Speaker 1: (00:00)
Hey everybody, what's going on? Dr. Chad Woolner here and Dr. Buddy Alan. And this is episode 22 of the health fundamentals podcast. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the minimum dose of this and how that can have a huge impact for good on your overall health and wellbeing. So let's get started.

Speaker 2: (00:19)
You're listening to the health fundamentals podcast. I'm Dr. Chad Woolner and I'm Dr. Buddy Allen. And this show is about giving you the simple but powerful cutting edge tools you need to change your health and your life. So sit back and enjoy the show as we show you the path to your best life down to a science.

Speaker 1: (00:38)
So, hey everybody, hope you guys are having a great day. Uh, we found something really interesting that we wanted to share with you guys. Uh, that has I think, some very profound implications, uh, to not only improving your physical health, but I think so many other areas of health, uh, as well. We can talk about emotional health. We can talk about, um, mental health. We can talk about, uh, relationship health. Well, you know, think about what your s, the the the minimum amount of this that we're going to talk about. We'll share with you in a second. Think about all the minimums that we get for our health and wellbeing. We have like, you should drink at least 64 ounces of water, right? You should have at least this many servings of fruits and vegetables, right? At least seven to 10 hours of sleep or seven to nine hours of sleep or something.

Speaker 1: (01:25)
You know what I mean? It's like you have all these minimums, right? But this was, this one would kinda come caught us off guard and we're like, Huh, but it makes sense when you think about it. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so basically what we're looking at here is there was a study that was done, uh, it was published, uh, uh, through the University of Exeter, and they said, spending at least two hours a week in nature may be a crucial threshold for promoting health and wellbeing according to a new large scale study. Basically what they did was they looked at, at people's overall health and they kind of looked at commonalities and patterns. And what they seem to find was that that two hour threshold was the minimum that needed to be met. Um, that anything less than that did not have the same level of effect or impact on people versus doing none at all or under an under that amount.

Speaker 1: (02:17)
Right. Didn't have any difference. Right. Yeah. So be, yeah. Anything less than two hours didn't seem to have a significant difference, uh, or, or improvement. And so, uh, that minimum two hour threshold seems to be, uh, something profound or something special. Something powerful, uh, happens at that point in time. And, uh, you know, Dr. Allen and myself, this, this, I think this, uh, episode couldn't come timed any better in that we're approaching fast, uh, fast approaching summertime. Uh, this weekend we're going to be celebrating the 4th of July. Yeah. And probably by the time this episode comes out, we will have already celebrated that. But, um, but nonetheless, you've got some fun outdoor trips planned this summer, didn't you see? You guys were going to be, we're hiking Mount Bora. That's more than a hike. Yeah. That's gonna Climb. That'll be a little challenge. That's amazingly fun. And it's going to be that, that's the highest peak in Idaho.

Speaker 1: (03:11)
Right? How, how tall a, I wish I, I think it's 12,000. I was gonna say, I thought I was going to say 13,000. Um, so, yeah, man, first mount bore than Everest and that's right. Yeah. So, uh, but, but being outdoors, um, you know, the, the thing that, that I think is really interesting about this is we're not just talking about the typical and, or usual, um, things that people think of in terms of the, the benefits of being outside. Like for instance, most people are familiar with, uh, sunlight, right? That it has an impact for good among many other things of helping us to produce vitamin D levels. Vitamin D has an impact on, uh, you know, they're finding that vitamin D acts more like a hormone than an actual vitamin, and that it has a significant role to play in terms of our overall mood in terms of hormone production.

Speaker 1: (04:02)
Uh, in terms of normal, uh, rhythms throughout life, uniques or pains, aches and pains. Yes, it helps with reducing pain. Uh, so we've come to find that that healthy dose of sunlight can have those, those impacts on us. But I think there's something far more, uh, far deeper, I guess I should say about what they're implying from this study too, that there are other impacts from nature that may not be as, as readily obvious, you know, for us. Um, and again, I think that that would make sense too, because again, I think there's something that maybe can be not always easy to explain about the experiences people have with being outside with nature. You know, I think you said it when we were, before we even started this, you said something to me that I hadn't really thought about and it was actually quite, uh, quite true.

Speaker 1: (04:50)
You know, I thought about it myself. You said some of my favorite memories are of doing things with my family in the outdoors, in nature, family trips, things like that. And then as soon as you said that, I'm like, actually me too. Right. You know, I mean, growing up as a kid, I was always outside catching thing, catching fish, catching frogs and stuff out in nature. And I wouldn't even necessarily, I think memorable is certainly inappropriate word, years use, but I don't even think that fully adequately conveys the, the, what we're really getting at here is, I would say the, some of the most profound experiences, some of the most indelible impressions, uh, of, of life in general, uh, have been as a result of being outside, being in nature. You know, as far back as I can remember as a kid, uh, we had a very, uh, actively engaged outdoor type family.

Speaker 1: (05:44)
We did lots of camping trips. Um, and I wouldn't even necessarily, you know, why I don't want this image to be conjured up of our family being like these, like mountain climbers or anything like that. But we would, we would oftentimes, I mean, we would go and we would see stuff. I remember we would go see the Grand Canyon. That was powerful, you know, which is cool because we just took our kids, uh, a month ago to see the Grand Canyon for the first time. My wife had never seen the Grand Canyon before. Um, I remember seeing, uh, Bryce Canyon and Kings Canyon. We went, we did all the canyons, you know. Sure. And a lot of different, uh, state and national parks that my parents took us to. I remember, uh, to this day, um, I remembered experience we had when I was 14 years old, uh, at Yellowstone. I remember like, so, so vividly.

Speaker 1: (06:34)
I remember, uh, how shocked I was at seeing that many stars at night. Oh yeah. You know, cause having a, you know, I was, I was born in southern California. I lived in Portland, which you can imagine you're not a whole lot of stargazing going on in cloudy. Nope. Cloudy Portland. Um, but then getting out to Yellowstone and seeing at night, just, uh, just the sky, just literally, uh, blanketed with, you know, countless, countless stars. I mean, sure. To the point where you could see the Milky Way and you could see just just so many clusters that it was just the, it almost looked cloudy. He and art. I mean, so it was, it was powerful seeing that. I totally remember that. So I, I, my point is is I'm not trying to just simply take us down a memory lane, memory lane here. The, the point is, is nature is therapeutic.

Speaker 1: (07:24)
There's something, there's something profoundly and we're inherently therapeutic about being outside and being in nature. And so I would simply say the practical take home for people listening would be what? What would you say practical take home is, you know, what schedule it make it. Just like we have minimums that we tried to accomplish from day to day, from week to week. It's like make this something that's important because getting outside and it doesn't have to be up in the mountains. It doesn't have, absolutely, I mean it could be on a nice trail that goes through your town. It might be a nice road. Just something that brings you peace, gets you outside and allows you to Kinda just time to think, be in your own head. And um, you know, like you said, what all the benefits specifically are and why it works so well.

Speaker 1: (08:07)
I don't even think it's, you don't even need to, you don't need to understand, oh just do it. You know, it's like we, we know that the benefits are there, so make sure you take the time or make the time, cause it's one of those things, I think that is way more important than we give it credit for. Yep. Yep. And that which gets scheduled gets prioritized right at the end of the day. So this needs to be a priority. It has to be right. Because this could have such a significantly profound impact again for good on your look at how much depression and how many, you know, how much we see and hear about that in the media. Mental health was a big problem, is huge. And so anything we can do to help bolster or em, you know, like, uh, just charged our, our batteries in our ability to deal with stressful situations.

Speaker 1: (08:50)
Uh, this, this is a simple one, right? It doesn't require any money. It doesn't require very much effort at all. Just get outside, be in nature. And I do believe that, um, taking time or planning time to do a light maybe longer excursion trips or further out of town is also, you know, I'll be a headache, I'll be at a headache at times once you get out there. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And in terms of this, we're talking about two hours per week is the minimal dose. So if you want to break that up, you could say, okay, you do two, one hour long excursions or not even excursion. I don't want to say that, but to our outdoor activities, activities every week or if that's not the case, if the, if the, you just can't do that, then 20 minutes a day per six days a week, 20 minutes a day, six days a week, or pretty simple hour sessions or one, two hour session for that matter, you know, so I'm either way, schedule it, make it a priority. So absolutely can. So hopefully it's been helpful for you guys. Uh, share this with others that you feel can help. Uh, if you're looking for maybe some ways to, uh, help boost energy, improve your health, improve your mental health, um, and you feel like you've tried a lot of different things, this is something simple that's really easy to implement that anybody can do. So, uh, again, hopefully that this has been helpful for you and, uh, we'll talk to you guys on the next episode. Have a good one.

Speaker 2: (10:16)
Thanks for listening to the health front of Middles podcast. Be sure to subscribe so that you stay in the loop. And in the note with all of the cutting edge health information that we share, if you knew other people that could benefit from this information, please share it with them as well. Also, be sure to give us a review. These really help us to ultimately help more people. Last but not least, if you have questions that you want answered live on the show, or if you have ideas for topics that you would like us to cover, please shoot us an email and let us know at info@thehealthfundamentals.com.