Nature, Wellbeing and Health with Michael Depledge

Nature recovery isn't just about biodiversity; it has real implications for our health and wellbeing. In this episode Joseph Gent joins the podcast to talk to Emeritus Prof Michael Depledge CBE DSc FRSB FRCP who is one of the founding members of the European Centre for the Environment and Human Health. (www.ECEHH.org). The ECEHH was the first Centre of its kind in Europe and pioneered much of the early work on fostering health and wellbeing using the natural environment (from around 2008 onwards).

Michael has a distinguished background as a marine biologist and has been Visiting Professor at the Department of Zoology, Oxford University and at University College, London. He is a former Commissioner of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and former Chief Scientist of the Environment Agency of England and Wales.

In this episode we talk more about the link between nature and human health, the importance of our oceans and rivers to our health and the complexity of understanding and prescribing nature to improve wellbeing. You can also find Michael's talk to the Centre here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YibF3k8tWX8&ab_channel=OxfordBiodiversityNetwork

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.

The views, opinions and positions expressed within this podcast are those of the speakers alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

The work of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is made possible thanks to the support of the Leverhulme Trust.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 4:45 Interview

Transcript

Stephen Thomas: 0:00

Oh. Welcome to the nature recovery podcast,

stephen thomas: 0:09

we're going to take a closer look at some of the solutions to counter biodiversity decline. And we'll find out more about the people behind these ideas. Hi,

Unknown: 0:20

I'm Stephen Thomas. And I'm Joseph Gent.

Stephen Thomas: 0:23

And welcome to the nature of recovery podcast. So Joseph, thanks very much for joining me this week. It's great to have you as CO presenter. How have you been doing?

Joseph Gent: 0:32

Yeah, I've been doing great. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to talk about nature will be

Stephen Thomas: 0:37

excellent. Yes. Well, that's the theme this week, we're going to be interviewing Michael depledge. Later, but the theory theme is all about nature, health well being, which is something that you've been researching as well, is that right?

Unknown: 0:49

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm working as a research assistant at the leading human centre, as a part of the health and well being. So we've been interested in finding which elements of nature are most conducive to those positive benefits that we've been seeing from around the world in lots of different studies.

Stephen Thomas: 1:04

And and can you maybe for people that I think everyone has a sort of intrinsic faith or knowledge that right, you know, fresh air walks in the countryside, getting out in nature is good for us. But there is a lot of literature out there, there's a lot of research, what are the sorts of things that we sort of, for me, I understand it as like, well, kind of lower blood pressure and stress relief. But is it bigger than that? What are the papers kind of saying that the nature can do for our physical and mental well being?

Unknown: 1:31

Yeah, so I like to divide it really into two scales. So I think you were mentioning sort of like stress and kind of the personal element of it. I think that one side of the literature has been a whole series of psychological studies, where we find really clearly that when people are exposed to different natural environments, or elements of those environments, for instance, it might be being exposed to the colour green, or particular volatile organic compounds. So things you could smell that are released by plants, or even in some cases, the shape and fractal dimension that we'd find when you're looking at natural view. And we see that actually, you can measure both physiologically. So looking at stress indicators, maybe cortisol levels in the saliva, or blood pressure, we can see that it does have a beneficial impact. But I think there's also the other end of the of the sort of the scale of study, where we're interested in what does this look like at a population level. And there's been a whole series of really great studies which have shown that you can link the level of greenness in a particular urban environment to how well people are doing both mentally and physically. And so that's something that we've been looking into, and we're going to continue to look into in the theme.

Stephen Thomas: 2:39

Amazing. I mean, this is huge stuff as well, because stress, obesity, depression, comorbidities, they can be affected by the environment we're in. So if we're seeing actually green space, that can have a positive impact on public health given, you know, the amount of money we spend on stress reduction on on, you know, exercise on general kind of well being I think more and more sort of symptom specific medicine hits a barrier when it comes against, you know, the these things where people are feeling ill at a sort of system wide level. So yeah, I'd imagine there's lots of people are very interested in this from a sort of public health perspective,

Unknown: 3:17

there definitely are. And I think you've seen a big push towards social prescribing, which is a sort of a different approach to medicine, where we're trying to get people out and about into social situations or being exposed to nature, or perhaps involved in sort of more cultural activities, in the hope that that will actually kind of promote good health, particularly often in relation to mental health. And there's a lot of enthusiasm, but I think this is the real opportunity for the the research that we're doing here is to understand exactly what are the best ways to go about doing that. Because we want to make sure that, well, we want to make sure that the evidence base is pretty is pretty good. So that we can be making convincing arguments to policymakers, that this is a good thing to be pursuing. But also, we want to be pursuing best practice. And so when we do have people, you know, going and getting prescribed something by say, their local GP about going into nature, we want to make sure that's actually going to have the impact that we hope it will.

Stephen Thomas: 4:14

Okay, yeah, that's really interesting. There's a big, you know, social prescribing, it's not quite mainstream yet. But there's a big difference right between a doctor saying go in, have a walk around this, this area that we know has been, you know, peer reviewed and tested that it has a measurable impact on your health versus just sort of having a little walk around the tree in your supermarket carpark or something expecting the same results. So amazing work, really excited to hear more, but let's go and chat to Mike and find out what he has to say.

Unknown: 4:44

I'm looking forward to it. Again, gives me great pleasure to introduce today's guest Professor Michael depledge. He's emeritus professor of environment and human health at the University of Exeter Medical School, alongside A whole host of accolades, which I don't really have the time to list here. Professor depledge has played a key role in finding this field of research that looks into how environments shape our health. And I'm delighted to be able to discuss his work today here on the podcast. So welcome, Professor depledge. Thanks very much. So I want to kick off by asking you, you started your career in biology, looking at the impacts of pollutants in marine ecosystems, before transitioning to focus on human physiology. And I was wondering what brought you back round to thinking holistically about the impact of the environment on human health. But yeah, I've had a very strange career. And so it really started from, as you say, the marine pollution angle, but I was looking at the impact of marine pollutants on circulatory and respiratory systems, in marine animals, and in crabs and lobsters, things like that. But then I was hoping to get a postdoctoral position. And I couldn't get one at the time, it was a time of economic problems in the UK, much like today. And through a coincidental meeting with a medical expert, he suggested that I might look at the impact of chemicals like chemotherapy agents, and so on, on humans, because the principles are actually pretty well the same on human respiratory systems. So I was offered a postdoc position at the Brompton Hospital and joined a team after we got a large grant from the leukaemia Research Fund to work on the first patients who were given bone marrow transplants for leukaemia in the UK down at the Royal Marsden Hospital. And the reason that was an issue was half the patients died from lung complications. And we had to find out why. So I got doing that. So that was a medical sort of introduction. But having worked in the cancer hospital for about five years, we then went off to Hong Kong where I got a job. And you're just surrounded by this amazing marine environment. But you also know that there's lots of people there who got all kinds of diseases caused by environmental issues, for example, arsenic and seafood was causing peripheral neuropathy in some of the population because it were eating lots of the seafood and getting asset contamination. And it just occurred to me that, gosh, there's loads of things to do with the environment affecting human health. And also, it was interesting that living in such a crowded environment in Hong Kong, the only escape from this intense environment was at the weekends when people could get out to the outlying islands and go for a walk. And so that's when I became interested in environmental and human health.

Stephen Thomas: 7:43

Thank you for that. So I mean, we've known for a long time that the environments we inhabit, have already seemed to have a beneficial or detrimental effect on our health. So from seeking the fresh air and rejuvenation of more natural seeming rural environments to the detrimental effects of air or noise pollution and urban environments. But in your opinion, are from what you know, I mean, how detailed is our understanding of this relationship? For example, is the science much clearer about the connections between toxic environments and ill health than it is about the positive environments that the positive benefits that nature can have on our health? And I guess, where do you feel lots of research is still needed? Well,

Michael Depledge: 8:22

I think, overall, we probably know more about the toxic environment on on human health, especially things like air pollution, and specific toxins like mercury or whatever. But over the last 10 years, or 15 years, I suppose my research group and I have been looking into the benefits side of things. And we reviewed all the studies that we could get ahold of back in around 2008 or so. And most of them were anecdotal, poorly done, not robust in any way at all. And so we were quite sceptical when we started off on this line. But happily over the last 10 or 15 years, the quality of those studies has improved tremendously. And I think now, there is a lot of evidence that spending time in different natural environments, does foster improvements in health and well being. And in fact, we were asked by the Cabinet Office to write a review about this, which we did, and we found literally 1000s of papers on it, many of which weren't very good, but there are now a lot of good studies. And so I think that, you know, the evidence is overwhelming that spending time in nature is good for you. But where the deficit is, is we don't know the mechanism. So one of the stories I tell endlessly to my students I've done in the past is what are the cues and clues that you pick up from nature or what do you see smell here? wind in your face, what does that do to your physiology and your psychology. And that's what you don't know. So in my centre, the European Centre for environment and human health with Professor Matt White, and colleagues there, we've tried to create artificial, natural environments. So you can actually set people up with these high quality digital videos, you can play back the sounds of nature, and you can mess with it. So you can make the sky read the trees, yellow, you can do all those kinds of things. You can also generate different smells of new mown grass or cow dung, or whatever else you want to do, and try and find out and we haven't succeeded in doing this yet. We're on the journey. But we haven't got there yet. To see if you can recreate natural environments through these artificial means. And to see which are the most important elements? Is it vision? Or is it sound, whatever. We've also done quite a lot of work on blind people in natural environments. So this is not a visual thing for them. But still, they seem to get profound benefit from from being in nature. So it's a mechanism is what I think I'm trying to tell you.

Unknown: 11:17

That's really interesting. And it's great to hear, and it's encouraging to hear that you're working on it. But I wonder, is our evidence base good enough to say confidently? What works best? For instance, could we, in the process of an unknown, it's become increasingly popular with social prescribing where you might have a healthcare worker? Suggest a particular intervention, like spending more time outside? Do we know what kind of spending time outside is best? Is it better to walk in a forest or by the ocean? I think it depends on the individuals in question. Rather than telling people that well, you know, I like to see, therefore, I get a lot of benefit from it. And therefore, you should try that, well, they may hate this being on seashores, and so on. So I think it's partly a question of personal preference. But in some of the largest studies that we've done, we have found that aquatic environments seem to be particularly stimulating and attractive to people. Again, for reasons we don't quite understand. But if you create two new parks, and you put a large pond in one of them and not in the other, people would definitely prefer to go to the park with a pond. And we also have a sort of a rather, I should have prepped some said more about this. There's a study that we did, I just want to study, it's a setup that we did, where we created this situation where one can be giving a lecture and invite the audience to come to a hotel with you. And all the rooms in this hotel are identical, so there's no difference. And then you can show them the view out the window. And there are three views at the window. One of them is a very attractive urban environment. Second view is of green forest nature II kind of environment. And the third one is seashell. And you can ask the audience which one which room would you prefer. And I've done this in double landlocked countries, like Uzbekistan, as well as in all over Europe and in the US. And about 80% of the audience always choose a view of the sea. And we don't know why. But it's certainly true that people love walking by canals by rivers by lakes, seashore, as people go on holiday by the sea. There's a global trend of people moving to live near the coast, the gradual global trend of more and more people moving to do that. So I would suggest to you that aquatic environments seem to be a bit special.

Stephen Thomas: 13:47

Thank you for that. I think it's possible to make a case that Western medicine, you know, has focused in the past on a sort of a symptom, diagnosis treatment relief basis. But nowadays, we've seen the increase of very complex non communicable diseases and comorbidities where this approach can at times reach efficacy limits. So you know, I've heard some physicians suggesting a more sort of systems based analysis of the patient may be required. So you're not just looking at the symptoms, but you're looking at the reasons behind that which might involve their diet, their sleep, their habitats, their social connections, and very importantly, their exposure or lack of exposure to certain environments. But this is quite a big jump, and I'm guessing you've worked with a lot of the medical community, you know, is current medical training adaptable enough to sort of handle this shift in thinking or are we asking too much of the medical community but as well as the biochemistry and the pharmacology that they learned that they now understand the social prescribing and knowledge of external impacts on the gut microbiota and understanding of natural spaces to the toolkit? You know, should the link between an environment and health be something that we very much look at from the macro public health level? Or is there a role for physicians to play with that?

Unknown: 15:06

That's a complicated question and an excellent question. I think my initial answer is I think that the medical community need to move to a more systems based approach. And, in fact, I know that some of the private med medicine groups, you know, there's a Harley Street practice, I know, actually operates on that systems principle where they want to know everything about your life, if you're going with a cut finger. It's it's really a very extreme assessment of every aspect of your life in relation to your health and well being I think that's a good idea. But practically speaking, I don't think that medic medical training would allow for that. But I think that takes us into a whole other area, which is, the National Health Service isn't really a health services. You know, this cliche, it's a disease Service, National disease service. And one of the things that I think is a danger, and I'm not sure quite how to resolve it is that when we talk about health from the natural environment, we're medicalizing it. And practices some way of detaching or splitting off the health part of things from the disease. Part of so obviously, you need highly skilled qualified people who understand the physiology, biochemistry, toxicology, all the rest of it for treating disease. But in terms of health, that it's much, it's a much more general thing to say about your relationships and your diet and what you know, physical exercise, and mental health and so on. And I just don't think we pay anywhere near enough attention to that. And that might be something that's included in school curricula. And yet, I know that that's pretty crammed as well. But perhaps that's really fundamentally important, especially given the fact that so many people are suffering from psychological disorders, the World Health Organisation suggests by 2030, mental health problems will be the biggest medical problem on the planet. By not, you know, AIDS, malaria, all the rest of it's trivial in comparison. So it's, we might want to reassess our priorities and decide that it's vital to teach people how to be healthy, why to be healthy, what the mechanisms are, both mentally and physically. That's really interesting. And thinking about the idea of looking at health promotion, rather than just disease prevention. It seems to me that a lot of work in this field has been really focused on so called green infrastructure. So looking at the role of plants on land. And there's been a bit of a deficit in the attention on blue infrastructure. And given your expertise. I was wondering, could you tell us you know, what the differences between the two are and what why do you think blue infrastructure has received less attention? Yeah, well, part of the reasons I think, is down to one of my good friends who's a chap called Dr. William Byrd, who is absolutely a pioneer in this area, he was a GP, who was very concerned about the fact that many of his patients didn't really have anything clinically. Wrong with them, but they were just generally depressed, cheesed off, not feeling great. And so he started suggesting to them that you should go back and spend some time in your garden, go to the park, whatever. If you didn't have access to that, you could set up a team of volunteers who would take people out and encourage them and so on. And he called this a green gym. And he got the British trust for conservation volunteers, which is now called something else, I'm not quite sure what. But they set up these green gyms around the country where doctors could actually refer patients who are feeling a bit cheesed off do go and get some exercise and be out in green space. And the good thing about that is that if you get a volunteer who can take a few people out, then people get re socialised as well and build friendships for life and feel part of a group because if so, and so doesn't turn up one week for the volunteer walk people saying where is he and you know, they're going care about him. And so, so it builds this this all up. And all of that was done in the green environment was called the Green gym. And a lot of the work after that sort of stemmed from the green gyms. And in fact, when I set up the European Centre for environment and human health, I hired William Byrd to come work with me a couple of days a week, and we were off at some conference or other and we're talking about could we do some studies, you know, to capture the data about green gym, but we felt it was already kind of, you know, it was already running, so it's all a bit confounded to do the study. So we have the idea of coming up with the blue gym, especially in Cornwall. We're in southwest Britain, which is essentially a coastal community. So we set up the blue gym, which is swimming, swimming, sailing, surfing, kayaking, but also gentle things like rock pool, rambles and coastal walks. And that's, that's where that came in. And then with Matt White, this professor of environmental psychology, he started doing the psychological assessments and finding this huge preference for blue environments. We've written quite a lot of

Stephen Thomas: 20:29

interesting and I know certainly in lockdown, Oxford, particularly with the river saw this big explosion in wild swimming. Unfortunately, someone that sort of has been involved in that and tried to, you know, look at having a sauna or something like that by the river, the council won't allow any, any any activity, any commercial activity that encourages swimming because of the toxic state of our rivers. And just kind of going back to sort of what you were talking about with with Hong Kong, I know, some whales from us are very aware of some of the things that are happening. But I think for a lot of people, you know, it is out of sight, out of mind, you know, the sewage goes into the river goes into the ocean. And yes, there's something that's very bad for dolphins there. But we don't have to worry about it. You know, without getting political with the way we're treating in this country, our sort of marine environment, how does that come back to the public health? You know, how does that affect us?

Unknown: 21:26

It's, I mean, it's a huge, huge issue. And I want to because of this thing about being a marine biologist initially, and then moving into health, oceans, and human health has been of great interest to me. And so the first thing to say is, you're absolutely right, the public are not really kind of aware of all the different implications of it. So in creating this meta discipline of Oceans and Human Health, we've been trying to gather the evidence together to show people just how important it is. Because since it involves health, then you have to get the medical community involved. And that's been a struggle, because they're just not interested or haven't been interested. Although, more recently, the UN there's a group of consultants and doctors of different kinds in the NHS, who set up NHS ocean to try and look at the impact of the National Health Service on the ocean, which is quite significant really, because they shipping, various materials, pharmaceuticals, various medical devices and equipment around the world, which has a huge impact on carbon, and that kind of thing, plastic pollution from from the NHS in the oceans. So they're trying to raise awareness that way. I'm now Chief Scientific Adviser at the Eden Project in Cornwall. And with Sir Tim Smith, we both become extremely concerned about what's happening in British rivers. And with various interesting people like Fergal Sharkey, and a whole array of different people have been trying to mount campaigns to raise awareness about pollution and rivets. Small film was made called Riverside, which documented some of that. But even even with those groups, actually, it's really quite difficult because when people talk about river pollution, they tend to be worried about sewage, essentially sewage. But if you take all the sewage out of the rivers, that's not where it ends. So you have pesticides running in from the farms, you have all the nutrients running off farms and nitrates and phosphates causing all kinds of problems. There are things that you paint fences with try phenol tins, which run into the water. But my greatest concern in rivers, or growing concern, let's say, is pharmaceuticals. So when you take drugs of one different kind or another, then you don't metabolise them completely, and you end up excuse my language, but peeing and throwing them out into the sewage system. The sewage system doesn't clear them. And so they go into the rivers. And we've known for a long while that antibiotics and analgesics getting rivers, but when I was working the Environment Agency, we found cancer chemotherapy agents in rivers. Now, those latter groups of chemicals are at very low levels very low and wouldn't cause any toxicological effect. But if you look at the ageing population, and if you look at the fact that people who get older get more cancer, and these days people are given that chemotherapy to take home so it's not going through some special hospital sewage treatment system. It's going in the general sewage system. So you can see that in years to come. The amount of pharmaceuticals going into rivers is going to be tripling at least the next 10 years. And we don't know what affects it. That's really interesting. And I know that as part of your work, you've looked at the impact that humans have on the environment in terms of the impacts on aquatic ecosystems. But thinking more broadly, one of the biggest impacts that we're currently having is obviously, climate change. And I was wondering, in the process of planning interventions, so thinking about perhaps increasing the amount of green space that people have access to, or trying to restore our aquatic ecosystems? How do we need to be taking climate change into account in planning those changes? Well, in a myriad ways, but I mean, we do need to take it into account. I mean, it's interesting that, you know, we, we've got very, very focused on climate change, obviously, because it's a massive problem. But then, you know, if you're interested in biodiversity, then you probably say biodiversity is the biggest deal. For me, chemical pollution is an equal, equally important deal. So this is why I think we've come up with this terminology about wicked problems, these incredibly complex problems with climate change. And with the release of co2, particularly, we're getting ocean acidification. And we don't know what the implications of warming the oceans 70% of the planet will be. Nor do we know what the implication of acidification will be in terms of chemical pollution. For example, things like metals, if you increase the acidity of the environment, then the metal ions become more available for uptake into organisms. So maybe we'll have toxic enhanced toxicity. And if you increase temperature 95% of animal species on the planet are invertebrates, and don't control their body temperature. So if the temperature goes up, they metabolise a bit faster. And, you know, thermodynamics and so on tells you that chemical pollutants will diffuse more rapidly, so, maybe they'll take up more, maybe they'll metabolise it faster, maybe that excreted faster, we don't know. We don't know if toxicity will be enhanced. So this whole world of interaction between climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, and all the other bits and bobs needs looking at. Now, of course, people argue that you should look at specific things. And clearly you should we need experts to look at individual elements of it. But we also need a few guys who look at the whole picture, I think.

Stephen Thomas: 27:36

Yeah, absolutely. you've highlighted the role about this, you know, the role of disconnection from nature plays. And I think that's something I feel very strongly about. Because you know, the more disconnected you are from nature, the easier it is not to care about your rivers or so on. And as someone went through career change, a lot of that was based on rekindling a connection with nature. And it was a surprise to me that this is something that you can actually measure. And as a general population, we have a broad disconnection with nature, that seems to happen from adolescence onwards. And that seems to have negative impacts on us and on an environment. In your personal view, you know, how do you see ways that we can approach tackling that? How do you see the issue of connection with nature? Is it something that we look at from a stem perspective? Or is that actually going back to education and society that we need to look at nature connection being something that is at the forefront of what we're doing? Both as, as you've said, you know, with looking after ourselves and health, also looking after nature is something that we need to have more focus on? Yeah, I

Unknown: 28:36

mean, I think ultimately, we're talking about education from a very early age, and finding ways to to help people gain access to nature, and enjoy nature in all its different elements. And for example, down in Cornwall, in Truro, which is where I centre is, there are some housing estates there, where the, you know, the put lots of poverty and lack of access to to nice environments and so on. They're probably living maybe two kilometres three kilometres from the sea. And there are children on those housing estates, you've never been to a beach. And I had a particularly vivid conversation with one of the head teachers of the school and they had quite a lot of trouble with a young lad who'd been a bully is only like 1314 and something, never been to the beach or anything. And they did a school trip to the beach. And he found a tiny crab in a rock pool, which of course in the net, and he brought it to her and he was terrified of this crap. And it's quite remarkable, that sort of bullying sort of young lad will be so frightened of this tiny little crowd in nature, and she kind of engaged with him and And he was a lot better after these trips to, to the beach and, you know, kind of attracted by it and making him realise that, you know, he could find new worlds in this in this beach environment. So that's just one kind of anecdote, but I mean, I think there's there's so much that can be done and down at Eden. And also, we have another venue that the Lost gardens of Heligan got a lot of children coming down in the summer learning to make campfires safely and make things out of twigs, and cook around a campfire, and all those sorts of things. So just trying to get a myriad of enjoyable activities that people really want to do. I think my colleague Matt White did some work on taught me of some work anyway, where we were looking at memory of things you've enjoyed in childhood, and quite a lot of people when you ask them straight off young people, they say, Hi, this computer game is absolutely terrific. That's my favourite thing. But actually, when you talk to them a bit longer about did you enjoy climbing trees? And didn't you enjoy going in rock pools? Oh, yeah, I really liked that. But it's interesting. It's not the first thing that comes to mind. And I think there's some psychological thing about the intensity of the experience. So with a computer game, it's very intense. But climbing a tree and being a rock pool, maybe? I don't know, that's, that's work for the environmental psychologists to figure out.

Stephen Thomas: 31:30

No, absolutely. And, you know, for me, it's something that is anecdotal, but, you know, work I've done with other charities and stuff. To me, it's always that shocking thing where you hear people saying, Yeah, this, this kid has never been to a forest or never seen a tree, and then you go to some primary schools, and you realise it's true, you know, I was doing some tree planting, and they didn't know which which way to put the tree in. And it's like that, but but then you find those there are those kids that maybe don't do well, in a particularly in a classroom environment, for whatever reason, you put them outside where there's a bit more freedom. And actually, suddenly, the rules have changed. And, you know, people can flourish in that. And I think also we, we don't often promote the fact that there are a range of careers out there beyond, you know, maths and say, you know, you do maths to do English, we want to get a disease, and they are very important. But actually, for a lot of people that struggle, actually having a career that is more nature based or outdoors is is fantastic. But but often they didn't learn about it until way later in life. Well,

Unknown: 32:28

with Tim Smith, I know he's been a very strong advocate for this new help to get the terminology right. And at GCSE, in nature, and so on. So that's, you know, that's a pretty good thing to have move forward. Although I think that's just a small step on a very long journey to do this kind of work. But yeah, I think that that is probably the only way we're going to really do it. You can't tell people to do things. You don't want to tell people to do things. But to make people aware of it back in I can't remember what year it was. But about 2008 I think it was Natural England, the government conservation agency said that everybody should live within 500 metres of a green space. And that didn't really happen on the government just announced a few months back. Why don't we get everybody to live within it? 300 metres now, I can't remember what the ticker is. But it's not really happening. Is it? Absolutely. It's definitely need some work, doesn't it? So this is the nature recovery podcast. And so we like to ask every guest What does nature recovery mean to you? Yeah, well, that's a complicated question, too, because I'm still struggling to figure out what nature is. But passing over that, I mean, nature Recovery to me means really getting back to more sustainable bio diverse environments. Really, I think that's that's a key thing for me. And that's definitely something I think we can all agree we should be aiming for.

Stephen Thomas: 34:15

And the final question, which I champion, I guess, if I had a guess at this, I would be focusing on your marine background, but you never know. I might be surprised. So if we gave you the freedom we ask our guests this to go anywhere, and to spend some time just just having relaxing, what type of natural environment would you choose to visit?

Unknown: 34:37

See, sure. Yeah, I mean, I I've never been big into diving or anything like that, but seashores for me, absolutely terrific. And I've been very, very fortunate during my career to visit sea shores all over the world, South America, New Zealand, Africa. The Arctic and yeah, and I just find these these invite I met so interestingly changeable, they're a mixture of air and water. And I just think they're incredible. And the animals that live, I find utterly fascinating.

Stephen Thomas: 35:11

Definitely very special. Well, I can't thank you enough for your time, and for educating us. And I wish you all the very best. And thank you very much for appearing on the next recovery podcast. Thank you. Wow, well, that was a fascinating interview, I learned a lot about nature and health, and certainly some of the recent marine stuff that you know, was surprised me. Did you enjoy chatting to Michael?

Unknown: 35:36

Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's just really interesting and encouraging to see that people doing similar and really vital work at other institutions as well. Great. Well,

stephen thomas: 35:45

we're gonna wish you well hope you'll come back and help us out with more podcasts. But in the meantime, if you want to find and sort of follow the work you're doing with, you know, niche or niche recovery, and health and the sort of the social prescribing space, then a good place is the nice recovery website.

Unknown: 36:03

Right? Yeah, absolutely. So on the website, we should have descriptions of all the projects that we're currently pursuing. So you can find out a little bit about what research might actually look like in this in this area.

stephen thomas: 36:13

Cool. Well, thank you very much for your help today. And yeah, follow the research at nature. recovery.rocks@ac.uk. Don't forget to smash that subscribe button. And yeah, we'll be back next week with another fascinating podcast. Thanks very much. You've been listening to the nature recovery podcast with me Stephen Thomas. Please don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you can, please consider leaving us a review, as it will really help other people to find us. Also, why not consider sharing this episode with someone you know, you never know. You might get them interested in the wonderful field of nature recovery. If you want to find out more about the activities of the levy whom Centre for nature recovery. You can find us on Twitter at nature recovery, or you can visit our website for more information. That's www dot makes recovery.ox.ac.uk Thanks so much for listening.