cleaner than indoor air.

26:22 It doesn't have that buildup.

26:23 It doesn't have the offging toxins.

26:26 doesn't have the VOCC's that build up the forever chemicals and so on.

26:30 That's a whole related discussion.

26:33 But h being inside deprivives you of the biologic inputs that your brain

26:39 needs to improve your health and to reduce risk for cardiovascular disease.

26:46 And inside especially about cardiovascular disease makes you

26:50 older by in part increasing your risk for cardiovascular

26:56 disease in part because 40% of us go to sleep with a lamp or a TV on.

27:02 And when that happens and we get that bright light,

27:06 the blue light we've been talking about between

27:08 12:30 in the morning and 6:00 in the morning,

27:11 our risk for heart attack goes up almost 50%.

27:15 Our risk for stroke goes up almost 30%.

27:18 Aphib and heart failure similarly and this is not subtle.

27:22 This is 111,000 people published in JAMAMA over 34 years uh

27:28 last year in 2025 showing that nightlight is actually as big

27:34 a cardiovascular risk factor as smoking or a sedentariness and and you

27:40 know loneliness is 3/4 of a pack of cigarettes a day.

27:43 This is a serious problem that we've underestimated.

27:46 I think I think that's really the key is that the data is all out there,

27:50 but because we've underestimated it,

27:53 it's so easy to overlook these simple solutions because a lot

27:57 of people think and they scratch their head and say,

27:59 "Well, if it was that bad, there'd be a national campaign about it,

28:02 right?" But then they forget that, you know,

28:05 if you look at the history of here in America,

28:09 we knew smoking was bad for a long time.

28:11 We did.

28:12 And it really took a while before all

28:16 the things came around till the recommendation said,

28:19 "Hey, smoking causes cancer." And we

28:24 need to actively discourage people from smoking.

28:28 And you're sort of arguing in that same way.

28:30 We're we're in that space right now.

28:32 It's just that some people know it and a lot of people don't.

28:34 Well, and so he also causes heart disease and um

28:38 respiratory problems and um secondhand smoke and our and allergic reactions.

28:46 There are national campaigns,

28:48 but there are national campaigns in other countries.

28:52 Um Singapore is way ahead of us on this.

28:55 Singapore has a national campaign to have parents take out their kids two hours

29:00 a day for free play without their devices to reduce the real epidemic of myopia.

29:10 90% of Singaporean children that's ongoing in Asia and myopia

29:17 which is nearsightedness is not such a bad thing.

29:20 you wear glasses or you get eye drops.

29:23 But about 5% of myopia is high myopia.

29:27 And by the age of 40,

29:29 about 5% of people with myopia experience significant eye damage,

29:34 corneial damage, retinal damage, and in some severe cases, blindness.

29:39 And we don't need to risk that for something

29:41 with as simple a solution as this has.

29:44 And myopia is a real thing.

29:46 It's actually 40% in uh California where we are because we

29:50 are so dependent on near devices and it's called near work.

29:57 Uh then our eye actually our eyes actually physically elongate.

30:02 It changes the shape of your eye to do as much near work as we're doing.

30:08 And the fact that you could forestall that by getting distance vision,

30:14 by getting free play,

30:17 by going outside and having activity I mean actually

30:21 your eyes need distance like your lungs need air.

30:24 And that's what those kids are getting when they're playing outside.

30:27 It's what adults should be getting when we're playing outside.

30:30 I gave a talk in New York last week and there was an initiative

30:33 with a soccer team and I talked to the woman afterwards about it and she said,

30:39 um, I'm so glad you gave a shout out to sports because I did.

30:42 A lot of people think that play is just for children.

30:46 And I thought, wow, how did that happen?

30:49 That I mean, my peers play sports every day.

30:54 You can't give that up just because you're not a kid anymore.

30:57 And athletics and sports are incredibly important.

31:00 And guess what?

31:01 Most of them are outside.

31:03 And most people don't appreciate that outside is social.

31:08 I have a whole book and chapter in the book about social connection

31:11 as you know and why that's important

31:13 for longevity and for reduction in chronic disease.

31:17 Nature is social.

31:19 It's not just the Pacific Ocean,

31:21 not just the Rocky Mountains, not just some far away place.

31:26 It's the park down the street.

31:27 It's the the window sill garden you might have.

31:31 It's the house plant on your table.

31:34 It's the wind that blows it blows the curtains.

31:37 It it's maybe even the lettuce in your salad

31:39 and where that came from and who grew it.

31:41 Maybe you or maybe somebody who know who you know.

31:45 Nature is very close and we of course are part

31:49 of nature and we need to use our time in nature

31:55 intentionally in a blue or green space as a health

32:00 intervention that we can deploy because it's just available to us.

32:04 Let's talk a little bit about origin story because I feel like

32:07 when people understand how these ideas all came together for a guest,

32:13 it starts to help them understand the why behind the drive,

32:16 like why do you have so much commitment besides the obvious that you're

32:20 a doctor and you've sworn an oath to make sure you look after people,

32:24 you know, and this is just another extension

32:26 of a practice that's there by teaching people that, you know,

32:29 things that they can do.

32:31 But give us some of the first early things as part of your story where you

32:35 noticed that this absence of blue and green

32:38 space was taking a major toll on society.

32:43 Well, in my own story, as as you know,

32:45 I have a small organic farm in Santa Barbara

32:47 and when I bought it about 15 years ago

32:50 is an abandoned nursery and it is basically

32:53 a sand dune with nursery structures and it was static.

32:58 So, I thought I could leave it alone.

33:00 I mean, it was all sand and a few trees.

33:04 And so I bet went about doing my life and uh had seeing patients and um

33:11 I had a TV show at the time on Lifetime and I was had a new book.

33:16 Um, and I went to New York to uh be on a TV show.

33:21 And this is about a year after I owned

33:24 the farm and I was starting to learn about it.

33:26 And instead of booking five or seven other events while

33:30 I was in New York for this one TV show,

33:32 which was 3,000 mi away and a lot of money to go back and forth,

33:36 I just like I was back home as fast as I could.

33:39 I didn't I didn't spend more time booking events.

33:41 I just came back home because I wanted

33:43 to see what had happened with the trees I'd planted.

33:46 And I thought, that's weird.

33:48 Why am I doing this?

33:49 I mean, it's so counterproductive for my career.

33:51 What am I doing?

33:53 And and I just didn't understand it.

33:57 And I had people over to the farm in that first year and they kept going,

34:01 "This is so beautiful." And I'm thinking, "No, it's empty.

34:03 Why why is it beautiful?" People felt better right away.

34:06 You could see it on their faces.

34:07 And those two things,

34:09 anybody who came over felt immediately better and asked me,

34:13 you know, if they could stay longer.

34:15 And my own return to the farm away from this high-profile opportunity and many

34:20 other opportunities that were available to me

34:22 made me want to know why this worked.

34:26 That's actually why I wrote this because I then had to read all about this.

34:31 Figure out why I was so drawn to be in a space that yes,

34:36 it was wide open but didn't have a lot of greenery.

34:39 Wasn't to my eye beautiful.

34:41 Everybody kept saying it was a diamond in the rough.

34:43 and all I could see was it was a sand dune.

34:45 And with my training as a chef and the work that I've

34:49 done as a chef and the long 30 years of practice I've had,

34:54 I knew that I could grow things,

34:56 but I didn't know enough about how I could make them

35:00 nutritious because I didn't yet understand how to feed the soil.

35:04 And that's what being regenerative and what organic has taught me.

35:09 and and actually not just not that but the hundreds of people who have come

35:12 over to help me make sense of this and to work with me on it.

35:18 So I've used the farm as a kind of laboratory

35:21 for the book to try out different things that might

35:25 be helpful not just on me but on the people

35:27 who visited and as I told you we earlier

35:31 when we were talking I um put together a the first

35:36 skills-based elective for in nature as medicine for physicians

35:40 with UCLA and Elizabeth Co heads integrative medicine there

35:43 and we taught that last year at my farm in 2025.

35:47 five.

35:47 And so we taught people how to forest bathe, not people,

35:50 but other clinicians who needed to tell their patients about it,

35:54 how to forest bathe, how to garden,

35:57 how to exercise outside, what what activity was most meaningful,

36:01 um why nature was social, uh and and really as much as we

36:07 could about gardening and how how to grow things.

36:11 Um, and when clinicians get this, how easy it is,

36:16 how easily transferable it is, you know, my origin story just goes away.

36:21 It's just lucky that I got trained as a doctor, trained as a chef,

36:25 and now trained as a farmer

36:27 and understand much about how those things integrate.

36:32 So I could put together this idea that it isn't just

36:36 food and it isn't just pharmaceuticals and it's not just the outdoors.

36:42 It's how they work together.

36:44 But if you don't have one of those legs on the stool,

36:48 you can't can't sit and you certainly can't stand.

36:53 So what this makes sense to me about at its

36:57 core is that you have more control than you think.

37:00 You know, and I think with this intervention

37:04 of outdoor RX and using the the hundreds of ideas

37:09 I have in indoor epidemic to take advantage

37:11 of the outdoors to use it as a medical tool,

37:15 the protocols that are available,

37:18 we can begin to reverse some of the disintegration we've

37:22 seen of our fabric and the acceleration of chronic disease.

37:28 I want to pull on one of those threads.

37:30 You mentioned heart disease.

37:31 Let's just use that as an example.

37:32 The number one killer of men and women.

37:34 A lot of people forget that.

37:35 You know, breast cancer gets a lot of attention.

37:38 Other things, other disease get a lot of attention as they deserve.

37:40 But heart disease still the number one killer of people that are out there.

37:44 You've already mentioned one thing related to heart disease.

37:46 Bright night bite.

37:47 Yeah.

37:48 Bright light night.

37:49 Yeah.

37:49 and how that can accelerate all sorts

37:53 of very challenging things and tax our heart health,

37:56 our endothelial system, right?

37:58 Increase our chances for aphib, etc.

38:01 What are some of the RX protocols that are in the book, for example,

38:07 there's a ton of them for a lot of different things,

38:09 but for heart disease, what are a few of the RXs?

38:12 If a patient came to you and said, "Hey, doc,

38:14 I have a family history of heart disease that's there." Uh,

38:18 you know, I think about some of my own friends who lost their father early.

38:22 And, you know, I really want to be proactive.

38:25 I try to watch what I eat.

38:26 I, you know, I'm not obese, but sure, I might have a couple pounds extra.

38:32 And, uh, you know, I'm trying to keep an eye

38:34 on my LDL or now everybody's aware of Apo B.

38:37 U, but how can these blue green spaces, environment RX,

38:42 nature RX, how could I use that to accelerate?

38:46 We've already talked about avoiding blue light at night

38:48 and making sure that the lights are dim,

38:50 potentially using amber lights, blue light blockers,

38:53 whatever is needed to support that.

38:55 What other things would you suggest to them?

38:57 There's a lot in that question.

38:58 First, I want to say that the laboratory data are really important.

39:03 I'm not I'm not at all dissing the importance of LDL or blood

39:09 pressure or smoking or lifestyle habits or your community or your your partner,

39:17 your alcohol intake,

39:19 all of that stuff adds up to potential risk for heart disease,

39:24 and it all needs to be addressed.

39:25 Now, adding outdoor exposure to that to supercharge what you're

39:30 doing well already can actually interact with many of those things.

39:34 So, simply having a meal outside instead of at your desk,

39:39 if it's you're eating something that's good for your heart, have it outside.

39:44 have a have lunch outside.

39:46 This also gets you away from the office where your adinuric system is going

39:52 your cognitive system is working over time

39:55 and outdoors you engage your senses more.

39:59 So that's automatically more relaxing for your heart.

40:03 It's automatically reducing the adinuric hormones that are

40:07 are charging through your system much throughout the workday.

40:10 And that's actually how we experience nature.

40:13 We experience nature with our senses.

40:16 And our senses are touch, listen, sight, smell, taste, all in on your face.

40:23 And I do that because it's important to remember what they are.

40:26 Many people are not in touch with what their senses are,

40:29 but that's how you experience nature.

40:32 And that's a way to help you in lunch.

40:34 Appreciate the flavor of your sandwich.

40:38 Appreciate the aroma of the flowers that might be by.

40:41 appreciate the wind that's blowing on your face.

40:44 So, that's one thing.

40:46 Another is outdoor exercise.

40:50 Exercise outdoors is actually 20% less

40:54 perceived exertion for the same exercise indoors,

40:58 which means that you're doing as much as you're doing indoors,

41:02 but it feels 20% less.

41:04 And you may even be doing in some studies 28% more

41:08 work in that same time even though it feels like less.

41:13 So exercise outdoors exposes you to a lot of things

41:17 that are good for your heart and your immunity.

41:20 It improves your getting microbially rich air.

41:25 You're getting air that's filled with fights

41:28 if you're near a blue or green space.

41:30 And a fight inside phyt side is an aromatic chemical that a tree

41:38 releases to communicate with other trees and to fight off predators and bugs.

41:43 But it has an immune effect effect for people that improves natural killer

41:47 cell account killing tumor cells and virus

41:50 infected cells in your in your system.

41:54 And the cardiovascular system and the immune system work together.

41:57 When you're outside and you're doing exercise,

42:00 you increase mitochondrial biogenesis.

42:03 You increase metabolic flexibility so that you can

42:07 tap both fat and carbohydrate as energy sources.

42:12 So building mitochondria is a really good thing because you're

42:17 burning more fuel and you're making your metabolism more efficient.

42:22 Being outdoors is important for your cardiovascular health also because you're

42:26 getting better air outside than you're getting inside as we spoke about.

42:31 And that's important for your respiratory system.

42:35 Um, you know, I'm not talking obviously about days

42:38 where the particulate matter 2.5 rating is very high.

42:42 If there's extreme pollution, if you live next to a smoke stack,

42:46 if you have like we've had out here,

42:48 severe fires, um that's a very different circumstance

42:52 and fortunately it's time limited for most of us.

42:55 Um so then of course you want to be mindful.

42:59 You want to inside run heap filters and and um

43:04 live in a in a well building if you can.

43:06 So, those are some of the ways

43:08 that being outdoors interacts with the cardiovascular system.

43:12 I do think this nightlight idea is super important

43:16 and and underappreciated and something people can do right

43:19 away because so many of us go to sleep

43:22 with a light on and because that light is blue.

43:25 You mentioned blue blockers and amber light.

43:27 You know, blue blockers work if they're blocking enough.

43:32 Many people use them as cosmetics or kind of as a cool look and that's okay.

43:39 But if you want them to do work, they really have to block the blue light.

43:44 And uh on your device, on your laptop or on my phone,

43:49 you should run, and I bet you do already,

43:52 f.lux to uh change the spectrum of your the light

43:57 that comes from your laptop or your computer.

44:00 Um, that's in addition to night shift on an iPhone or I'm sure it's on Pixels

44:07 and uh and other devices as well because it

44:11 doesn't actually block all of those wavelengths, just some.

44:15 And you want to have as much amber light in the evening

44:18 as you can to get your brain ready for sleep,

44:21 which is like the most important thing that you can do to restore your brain.

44:26 I love it.

44:26 You know, this really brings back one of the big

44:28 ideas in the book is that these small doses,

44:32 these small little things that we do consistently, right?

44:36 That's one of the key themes, consistently.

44:38 Yeah.

44:38 Yeah.

44:39 They add up to major changes, right?

44:41 So, if you're financially minded minded, um it's compounding, you know,

44:46 it's like compounded interest, small, consistent, every day, not big.

44:52 I call them micro doses because they're really small.

44:57 17 minutes a day everybody has.

44:58 In fact, you're already spending 7 to 12 hours out outside.

45:02 17 minutes a day minimum effective dose.

45:04 All you got to do is reorient some of that instantal time.

45:08 Tweak it as you say so that it's intentional time.

45:13 And we can add that up right now.

45:15 We can get 10 minutes of morning light.

45:17 Okay.

45:18 You don't do it every day.

45:19 Let's say you only do it five days a week,

45:21 but that's amazing and it helps you even that five days a week,

45:25 even once a week to start.

45:27 You know, I'm a clinician.

45:28 I'm used to having people make small changes that make a big difference.

45:33 And starting with a small change is much bigger than saying,

45:36 "Oh, you're a carnivore.

45:38 I want you to go vegan." That like never works.

45:42 It worked for Dean Ornish for a number

45:45 of people who were facing very serious heart

45:49 disease and needed to have an operation or not

45:52 in the early 1980s and into the 1980s.

45:55 And more props to him.

45:56 He's amazing.

45:57 It doesn't work for most people to go from carnivore to vegan.

46:00 It's not going to work for most people

46:02 to go from to totally inside 24 hours a day,

46:06 which some people are, to um to as much time as I spend outside,

46:12 which is probably 5 hours a day.

46:15 And and so what do you do?

46:18 You do the minimum effective dose.

46:20 How much is that?

46:21 It's 17 minutes a day.

46:22 What do you do during that time?

46:24 You get 10 minutes of morning light.

46:26 You have your lunch outside or you have a walking

46:31 meeting outside or you have a phone call outside.

46:37 Does it happen not to be a blue or green space?

46:40 Okay.

46:41 Do you get full microbial and green benefits?

46:44 You don't.

46:45 Do you get some?

46:46 You do.

46:47 You should take it outside.

46:49 And then in the night, in the evening after dinner,

46:52 it'd be great to get a 20-minute walk.

46:54 Everybody would that be optimal.

46:57 But if you get outside five minutes and you walk, you know what?

47:01 Your blood sugar starts to drop.

47:02 After 20 minutes, your blood sugar is 30 milligrams per deciliter lower.

47:06 And you don't even need insulin for it.

47:08 Just gets vacuumed up.

47:10 Morning light, any time during the day, a phone call, a walking meeting, lunch,

47:16 because that bright light tells you you're still alert.

47:20 Tells your brain to wake up.

47:22 If you have your arms and legs exposed or even just your arms,

47:25 you're making vitamin D during midday,

47:27 which you don't do in the morning and you don't do in the evening.

47:31 And and during most of the country,

47:33 you don't do it from November till April because the angle of the sun

47:37 isn't proper for that um activation of vitamin D in your skin.

47:43 It's not truly making it.

47:44 It's activating it in your skin.

47:47 And and in the evening, a little walk after dinner.

47:51 You know, the tradition in uh Italy and in other parts

47:54 of the world is a pagiata um which is a a stroll after dinner.

48:00 And we used to think, oh, that's just social.

48:02 It's just fun.

48:03 It's to show off your partner.

48:06 It's to say hello to people on the street.

48:08 It's more than just social.

48:10 It's actually biologic.

48:12 It's information for your body.

48:14 It's time to cool down.

48:16 That it's time to experience life with your senses.

48:20 It's time to engage your parasympathetic system instead

48:24 of your sympathetic nervous system and the rest and digest system

48:30 as you know rather than the fight and flight system

48:32 which you've been keyed up for most of the day.

48:35 It's time to get away from that digital obesity where

48:39 your fa your brain feels too burned out by so many pixels.

48:43 It's time to to power down.

48:47 And and even five minutes makes a difference.

48:51 20 minutes optimal.

48:53 Can you watch the sunset?

48:54 Can you get those red and amber waves?

48:56 You can.

48:57 And what does that do for you?

48:59 That's the only light that doesn't suppress melatonin.

49:04 That only light that you can look at and just plain

49:08 enjoy and not worry about not getting to sleep that night.

49:11 Growing up, my grandparents uh my family's ancestry is Indian.

49:16 Growing up, my grandparents would spend time,

49:19 my dad has uh seven brothers and sisters

49:22 total and so the grandparents would go to different,

49:24 you know, and spend time and get a chance to be with the different grandkids.

49:27 And when they would come with us, I I loved my grandparents.

49:29 I was so close to them.

49:30 But I always felt a little bit uh embarrassed in the evening

49:35 because we would always go as a big posi, a big group.

49:40 We'd have dinner and my grandfather and actually

49:42 it was usually my grandmother would say,

49:44 "Okay, it's time to go walk." And we'd walk in our street,

49:48 you know, and even back then it was kind of uh it was different,

49:53 you know, I'm an 80s baby.

49:55 It was different to see like a whole

49:56 family walking in like a suburban neighborhood all together.

50:00 And on top of that, my grandmother's

50:02 wearing like traditional Indian garb like a sari

50:05 and you know, people were like, "Hey, what is this family up to?" Yeah.

50:08 Right.

50:08 And looking back, I have so much appreciation

50:10 for those times and also the fact that so many cultures from around the world.

50:14 This was inherently how they lived.

50:17 They didn't have the science to back it up, right?

50:20 That this evening walk after a meal.

50:23 That was just one example of something my grandparents did was so powerful.

50:29 Family connection.

50:31 We'd tell stories.

50:33 Sometimes my grandmother would sing a little bit.

50:35 That's nice.

50:35 And it was just a really beautiful opportunity

50:37 and it was like a ritual and I loved

50:40 it even though I was secretly embarrassed of like

50:42 oh which friends are going to see me.

50:45 When you're a kid you don't really understand that.

50:46 Yeah.

50:46 When you're a kid you don't get it but

50:49 then you learn that and you you miss that when you get older and now

50:53 obviously everybody lives in different houses and other

50:55 stuff and we're still close as a family.

50:56 My grandparents are no longer here but you're like

51:00 man that what a beautiful tradition to bring in.

51:04 Not to mention all the health benefits that come along with that.

51:08 Yeah.

51:08 Here here's another one of those.

51:10 There's um I don't think actually I covered this in the book.

51:13 There's a uh the tradition of a digest teeth where

51:19 um in many parts of the world particularly in Europe,

51:22 Southern Europe actually all over Europe you used

51:26 to sometimes you have something bitter before a meal.

51:29 Sinaar or amaro has a little alcohol in it

51:33 and a little sugar but mostly it tastes bitter that's actually triggering

51:38 your GLP1 and if you don't want to do the booze

51:42 and you know arugula has the same effect a cruciferous

51:45 vegetable also bitter um gentian is like the most bitter

51:50 substance possible um that bitterness um tells the GLP1 that you

52:00 should prepare to get full cuts cuts your appetite a little

52:04 bit and that's what the science behind that long tradition.

52:11 Um they knew it worked but the science nobody knew.

52:17 So I mean this is really tries to be a scientific road map through the hundreds

52:23 of different kinds of things that you can

52:25 do outside to turn those incidental minutes into medicine.

52:30 You were talking about the seven pillars in the beginning, right?

52:33 And we covered a couple.

52:34 Is there one right now at the stage of the conversation that you want to dive

52:37 into a little bit more as an example

52:38 of some of the incredible content that's inside the book?

52:41 I'd like to talk about gardening because I please love gardening

52:44 and I I made this coaster which I give away at talks.

52:50 Yeah.

52:48 And uh here you go.

52:50 Um that's upside down.

52:52 So um I'm not selling these by the way.

52:56 Um and but I do give them at talks

52:59 and the reason I made this coaster which has embedded inside basil,

53:03 parsley and chive seeds is that many people

53:06 are like a quarter people are afraid of spiders.

53:09 That's one of the reasons we go outside

53:11 and gardening even though 70 million of us are gardeners

53:16 um is still a leap for a lot

53:18 of people because we're afraid we're going to kill plants.

53:21 I did this study of burnout in a corporation

53:24 in Santa Barbara and I gave people um an office plant,

53:28 had them go outside for 5 minutes and then also send them funny texts,

53:33 12 12 texts over four weeks and it was a control trial.

53:36 So you got uh each of these and the people who went outside had the most

53:40 benefit reversed burnout actually and the symptoms of presentism

53:46 um increased and the symptoms of absentism dropped.

53:49 It was pretty significant.

53:51 Um and the people who got the house plant did the worst

53:55 because they worried about the plant and they over watered it.

53:59 House plants need six ice cubes every two weeks by the way.

54:03 So, same for office plants, but gardening, if you've never gardened,

54:08 this is kind of a gateway because all you have to do,

54:11 and there's a QR code to plant on it,

54:13 and you can get it um if you come to my own talks,

54:16 it's also on the website, is put it in organic potting soil.

54:20 An organic product soil is important because it

54:22 has the right kinds of microbial richness in it,

54:26 including mic microacteria vaxi, which is a a mcoacteria that triggers serotonin

54:34 producing neurons in your brain and in your gut.

54:38 And as you know, you make serotonin in both your brain and your gut.

54:42 So gardening is actually a kind of serotonin intervention as well

54:48 as something that gives you in this case basil and chives and parsley.

54:52 So I think you should have your hands in the soil

54:56 once a week and that's to improve your microbiome.

55:01 It's to not just on your skin, but also in your lungs and in your GI

55:07 tract and to help you produce serotonin to feel better.

55:13 And that's kind of a weird thing, like why should you have your hands in soil?

55:18 But when you begin to understand the physiology of it and the medicine of it,

55:23 it becomes something that is an evidence

55:28 basis for something you might enjoy doing anyway.

55:32 And putting this in organic potting soil so you know what you're getting.

55:37 So that the miccoacteria in the potting soil, not just miccoacteria,

55:43 but the the fungi and bacteria that transmit

55:48 minerals between roots and the soil are

55:51 able to be active and go into the plant that you're about to eat eventually,

55:57 either the leaves of or the fruit of is a way that you get more nutrition.

56:03 So, organic potting soil, press this down.

56:07 Um, add half an inch of potting soil on top of it and water it.

56:13 This is something you can't overwater actually until it comes out

56:18 and then water it like every other day or every third day.

56:21 Um, and it's magic because growing

56:25 things connects you with the nature experience.

56:29 You're part of nurturing something.

56:31 That's not a lot of experience that we get now except for nurturing a person

56:36 or an animal which there's also a section

56:39 about in the book importance of companion animals.

56:41 Gardening I think is and gardeners are way ahead.

56:46 But if you do this especially

56:47 organically without synthetic artificial chemical pesticides,

56:52 herbicides and fungicides,

56:54 you are not just getting a plant that's grown up on, you know,

57:00 growth hormone on junk food in a way.

57:03 You're getting a plant that's extracting minerals

57:06 from the soil and that makes your food richer, higher in nutrient content.

57:12 And we've seen this in the studies of regenerative farms.

57:16 We've seen higher mineral content, potassium content, um organic content,

57:24 uh other nutrient content in the studies

57:27 of n of regenerative farms producing vegetables primarily.

57:32 Um I'm not aware yet of one that produces fruit,

57:35 but I haven't looked at this literature in six or eight months.

57:38 and and that's one reason to grow your own or to go

57:43 to farmers markets and buy from someone who grows because then

57:47 you can have a relationship or to go to a market

57:50 that sells things that are locally grown in organic soil or grown organically.

57:55 I don't think it has to be certified organic even though

57:58 my farm is certified organic because

58:01 that structure is sometimes cost prohibitive

58:03 for farmers and it's not a half a percent that they can

58:08 afford to pay plus all the recordkeeping which is quite um burdensome.

58:14 So gardening is an intervention that pays you not just in tomatoes

58:19 and in herbs but in serotonin production in having your hands

58:24 in the soil and improving your microb biome with that biodiversity of organisms

58:30 and people with more diversity

58:32 in their microbiomes have more metabolic flexibility.

58:36 They have less GI disease.

58:38 It's actually increasingly um important not just in in the amount of fiber

58:44 that you get but in the way that you make hormones because

58:48 as you know that's what the internal microbiome does makes protein and hormones

58:52 and it's about the same size as your brain about 3 lbs.

58:56 For a lot of people who are listening who are like oh I don't have

58:58 like a backyard condo other stuff can they start with uh you know house plants?

59:02 Yes.

59:03 This is designed to fit in a 4 in like kitchen.

59:06 That's gardening in my view.

59:07 As long as you're touching soil, you have a 4-in pot.

59:11 I prefer a 6inch pot for this because you're going to need it.

59:14 But if you only have a 4-in pot, fine.

59:17 Get a little bag of organic potting soil.

59:19 This is a beginning gardening.

59:20 As long as it's getting enough light, even in a window, a bay window,

59:24 um a window that gets even six hours of light is enough for this.

59:28 And and you don't have to use my coaster.

59:31 buy seeds that are organic that you can just sprinkle on top and press in.

59:37 That pressure actually tells the seed to begin

59:40 to reach out to the soil around it.

59:43 I know that sounds a little woo,

59:45 but it actually does it that triggers the little sensors on the outside

59:50 of the seed to know that it's not in a packet anymore,

59:53 that it's in a growth medium.

59:55 And that growth medium again is important for getting not

59:59 just extracting minerals but other types of nutrition so that when

1:00:03 you eat that plant you get the nutrition that the plant

1:00:06 has and you know exactly where it's from and you have

1:00:09 the experience of not just nurturing it but being in touch

1:00:13 with something that's natural and powerful because you are nurturing it

1:00:18 and because you've had a lot of experience outside when there

1:00:22 you've gotten light if you're outside and you're potting your seed.

1:00:25 s you've gotten microbially rich air,

1:00:29 so you're benefiting from the fighting sides

1:00:31 that are improving your natural killer cells.

1:00:33 You're getting distance because you're able to look outside.

1:00:36 I have some people put a postit on their fridge

1:00:40 that says look up today because you can't look up.

1:00:44 You are seeing a ceiling here.

1:00:46 So look up today mean goes outside and look up.

1:00:49 It's just a little prompt to a nudge and that's

1:00:52 all this is a nudge to do the right thing.

1:00:55 That GLP1 thing I said also a nudge because that's what people need to know,

1:01:01 hey, this is kind of fun.

1:01:04 And the joy is actually the best nutrient.

1:01:07 The joy is the way that people continue to do this.

1:01:11 It's why they continue to do it because

1:01:13 it's fun and actually they not just feel better, but they are measurably better.

1:01:20 You know, I love the videos or clips or even

1:01:24 a couple times I went to uh Japan or I was

1:01:26 in Sicily once and you see older people who are

1:01:29 gardening and a really beautiful site is like they're squatting, right?

1:01:35 They're squatting down.

1:01:36 Not everybody gardens that way, especially here in America,

1:01:39 but like in a lot of these other countries

1:01:42 and and this is still like a city environment.

1:01:44 It's not like some like crazy rural area

1:01:47 or it's it's it's a little bit more urban.

1:01:51 And to see them squatting down and you look at I'm like,

1:01:54 man, I have probably, you know,

1:01:57 a quarter of my friends that are my age that couldn't even squat down

1:02:00 and regularly get up and get down like

1:02:02 they were doing in, you know, the gardening.

1:02:04 And then anybody who's seen like the Blue Zone documentaries and the Okanowens

1:02:07 and other stuff and how much that gardening is a part of their life,

1:02:10 it's it's a it's a very inspirational idea and they

1:02:15 don't do it because it's good for their health.

1:02:18 They do it because they enjoy it and for many of them they're

1:02:20 also doing it because they are getting food that way as well too.

1:02:24 Absolutely.

1:02:24 Yeah.

1:02:24 Dan beatner has done a brilliant job of of not just naming the blue

1:02:28 zones with his colleague but also um

1:02:34 popularizing them and popularizing the habits from them.

1:02:36 And as you know he has nine principles he's extracted that he's applying here

1:02:39 in America and gardening together is what many

1:02:43 of those people in the blue zones do.

1:02:45 It's not a solitary activity as much as it is a social activity.

1:02:50 And and that's important not just because nature is social as I point out here,

1:02:55 but also because you get to share.

1:02:58 Um almost always when you garden, you produce too much of one thing.

1:03:03 So you it's got to go somewhere.

1:03:05 And if they're tomatoes, you can put them up or almost anything else you can

1:03:09 put them up and can them or freeze them or dehydrate them.

1:03:12 We do all those things.

1:03:14 But uh for many people it's also training.

1:03:19 Now for squatting you need those hip flexors.

1:03:22 You need those hip extensors.

1:03:24 And it is actually learned as an adult to squat

1:03:30 if you've not been doing it all your life.

1:03:33 But that kind of mobility and flexibility lead

1:03:38 me to the green exercise part of this book,

1:03:42 which is that for my age group, especially, flexibility, gate,

1:03:51 and balance and strength are so much more important than aerobic.

1:03:55 Aerobics is great when you're young, but you actually don't need it as you

1:04:00 age as much as you need these other things.

1:04:03 And you need flexibility, which you do when you squat.

1:04:06 You need balance, which you do when you squat.

1:04:08 And you need strength, particularly core strength,

1:04:11 you do when you do when you squat, because it prevents you from falling.

1:04:15 And falls cause injuries in older people.

1:04:21 And if you can prevent yourself from falling,

1:04:25 you are going to be able to powerfully age and reduce your health span,

1:04:33 which is what this is all about.

1:04:35 Health span, as you know, is the time that you're alive,

1:04:38 that you're healthy, and longevity or or lifespan is how long you live.

1:04:44 And in America, we have about a 10year gap.

1:04:47 So if the average age of death in America

1:04:49 is about 79 now that means that around 69 things

1:04:55 start breaking down and you are not spending those last

1:05:00 10 years playing pickle ball rolling around the floor

1:05:03 with your grandchildren and and you know going to see

1:05:08 the sites in Japan Sicily and wherever you're kind of recovering

1:05:13 from your last hospitalization from your last operation from the polyfarm

1:05:18 pharmacy you might have to take and so on.

1:05:22 And we want to avoid that.

1:05:24 We want to live as healthfully as we can for as long as we can.

1:05:29 And when we die, we want to die only

1:05:32 because we've been sick for a really short time.

1:05:34 We want to use all of the life that we have.

1:05:38 We want to be able to enjoy it for as long as we have.

1:05:42 And doing flexibility, gate, balance,

1:05:47 strength exercises ought to be part of everybody's routine.

1:05:52 And green exercise allows you to do those things

1:05:55 and experience the benefit of the outdoors as you do them.

1:05:59 The light benefit, the microbial benefit, the distance benefit,

1:06:04 all of the things come if you do your squats outside.

1:06:08 When you look around today,

1:06:10 one of the things that every family seems to be navigating,

1:06:15 and a lot of people just think it's just normal,

1:06:18 because it is kind of normalized these days,

1:06:20 is that everybody is just busy all the time.

1:06:27 Yeah.

1:06:26 And it seems that this busyness is one of the things, this bubble of busyiness,

1:06:31 you know, you ask people even at the grocery store, how are you?

1:06:34 You check in with a colleague, people say, how are you?

1:06:36 Oh, busy, busy.

1:06:37 You know, it's kind of like a very standardized response that's there.

1:06:41 And that busyiness seems to be crowding out a lot of room mentally.

1:06:48 Yeah.

1:06:47 That we can do some of the things that we know.

1:06:49 Many people are listening today.

1:06:51 They know a lot of these things are good for us.

1:06:53 They may not know the science and they're excited to have

1:06:55 you and check out your book and hopefully buy it.

1:06:58 We have the link in the show notes.

1:06:59 Please pick up a copy.

1:07:01 And they'll often say,

1:07:02 "I just feel this sense of we're we're so busy all the time." I know.

1:07:06 I used to say that all the time, too.

1:07:07 Yeah.

1:07:08 What do you think's going on there?

1:07:09 And for the person that's feeling that, what

1:07:10 would you want to talk about with them?

1:07:12 Doesn't matter where you live.

1:07:14 You live in an inner city, you live in the country,

1:07:17 it takes 17 minutes a day and you're already

1:07:21 spending 7 to 12 hours outside in a week.

1:07:26 So, this is time that you're just repurposing.

1:07:30 Um, and you have a scientific road map to do it.

1:07:34 and you're turning these incidental minutes into medicine.

1:07:38 So, you're already spending the time outside.

1:07:42 This just means doing something different

1:07:44 that you're in a time you're already spending.

1:07:46 It doesn't take extra time.

1:07:48 Even if you maxed out at 42 minutes a day,

1:07:52 it still doesn't take extra time for most people because most of us

1:07:59 are spending at least an hour a day outside even though it's incidental.

1:08:04 And most importantly changes your biology in a way that makes you feel better.

1:08:12 And not only do you feel better, you actually are measurably better.

1:08:17 that outdoor cardiovascular benefit you asked me about before,

1:08:21 that also lowers your blood pressure.

1:08:24 And blood pressure is not something you can feel

1:08:26 unless it's 210 over 140 and then it feels awful.

1:08:31 Um, and you really, some people can feel low pressure, low blood pressure,

1:08:35 but generally it's got to be a big drop right away to feel it.

1:08:40 So cardiovascular benefits to being outside, lower blood pressure,

1:08:44 lower cortisol level, lower stress level, more enjoyment, less stress.

1:08:51 So yes, everybody's busy.

1:08:52 This is incidental time, incidental minutes.

1:08:56 You're turning into medicine.

1:08:58 Everybody's busy, but busy is often a perceived sense of busy,

1:09:04 which when people really do an audit within themsel,

1:09:08 it's this sense of I'm not doing enough.

1:09:11 I don't feel grounded.

1:09:12 I feel a ton of vision from this digital

1:09:15 obesity that we're all walking around with all day.

1:09:18 And you are in this constant state of being reactive.

1:09:22 And the beautiful thing about these green and blue spaces and everything

1:09:25 you talk about in your book is that when you take a step

1:09:28 away from reactivity even if there's a lot

1:09:31 going on, you actually just don't feel as busy.

1:09:34 You don't feel as reactive because you're taking a moment for yourself.

1:09:38 Yes, it's very much.

1:09:39 And that's why so many people feel when they go on that walk, you know,

1:09:41 you have uh you know study inside of the book about 90minute

1:09:46 nature walk reduces activity in the brain

1:09:48 regions tied to rumination and depression.

1:09:50 Yeah, definitely.

1:09:51 How many people are overthinkers?

1:09:52 I know even though my natural state I don't I I think a lot

1:09:56 of people in the same boat my natural state is not stuck in reumination all day.

1:10:01 But when I'm so tunnel vision on the screen I notice

1:10:06 that my brain is is constantly in this these loops when I'm always

1:10:10 reacting to that email or as you mentioned having the just having

1:10:13 your phone in your hand your brain thinking it's time to work.

1:10:15 I will get stuck in overthinking and then I'll go for a walk and sometimes

1:10:21 it's like it's like a it's like

1:10:22 that thing where you're like pulling off the band-aid.

1:10:24 You're like I I just need to go for a walk for a second

1:10:27 and you're like why the hell did I not do this sooner?

1:10:30 Everybody has that feeling because you feel so good

1:10:34 and you're no longer reacting to the media of the world,

1:10:37 reacting to the social media of the world,

1:10:39 reacting to the all the priorities of everybody else.

1:10:42 And you can actually say, "Hey, what do I need to do for myself,

1:10:46 for my family right now to actually feel

1:10:48 good and to thrive?" And sometimes that's doing less

1:10:52 and doing something that I think seems less

1:10:56 but might be helping your self in a new way.

1:11:01 I think you know in my 30 years of practice

1:11:04 the most overlooked healthc care datim is where people spend their time.

1:11:08 And if we're only spending our time inside we're missing 99.9% of the world.

1:11:15 It might seem like we have it because it's all on our phone.

1:11:18 I read recently that traffic accidents are increased not because um people are

1:11:24 just looking at their phone but because they're looking at video on their phone,

1:11:28 YouTube uh and others.

1:11:31 But actually outside is even more active than this thing you're addicted to.

1:11:38 This thing that children are addicted to.

1:11:41 Anti-depressant prescriptions in children are in teenagers

1:11:44 are up 69% over the last six years.

1:11:48 And a lot of that is laid at the feet

1:11:50 of social media and and especially addictive social media, particularly video.

1:11:56 So, um it's not that it's bad necessarily,

1:12:00 it's just that it's overwhelming and it's too much.

1:12:03 It's more than our brains can handle.

1:12:05 You're describing burnout, which so many workers feel exhausted, unable to cope.

1:12:11 And the thing is that it's a biologic response.

1:12:14 That's a biologic response.

1:12:16 It's not a, as I said, not a character flaw.

1:12:18 It's not their fault.

1:12:21 It's because your brain can only handle so much before it needs a break.

1:12:26 And we've forgotten that.

1:12:28 But distance can restore it.

1:12:30 Outdoor time that restore it.

1:12:31 The study that you cited of 90 minutes outdoors in a meadow

1:12:35 versus on a urban street that was done in Palo Alto.

1:12:38 Stanford is beautiful.

1:12:39 I mean, Palto is a nice town.

1:12:41 nice street trees, too.

1:12:43 But they had people walk down a street and walk in a meadow.

1:12:47 And the prefrontal cortex,

1:12:50 where rumination starts and continues, was so much calmer.

1:12:54 And people would walk without the distractions of cars, of lights,

1:13:00 of the potential for their device, of stuff to do,

1:13:03 of lists in their head, of direct messages, of text notifications,

1:13:08 of all the things that your brain is tuned to when you're inside.

1:13:13 And when you're outside, you're using your senses.

1:13:18 Your parasympathetic nervous system shifts.

1:13:21 You are restoring your brain content.

1:13:22 It's actually an intervention.

1:13:24 kids look outside the window, look out their window at school,

1:13:29 they they're not they shouldn't be punished.

1:13:32 You know, you mentioned school and it feels like there

1:13:37 could be an opportunity here in the States to make

1:13:43 some changes that allow some of these habits to be

1:13:47 baked into how kids learn from a young age, right?

1:13:51 I remember reading a story.

1:13:52 I think it was uh I forgot the author's name.

1:13:54 It was uh Jonathan Hyde.

1:13:56 He wrote the book on GLPs and you know when

1:13:58 they first kind of came out and his experience on them

1:14:00 and food noise and in his uh in his book

1:14:04 he was talking about this story about Japan's history with obesity.

1:14:07 And Japan always had a pretty low obesity rate.

1:14:10 I think it was like in the 3 percentile uh 3%.

1:14:13 Um and then there was one period of a year uh that uh

1:14:18 their obesity uh rate went up by like something very small like

1:14:23 half a percent or.3% or something and there was like a national

1:14:27 freak out and they were like we need to get to the root

1:14:30 of this what's going on you know obviously people know the stats

1:14:33 compared to like America where the obesity rates are like 40 plus percentage

1:14:37 and some of the things that they did uh are are some

1:14:41 of them are very controversial you I know some of the bigger companies,

1:14:44 they really encourage bigger companies,

1:14:47 public companies there to actually help employees with their weight

1:14:51 and mandatory sort of check-ins with, you know,

1:14:54 nutritionists and weighins uh that would be there so that if your weight started

1:14:59 creeping up beyond your sort of own personal mean or average that was there,

1:15:03 they would really say, "Hey,

1:15:04 what do we need to do to help you sort of reduce the weight?"

1:15:07 But some of the really interesting things

1:15:08 that they did with kids are number one,

1:15:10 there was mandates that every school had to have

1:15:14 a nutritionist that was assigned to the school that was there.

1:15:17 And another rule that came out of it was every school daily

1:15:22 had to have food made from scratch that was given to the kids.

1:15:27 And another one, this was um not

1:15:30 something that was implemented in every single school,

1:15:31 but that schools were highly encouraged to get kids

1:15:35 involved at a young age with some version of uh

1:15:39 you know interacting with foods and more time with foods

1:15:43 like hands-on like cutting foods uh spending time outside.

1:15:48 They have a big cleanup culture over there.

1:15:50 Kids regularly participate in cleanup.

1:15:52 I always thought that was really interesting.

1:15:54 You know, in America here we pride oursel on freedoms.

1:15:57 don't tell me what to do, you know, don't be in any state, etc.

1:15:59 But could you see, you know,

1:16:00 taking this idea of the indoor epidemic and how bad it's gotten here.

1:16:05 Could you see certain things working on a state level,

1:16:09 on a national level when it comes

1:16:11 to children and installing some of these habits

1:16:14 to the degree that they just feel like this is nor this is a normal way?

1:16:17 And I think more schools need gardens

1:16:20 and need people to work in them, particularly kids.

1:16:25 It's been obvious for I mean all the time

1:16:27 that I spent with Chef MD and in culinary medicine it

1:16:30 was clear even 15 years ago that kids who participate

1:16:34 in growing food were much more likely to eat it.

1:16:37 In fact, even kids who pick a bell pepper from the store

1:16:41 because they chose it are more likely to eat it.

1:16:45 And and anything you can do to get

1:16:46 kids to participate is going to be powerful medicine.

1:16:52 Probably the most important factor in getting kids to participate

1:16:58 in in outdoors and off their devices is their parents.

1:17:05 And it's tough to get parents off their devices to to do this with kids.

1:17:11 But when they begin to learn the science,

1:17:12 they learn how myopia elongates the eye,

1:17:15 how there is u how it's essential for children

1:17:20 to get not just the microbial benefit but the social benefit,

1:17:24 then it becomes easier to go to the park and fly a kite

1:17:28 or throw a frisbee or use the time down the street in schools themselves.

1:17:34 Um, and Alice Waters pioneered this in the Bay Area.

1:17:38 You know, gardening can be used as a curriculum

1:17:40 for everything from math to English to history to social science.

1:17:45 And actually, she did that in some

1:17:47 Bay Area elementary schools to change the curriculum

1:17:50 that so that it was focused around gardening as a as a stimulus for those areas.

1:17:57 I would say that schools themselves and teachers

1:18:01 um can use this information in new

1:18:04 ways in in understanding children who are looking out the window as children who

1:18:10 are resetting their brain in um teaching

1:18:13 some of the powerful connection that people have

1:18:17 with nature to uh that children have with nature as a way of experiencing life.

1:18:24 the senses are are emphasized in school and they're

1:18:28 not really emphasized in later education except in culinary school

1:18:32 where we got a lot of it and as we

1:18:35 should have uh and and chefs really appreciate this anyone

1:18:39 who cooks actually I think appreciates the importance of the senses

1:18:43 what we haven't appreciated is that we can use

1:18:45 our senses outside as well so I think schools are

1:18:49 fertile ground for for uh curricular changes and curricular modifications,

1:18:56 but even after school programs that celebrate the idea of outdoor play

1:19:02 and the importance of outdoor play continuing in life as a life habit.

1:19:07 When I went to medical school a long time ago,

1:19:09 I was turn I was it was drilled into us from the very beginning that what

1:19:15 we were learning in medical school would likely

1:19:17 change and half of it would be wrong.

1:19:19 And that's turned out, I haven't kept track precisely,

1:19:22 but I feel that to be true.

1:19:24 And the fact that we've needed to learn more things,

1:19:27 new things about how that weren't taught in medical school,

1:19:32 but are now being taught because of peer-reviewed science

1:19:35 and people who can put it together in new ways.

1:19:37 Needing to keep up with lifelong learning is just like

1:19:42 having a lifelong nature practice or a lifelong play practice.

1:19:50 These are powerful medical tools as well.

1:19:54 Gardening as I said is a serotonin intervention.

1:19:58 Morning you know we have a glimpmphatic

1:20:00 system a mitochondrial system a gut brain access.

1:20:05 All of those systems work together.

1:20:07 Putting them together in ways that make it easy for people to do small things,

1:20:13 micro doses that make a big difference gets us

1:20:17 on the track to saying, "Hey, this is fun.

1:20:20 It's changing my biology, too, but it's fun.

1:20:23 That's all I want." You know, as we're winding down today,

1:20:25 it feels like, and you've written about this a bunch inside the book,

1:20:28 it feels like for a lot of people,

1:20:30 you start to understand that this indoor epidemic is a problem.

1:20:33 Now you have some stats to back it up.

1:20:35 You know that 93% of our time is indoor.

1:20:38 And then the next extension of that is

1:20:40 that as we've been spending more time indoor, we've also become more isolated,

1:20:46 right?

1:20:44 As a group of people, it's most extreme in sort of older men, right?

1:20:50 At least from what I've seen inside of the data,

1:20:51 but it's now impacting a lot of young people as well too.

1:20:54 Kids are not playing in the same way that they they used to.

1:20:58 And when you look at a lot of these prescriptions,

1:21:01 these protocols that you talk about and the idea

1:21:04 that we want to match it up with consistency over time,

1:21:07 the supercharging aspect to that is that it's a lot easier

1:21:11 to be consistent when we're doing these things with other people.

1:21:16 Give us an idea from your own personal life,

1:21:18 some of the things we've talked about, maybe some things we haven't.

1:21:21 You mentioned pickle ball.

1:21:22 What are the ways that you have regularly used

1:21:24 your social community to not only stick to these habits,

1:21:28 but to actually make them so much more enjoyable to the degree

1:21:32 to the degree that you look forward to doing these things?

1:21:35 Well, actually, pickle ball is a pretty good

1:21:37 example because I've never really thought of myself,

1:21:40 Candy laughs at me, but I've never thought of myself as an athlete.

1:21:44 I didn't play competitive sports when I was growing up.

1:21:46 I was on any teams.

1:21:48 I was in the library a lot.

1:21:51 um you know this is my eighth book and so write

1:21:55 a book you have to keep your butt in the chair uh

1:21:57 and write and just over the last 10 years I would say

1:22:00 that changed and it changed because I found that I liked exercising

1:22:06 with other people and I didn't know that about myself and pickle

1:22:11 ball is a lot the you know fastest growing sport in America

1:22:13 and and it's not just because uh older people can do

1:22:19 it it's actually the fastest growing sector is uh 25 to 39,

1:22:24 but it's also because you can have fun

1:22:27 within 20 minutes of learning it and and also

1:22:31 it forces you to do a lot of to get out of your house for one.

1:22:36 It breaks that isolation that Dr.

1:22:38 Mercy talked about of being the equivalent of 3/4 of a pack of cigarettes.

1:22:43 loneliness is.

1:22:44 And it makes you be polite.

1:22:49 When you're playing pickle ball, you have to introduce yourself.

1:22:52 You have to not hit it at the other person's head.

1:22:56 And if you do hit it at the other person's head,

1:22:58 either intentionally or otherwise, you have to go apologize.

1:23:03 And if you don't apologize, you're like, "What?

1:23:05 Who is he?" And at the end of the game,

1:23:08 if you've competed hard, and you know, we believe in competition,

1:23:12 you you click paddles, you say thank you,

1:23:16 and you sit together for a moment before going on to the next match.

1:23:21 And those skills, those basic social skills are missing for a lot of people.

1:23:28 They don't quite know how to do that until they re-engage them.

1:23:32 And when they re-engage them, not just that does their oxytocin level go up,

1:23:38 just like when you take a walk with someone, your oxytocin level goes up.

1:23:42 It's easier, more fun,

1:23:44 less stressful when when you walk with someone than you walk alone.

1:23:48 And you feel better.

1:23:49 You're happier, but you feel like your own

1:23:53 problems may not be as big as they are.

1:23:56 You're part of something larger than yourself.

1:23:58 you're becoming more of who you are instead of less

1:24:02 of who you are or just who you are.

1:24:05 And that's a great feeling.

1:24:07 It's a great feeling to know that you're part of something bigger.

1:24:11 And so my example of pickle ball is just me.

1:24:16 I mean, but my patients example of of joining a newcomers group,

1:24:22 if you're a newcomer in town, we have a newcomers group in Santa Barbara.

1:24:27 um all of a sudden you have like 800 people who've moved to town in the last

1:24:31 two years who you can be friends with joining and and this is also true for me.

1:24:36 I have never been part of groups and and just in the last few years

1:24:41 I decided I would try it more because I knew it was better for me.

1:24:47 You know not everything that you want to do

1:24:50 at first is fun or that's good for you.

1:24:55 Not everything that is good for you you want

1:24:59 to do but when you try it you find some

1:25:02 benefit in and then actually there turns out to be

1:25:05 more benefit in it so you keep doing it.

1:25:08 These things in the book that I'm suggesting morning light

1:25:10 and gardening and forest bathing which I haven't talked a lot

1:25:13 about and looking at the sky and the sea and the stars

1:25:17 and the social connection in nature and and evening light.

1:25:21 These things are pretty easy.

1:25:24 They're really pretty easy and it's a minimal commitment, 17 minutes a day.

1:25:29 When you try them, you might be surprised that they snowball.

1:25:32 So that you might want to spend more than 17 minutes a day.

1:25:35 And that's success.

1:25:36 That's actually pretty cool because you've discovered something about

1:25:40 yourself that not only is improving your health directly,

1:25:44 measurably, but also makes you feel better.

1:25:49 And that might be the reason you continue to do it.

1:25:51 And that's great.

1:25:53 That's enough for me.

1:25:54 when we do things with other people, even if it's a little bit challenging.

1:25:57 Not everybody is an extrovert or wants to be around a group of people,

1:26:03 but we were designed as a species and you don't need hundred friends.

1:26:09 No, right.

1:26:11 Yeah.

1:26:10 A couple people that you're close to.

1:26:12 And Dan Butner points out that Moai are like four people, five people.

1:26:16 the the groups that Okinawan women and men have since they were young,

1:26:21 since they were four or five,

1:26:22 those are four or five people, but they always have your back.

1:26:26 Yeah.

1:26:26 And because we move a lot and because people

1:26:29 move a lot and people vacation in different areas,

1:26:32 we do have to actively go out of our way

1:26:34 to cultivate that because the inertia of life is

1:26:37 so much so that it'll just bring you

1:26:39 in and have you be isolated before you even know it.

1:26:43 Now, there are some people who just don't want to socialize,

1:26:45 that are just happy by themselves and just leave me alone.

1:26:49 And I get that.

1:26:50 I'm actually more introverted than I am extroverted.

1:26:54 I can be extroverted.

1:26:55 You know, I'm here and I had a TV show and I like being on stage.

1:27:01 That's fun for me, but then I need to recuperate.

1:27:04 I need to restore my energy.

1:27:06 Being with people opens up an avenue

1:27:09 to of yourself that you might not have been aware

1:27:12 of that you might really like if you're primarily

1:27:16 an introvert or if you like just being by yourself.

1:27:20 And the data showed that actually you get happier

1:27:24 when you walk with someone as I've just suggested.

1:27:27 Even when you garden with someone and you and you when

1:27:30 you um trade vegetables or trade fruit, uh when you donate,

1:27:38 people who give to other organizations,

1:27:40 spend their time with others actually get more

1:27:44 out of it than the recipients in psychological benefits.

1:27:49 They feel like they're part of something bigger.

1:27:52 It helps us to give to other people

1:27:55 and to other organizations which we believe in.

1:27:59 That's actually a medical benefit,

1:28:01 not just a personal one or a psychological one.

1:28:04 So we nature is social and we can and should enjoy that aspect of it

1:28:13 just like we can and enjoy we can enjoy watching the sunset by ourselves.

1:28:18 though.

1:28:19 Every time I go to watch the sunset at the beach near where I live,

1:28:23 there are dozens of people lined up watching the sunset,

1:28:27 too, because it draws us.

1:28:30 And that's the cool thing about nature.

1:28:33 It draws our attention.

1:28:35 It's less imposing on our brain.

1:28:38 The patterns of fractals that are apparent in nature in leaves and in plants

1:28:44 are more relaxing for our brain than the pixels that we bombard them with.

1:28:49 Nature draws your attention.

1:28:52 Pixels demand it.

1:28:55 What are you doing today?

1:28:56 When are you doing it?

1:28:57 What are we going to get done?

1:28:58 How fast are we getting done?

1:28:59 Who is waiting?

1:29:00 Nature.

1:29:01 Oh, I noticed that burn.

1:29:03 Oh, there are two shades of green.

1:29:05 Oh, the wind is moving the leaves.

1:29:08 That's a different part of your brain and is

1:29:10 restorative to the cognitive part of your brain.

1:29:14 It's so easy.

1:29:16 It there's hundreds of ways to do this.

1:29:18 It's an important reminder in a world that is

1:29:21 driving us away from nature and yet it's so crucial.

1:29:24 It's how our genetics evolved on this earth.

1:29:27 Nature was here.

1:29:29 Yeah.

1:29:28 Before we were here.

1:29:31 Yeah.

1:29:30 And because we've gotten so far away from it,

1:29:33 it's scary the price that we're paying in our body and our mental health.

1:29:37 the price that our kids are paying as well.

1:29:39 You see this whole nostalgia amongst young people yearning for a pass.

1:29:44 You know, they're I have I have a nephew and niece that are

1:29:46 just just gotten to high school and they love watching Save by the Bell

1:29:51 and they're like, "Man, that seems like the golden age,

1:29:55 you know, like Midnight in Paris.

1:29:57 like, oh my gosh, like that was the best

1:30:00 times to be alive because you weren't on your phone

1:30:03 and you didn't have all these distractions and you

1:30:06 know this analog movement that people are doing.

1:30:08 Absolutely.

1:30:08 Yeah.

1:30:08 Know 30 analog devices in the book.

1:30:11 I think people should use an alarm clock.

1:30:13 I think they should write in a journal.

1:30:16 I think that and it's been shown that that kind of repetitive

1:30:20 motion of writing in a journal lowers your cortisol level too.

1:30:23 This is actually being imple implemented

1:30:26 as an intervention in John Hopkins studies in neuroscience.

1:30:30 Analog tasks even physical handwriting as I've just

1:30:34 pointed out but game playing board games are use

1:30:40 different parts of your brain than watching the same

1:30:43 game or playing the same game on your device.

1:30:46 They are good for motor coordination.

1:30:48 They are good for visual coordination.

1:30:51 They're good for engagement with others.

1:30:54 They analog devices are complementaryary to what we are

1:30:59 doing now and in some cases should replace them.

1:31:02 I have an alarm clock by my bed in addition to my Fitbit

1:31:07 and and I use both and it's easy enough to use analog devices to engage.

1:31:18 Uh, I was on um I don't remember

1:31:21 on a beach somewhere else and these 25-year-olds

1:31:24 were taking pictures of each other with a Polaroid

1:31:27 camera and and it was perfectly normal.

1:31:32 Like why was I taking pictures with my iPhone?

1:31:35 And um I admired it.

1:31:39 And I think there is a yearning for this connection.

1:31:42 And what people I think are unaware of is it

1:31:44 actually measurably improves their biology to do to use analog devices,

1:31:50 some analog devices anyway.

1:31:52 And it's not one or the other.

1:31:55 Um, an interesting place is wearables, you know,

1:31:58 that modulate your sleep or improve your sleep that there's

1:32:04 some good evidence for at least a couple of them.

1:32:07 And they're terrific devices.

1:32:10 is they work pretty well.

1:32:12 Um, but they're they're treating the symptoms of deprivation.

1:32:18 And what I'm interested in is stopping the deprivation.

1:32:21 John, the book is out there.

1:32:23 It's available.

1:32:24 People can pre-order it, pick up a copy.

1:32:26 This is an important topic and it's one

1:32:29 of those epidemics that everybody when they hear it, they know it's there.

1:32:38 They just needed somebody to connect the dots and you've

1:32:40 done that today for our audience in this interview.

1:32:44 So I super appreciate it.

1:32:45 Indoor epidemic 93% inside steel sleep focus years the 7% where we

1:32:53 can make these little tweaks small micro doses that you talked about.

1:32:57 You bet.

1:32:58 Or the out outdoor RX restores them.

1:33:00 So we super appreciate you.

1:33:03 Um, if people want to know more about you,

1:33:05 the farm, all the great things you're up to, uh, indoorepidemic.com

1:33:11 is the book website.

1:33:12 The farm website is lumafarmms.com.

1:33:15 But we have a a free cheat sheet.

1:33:17 We have a free outdoor rx that you can download.

1:33:20 We feature uh resources that and organizations that are

1:33:25 doing this for underprivileged people and people without optimal access.

1:33:30 Um, visit it, check it out.

1:33:32 It's uh got everything you need.

1:33:34 Can they get one of these coasters, too?

1:33:35 Oh, yeah.

1:33:35 I brought them for you.

1:33:36 Are you kidding?

1:33:37 Oh, amazing.

1:33:37 I mean, separate from me, can the audience buy these or request them

1:33:41 or they have to come in person to the farm?

1:33:43 They if they come in person to the farm, they get one.

1:33:45 Okay.

1:33:45 Yeah.

1:33:46 And wherever I speak, I give them away.

1:33:48 I'm not yet in the business of selling them.

1:33:50 I'm not sure that I I want to, but

1:33:52 it's more of a It's more of like a token for a talk or a little souvenir.

1:33:56 It is, but it gets people excited or it's a serotonin interface.

1:34:00 Hey, running a farm is hard enough business.

1:34:02 you don't need to uh have uh you know probably cost you know

1:34:06 to mail these out is a is a is an operation in itself.

1:34:09 So focus on the farm.

1:34:11 I I'm happy to give them to people I interact with.

1:34:14 Yeah.

1:34:14 um because it really is magic to be

1:34:17 able to grow something and it's a serotonin intervention

1:34:20 and it's really fun to eat what you grow and this is such a simple way to do

1:34:24 it and I just I love giving them to people and they have a QR code on them

1:34:30 so you if don't remember how to plant them you can just scan and they tell you.

1:34:35 Yeah.

1:34:35 Well, I love it.

1:34:36 I'm going to plant one of these.

1:34:37 Oh, goop.

1:34:38 Yeah.

1:34:38 In my uh in my my kitchen condo here in uh Los Angeles.

1:34:42 Great.

1:34:42 Send me pictures.

1:34:43 Yes.

1:34:43 Absolutely.

1:34:44 John, thanks so much for making it down here.

1:34:46 Pleasure.

1:34:46 I'm excited to look forward one day to visiting the farm up there.

1:34:49 And thank you for the years of work that you've been doing in this space.

1:34:52 Oh, thank you.

1:34:53 To make healthier living just baked into our normal lives to the degree

1:34:58 that I always tell people like you focus on your health

1:35:01 for a little bit of time so that it's baked into your life

1:35:04 so that you can give love and attention to everything else that matters.

1:35:07 Yeah.

1:35:07 You can do this along the way.

1:35:09 You you don't have to retire and do it.

1:35:11 You can do it every day, no matter how old you are.

1:35:14 That's the message.

1:35:15 Thank you.

1:35:16 Thank you.

1:35:16 Hey YouTube, if you enjoyed what you just saw,

1:35:19 keep watching for more great content on how to improve your brain and your life.

1:35:24 We've had the ability in the past to have a natural diet of light.

1:35:28 And what we're getting now is we are raising

1:35:31 a whole generation on a diet of artificial and processed