Resources: Article – “Nature RX: The Best Medicine” by John LaPuma, MD

Sharing a wonderful article by John LaPuma, MD and board certified doctor of internal medicine, outlining the benefits of nature, beyond what we already know.

Highlights:

“One patient, a friend of Sacks’, had moderately severe Tourette’s syndrome. The condition forced hundreds of grunts and tics daily. But one day when the two men were hiking in a desert, his friend’s tics had completely disappeared. Sacks wrote that “the remoteness and uncrowdedness of the scene, combined with some ineffable calming effect of nature, served to defuse his ticcing, to “normalize” his neurological state, at least for a time.”

Another patient, a woman with moderately severe Parkinson’s disease, was frozen and immobile when indoors. But outside, she was mobile and agile on terrain, in a rocky garden.”

“Kids with ADHD concentrate better after walking in a park rather than downtown or in a neighborhood. The improvement is as if they have been given extended-release methylphenidate (which is a stimulant medication used to treat ADHD and sold under the trade name Ritalin, among others).”

Read the FULL article. It’s worth it!