Your latest prescription is to get outside

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Find a shady spot under a tree, take a breath of fresh air and call me in the morning.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Find a shady spot under a tree, take a breath of fresh air and call me in the morning.

Health care providers have long suggested stressed-out patients spend time outdoors. Now hundreds of providers are going a step further and issuing formal prescriptions to get outside. The tactic is gaining momentum as social media, political strife and wars abroad weigh on the American psyche.

Of course, no one needs a prescription to get outside, but some doctors think that issuing the advice that way helps people take it seriously.

“When I bring it up, it is almost like granting permission to do something they may see as frivolous when things seem so otherwise serious and stressful,” said Dr. Suzanne Hackenmiller, a Waterloo, Iowa, gynecologist who started issuing nature prescriptions after discovering time outdoors soothed her following her husband’s death.

Getting outdoors can improve your health

Spending time in natural areas can lower blood pressure, reduce stress hormones and boost immunity, multiple studies have found.

“Study after study says we’re wired to be out in nature,” said Dr. Brent Bauer, who serves as director of the complementary and integrative medicine program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The program focuses on practices that usually aren’t part of conventional medicine, such as meditation, acupuncture, massage and nutrition. “That’s more than just ‘Woo-woo, I think nature is cool.’ There’s actually science.”

Telling someone to go outside is one thing. The follow-through is something else. Starting about a decade ago, health care providers began formalizing suggestions to get outside through prescriptions.