Kitty. Do you remember our last camping trip?
Oh, let me think about that. No, because Adam, we don't camp. So do you mean the last time the power was out of the house.
Yes, Like I said, camping exactly. And you hear people talk about getting back to nature, but in this modern world that we are in, what you and I need are practical ways to sleep more naturally, and we would like to know would this improve our lives?
This is a super important episode because come on, it's like, if we can be more connected to nature and actually connected to each other, I don't know. I have a feeling that it's going to help us stay healthy, including having healthier sleep.
Exactly.
I'm Katie Low's and I'm Adam Shapiro and this is Chasing Sleep, a production of Ruby Studios from iHeartMedia in partnership with Mattress Firm.
In this episode, we're exploring the bare naked truth about our big, beautiful world, our sleep, and how it's all connected. In fact, Adam, we've been trying to connect our sleep more to the world outside by seeing if we can sink our bodies natural rhythms to the sunrise and sunset rise, sunset.
That's right, you and I have been using these sunrise.
Alarm clocks and we're really into them.
I think it's been amazing.
Our guests today are going to help us understand the relationship between nature and health and getting good sleep.
Yeah.
With us today is doctor Jade Wu. Doctor Wu is a brilliant sleep psychologist, a Board certified behavioral sleep medicine specialist, a sleep advisor to Mattress Firm, and I just always find her insights fascinating when she's here on Chasing Sleep.
Thank you.
Also, let's welcome Richard Louve.
He has away with words and a reverence for nature. He's a journalist and an author of several books that have inspired people around the world to reconnect with nature. Welcome to Chasing Sleep.
Thank you.
We love the title of your book, Last Child in the Woods, Saving our children from nature deficit disorder.
Can you just explain what is nature deficit disorder.
It's not a known medical diagnosis. Maybe it should be, but it's a way to look at the disengagement of children and adults because children happen to grow up from the natural world. That's happened really very quickly, particularly in the last few decades. There's some particular reasons, and it's not so much a measure of illness as it is a way to talk about what happens when you take the good stuff of nature away from kids and the rest of us.
Is there an effect of nature deficit disorder on sleep?
Doctor Woom probably knows more about that than I do. There's at least a couple studies that suggests that, particularly for men at over sixty five, which would include me, that spending more time outside helps us sleep better.
Let's throw that over to you, Jade, I mean, does it affect good sleep?
You know? How are these two related? Oh?
Yeah, I definitely think so. So. First of all, just on a personal level, the time of my life when I slept the best by far, was when I was living in this Swiss organic farm and farming during the day and sleeping in this cabin by night. And I napped for about an hour every day and slept the best sleep of my life for about eight and a half hours at night every night. Part of it is because I was doing hard labor during the day, and part of it was because it was the freshest air,
it was the best sunlight during the day. The freshest food I ever ate. Just being close to animals and being close to plants, and just going with the rhythm of the mountains around me. It was just magical. So absolutely, I strongly believe there's a correlation between being close to nature and sleeping well. And there's actually a couple of good scientific reasons for that. One is, we are diurnal animals. We really really need sunlight during the day and darkness
at night for our circadian rhythms to function well. So if you get lots of sunlight during the day and not too much light at night, then your circadian rhythms are very happy. And when they're happy, they make you sleep well at night and wake well during the day.
But I have to add I don't sleep well. I need to spend more time outside. And just because you're I live in a very natural area. There are mountain lions in our yard. But this morning I woke up because a woodpecker was banging outside of the house.
So in that case, nature is not necessarily helping you sleep better when the woodpecker is pecking on the.
Side of your house.
Rich and doctor WU like, is there something about feeling connected to nature? Feeling connected to other species, how does that help us sleep better well?
In addition to being diurnal animals, we're also pack animals, right, So a big part of sleeping well at night is also just feeling connected and feeling safe during the day. So if we have our social interactions with other people, and if we feel connected to the people and animals and nature around us, then we feel much more safe and calm.
There's a great conversation going on all around us. In recent years, the more research that's been done on how animals and trees communicate, sometimes between each other in the same species, sometimes across species, including with us. When we pay attention to that, we feel less alone and we feel calmed rich.
You suggested something called green exercise. What does that look like.
Well, some of the studies have shown that when people do the same exercise and in fact burn exactly the same number of calories in an indoor gym, for instance, on a treadmill, compared when they expend or burn the exact same number of calories they do it outside gardening or hiking or something like that, there's a significant difference. It's improvement in terms of well being and a number
of other indicators. So some people call it green exercise and actually market it that way that there are green exercise groups, particularly in Europe. It's something that I think is caught on to a degree in the US.
Really cool.
I've heard of forest bathing, which is like a Japanese concept. Is that similar to what you're talking about.
Well, that's a form of therapy in a sense.
Can I ask what exactly is forest bathing?
I think the Japanese name is shinin yoku. That's it, And I think it just literally means bathing in the forest, and it doesn't have to be very complicated. You just go into a forest and allow the trees to surround you. You experience the feeling of the soil under your feet as you're walking, the breeze on your face, and you hear the sounds of the forest. It gives us such rich material to really experience with our five senses, and that really slows down our heart rates. It decreases our
blood pressures, our cortisol level goes down. The whole sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight or flight system, calms down a little bit. It's like you're telling your body that you're safe, that it's okay to let your guard down.
There are a couple of reasons the way that's good. One is all the reasons that makes sleep better when they're in nature, but also because people bring their souls to nature in ways they don't usually. Our relationship with trees works on two levels. One is that some of the chemicals released by trees actually are calming to us.
Oh wow.
But the other reason is that people act different when they're around trees, and so force bathing. You go out there with a group and you have a therapist, you and we were asked to go out pick a tree, any tree. And I know this sounds like tree hugging, which is highly underrated. But pick a tree and spend some time with it, and then come back to the group, sit in a circle, and why did you learn? What did you feel in the tree?
I want to do that immediately, Adam, I mean, it could really help us feel connected to nature and improve our sleep too. But for those of us who live in places like Los Angeles, it's not that easy to go forest bathing every day. I mean, Am I right?
Yeah, it would be ideal if you could get out to nature every once in a while, you know, like say on weekends if you can go hiking. But I think there are ways to maybe focus on the quality rather than the quantity as well, like even if you have a house plant, spending some time with your plants, with the little bits of nature that you do have, and being really mindful, being in the moment and allowing your senses to really experience whatever little bit of nature
there is. And then maybe on a more logistical level, you know, have black house curtains at night to keep out the traffic lights and whatnot, and throw your windows wide open during the day for that sunshine and fresh air. If you can bring as much of the rhythms of nature to your home as possible.
You know, I always wonder like, is it possible to use technology to replace nature in our homes? You know, like we'll do a little like bird sounds or ocean sounds. Can we trick our body in a way into feeling like that we're really in nature even though it's a computer generated sound.
There is some evidence that technological substitutions can work a little bit like watching nature videos, but there's a limit to that. Better approach really is the town that I live in, Julia and California is a dark sky community. There's an organized effort around the country to commit to certain kinds of bulbs and turning off lights at night out side. Oh wow, my son came and visited and looked up at the sky and said it was the first time he could smell the stars. I mean, it
was that vivid to him. But also within cities, conservation is no longer enough. Now we need to create nature. As strange as that sounds, and there are a lot of efforts around the world to change cities to have many more trees, not only for carbon sequestration, but for the kinds of things we're talking about, the health benefits of that connection of nature. We can find nature in cities.
So how do we create nature inside the rooms we sleep in.
There's something called biophilic design and biophilic architecture. It's based on the biophilia hypothesis of EO. Wilson at Harvard, which holds that we are hardwired genetically for an affiliation with nature, and when we don't get enough of it, we don't do so well. Biophilic architecture actually brings plants into the workplace. For example, can be your home or school, as well your plants climbing inside walls or outside walls, outside the windows.
And what the biophilic architecture is revealing in the research is that people who work in biophilically designed workplaces are far more productive. Sick time goes down, turnover gets better, everything gets better.
That's fascinating, doctor Wu.
How do you bring nature into your bedrooms? You have suggestions and advice.
Sure, so, I'm very lucky to live in a pretty green neighborhood. We all have big trees in our yards and whatnot, and it's pretty quiet at night, so I open the windows and I let the night sounds and the fresh air come in. And in fact, I personally feel a huge difference when the windows are open versus not. So there are seasons of the year when I sleep worse or better depending on whether the weather allows me to open the windows, and I make my room very
very dark, I blackout curtains. Yeah, those are sort of my main ways of doing it. If I had more where withal and I didn't have a one year old and three year old, I definitely have a lot more plans as well, But for now that's what we've got.
This is a fascinating discussion and we are not done more to come. Welcome back to Chasing Sleep. We are learning about nature's connection to sleep with author and journalist Richard Louve and sleep specialist doctor Jade Wu. You know, we're talking about getting close to nature, but nature around us is changing drastically with climate change. How is that affecting the way that we sleep?
This is something that my colleagues and I in the sleep community are very concerned about. There's the obvious one, which is that when temperatures get hotter, it's harder to sleep. Our bodies do need to cool down during the night in order to sleep well, so your body temperature stays higher.
That's the obvious one. But then there are also less obvious ones, like the stress from mass migration events and people losing their homes to extreme weather events, and people losing their jobs and their lives being upended from you know, the economic and social disruptions from climate change, and of course the nature that is destroyed and the human communities that are destroyed by climate change just adds every layer of stress possible to body, mind, spirit, emotional well being.
So yeah, we are actually quite concerned about climate change. And what it will do to every aspect of health, but sleep in particular.
Yikes, who stands to you know, have their sleep most disrupted by climate change?
We already have plenty of studies showing that the amount of green space in a neighborhood is directly correlated to how many hours people sleep, Like they did studies with satellite imagery to count up what percentage of the neighborhood is green, and that directly relates to how many hours people are sleeping and how often people having sleep problems. You know, it's things like walkability of your neighborhood. So yeah, it's the people who have less control over their environment.
So folks who are lower income, who are in less affluent areas older people. Yeah, it's the people who are least privileged who will be most affected.
Are these the things rich that bring on the solestalgia?
Did I do it?
Rich?
Solistalgia is a term that was created by an eco philosopher in Australia and Glenn albrit And basically, when you feel solistalgic, you're feeling a kind of intense homesickness for the home around you. The nature is being destroyed. It's not for the past. It's for the present that is changing so quickly and the loss of nature. I think
a lot of us suffer from that. One of the reasons also psychologically, and this is connected to climate change and biodiversity collapse, which go together, is the fact of the growing amount of eco anxiety. It's called different things ecological depression. But it's no accident that as the pandemic began to ease, the trailheads were packed with people.
Yes, the parks were overwhelmed, some of them by the number of people that were Yes, finally rediscovering nature. Folks are really worried about that and the healthcare professions. Jade said in communities that have a lot less than nature that taking nature away from people is a life and death issue.
And doctor Wu, do you have any thoughts on how this sort of eco depression that is probably collectively happening, how that's affecting our sleep, how we can try to combat it.
Yeah, it's definitely related to sleep. I think often people may not consciously realize that when they're having insomnia or having difficulty sleeping that it's related to this. They just say, Oh, I just can't shut off my mind, or I just can't relax. Just something's bothering me and I can't really put my finger on it. And I think there is some longing for connection or simplicity or just I always start with mindfulness of just take what you do have in terms of nature and connect with that.
Yes, clearing the mind is what it's all about, all right.
Adam and I want to share a little experiment we've been conducting. We have a new alarm clock that projects light during the day and at night. It is dark.
Blue light, and the color of the light changes and it kind of gives us a wouldn't you say, Katie, It's like a sped up sunset.
What I think about it is that at least in the midst of this Los Angeles concrete jungle that we live in, we've been experimenting with this alarm clock and I like it. I really do.
He love it.
Yeah. So, there's research showing that having light in the mornings, even when you're still sleeping your eyes are closed, about ten percent of the light goes through your eyelids. So if you have a light that's kind of gradually getting brighter and brighter, some of that light is going through to your brain and giving it sort of a gentle forewarning, like okay, adam, it might be time to get up soon, and you know, you get a bit of a warning
and your brain likes that, right. And also as a night owl, the best way to shift your circadian phase, as in, you know, make yourself more of a morning person, is to have bright light first thing in the morning. And so if you're starting that even before you open your eyes, that can actually make your sleep inertia a little bit better. And sleep inertia is that draggy feeling that like the half hour an hour that it takes for you to fully wake up, like you're sledging through mud.
That gets better if you have that light wake you up.
That's great to know.
Rich thoughts about such clock, these clocks that are being offered these days that have birds and ocean sounds and a light that goes like a sunset at night down to blue and can put on a sort of sunrise. What are your opinions on such clock?
If it works, it's great, And that sounds like it works for you. I have a woodpecker I can loan you too for waking up, you know, during the pandemic, and I wrote a piece for the like times about this. People started looking out their windows when they were in seclusion, and they were noticing that there were birds out there. Now they knew they were out there already, but they didn't really know. And they started connecting with those birds, their kids did, and they did not feel so alone.
They felt a sense of solace and connection. And that has to do with this the loneliness epidemic. The medical community is really quite worried about loneliness as a source of disease. It turns out many of the same diseases that are associated with obesity and with smoking happened when
people are extremely lonely, when they're very isolated. And many of the reasons that are given for this happen to be exactly the same ones that keep kids indoors too much, electronics, cities that are designed for cars, not for nature for people, and the list goes on. I would add another factor to that list of causes for the extreme epidemic and human isolation all over the world, particularly in in countries
like ours, which is species loneliness. I think that deep within this is a deep desire to not feel alone in the universe.
Wow beautifully said in terms.
Of climate change and the eco anxiety which keeps a lot of people away. We need something that I call imaginative hope. I think we need to begin to imagine what would it be like to have a nature rich home that would help us leave better. I just wanted to add that there's a lot of good news. In twenty ten, I was asked to give thee to the American Academy of Pediatrics, about five thousand pediatricians their annual meeting. And at first I thought, why me, nature deficit disorder. Really,
it's not even a known medical diagnosis. And I was nervous before I went up to San Francisco to give this, and my wife, who is a nurse practitioner, took my face in her hands. They said, listen to me, Rich, pediatricians are different from other doctors. They're really nice people. Oh except for doctors like Jade. And so I led with that line and I was off to a good
start with the pediatricians. I suggested, how about if you guys, men and women begin to prescribe nature, literally write prescriptions. There was a little of that going on already, and they went back many of them and started doing that. There's a guy named doctor Robert Tzar from Washington, d C. Who went back. He literally started writing prescriptions to his families for spending time on the side of nature. Then he's got the other pediatricians in DC to do it,
and then they took the next step. They created a database of all the parks and open spaces in d C. So the doc could not only write the prescription literally, but could turn to the computer and say, there's a park a block and a half from your house. Here's what you can do there. I was puzzled by that. Why that happened with the pediatricians, and it was later explained to me that pediatricians are so deeply frustrated. They see mortalities every day, morbidities every day among children that
they can't deal with. Not only that, but every day they write prescriptions to pharmaceuticals. So they already have a sense that somehow we're missing the boat in so many ways, and they're frustrated. So they took to this.
That's amazing.
So there's lots of things happening.
Yeah, collectively, I think we could probably use some of that imaginative hope to help us to sleep more peacefully at night.
Well, that is very hopeful.
I appreciate that as a parent and as the host of Chasing Sleep.
Thank you, doctor Wu and Rich so much.
Thank you, thank you.
What a beautiful way. Let me just say to end the season, this one.
Might have caused the most changed to our lives. I feel it if.
We connect with nature and we connect with each other, we are going to sleep better.
It's that simple.
I'm so grateful because I think so much of the information in today's episode and all the episodes are really life changing in ways that are doable.
I would agree with that.
This has been such a gift, and I want to thank everybody that is listening for connecting with us on season two of Chasing Sleep.
I think every episode we learn so many practical, life changing things to better our individual lives, our family's life, and.
Our marriage and our sleep.
Like, is everyone vibing this?
We're vibing.
And if you liked this episode and you missed a few of the others, feel free to binge listen.
We will not judge. Plus, we want to hear from you.
Yes, go to your podcast player of choice and rate and review the show and tell us what you think.
Katie, tell them your social.
My social is kt Q. Low's on the Gram.
Yeah, and I'm on the Gram too. I'm much shabby shaps.
Don't forget to follow or subscribe for future episodes.
Until next time.
I hope you're living your best while sleeping your best.
Chasing Sleep is a production of Ruby Studios from iHeartMedia in partnership with Mattress Firm. Our executive producer is Molly Sosha.
This show was written and produced by Sound That Brands Dave Beeson, Jason Jackson, and Michelle Rice.
Chasing Sleep is hosted by Katie Lows and Adam Shapiro. That's Us. Thank you to our partners at Mattress Firm.