Today it my pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Cyndi Gilbert, a naturopathic doctor, author and speaker. Dr Gilbert is a faculty member at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, and sees patients at her clinical practice in downtown Toronto, Canada.
Cyndi is the author of Forest Bathing: A Start Here Guide For Beginners. I found Dr. Cyndi Gilbert on Amazon – those people that bought her book Forest Bathing bought my book Take Back Your Outside Mindset. So I ordered her book. It is terrific. I reached out to Dr Gilbert on LinkedIn and here she is – with us today. Thank you again for joining us Dr Cyndi Gilbert.
Cindy would please start by tell us your story why you wrote your book called Forest Bathing?
Many of my first memories as a small child were of just lying in the grass and looking up and smelling the cedar heges that lined my property. These had a big impression on me. I always found comfort, safety, and care in nature. I didn’t really think about those things. And many of us don’t .. we go through our lives. It was not until I started to spend a lot of time outside starting community gardens, studying community herbalism for fun – this was all before I knew what naturopathic medicine was. And then I moved to China for a year. The city I was living in was really different than anything that I had lived in before. I realized that I had taken for granted so much green space that we have in Canada. In this medium sized city in China (very large in Canadian standards) there was just so much concrete and so many buildings, and little access to green space. For the first time I noticed what I was missing. So I had to change my habits and go out of my way to find gardens to visit. This was new. My visits to green space had to become intentional. I needed to make time in my schedule to make sure I had that visit. And so I became conscious of this need for contact with nature for the first time in my life.
When I came back to North America it was to study naturopathic medicine. When I got to the school it was early 2000’s and there was a lot of research coming out at that time looking at the health benefits of nature. And I became particularly interested in the benefits of nature on non-communicable disease. I threw myself into the research starting with Lost Child in the Woods, the research coming out of Japan, Scandinavia, the UK and North America – and started to put the pieces together. And as someone studying naturopathic medicine I was looking for ways to bring the research into my clinical practice. So working one on one with patients and doing things like we are doing today to share the research with others. And also share the evidence of what many people know deep inside their hearts that is true – that we have this connection. And showing that there are benefits of being in nature or benefits of even just looking at landscape pictures.
What is forest bathing? And How Should We do it?
Forest Bathing is exactly how it sounds, you don’t take your clothes off. It is a literal translation of the Japan Shinrin Yoku . Even though this time in nature has its roots through all of human history, the term forest bathing was coined as a term in the 80s because the forestry department and the ministry of health together decided to study the relationship with health and nature.
What is the difference in people living in urban centres with lots of concrete and not many trees and what happens in their bodies when they then sit or walk slowly through forested environments. They began to take these people and sit them on chairs at busy intersections and measure all sorts of things like blood pressure, heart rate variability, and different markers of stress in their blood. And they would take those measurements after people sat on the street corner and took the same measurements on the same people when they sat in a forest environment. So forest bathing at its core is that research that came out of Japan. The research is continuing to evolve and has become popular around the world. In Japan they were sitting in coniferous forests but researchers have taken this and adapted to their environments, weather they have access to forests, or blue spaces like oceans, and lakefronts. It really is just being in nature.
So it is not something that you have to do. There are lots of different ways to do it and talk about those in my book, and I hope we can talk about them here too. But by forest bathing we activate all these healing powers of nature.
Could you talk a bit about trees and how they make us live longer?
Trees are the core of forest bathing. For one, they teach us how to live longer. They are the longest living beings in the world. I write about this in my book. With my family we visited the oldest living trees on earth the a bristlecone pine tree from California’s White Mountains, that is thought to be almost 5,000 years old. When you stand next to a tree like that you think about what it means to be resilient, have strength, and inner strength, and sharing that sense of wisdom in sharing something that has been present for so long. We can tap into that in on an esoteric or spiritual level, but then there is the physiological piece.
I like to say that trees are our natural partners in breathing. So they help us to live longer because we have this very basic oxygen exchange with trees. We breathe in what trees breathe out and trees breathe in what we breathe out.
That is a simplified description of photosynthesis, but at the most basic level we need oxygen to survive and trees are the best place to get that oxygen. Besides this oxygen piece, there are so many things that trees give us.
There is shade that we need. In the Japanese research there is the phytoncides, or in North America we know these as volatile oils that we put in our diffusers. These are sold as essential oils. These phytoncides or essential oils are present in many plants and trees. They are natural chemicals that help to calm our nervous system, lower our blood pressure, reduce our anxiety, and also help to boost our immune system.
There is strong solid research that shows that people that live around trees live longer right?
Yes there is large scale research that looks at tens of thousands of people. It is amazing and shows that no matter how rich or poor you are, how old you are, how much education you have, or whether you are in a rural or urban setting – if you live in a certain proximity to trees – you live longer. The presence of a tree canopy within a 3 to 5 mile radius near your home not only makes you live longer, but decreases your chances of having every kind of chronic disease there is.
So as researchers, we talk about “all-cause mortality” – so that is every single disease and every single reason that a person might pass away Those rates (all cause mortality) are lower in those people who live closer to trees. So lower rates of high blood pressure, lower rates of diabetes, lower rates of dementia, lower rates of depression, chronic heart disease.
Could we please dig in a little deeper to heart disease and trees?
Yes there is strong research on coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure. People who check their own heart rate might notice that it decreases when they are in greenspace or a forest compared to a street intersection. Pulse will within 5 minutes decrease. This is because being around trees triggers that part of the nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system. The opposite of this is the sympathetic nervous system which is the fight, flight or freeze central nervous system that we often experience inside during a normal day of living and working. When the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in as we go outside, our heart rate decreases, our blood pressure decreases. In the research shows that after minutes near trees, the blood pressure the top and bottom numbers decrease by 5 – 10 points.
The research also shows that people who live closer to trees have less heart attacks and strokes. In the research the effects were largest on older people who already have some degree of heart disease. Other stress and inflammatory markers.
Diabetes, all tied together – alongside the stress response, actual blood insulin levels decreased in forest bathing, Hgb A1C decreasing. These are tied into stress and inflammation. And all the inflammatory disease like systemic lupus.
I liked when you discuss in your book the and other inflammatory markers (eg. Angotension type 2, cytocykines, CRP, interleukin 6) , so much potential and applicability for those who are living with lupus.
Yes the inflammatory markers are shared by all inflammatory diseases. Cytokines (alarm, strong) interleukin 6, CRP – cardinal signs of inflammation – lupus, dementia, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and cancer. Spending time in nature is an adjunctive therapies. There have been small studies on Cancer and being in the forest increasing killer T cells. And that spending time clears respiratory tract infections.
I think this is one area where when we think about trees and essential oils – most of these essential oils come from trees. So the components of tree aerosols like alpa pinene, an pinene are known as decongestants, open up our airways, and even reduce pain. So that might be one reason that we want to be around trees with some type of smell – these might be different in different areas – might be cypress trees, pine, cedar or spruce trees in other areas. It might be tee tree if you are living in Australia. But finding those trees that are high in volatile oils is important. A lot of people at the end of the year celebrate trees – think of Christmas right – and how many people bring trees into their house, and it is an important tradition to be around conifers. We don’t often talk about how this might help people around the time of year where we are generally more susceptible to respiratory infections. There are so many traditions around the world that incorporate trees and their aromas and medicine.
In your book, you talk about when we are around trees we sleep better and longer. Sleep Better and Longer – seniors with dementia – especially.
You know as a nurse that we don’t always understand why things work – their mechanism of action – sometimes it is allusive, complex, and about a system. And I think sleep is a great example of that. We can’t completely identify what it is. Is it the exposure of Vit D during the day and that sun exposure encourages our body to produce more melatonin at night.. because of the difference between light and dark. Is it about those volatile oils that we just talked about, or our decreased level of stress when we are outside. And I think it is stress ties it all together. But what we do know is that people who spend time forest bathing sleep better, longer and have more restful sleep. So they wake feeling more rested.
You even cited some research on Sleep in patients with dementia.
There is a study by Ulrich that looked at people in hospital rooms – the “room with a view study”. First study to make us reconsider how we design our hospitals, retirement homes, and long term care facilities. We have to think about those spaces. This study was of people who were recovering from surgery. One group had a room that looked out on to trees. The other group of surgical patients looked out on a brick wall. The patients who looked out on trees recovered faster, required fewer pain meds, and had a shorter length of stay. The nurses also reported that the patients with a tree view were more cheerful. What this shows is that even having a room with a view makes a difference.
If you take care of a plant lowers risk of dementia
So this kind of research ties in with preventive care for dementia and for those already living with dementia. In the preventive randomized controlled research it showed that people who were 65 years of age and over – if they were gardening, even just taking care of a plant in a pot – this didn’t have to be an entire vegetable garden, but just tending to a plant – they had a significantly lower risk of developing dementia in the next 15 years compared to their peers who did not take care of plants. Most of that research was done in assisted living settings.
Those people living with dementia if they had a view of plants or any green space or if they were looking after just one plant, this decreased their risk of falls, decreased their need for antipsychotic medications, decreased reports from loved ones saying they were having trouble connecting with their loved ones, increased nurses and family members reports that residents were experiencing joy. These people living with dementia reported having good solid social engagement with family members, staff, and others in the facility. These people living with dementia also had less fear and less anxiety.
Those are the studies that also looked at sleep. As we know sleep is the most basic need that we have as humans right? So when we get more sleep we feel better, we are better people, we are able to engage with others without getting stressed, angry, sad, or frustrated. Those same people in the study experienced more restful sleep. Some of those studies looked at brain waves, in particular alpha waves for those listeners who want to dig deep into the science, those findings are there in the research as well.
Yes in my book I cited Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer’s work on living longer. Her team gave one group of residents in a personal care home a plant to look after – to notice if it needed sunlight and water and the other group no plant to look after. When the team came back 18 months later. Twice as many of the residents with plants were alive than those who were given no plant to look after. This is how Langer started her career in noticing studies. It is so exciting.
Yes and it does not take much. And that is the piece that is so important to remember. As much as I love going out for long hikes, sleeping outside, it does not have to be that kind or level of engagement with nature. It can be caring for a plant, looking at a picture of a plant, or sitting outside in a quiet space. There might be some differences there but there are still benefits in every interaction with nature even if just a picture.
Pain and View of Nature
There were these surgical pain studies done where people were lying down on a surgical procedure table. One group looked up at a blank ceiling and the other looked at a landscape picture on the ceiling. The patients who looked up at the landscape picture of nature reported less pain during the procedure and reported using fewer pain medications after the surgery.
I love in your book how you give us exercises to do outside no matter in the our back yards, a park, or in the woods. The ones I have written down here are 1) breathing 2) stand tall and 3) how to talk to a tree.
Breathing Exercise with a Tree
Ok the breathing one is the one I was talking about trees being our natural partner in breath. You can do this sitting, standing, on the ground, on a park bench, or inside looking out at a tree. So this is going to end up being a breathing exercise so now you are getting two for one. In this instance, focus on a tree, pick any tree that you want or a picture of a tree is that is what you are working with. So you visualize that tree and take a breath in. And you want to just become aware of your breath as it comes in through your nose and mouth, notice how it is coming into your body, how your chest and your belly are expanding, and then breathe out – exhale. Send all that exhalation, all that out breath to the tree. And as you do that imagine or visualize the tree taking in your breath. So as you are breathing out the tree is breathing in.
And then as you breathe in again, imagining and visualizing your tree breathing out the oxygen that you are taking in, so that they is this back and forth movement between you and the tree.
If you are sitting with the tree, you can touch the tree or do whatever feels comfortable to you. But just imagining that breath and really working with that idea of oxygen exchange. So that you are breathing in the tree’s air and when you breathe out the tree in breathing in your air. Ideally you are in a space where you have clean fresh air. You don’t have to do it for long. You can do it for a minute or 5 minutes. Imagine this relationship between you and the tree – making that connection.
This is especially helpful for those people who have COPD (Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease) or bronchitis. It does not have to be a deep breath. It does not have to be a specific kind of count. You breathe at your own pace. Also you can pair it with other breathing exercises if you have to do it for other health reasons. Also you can use this as a two for one when you are doing meditation.
Standing Tall Exercise
I think this ties in nicely with the standing tall exercise that you mentioned. This gets into ecopsychology. If you think about a tree, especially a conifer tree, or like the cedar in my front yard…they tend to go straight. They have very straight trunks. They don’t have very deep roots so they don’t spread out very far, but they manage to stand up very straight and very tall. These trees withstand a lot of wind even though they do not have these huge deep root systems. So we can learn something else from a tree: standing very straight. While we are standing straight like a tree, we can think about strength, resilience. We can think about those kinds of properties that we want to learn from a tree.
Other listeners may be drawn to the willow tree for their amazing flexibility. Human beings have used willow branches through history to make baskets because willow branches are so flexible. Also what is interesting about willows is that their main medicinal property are for pain relief. The willow bark contains a chemically active ingredient called salicin, which our bodies convert to salicylic acid – a pain relief and anti-inflammatory. So we already know willow as ASA or aspirin as pain relievers, but we can also think of the willow as a flexible in just watching them move.
So with the standing tall exercise, I encourage people to find a tree that they are attracted to for whatever reasons, whether it is because it is standing straight up and you may want to stand up tall literally or figuratively, they may want to build up inner strength – or they may want like the willow to have more flexibility in their mind or their body. Do a similar exercise of visualizing and thinking about that quality that you want to embody by standing with the tree. I say standing, but I have used this exercise with people who are using mobility devices. So it is not a problem to be in a different position. Some people even if they are able bodied like to lean into the tree during this exercise, so that the tree is actually holding you in some way. So you are using a mindfulness to connect with that tree an embody whatever qualities you find that you would like to embody from the tree.
How Do We Talk to Trees?
I start every intentional forest bathing exercise I do … or sometimes it is unintentional because I do spend a lot of time outside..so when I am alone, with family, friends, my patients or groups of people, I start with an acknowledgement and gratitude for the tree or trees. Grateful for the time that you have to be outside, grateful for the ability to step outside, grateful for the people that you are doing this with. … just like a lot of folks do around a table before eating. You can do the same thing when you are close to a tree.
For me, it always important to start with an acknowledgement of the land that I am on. So I acknowledge peoples who have been caretakers of that land before my generation and generations before that. So where I am I acknowledge the indigenous Mississauga Credit because they are the people whose territory I live on. I acknowledge all the indigenous people in my area, and throughout North America who have taken care of the land, the trees, and the water. They have been the water keepers and the tree keepers for all the generations.
So we are all part of the larger ecosystem, so that is the connection that we can start with. So that connection can look different to different people. How you want to talk to trees or how your listeners want to talk to trees will be different. You may just end up saying “hey hi how is it going?” and notice it.
Find a Sit Spot
Find a spot that you really like in nature on your property or in a park or wherever and just coming back to that same spot over time. Notice the seasons change, the people who come and go, the animals, and the birds. It becomes a constant and is really important right now because some of us are still sheltering in place. I know it has been an important piece for me – to go outside in the morning to my sit spot that is now in my front yard. I check in on my plants as they are growing in the garden, noticing which leaves have come out, what is different, listening to the birds, even though I live in downtown Toronto.
Is there anything you wish I would have asked you?
No I think we covered a lot. There are more exercises and research in the book that shows disease conditions and that things are better with nature. We barely touched on the implications of forest bathing on mood (preventing depression and anxiety) and for children (attention deficit disorder). And even just things around vision. As someone who wears glasses for long distance and now also using progressives because I spend too little time looking out at a distance and too much time looking at a computer. There is lots of great research on eyesight and so many other things.
Where can people find you on line Cyndi?
Readers can find me on my website (link is below) on more references and scientific information that we talked about today. I post a lot on all social media on Twitter, facebook, and IG. And on LinkedIn . All of those are Dr Cyndi ND and on Goodreads and Amazon and everywhere books are sold.
Website: https://cyndigilbert.ca
Twitter: https://twitter.com/drcyndind
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcyndind
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcyndind/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drcyndind/
Book links
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41150294-forest-bathing
St. Martin’s (my publisher): https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250214492
Amazon (CA): https://www.amazon.ca/Forest-Bathing-Start-Here-Guide/dp/1250214483/
Amazon (US): https://www.amazon.com/Forest-Bathing-Start-Here-Guide/dp/1250214483/
So listeners do get Dr Cyndi Gilbert great book Forest Bathing: A Start Here Guide. Love the way Cyndi shows us that forest bathing is easy, and that there are many ways to do it. Thank you Cyndi for your clear explanations on how forest bathing can be a game changer to prevent and treat our own disease conditions including heart and respiratory disease, diabetes, inflammation, lupus, dementia, stress, cancer, and rheumatoid arthritis. Cyndi showed us forest bathing make you sleep, work and think better. And it will balance your mood and help you to breathe easier. So let’s take our forest bathing medicine as prescribed by Dr Cyndi Gilbert in her book Forest Bathing: A Start Here Guide.
And if you have not already done so, please check out my book and workbook Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Prevent Dementia, and Control Your Chronic Illness. And visit my website Treesmendus.com for free resources.
Thank you for listening to the end. And please keep looking or going outside to spend time close to trees, shrubs, and plants ….. because if you ask me, we all need a little more of YOUR outside mindset.
