What you might not know is that you will also be more beautiful or handsome  to others when you are outside. When I saw an Instagram reel of my 20 something kids out in the countryside last weekend with their friends, I saw this. They were even more beautiful, happy and carefree out there together in the Cotswold area in England.  I want to explain to you in graphic terms why you too look even more beautiful out there in the countryside. It’s about blood flow throughout your body when you are out there. To do this I have to draw on my nursing biology knowledge about your autonomic or automatic nervous system and blood flow.
In the last episode I talked about how getting outside loosens and relaxes your thinking – your thoughts relax, you get perspective. At the very same time there are changes in your physical body – your nervous system comes into balance. On pages 57-59 my book Optimize Your Heart Rate I discuss the see saw nervous system which goes up and down between the sympathetic (fight/flight – where the heart speeds up) and the rest and digest where the heart relaxes and slows down. We need both. To get things done we need out heart rate to speed up and that is ok. When you are in sympathetic f/f the blood goes to your arms and legs so you can run away. But you don’t want to stay in that hyped up productive state, you need to give your mind and body a break. This is what happens in green space. 
The other extreme of your see saw nervous system, called you R&D takes over to bring your body and mind back into balance. Your In the r/d the blood stays in your head  and core – so the blood vessels open up in your head, through your chest and heart (relaxed heart rate) and your abs – sphincters and organs are relaxing so that your food, waste, blood, and secretions  can pass through your body with ease, and down below that the blood flows to your kidneys, bowels and genitals. This is where my kids say “mom……” This is all good I am a nurse this is how we talk... So 7 specific things happen when your blood flows 

 Transcript https://treesmendus.com 

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

This podcast, Your Outside Mindset  is now in the top 5% most popular shows out of 3.2 million podcasts globally. Thank you to each one of you in 56 countries for listening and sharing Your Outside Mindset podcast episodes. 

For science- based information with easy to use tools, tips and practical advice on how to get the most of your time in green space see my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space.

In this solo episode today, I want to share something that happened to me at my son Max’s wedding to Sarah - which took me by surprise and made me step back and revaluate who else needs to hear the message I am sharing in this podcast. 

So let me take you to the big day. I was there mother of the groom and asked to do a big speech.I was nervous, practicing, second guessing whether this was the right thing to say-all the things that parents feel before making a momental speech.. I won’t read you the whole speech.  So listeners here is part of my speech on that precious loved filled day: 

When the kids were small we lived on Loughborough Lake near Kingston. One day I  was rushing around tidying our house and saying, “I just want to get things back to normal.” Max who was in Grade 1 at the time said, “Mommy Where’s normal?” I replied “ I don’t know, where do you think it is? Max said “Out in  the middle of the lake somewhere.” 

And when Max was little he loved to lie on  the ground and look  up into the  tree branches – for a  very long time. So long that I finally decided to start lying down next to him. When I did,   he said “look mommy angels” – he  was referring to the light glancing through the tree branches. 

I don’t know, but if I asked Max today “where  is normal?” I am pretty sure he would say anywhere in  the world – and mostly outside and always with Sarah.|”

At the end of the speech his friends shared with me  the impact that my speech had on them - what it also showed that with their  careers, technology and screens  they have lost touch with the importance of making time for nature and green spaces in their busy lives.

So this is for you the 20-30 year olds at Max and Sarah’s wedding:

I get it. If I rewind my time back in my career and busy life in my 20s and 30s, I made time for the gym and workouts but that was it. Now you probably know that I have lupus today. I look back and think that if I had made time for more nature and green space daily in my busy career life – if I had

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD is a former physician and an internationally known mindfulness and Insight (Vipassana) meditation teacher. She is passionate about translating ancient wisdom teachings into accessible and applicable modern-day language. She aims to live from the heart informed by the brain and inspires her students to explore the same. 

She is the author of “Outsmart Your Pain – Mindfulness and Self-Compassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind”and the co-author of the classic training manual for mindfulness teachers “A Clinician’s Guide To Teaching Mindfulness”. Christiane is the lead-consultant and teacher trainer for the VA’s (US Department of Veteran Affairs) National Mindfulness Facilitator Training and a senior teacher at InsightLA.

3:38 Originally I just wanted to provide a print out for patients and providers of what mindfulness and self compassion are and where to find resources. We ended up with a user friendly book.
4:45 When our body goes into pain, this is the body's priority: paying attention to pain.  This gets complicated with chronic pain.
6:48 Our body  learns pain. In chronic pain our body becomes over protective.
When we say the pain is killing me today, be careful because your body is  listening.
8:00 When we are in pain, the mind goes into rumination, replays stories of what happened to us. 
10:00 We have a story with a history.  What did you do? what are you regretting? We have a story of the past  and a story  of the future. With each thought comes a particular emotion.
10:57 We might have a future story - we might know that the condition we have is progressive. We might worry that the pain will not go away....so you will not be able to go on hikes, lift your grandchildren.....

11:47 When the pain comes rushing in, this is a reminder of our past and future story:  fear, frustration, and worry set in.

12:08 The past is over and the future isn't here. You might recognize your thoughts and say "the past story is really running right now."

12:16  You can  learn practices to put that story down for a while. May say "I don't need to go down that path right now...at this moment."

For further episode transcript please visit my  website Treesmendus.com

Follow Christiane Wolf on her website here
and on Instagram: christianewolfmindfulness

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Full Podcast Transcript at treesmendus.com
Books written by podcast host Verla Fortier:
Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space
Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress  Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness


Dr. Patrycja Matusik is a physician-radiologist at University Hospital, Kraków, Poland. She completed her medicine degree and PhD at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In her work she focuses primarily on cardiovascular imaging, lung diseases and neuroimaging.

In her scientific work, one of the main directions is heart rate variability (HRV). She went to the Cardiovascular Division at the Department of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, USA on two occasions. There she completed internships in the field of advanced methods of ECG analysis under the mentorship of Prof. Phyllis K. Stein in the Heart Rate Variability Laboratory.

She is the co-author of several scientific papers published in peer-reviewed international journals, including the European Heart Journal. 

1.    Please tell us a little more about your personal - why you are interested in lupus erythematosus. 

First, I want to say thank you for inviting me to your podcast.

As you said I’m a physician radiologist from Poland. Privately, I’m a mother of 3-year-old Julia. My husband, Paweł Matusik, is also a doctor – a cardiologist, and together we combine our passion for scientific research. 

I was inspired by lupus for the first time on my internship at the Heart Rate Variability Laboratory led by Prof. Phyllis K. Stein at Washington University in St. Louis. During the course of lupus, involvement of multiple organ systems, including the cardiovascular and autonomic nervous system, occurs. Therefore, we decided to bring together and summarize current knowledge about the scientific findings and potential clinical utility of heart rate variability measures in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. 

2.     Please tell us what lupus erythematosus is and what can happen during the disease process as it relates to your publication “ Heart Rate Variability in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: a systematic review and methodological considerations.” 

Systemic lupus eryt

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

 For the full show notes of this episode visit website https://treesmendus.com

Verla's new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space. 

Verla's previous book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness

Dr. Tselios is an Assistant Professor of Medicine with the Division of Rheumatology at McMaster University since 2021. He completed his basic training and PhD in Greece and came to Canada in 2014 where he worked as a post-doc fellow with the University of Toronto Lupus Clinic. His main clinical and research interest is the field of autoimmunity and systemic lupus erythematosus, particularly the cardiovascular complications of the disease. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He is currently developing the McMaster Lupus Clinic and Lupus Ontario/Anne Matheson Lupus Biobank in Hamilton.

Time Stamps in minutes of our conversation:

2:00 I started looking after lupus patients in 2008 in Greece, and was offered an opportunity to do a PhD in lupus to become the medical director the lupus clinic ...and there, I fell in love with lupus patients and the process of the lupus disease. 

4:21 My published research caught the attention of the Toronto Lupus Clinic run by  doctors Touma   and  Gladman who were collecting data on lupus patients since 1971. This clinic at the Toronto Western Hospital at the University Health Network is one of the largest lupus clinic in the world, was a great environment for me to gain expertise in lupus. I worked there since  2014 and it was a great experience. I stayed there for 6  years. 

5:00 I stayed there for 6  years as a post doc. Then I was hired at McMaster University in the Division of Rheumatology at Hamilton Health Sciences. My main goal is to develop a new Lupus Clinic for south western Ontario and this Biobank, if we want to talk about it further is about collecting samples for further lupus research. 

6:00 Heart involvement and lupus: In the past lupus has been so agressive that it leads to often leads to death. But most people do significantly better now. So our patients will survive but the arteries can stiffen as the years go by (atherosclerosis) and as we get older.

8:00  Lupus patients are 50% more likely to have a heart attack than people without lupus.

8:22 I started investigating this in my research with the Toronto Lupus Clinic cohort. As you dig deeper into research sometimes you find things that you would never expect. 

8:60 The heart conduction system is about the heart pumping

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Host Verla Fortier
Verla's website https://treesmendus.com

Verla's new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space. 

Verla's previous book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness

Time stamp: 

03:00 My lupus diagnosis
04:00 Green space research changed everything
04:48 Sudden cardiac death of my best friend
05:40 Take 3 minutes outside in green space
06:27 HRV not captured on bedside heart monitors
06:50 What is HRV
07:24 Episode #30 Optimize Your Heart Rate is about  resting heart rate 
08:11 High HRV
08:18 How HRV
08:39 Why researchers love HRV
09:30 HRV measures fitness of your heart and your entire autonomic nervous system in one metric. 
10:16 One HRV metric captures how much stress you are under - physiologically and psychologically
11:29 HRV study in 2013 of 22K people without heart disease showed low HRV is indicative of first heart attack or sudden cardiac arrest  (by 40 percent) 
13:19 Low HRV early  warning system for heart malfunction and accompanies a range of diseases 
14:15 Marsuik research showed lupus patients  may have low HRV as a result of cytokines, not disease process
15:07 Covid and HRV research/Cancer and HRV
16:10 I use a chest strap for one minute every morning with my free HRV app
18:20 Greenspace balances nervous system
19:10 HRV let's me know what is going on - have my own surveillance system  and treatment plan
19:59 What happened to my HRV this summer. Didn't bounce back
20:52 My GP ordered a 48  hour halter monitor test
21:42 Revolution in personalized medicine
22:15 Toronto Lupus Clinic, University Health Network looked at prolonged antimalarial treatment effects. 
Link: 
23: 49 Can pick up heart conduction damage in EKG
24:11 Your own personal data is power
24:38 Reducing my medication with my GP and Specialist
26:37 Know your own HRV baseline
26:52 Time spent in green space balances HRV and resting heart rate
28:48  Be co-custodian of your own health by using HRV and greenspace. 

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Host Verla Fortier
Verla's website https://treesmendus.com

Verla's new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space. 

Verla's previous book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness

Michelle Schuman's book: The Understory: A Female Environmentalist in the Land of the Midnight Sun

Michelle Schuman's website: https://meschumancom.wordpress.com

Your Outside  Mindset Podcast episode #36

Time Stamp (minutes: seconds)

1:31 Michelle Schuman is an environmental scientist with over four decades of experience in Alaska working for the federal government, state government, and the private sector. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife Biology and Range Science, a minor in Soil Science and a Master’s in Environmental Policy and Wetland Restoration. Schuman is a certified Senior Ecologist and Professional Certified Wetland Scientist

Schuman is credited with writing hundreds of technical documents, including the Wetland Functional Assessment Guide for Alaska. But her greatest and hardest, accomplishment was a first responder on the Exxon Oil Spill analyzing one of the most devastating and long-term human caused disaster in North America.

She resigned from federal service in 1987, expanding her professional career into private consulting and state government in wetland science and oil spill response.

In October 2020, she began writing her memoir, The Understory: A Female Environmentalist in the Land of the Midnight Sun. A year later, she signed an option agreement with HTWIP Productions for a screenplay.

4:26 I am 66 now.  I was born in a small, rural town in eastern Washington, where I was free to explore the basalt cliffs and sagebrush fields. After receiving my undergraduate degree in wildlife biology, range management, and soil science, I married my soulmate, whom I met working in the Blue Mountains of Oregon.

4:44 Our adventure took us to California, where my husband was a mechanical engineer; and Ne

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Host Verla Fortier
Verla's website https://treesmendus.com

Verla's new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space. 

Verla's previous book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness

Guest Ernesto Rodriguez, Executive Director Nature In  The Classroom (tree mural ceilings) and in hospitals Sereneview (nature  mural hospital curtains).

Shownote  Timeline

3:45 Ernesto grew up in Cuba, grandfather a renown muralist

6:30  Visited  his friend in hospital (got the creeps). Then went to assignment in the Redwood Forest. As  he  was waiting for the light to come through the trees (about  an hour) was thinking of his friend  in the hospital.  Ernesto felt so good  there and  wondered why hospitals can't feel  like this? Research  on scientist Roger Ulrich in the 80s.

10:11 Brain reacts so quickly to nature. 

11:36 Story  of Asia: emotional soothing with nature  curtain.

14:27 Professor Richard Taylor's definition of fractals

17:17 Hôspital curtains for veterans, National Parks

18:26 10 days in National Parks

22:11 Attention Restoration Theory (ART): nature helps to calm, focus, and learn. Nature gives brain a break. 

24:00 Pilot Project to put tree mural ceilings in school.

25:18 One of the drawbacks of introducing something new: only 2% off the population is going  to get it. It takes 18% before it goes mainstream. 

31:07 Images of nature has to be life-like. Canopy has blue sky, see branches, see leaves, camera on a  tripod combined with software. 12 by 12 foot  squares  or 16 foot squares. 

37:07 Tip: go outside -there is no substitute for that.

38:11 Tip: We don't recognize your own anxiety until we see nature or get outside

40:03 Follow Ernesto's work Nature in the Classroom on Facebook and Instagram
and Sereneview.com

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Michelle Olson, PhD, LCAT, ATR-BC, ACC/MC

Founder, Executive Director www.evergreenminds.org 

Verla's website https://treesmendus.com

Verla's new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space. 

Verla's previous book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness

1:19 Michelle Olson is a social gerontologist, who started as a creative arts therapist with WWII vets who had serious mental health and dementia. Expressive arts include visual arts, music,  dance and drama.

05:15 What makes the difference is the ability of people who are experiencing mental difficulties to communicate in different ways. 

6:21 Michelle Olson: "When people lose the ability to talk... they can still move their bodies and use their senses -- as ways to connect and feel better."

7:19 Michelle Olson: "to do this as a family member -- we sometimes make it harder than we need to make it. It is the simple things sometimes the activity might be -- being together outdoors. Here we might spend time noticing the leaves or the light, the shadows, the textures....

7:38 Maybe its the smell in the air 

7:49 Sometimes I do forest therapy with clients and we turn around and notice things in different directions. Eg what does this acorn feel like? Maybe you can make a nature sculpture - something that will recreate this time together. 

8:47 Maybe a person does want to make a painting - then I focus on the process - maybe that product is interesting. Or maybe they want to make a poem - it might rhyme or it might not. It is the whole process of connecting that matters. 

09:58 As a social gerontologist I am interested in where we live and what we do across out whole lives....how we eat, how we move, how we socialize, how we interact with the world, do we feel safe..

10:17 When I was an arts therapist that is when the light really went on...I wanted to know more about aging. In social gerontology we look at the person holistically over the course of their lives. The field of gerontology is growing, there are financial gerontologists, environmental gerontologists... we need to know all these perspectives.

14:00 We often  don't think about environment when we think of aging.  United Nations just declared access to a healthy environment a human  right.  We  don't question why  we keep  patients and older people inside.     Dr Allen Power says balance the risk of safety and keeping people away from natural spaces. We can ask  staff 

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Dr. Bing Zhao  is a geriatric doctor in the first university of science and technology of China. This hospital is in  Hefei, a city located in the east China with a population of more than 9 million. She completed her medicine degree in China and PhD in University of Tasmania in Australia. Then she went to Duke University in the US as a research scholar.

Her PhD research interest is air pollution and cardiovascular diseases. She is recognized for her presentations at the youth section of annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology, the largest cardiology congress in the world. She has published several papers and one of them was published in the Lancet planetary health.

Please go to my website for the link to her paper. In my new book Optimize Your Heart Rate I tell the story of my close friend Leslie, aged 64 and apparently healthy with no diagnosis of heart disease,  who died of sudden cardiac arrest after  2 days on a road trip.

Time line of my interview with Dr. Bing Zhao

3:29 Breathing polluted air threatens our hearts

4:19 The consequences of PM2.5 particulate  matter is dramatic

5:03 PM 2.5 is a mix of solid and liquid - very thin- less than the size of a strand hair -goes right to lungs and heart

7:22  Study in Japan nation wide - Out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) - compared # of OHCA with air pollution over 3 days.

7:58 1/4 million cases over 2 years -  65 years of age increased incidence

8:30 Japan has air quality stations all over the world

9:01 Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart suddenly stops pumping = major medical emergency

9:42 Study finding: Short term exposure to PM2.5  up to 3 days associated  with increased risk      of OHCA -- men and women over 65 more susceptible

10:24 Gases in traffic emissions -  nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide

11:02 What surprised Dr Zhao the most?  People assume that air quality is safe at levels at levels below WHO levels. There are no safe levels of PM 2.5 air pollution for our hearts.

11:35 Current air pollution policy has to be changed

12:28 We  need new health care responses to air pollution
Chose public transportation over cars, use air purifiers indoors, and access green space in day to day activity.

14:49 Acute exposure to air pollution increases risk of sudden cardiac arrest in less  than 3 days.

18:43 Time line and more info on my website https://treesmendus.com

For the story of my life long friend Leslie who died of a sudden cardiac arrest at the age of 63 on day 3 of her road trip see my new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: B

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space