Welcome to The Green Prescription Club!

What if you get Nature as a medical prescription? Yes, it's possible! Let's change the narrative together: more outdoors, less medication.

Welcome to The Feel Good Life! A newsletter about health and all aspects of what makes a good life. Join me, Dr. Mariana, as I explore the intersections of life and medicine, from East to West and North to South, bringing together the best of the world and our shared humanity to help you discover your own Feel Good Life.

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In today’s newsletter:

• Open-air health talks for a change

• Introduction to Green Prescriptions

• Welcome to The Green Prescription Club by Dr. Mariana Calleja

Open-air Health Talks For a Change

Back in 2019 I started doing open-air health talks at the park. I had been wanting to take health into the outdoors for a long time, and being in Barcelona, with endless beautiful weather and open spaces felt like the perfect opportunity to unleash my creative, innovative doctor.

I’ve always loved teaching, and even though consultations offer us doctors the required privacy to do our job, they doesn’t offer a larger and more public way to teach people things they can use to understand their health and their bodies.

So I decided to throw myself at this experiment and launch my first health talk at the park - and the response I got was encouraging! After telling a few friends, word of mouth did its job and dozens of people showed up.

Even though the whole idea felt alien at first, it was clearly attractive to so many in that pre-telehealth world (oh, how things have changed).

Across five invigorating months, I ran a series of public health talks at the park. We would gather, I would teach, then we would let the magic of an in-person event do its thing. We would sit there for a few hours, exploring how a health class can be fun, interactive and engaging in a whole new way, enjoying the most stimulating and life-affirming conversations. The levels of openness, commitment, joy and sharing were off the charts every time!

Doing these open air health talks have been some of the best experiences of my professional life.

Then along came the Covid-19 pandemic - and suddenly, this whole approach felt urgent and timely in a whole new way.

It’s been four years since society was forced to stop in its tracks and reassess everything.

The pandemic arrived like a derailing train, crashing through our lives and leaving havoc in its wake. None of us were left untouched by what the pandemic brought, whether it was changing attitudes to work, relationships, physical awareness, mental health awareness, self-growth and more.

As everyone would agree, 2020 was one of the most surreal periods in modern times.

I remember being in my flat in Barcelona, getting ready to leave for work every morning, and coming back home later to try to process the day. Working in healthcare at the time was, to put it mildly, scary as hell. As a healthcare worker, I had the freedom to travel to and from work when most people were confined indoors, and I felt incredibly grateful for it, to be able to step outside and walk off the stresses of the day, and to vent with my colleagues as we took turns to release our fears and tears on daily basis.

Since then, people all over the world (myself included) have questioned their lives and their daily habits, particularly around food, exercise and a sense of purpose. This has also hit deeper truths making us question the way we feel about ourselves and how we relate to others.

It probably took us all a year or more to actually understand what had happened in our lockdown brains, unable to put into coherent words what we each went through on every stage of the process.

The aftermath of pandemic unlocked a memory that many didn’t know they had: the memory of feeling good in terms of calmness and appreciation of a slower life, away from the grinding daily rush, making us realise that maybe, just maybe, something can be done to make us feel better, going forward.

What I’ve seen in consultations since then have been the following truths, as clear as water and as grounded as a tree:

1) Nurturing social connections feeds the heart,
2) Being physical and enjoying the outdoors feeds the mind, and
3) Enjoying a calmer, slower life feeds the soul.

Welcome to the age of Green Prescriptions!

This beautiful and powerful evolution of conventional medical intervention is inviting people to rethink their lifestyles. In essence, it’s an invitation and series of prompts to get more involved in Nature-based activities, as prescribed by a healthcare provider.

These activities can go from exercise and healthy eating to engaging in hobbies, group activities and other forms of socialisation as an enhancer of physical, mental, emotional and immune health, just to mention a few benefits.

There is strong evidence showing the effectiveness of green prescriptions across public healthcare systems worldwide.

New Zealand was the first country ever to do green prescriptions - even before Covid times. (Kiwis, you absolute visionaries.)

Since then, other countries have started implementing green prescription practices, greatly accelerated in 2021-2022 as a way to help citizens recover from the emotional mishap that the pandemic provoked.

Canada started doing it in 2022. Its doctors are now prescribing nature and giving patients a pass to enjoy national parks throughout the year.

The UK’s NHS has joined the movement as well:

“There is a strong and growing evidence that nature-based social prescribing plays an important role in improving mental and physical health and reducing loneliness.” ~ Source England NHS

And it’s not just about mental health! Studies suggest our immune system is reinforced when it’s in greater contact with Nature, as explained in detail in this biological science PNAS paper:

“Modern life deprives us of many of the inputs that our immune systems evolved to anticipate, so we are now more dependent on the microbiota of other people and the microbiota of the natural environment and green spaces.” ~ PNAS.org

(Seriously, I could geek out about this for hours.)

It’s immensely encouraging to see that more and more public healthcare services worldwide are incorporating green prescriptions to their agendas, not only for patients but for healthcare staff too. We all know how burnt out healthcare services have been for so long. This fantastic post by Dr.

Amy Walsh

opens a huge conversation around the topic of traumatic stress in healthcare. As a doctor, this makes me hopeful that in the midst of such an emotional turmoil, the green shoots of change are working their way through the infrastructure of modern healthcare.

In May 2020 the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a set of Prescriptions for a healthy, green recovery from COVID-19, of which the first prescription is to “Protect and preserve the source of human health: Nature”.

In the same way:

“On May 26, 2020, over 350 organisations representing over 40 million health professionals and over 4,500 individual health professionals from 90 different countries*, wrote to the G20 leaders calling for a #HealthyRecovery.” (You can read the full letter here.)

In February 2022, the World Economic Forum followed by publishing this article on green prescriptions, bringing the topic even more to the forefront, inviting us all to think of larger and better ways to improve and do prevention after the pandemic havoc.

For these and many more reasons, I’m loving the Green Prescription movement - and now it’s time for me to get involved.

Let’s build our own green prescription space together.

Welcome to The Green Prescription Club!

Here’s the deal I’ll make with you.

Every month, I will prescribe you one set of Nature-based activities to be performed and enjoyed throughout the month. At the end of every month we will meet in a group call to comment and share important realisations, awarenesses and breakthroughs.

This will be a feature for paid subscribers.

As most of you might know, this newsletter is 90% free and it will continue to be so, as I truly believe health education should be of universal access! However, for the remainder 10% I’m choosing to offer paid subscribers a boost as a way to motivate everyone who feel absolutely ready to take accountable action towards their health, and towards feeling better.

It’s also important to make a key point here: I am not offering a medical prescription service, in the sense of prescribing drugs & medications, making formal diagnoses or providing formally recognised treatments within your existing healthcare system. This is solely a preventative public service, as a call to reinforce health and good lifestyle habits for all community members.

How does it work?

At the start of every month you will receive a Green Prescription prompting you to embrace an Outdoors/Nature-related activity. Each month will be a different activity.

(If you need it, I can also provide guidance for tailoring that month’s activity to where you live, and for challenging yourself to seek out Nature wherever you live.)

The prescription will look something like this:

It will include an Activity Tracker so that you can track your own performance and take notes. This will be used at the accountability group calls at the end of every month.

At the end of every month we will gather on a Zoom call to talk about how your green prescription has created a newfound awareness in your own health and your natural surroundings.

Super doable, right?!

It goes without saying that even though I’m your doctor prescribing this, I’m ALSO taking part in the challenge every time. I want to lead with example - so expect some good updates from me too. ;)

So, to summarise! Join The Green Prescription Club and for as little as $6 a month you’ll get:

1. 1 Green Prescription per month

2. 1 Activity Tracker Guideline per month

3. 1 Group Zoom call per month to discuss health matters related to the prescribed activity

4. A unique and amazing community to help you stay accountable and motivated towards your health goals!

Remember, this is both about physical and mental health, and above all about community. When we find a community that feels welcoming and supportive, we are more highly to stay committed and motivated to do the thing.

This club is here to help you - and to be fun!

Ready to do this?

Our first adventure starts on June 1st, 2024. Let’s go!

See you inside,
Dr. Mariana

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