A Doctor Says You Need 17 Minutes Outside Every Day. Here’s Why

BUY THE BOOK! The Indoor Epidemic https://amzn.to/4xSIYaD by John La Puma Dr. John La Puma joins the podcast to discuss his eye-opening book, Indoor Epidemic, and the life-changing research behind it. We now spend an astonishing 93% of our lives indoors and according to Dr. La Puma our health is paying the price. The good news? Just 17 minutes a day of intentional time in nature can improve sleep, sharpen focus, lift your mood and reduce anxiety. Also, just eleven minutes of daily, intentional engagement with nature can lower your risk of premature death by 23%. Dr. La Puma’s outdoor prescription is simple, free and potentially life-changing. As Oprah says, it’s a formula for making your life better. 00:00:00 - Welcome John La Puma, author of “The Indoor Epidemic” 00:04:40 - The indoor epidemic defined 00:06:10 - 17 mins outside improves this 00:07:00 - This lowers your risk of premature death 00:12:20 - Trees and our immune system 00:14:10 - Forest bathing 00:16:30 - Anxiety and hiking 00:19:00 - Movement is medicine 00:22:30 - Overstimulated and tired 00:29:15 - CEO reset 00:31:22 - One thing to help you reset 00:32:45 - Breathing exercise 00:36:00 - Being indoors is impacting kids 00:37:30 - Nightfall ritual 00:40:30 - Why John wrote the book Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Oprah Winfrey?

  11 minutes of daily outdoor activity, y'all, lowers risk of premature death by 23%. That is so shocking.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  That can even be risk walking in a park. Your sleep begins to improve. Your focus begins to improve.

• 0:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Really?

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Your mood begins to improve.

• 0:21Oprah Winfrey?

  It's a formula for making your life better. And I don't have to go out and buy anything.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 0:26Oprah Winfrey?

  I just have to get myself outside in a green or blue space. You said soul tired, oof, from being constantly plugged in. Soul tired, Chris. Tell us what's going on. Hi, everybody. It is my pleasure to be with you here on the Oprah Podcast. We're outside today, right on my front porch. And my guests couldn't be happier about that.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  I bet.

• 0:51Oprah Winfrey?

  Dr. John Lapuma is a physician and trained chef. They call him Chef MD. And he's written an eye-opening book called Indoor Epidemic. It's about the healing power of nature. And he means healing literally. And says, simply spending intentional time outside can significantly improve your physical health and your mental health. It's the age-old wisdom that parents have been telling children all these years, generations, go outside and play. And none of us are doing enough of that, right?

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Right. And we're not doing it in green and blue spaces.

• 1:36Oprah Winfrey?

  And we're not doing it in green and blue spaces. And what does that mean, green and blue spaces?

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Green spaces are spaces that are surrounded by plants and trees, anything green.

• 1:46Oprah Winfrey?

  So it's your front yard.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Could be your front yard if you have one.

• 1:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Could be your front yard if you have one.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Or it could be a park.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Could be a park.

• 1:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Love it if it's a forest.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Definitely it's a forest.

• 1:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  But most people don't have forests nearby.

• 1:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  They do have an urban park nearby.

• 2:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  And if we're lucky, we have a backyard and a garden.

• 2:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Or a community garden. Or any other type of green space.

• 2:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Blue space is just a space near water, preferably running water, a stream, a brook, the ocean. But lakes and ponds and pools all count because they have an incredible and direct effect on our biology. Green and blue spaces allow us to use parts of our brain that we currently are not using most of the time.

• 2:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Right. So a person living in a rural area surrounded by trees.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:47Oprah Winfrey?

  The way I grew up.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Versus a person living in concrete, surrounded by buildings, who never sees a tree.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Just naturally is going to be healthier and have a better state of mind than a person who is not surrounded by anything green or anything blue.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Yes, because they're more likely to get many of the natural cues that our biology evolved to understand. They're more likely to get light, daylight. They're more likely to have movement outside. They're more likely to experience fresh air.

• 3:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  They're more likely to have natural forces, including the ability to see at a distance. You know, our eyes need distance, like our lungs need air. And we haven't really understood the environment as an important part of medical problems, preventing and treating medical problems, until very recently.

• 3:46Oprah Winfrey?

  So I want to jump right in here, Dr. Lapuma.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Please call me John.

• 3:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay. Well, it's hard, but okay. Okay, John, let's jump in.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  I'm calling you Oprah.

• 3:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, good. Okay. Page 86.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:00Oprah Winfrey?

  I thought you were speaking to the world. "Is your mind a runaway train?" you ask us. "A clattering whirlwind of to-do lists, anxious what-ifs, and the endless ping of digital alerts? Do you feel a weariness deep in your bones that sleep cannot touch?" Wow. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. You're battling the indoor epidemic that Dr. Lapuma talks about head-on, and frankly, you're exhausted. And I think you just described just about everybody. Tell us about your 7% solution for the indoor epidemic.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Well, as you've said, Oprah, the indoor epidemic is the fact that we're spending 93% of our time indoors, which is startling. We only spend about 7% of our time outdoors on average.

• 4:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, I know. I read that. I was startled. Most people spend 93% of their time indoors?

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Amazing. And the 7% of the time that we spend outdoors is largely incidental.

• 5:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Trying to get to indoors.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Or maybe picking up the mail, or maybe picking up the door dash outside the door.

• 5:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  It's sort of, it's just walking down the sidewalk with your phone in your hand. That's incidental time, and it's biologically inactive. Doesn't help you at all.

• 5:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  But if you take just two hours a week, or 17 minutes a day.

• 5:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Two hours a week, or 17 minutes a day.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  And change that time from incidental to intentional, specific time in green or blue areas.

• 5:45Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  You can turn those minutes into a kind of medicine and change a lot of what you've just read that so many Americans, so many people worldwide are affected by. And it's not very hard. It's, it's.

• 6:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I think asking me 17 minutes a day is not like, world doesn't feel like it's like I have to make a big shift in my life to get 17 minutes a day.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  A lot of things, at that level, a lot of things happen that are good.

• 6:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Your sleep begins to improve. Your focus begins to improve.

• 6:23Oprah Winfrey?

  Really?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Your mood begins to improve. Even having that much vigorous activity at that level, that's a 23% drop in premature death, which is amazing. I know. It's 196 studies, over a million people, British Journal of Medicine.

• 6:41Oprah Winfrey?

  I read that, and I couldn't, I found that to be shocking.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 6:44Oprah Winfrey?

  That there's a 23% drop in your death rate?

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:48Oprah Winfrey?

  In the death rate.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  That study was actually done with 11 minutes of vigorous activity on average. But if you have that in a green or a blue space, you actually stack those benefits.

• 6:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, you say that on page 149, that 11 minutes of daily outdoor activity, y'all, lowers risk of premature death by 23%. That is, that is just so, so shocking.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  That can even be risk walking in a park.

• 7:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  And what we're talking about is stacking the benefits on top of that, the biological benefits.

• 7:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes. And you know what is so interesting is that so much of this comes down to re-engaging with the sun, the sky, the soil. And your advice, I think, in chapter one was to meet the morning sun.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 7:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Meet the morning sun.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:37Oprah Winfrey?

  What impact does that have? And what do you mean by that?

• 7:41Speaker 01

  What I mean by that is within 60 to 90 minutes of waking, the back of your eyes, the back of the retina, has light-sensing cells that will pick up morning light anywhere. You don't have to look directly at the sun. Please don't look directly at the sun. Don't wear sunglasses. Just go outside and look at daylight between, for 10 to 15 minutes, even on a cloudy day. Because outdoor light is 25 to 50 times brighter than indoor light.

• 8:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  And that does this. It lets you get a big cortisol boost in the morning, which you want, to be awake, helps your coffee work better. You can then set, you're setting your melatonin timer, which helps you go to sleep at night, for about 14 hours later. Your.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Most importantly, perhaps, creating deep sleep for yourself. Deep sleep is slow REM sleep in which you build bone. Very important for women who are worried about osteoporosis. You repair muscle from the day and your glymphatic system kicks in. Your glymphatic system is a brain cleaning system. The circulating spinal fluid around your brain cleans out beta amyloid and tau, which are the proteins that are associated with Alzheimer's. So in deep sleep, which we actually get less of unfairly as we get older, we, these three things happen.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Once you set your circadian rhythm.

• 9:23Oprah Winfrey?

  Why do we get less of it as we get older?

• 9:24Speaker 01

  No one knows.

• 9:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  And that's one of the parts that we want to research here because it makes such a dramatic difference in our daily health.

• 9:35Oprah Winfrey?

  Absolutely. So you write about, I say absolutely because I have that aura ring and I'm always checking how much deep sleep I got. And it's never enough. It's never enough.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  It isn't, no. And but it improves if you get 15 minutes regularly, within 60 to 90 minutes of waking, no sunglasses, seeing the sky because the wavelengths that are blue in the morning impinge on the back of your retina and they tell your brain, hey, wake up and hey, let's set our circadian rhythm.

• 10:08Oprah Winfrey?

  That's the, that's the healing power of the sky.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  That's the healing power of the morning sun.

• 10:12Oprah Winfrey?

  The morning sun. Healing power of the sky is something different?

• 10:15Speaker 01

  It is related because of course we're looking at the sky to get the sun. But actually you can be puttering in your garden. You can be doing almost anything as long as those rays come in the first 15 minutes. When you're out in daylight, working during the day, you get reinforcement of your circadian rhythm.

• 10:32Oprah Winfrey?

  I know. This was the best choice to be out on the porch because the crew wanted to be inside. And I said, why wouldn't you be outside on the porch where you can see the sky?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Whenever you can be on the porch and see green, touch green, smell green, feel the wind. It's actually biologically active. It is giving your biology signals that it is day, you are awake, you are alert, you are present, you are engaged, you are beginning to use your senses. Because as you know, that's how we experience nature.

• 11:05Oprah Winfrey?

  That is, that is, yes.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  By touching, listening, seeing, smelling, tasting.

• 11:12Oprah Winfrey?

  And you say even the color of the sky and the ocean, the color blue is healing. Here's what you write on page 53. When we're in a state of blue mind, you call it, our brain chemistry literally shifts the sight, sound and touch of water, activate the parasympathetic nervous system, dampen the hypothalamic stress circuits and rebalance neural pathways towards safety, reward and connection. Why is blue so healing?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Again, not known, but it's thought it's because it's a key color in nature.

• 11:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  The sky is blued, the ocean is blue. It's thought that those natural signals that we evolved with, that are ancient, are reflected in our philia, our attraction for the color blue and that that being near water is part of that. It may also be that the, the sound of water, particularly moving water, can itself be healing and activate the parasympathetic nervous system, as you say.

• 12:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, anybody who knows me knows how much I love trees and love to be surrounded by trees. I even sometimes in the morning I'm talking to them. What I didn't know until reading this is that they are answering me back in their own way.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 12:34Oprah Winfrey?

  So tell us how being around trees actually boosts our immune system.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  I love that you do that. I do it too. Trees make chemicals called phytinsides and they make them in their leaves. And they make them as part of their own immune system to ward off bugs that will eat them. When trees emit phytinsides and send them out into the world, other trees pick them up and also change the chemicals in their leaves so they won't be as tasty to insects. And those very same chemicals, phytinsides, which we can recognize from some aromatherapy can improve our own immunity.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  An immunologist named King Li in Japan in 1985 did studies about phytinsides. He took actually office workers into the forest and for three days and two nights, they just walked gently in the forest. And they came back and measured how active their immune system was. They made white blood cells 56% more. Natural killer cells were 56% more than they were when they left.

• 13:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  And these natural killer cells, which everybody makes, kill cells in you that have viruses, kill cells in you that are tumor cells. And that effect lasted not just seven days, but 30 days in those office workers. And he went back to the laboratory and tested these very same chemicals and found the same thing.

• 14:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, you write about forest bathing too, which I just love that term ever since I first heard it. Explain to our audience what it is and why we should all be doing it.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Forest bathing is not.

• 14:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Bathing in a forest.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Not, but instead bathing in the sensory qualities of the forest. It's sensory sipping of the forest, if you will. It's a kind of deliberately cycling through your senses and asking the forest in a way to be the therapist, to simply being present. It's going maybe an eighth of a mile in half an hour. It's not exercise. It's a way to breathe the microbial richness of the forest, to see the wind move, to be in tune with nature. And this does.

• 14:58Oprah Winfrey?

  It's walking through the, moving through the forest with intention and full on presence for everything that you're experiencing.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Exactly right. And it has the same effect as an initial beta blocker for blood pressure. Drops blood pressure by seven millimeters systolic and four millimeters diastolic.

• 15:15Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. So forest bathing is walking through a park or walking through a woods, or walking through a forest if you happen to be around one and taking in with all of your senses, everything, your feet on the ground, the presence. And I've often heard people say this, that walking barefoot through on grass does something, does it?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  You know, I wrote a chapter in the book on grounding and then I took it out.

• 15:39Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Also called earthing.

• 15:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Because I wasn't persuaded by the data. It didn't rise to the level of gardening or of looking at the sea and sky and stars.

• 15:51Oprah Winfrey?

  So it hasn't been scientifically proven.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  But of the 2,200 studies that I read for this book, which I needed to do to find the science for it, I found that the grounding studies did not measure up as, as well as the gardening studies, it's the forest bathing studies, as the morning light studies, as the dusk studies, as, as the movement through nature studies, which I call.

• 16:16Oprah Winfrey?

  All of those have been proven.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Green exercise. I mean, there's really nothing easier.

• 16:21Oprah Winfrey?

  But if you want to go barefoot, do it.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Please.

• 16:23Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Just be careful.

• 16:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Be careful where you're walking barefoot.

• 16:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Everything I do begins with intention. You become exactly what you believe is possible. Especially the Oprah podcast. You're doing good, Aiden. I believe when people share their personal journeys with authenticity.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Never thought of it like that.

• 16:45Oprah Winfrey?

  I love that. You've never thought of it that way before. And with intention, something beautiful happens. We recognize pieces of our own lives in theirs. We realize. That actually helps, right? We are not alone.

• 17:00Oprah Winfrey?

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• 17:41Oprah Winfrey?

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• 18:15Oprah Winfrey?

  So we have some folks on Zoom with questions for you. Brooks is an ER doctor who did one of your YouTube video series called How to Treat Anxiety with Hiking. Brooks, welcome to the podcast.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Hi, thanks you guys so much for having me. What an honor.

• 18:32Oprah Winfrey?

  What did getting outside do for you?

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Well, I have sort of struggled with anxiety my whole life. It's something that, you know, before I went to medical school, I was having a lot of anxiety. When I went to medical school, I was able to start hiking. I lived close to the outdoors. I was close to a waterfall. I would take my dog. We'd go up hiking. And all of a sudden, this anxiety during what should have been a really, you know, one of the most stressful times of my life, all of a sudden, my anxiety is gone. I'm sleeping great. I'm feeling great. I'm like, wow, this is insane. I feel so wonderful. And so, fast forward a little bit, I went to residency, had three years of residency, did not get to go outside at all, really. And so during this time, my anxiety levels rose.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  I was working a ton and I wasn't sleeping and I really felt the effects.

• 19:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  I've been out of residency now three years and I'm outside and I'm hiking again and I feel like me again and I just, my mental health has improved so much.

• 19:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Sounds like residency is designed to kill people. I mean, I have one of my girls from South Africa in residency and all I hear is, oh my God, I'm dying, I'm dying. Yes, yeah. It's designed to wear you out, right?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  It's really, honestly, it's a really tough part of the training, really tough.

• 19:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yeah. And I hear you're now, Brooks, you are prescribing outdoor time for your emergency room patients.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  I do all the time. I get people with anxiety and panic attacks like every single day, right? And so they come in and once I've ruled out the emergencies and say, okay, I really think you're having anxiety, I ask them, what do you do? How much are you getting outside? What do you do? And the answer is almost all the time, they're really not getting outside, they're really not doing much. And I tell them, actually, I tell them my story a little bit. I try to be honest with them and say, this has changed my life. This has changed my anxiety. As somebody who knows it personally, I said, you need to get outside. You gotta walk up some hills, you gotta look at the color green, you gotta, this is gonna change your life.

• 20:28Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow, wow, nice. Well, we're happy for you and happy you got out of residency and now you're a walking advertisement.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Yes, you are.

• 20:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, you are. Thank you so much. Good to see you.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  Thank you, you too.

• 20:42Oprah Winfrey?

  So, chapter four of Indoor Epidemic is about movement is medicine. Some of what Brooks is saying, and I could not agree more. You say, it matters where, though, we do our moving. It matters as much where.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  That's the major thesis here, Oprah, that, you know, in my 30 years of practice, the most underestimated health factor, I think, is where people spend their time. So it's not simply that you're outside, as I've mentioned, it can be incidental time. It's where you walk, where you exercise, where you move, needs to be for it to be biologically active, near a green or blue space. Not the same walking down a sidewalk in Manhattan, Los Angeles. And yet, the studies of people walking down a city street and a meadow show that the

• 21:39Speaker 01

  rumination center in the brain is quieted by walking in a meadow, but actually slightly activated by walking down even a pretty city street.

• 21:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, because all other things have to be on alert also.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Exactly right.

• 21:53Oprah Winfrey?

  No matter what city street you're on.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Your adrenergic system is in high gear. You're watching for things on either side, you're paying attention to notifications on your phone, most likely, you're wary of traffic, you're mindful of your next meeting. So all of that doesn't allow you to pay attention to the out.

• 22:11Oprah Winfrey?

  I can tell you that after my knee surgery in 2021, I would look out the window and I'd see this tree up on the hill and I'd say, God, I hope one day I could get up there. I hope one day I could get up there. I actually now call it the hope tree. And now, the first time I did it, it took me an hour and 38 minutes to get there.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 22:28Oprah Winfrey?

  Now I can do it in 28 minutes.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 22:31Oprah Winfrey?

  That hike.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 22:33Oprah Winfrey?

  But I can tell you that the difference I feel, because I've worked out, you know, my whole life, but the difference I feel, working out outdoors, hiking, you know, on the mountain, through the hills, in the, I can't even tell you the change it's made.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  And so there's a great biologic reason for it. One of the most famous studies here, it was done in 1984, published in Science Magazine, it's been cited over 5,000 times, where people who had the same operation, staying on either side of the hallway, I mentioned it in the book.

• 23:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Have, some had, half had a view of greenery, like you did of that tree, half had a view of a brick wall. The people who had view of greenery outside their hospital room window.

• 23:13Oprah Winfrey?

  I love that study.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  I know. Had half the opiate requirement, had stayed in the day, in the hospital a day less, and the nurses thought that their hospital stay was so much better than the one, people exactly across the hallway with exactly the same operation and exactly the same medical care. And that changed hospital architecture. I mean, design and what's now being called neuroaesthetics is really an important part of determining behavior, not just intention, but how your environment encourages behavior one way or the other determines really whether you respond biologically.

• 23:56Oprah Winfrey?

  I get that, 100%. We're joined now by Chris, who wrote into the podcast saying, lately I have to admit to myself, something is going on. I'm tired, not just physically tired. You told us, you said, soul tired.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 24:15Oprah Winfrey?

  From being constantly plugged in, soul tired. Chris, tell us what's going on.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  Hi, Ms. Winfrey. Hi, Dr. Lapuma. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I guess what I mean by that is like, when I think back on just all the things competing for our attention these days, from like constant scrolling, the alerts, the non-stop notifications, that pressure to always be on, I've noticed that it's left me feeling overstimulated and somehow, at the same time, empty. Even when I tell myself I'm resting, I catch myself still staring at some sort of screen. And honestly, the more I feel like that I'm connected online, the more disconnected and distant I feel for myself and it kind of creates this quiet kind of depletion.

• 25:02Speaker 04

  So, you know, my question to you is like, I would really love, and some of the statistics at the beginning of this conversation has been so great already, but I would really love your advice on just emotional regulation, because sometimes something as simple as an email or text can send me spiraling and feel so stressful.

• 25:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  And I know we live in a digital communicative world now, it's all a part of our lives, but how do we shift our perspective and not let it control our emotional state?

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, Chris, I'm really sorry for this. I know how hard that feels and how difficult that must feel for you. And you must know you're not alone. A lot of people feel exactly the same way, right?

• 25:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes. I was describing you in the intro, your mind is a runaway train.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Actually, we're calling this condition digital obesity, where.

• 25:49Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  You are just so overwhelmed by pixels, like too much sugar burns out your metabolism, too many pixels burn out your brain, and that's kind of what's happening to Chris here. And so, there are a couple of things. One is, when you feel like you're spiraling, you get an email and you want to punch somebody or you feel like, I just can't take it anymore.

• 26:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Or just agitated, just agitated by it.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Just agitated.

• 26:16Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  You can bypass the thinking part of your brain, which is processing this, by doing something called the dive reflex. So you go into the bathroom and you splash cold water on your face for 15 seconds. What that does is take, tell the nerve, the trigeminal nerve that innervates your face, that gives your face feeling, to go directly to your vagus nerve, which then will shut off, force quit, your stress response. Your blood pressure drops, your pulse drops, you just feel better right away.

• 26:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Splashing cold water on your face?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  15 seconds. And that's because it just goes directly to the brainstem, to the vagus nerve. It doesn't involve your cortex, which is where you're thinking and ruminating. So if you need a force quit, that's what I would do. And then just come back and you'll be, the stress response will have gone away and you'll be able to begin to make sense of your inbox, but you'll probably need a preventative thing as well.

• 27:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  The preventative thing might be to listen at night or in the morning before work to natural regulating sounds. And I like the babbling brook sounds, the light rain sounds, the ocean wave sounds at 50 or 60 decibels, because just five minutes of that.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Allow the brain to relax and feed your sleep. If you're doing it before sleep and in the morning, give you calm if you're doing it before work. And my guess also, Chris, is that you're not, you may not be spending a lot of time outside.

• 28:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. Are you in that 93%? Are you 93% indoors?

• 28:07Speaker 04

  I'm definitely in that 93%. It's not intentional, you know? Sometimes I just catch myself off guard and I was like, wow, I don't think I've stepped foot outdoors today, just because of how busy the day was or kind of constantly, I'm living through, you know, multiple devices. So yeah.

• 28:21Oprah Winfrey?

  And you're one of those incidental people? You're just going from your car to the garage, to the building, to the da, da, da? Yeah.

• 28:28Speaker 04

  Very much so, yes.

• 28:28Oprah Winfrey?

  I would start there. I mean, I would, why don't you start, do what Brooks did and put yourself on this program, the 7%. Why don't you give yourself the 7% solution? It's not going to be hard. 17 minutes a day, you really just clock yourself on your watch. 17 minutes a day outside, intentional, in some green space.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. And it could start with just 10 minutes of morning sun. Because that 10 minutes, it'll let you sleep better at night and it will give you the energy in the morning to face the inbox and power through it. It will set all of the clocks in your body. And actually, this is one of the leading theories of aging, that each organ has a clock and the circadian rhythm is managed through the master clock in the brain. So by doing this, you synchronize all the clocks in your, all of your organs and you then have a chance to begin your day in a way that's organized and logical.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  And as Oprah says, reinforce that with time outside. And I like that you're beginning with the green exercise, with movement.

• 29:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yes.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:44Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm beginning with that because that's what I do. And I know that it's, I know that it works because it works for me. And I was one of those people who, for 25 years in Chicago, I literally went from one garage to the next garage. I would be picked up at 5:30 in the morning, I would go to the gym, I would leave the gym and then I would go to the garage at the studio and then I wouldn't leave till 10:30 at night. I never saw the sky, I never saw the sun. So I know the difference between now being outside and forest bathing, taking it all in whenever I can. Huge difference.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  I'll definitely be taking some of these notes and cues into practice. So thank you for sharing that. And Ms. Winfrey, to your point, just taking 17 minutes, like if you don't have 17 minutes, we have issues.

• 30:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, you don't have 17 minutes and you don't want to get better.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  Right, exactly. So I think just penciling that in and just being very intentional about that, I will for sure put that on my calendar moving forward.

• 30:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, thanks, Chris. Thank you so much.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Thanks for the question, Chris. Hope you feel better.

• 30:44Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you. Thank you. So Stephen is a CEO and serial entrepreneur. Stephen, welcome to the podcast. Hi.

• 30:52Speaker 05

  Hey Oprah, it's nice to meet you. And John, it's great to see you. How are you today?

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Hey Steve, how are you?

• 30:56Oprah Winfrey?

  I hear you've known John for about two years. Tell us about your CEO reset you had.

• 31:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, so John, I knew I needed to make, I needed to make a change because I just wasn't thinking as intentionally as I needed to be thinking. I mean, leaving an early-stage college sports company, it just, I just, it wasn't as sharp as I wanted to be and if you can't tell, I'm not as young as I used to be. So that reset time wasn't where it needed to be. So at the same time though, I really, I wasn't looking to add more to my schedule and I wasn't looking for more things to do. So I'm looking for clarity, but I'm also looking for something that would travel because I'm on the road a lot. So what I loved about John's book was it allowed me to repurpose time that I already

• 31:46Speaker 05

  had. So for example, I used to start my day on my phone, reading emails, reading the news, and that would set my agenda. Now, when I'm in California, I start my day and I'm up and I'm walking my dogs in beautiful Santa Barbara and I'm thinking about what I want to do and what are the most important things that I've got to get done that day. And I'm setting my priorities versus the screen, setting my priorities for me in the morning. And it just starts my day off better and allows me to make better decisions and I'm sharper on that. And I feel, and that's helping me quite a bit. And I can take that on the road with me. I can't take the dogs on the road with me, but I can, I can take that on the road with me.

• 32:28Speaker 05

  And then I reset it with an afternoon meeting that I take on a walk. Normally it's a low-stress meeting. And then the last thing I'm doing, John, that we talked about, is I'm shutting the screens down 30 minutes before I want to go to sleep and I'm thinking about what I want to do and what are the most important priorities that I have, and I'm reading a book. So what I love about it, it's really the same hours, just different inputs, but I'm getting better outcomes, right? Like better focus, better sleep, and really less reactive decisions. So it's working great for me.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 33:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I would go say, wow, that's the same job. Wow.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 33:09Speaker 05

  I do have a question though.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Oh, all right.

• 33:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:12Speaker 05

  So, so John, sometimes, I mean, we're not all perfect, right? So sometimes I get out, you know, you get off, you get off the rails. So my question for you is like, if you get a little bit out of whack and you've fallen a little bit out of the routine because you get an early flight into New York and you landed at 3:00 in the morning and that thought of, I just, I'm just like, I don't know if I can do it. Like what, what makes a real difference? What's that one thing that can make a big difference if I can't fix everything and I got to get it back on the rails?

• 33:42Oprah Winfrey?

  That's a good question.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  It is a good question.

• 33:43Oprah Winfrey?

  I like that.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And especially important for someone in a senior leadership position like you are, who responsible for other people and needing to guide them and help them with their work. And let's say that Steve is way ahead in many ways, right? You know, he's already walking his dogs, he's already getting outdoor meetings, walking meetings with people. He's already, he's already walking the talk, literally, and it's reflected in his productivity and performance. But when something falls off the rail, and this is not about being perfect, I mean, 17 minutes is a minimum effective dose and it actually optimally goes up to five hours a week, which is about 42 minutes a day for a longevity benefit.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  To get back on track, it depends what's derailing you, but if you're having trouble getting to sleep, and a lot of executives are, I like a breathing exercise, a 478 breathing exercise, which is sort of a tranquility breath, where you're allowing CO2 to build up a little bit and you're allowing your, your parasympathetic nervous system to kick in, which is inhaling for four through your nose, holding for seven, and exhaling through your mouth for eight, and doing five reps. And it doesn't take long, takes a minute for each, and that's less than five minutes,

• 35:10Speaker 01

  really, 478 breaths. The second thing I like during the day, if you get off track and you're just, you started and you didn't get your 15 minutes outside and you, and you didn't, you know, do the things that you would normally do because that stuff happens.

• 35:26Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Is any time in the morning that you can go out, because you're in charge, you have yourself for the boss, say, I need five minutes. Just go outside and look at daylight. Because those blue, that blue wavelength will tell your eyes, you're awake, it's good to make cortisol, you might not be making melatonin tonight the way that you should, but during the day, you can re-center yourself by getting a little cortisol boost. And that five minutes of daylight, which is all you need, and especially if you can look at a horizon.

• 36:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Hmm.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  If you can look as far away as you can, that does a couple of things for you right away. It relaxes your ciliary muscles, the muscles around your eye that are so focused on a device like this normally, it relaxes them so that a lot of the fatigue that you might be feeling, the headache that you might be feeling, the tension that you might be feeling when you get off track, a lot of that begins to dissipate with just five minutes of looking at a horizon. In fact, five minutes an hour can help to stall myopia. And myopia is nearsightedness, which there's epidemic levels of in Singapore and much

• 36:50Speaker 01

  of Asia, almost 90% of people are kids with myopia, excuse me. And that's because there's so much what's called near work, device work that looks like this. So Steve, five minutes of daylight, five reps of the 478 breaths, and when you're in daylight, look at the horizon as much as you can. If you happen to be in an urban canyon, among office buildings and you're, it's not an easy thing to do, walk to the end of the block and see if you can see further there. It's as far as you can see. There's no wrong answer for this.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  It's just as far as you can see because it resets you both physically, medically, and psychologically.

• 37:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 37:42Speaker 05

  Put it to work next week.

• 37:45Oprah Winfrey?

  All right.

• 37:45Speaker 05

  I'm in Manhattan. So I'll put it to work.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  All right.

• 37:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Love it. It's a good place to put it to work.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  It is, yeah.

• 37:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Stephen.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Nice to see you, buddy.

• 37:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay. One of the things, what, how does this impact kids too? Because you write that, I remember you saying in the book that kids spend less time outdoors than prisoners.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  That's in a maximum security prison, that's right.

• 38:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Kids today.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  I know. I know.

• 38:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Spend less time outdoors.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  I know.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Antidepressant prescriptions are up 69% in teenagers in the last six years. That's how it's affecting them. It's affecting them with isolation, with loneliness, which in adults has the same mortality risk as 15 cigarettes a day.

• 38:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  I know. And kids need help dramatically.

• 38:38Oprah Winfrey?

  That's why, yeah, you need to read this. Indoor Epidemic, it's so shocking. It's one thing after another. I couldn't even believe that stat about kids spending less time.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  I know.

• 38:47Oprah Winfrey?

  You know, maximum security guys are looking for that one day, that time out on the yard.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Right, they get an hour sometimes.

• 38:54Oprah Winfrey?

  They get an hour out in the yard. And now kids today aren't even spending that.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  No, and it's affecting their mental health. And, you know, this time, this minimum effective dose of 17 minutes a day.

• 39:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Makes everything else you're doing for your health work better.

• 39:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  It makes, it's an improvement. It's an enhancement.

• 39:19Oprah Winfrey?

  And you say that sleep is a crucial component of this book.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  It is.

• 39:25Oprah Winfrey?

  You suggest a nightfall ritual, I think you call it. Nightfall ritual, what is that?

• 39:31Speaker 01

  It's a cooling down ritual before bed.

• 39:34Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Because bright light within, really, within 30 minutes of bedtime. And there's some data about even earlier, but at least 30 minutes, like Steve is doing. But I like even an hour. Bright blue light suppresses your melatonin by 80% for an hour and a half. And that makes it harder to get to sleep and stay asleep. So we want to not have screens before bedtime. Night shift on your phone can help, but it's not actually enough because you, that's why you want to look at dusk, by the way, because you, those red amber wavelengths of the sun tell your brain that you can release melatonin that night

• 40:19Speaker 01

  and that the day is ending, that your temperature needs to cool. So we want to avoid bright light at night before bed. And 40% of us go to sleep with a lamp or a TV on. Turns out that bright, the people who get the most bright light between 12:30 in the morning and 6:00 in the morning have a 50% increased risk for heart attack and AFib and 30% stroke and heart failure. This is data just from JAMA last year of hundreds of thousands of people followed for nine years in the UK. It was stunning. It has some of the same risk factor for heart disease. Bright light between 12:30 in the morning

• 41:04Speaker 01

  and 6:00 in the morning. And the reason is not because you're getting fewer hours of sleep. The reason is that it's disrupting your circadian biology.

• 41:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Ah.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  And that is what we want to give people back. So don't go to sleep with a light or a TV on. Don't look at bright light before bed. Read, do this nighttime ritual.

• 41:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Don't get up in the middle of the night and pick up your phone and start reading the news.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Please not, no. Instead, do some of the things that Steve was talking about. We want a cup of tea, read a book, write a journal.

• 41:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, so it's not that it's just keeping you awake or not letting you sleep. It's interrupting the circadian rhythm.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Right, the way that your body is keeping track of its normal metabolic processes. Almost half of our genes turn on and turn off with, at the right time of day.

• 42:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Ah.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  But they're not activated actively unless our circadian rhythm is set.

• 42:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Did you feel a sense of, what, urgency or need or great desire in writing this book, Indoor Epidemic? Why did you want to do it?

• 42:21Speaker 01

  I wanted to do it because I myself was caught in somewhat the same kind of schedule you were, where I just was going, going, going all the time. I was in New York and I was on a book campaign. I should be scheduling a dozen things to do in the time I'm there because I live in California. But I wanted to come back right away, and I did. I like wasted this whole trip, but I didn't know why I wanted to come back, but I had to. I felt like I needed to be outside on the little abandoned nursery that I had bought. And I needed to figure out why I felt that way. And that's why I read these 2,200 studies. I figured out the science for this. And I wrote a scientific roadmap so other people could do it.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  You know, nature is not that easy to commercialize. I didn't do it because I have a widget and need to sell it. I did it because people in the indoors are, you know, immune deficient. They have insomnia, they have insulin resistance, they have arthritic, creaky joints, they have sedentariness, they have cognitive fog, brain fog. They have reduced attention and attention fatigue. I mean, these things are all, and loneliness. These things are all directly a result of the indoor epidemic. And people don't realize that it is impacting their longevity as well. It's causing their telomeres, the caps and their chromosomes to shorten more rapidly.

• 43:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, one of the reasons I appreciate what you've written here is because it's a formula for making your life better. And I don't have to go out and buy anything.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:00Oprah Winfrey?

  I just have to get myself outside.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Deliberately.

• 44:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Deliberately, intentionally.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  And specifically. In a green or blue space.

• 44:07Oprah Winfrey?

  In a green or blue space. That's what you have to do. Dr. John Lapuma, thank you so much for being here.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  What a pleasure.

• 44:15Oprah Winfrey?

  And for this eye-opening book. Brooks and Chris and Stephen, thank you all for joining our conversation. And thank you all for listening. And I hope that listening will get you to buy the book and also not be among that 93% of people who are indoors. Get outside and have the 7% solution. Thank you so much. Thank you.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 44:39Oprah Winfrey?

  Go well, everybody. If you want a copy of Indoor Epidemic by Dr. John Lapuma, you can scan the QR code that's right on your screen. We didn't have time to get into all of it. This book is packed with practical science-backed strategies to help you harness the healing power of nature to lower your stress, improve your sleep, and even extend your life. Take good care of yourself, listeners. Go well. Our listeners tell us that the podcast is resonating with you and is serving as a bright spot in your day. That means a lot to me. So here's the thing. I would really appreciate it if you like and subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube or wherever you podcast. It's just a quick tap of the subscribe button.

• 45:24Oprah Winfrey?

  And that way, you won't miss an episode in your queue. You don't have to pay anything. I know subscribe usually means you're paying something, but this time it means you just are notified when there's something new. There are many more to come that we're excited about. So thank you for watching and listening.