Nature Rx: Dr. Don Rakow on Biophilia, Nature-Deficit Disorder, & Nature's Healing Powers
Dr. Don Rakow is a professor, director, founder, author, and a changemaker in the world of horticulture. He was a faculty member at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Science for 36 years, and his two main areas of focus are the management of public gardens and their sustainable community outreach efforts, and the human benefits of time in nature. He currently co-directs the nationwide Campus Nature Rx Network, designed to enhance the well-being of college students through engagement with nature. All that being said, Dr. Rakow is extremely knowledgeable about all things nature, so I am very excited to pick his brain about the physical, mental, and emotional effects of nature on humans.
Episode Transcript
Lauren Stenger: Dr. Rakow, thank you so much for being here with me today. It's really an honor, and I'm really looking forward to all the questions I have for you today. To start off, I'd love to hear more about your background. I know you got your degree from Cornell in horticulture and then shortly after you joined the faculty and you worked there for many decades. So, how and when did your love and passion for nature develop?
How and when did your love and passion for nature develop?
Dr. Don Rakow: I grew up Lauren, in what was considered our typical post World War II suburb of Levittown, New York on Long Island. The lots were small, the houses were very uniform, but even with those conditions we had a garden in the backyard. I recall from a very early age being fascinated by how plants grew, seeing seedlings emerge from the ground, watching insects as they moved along the soil, or were feeding on particular plants. I would say that early fascination stayed with me, really, throughout my life. And much later, when I was on the faculty at Cornell University, and rose to the position of executive director of the Cornell Botanic Gardens, I would be so interested in watching groups of visitors and seeing them arrive by car and being hassled. They’d be having to get the kids out of the car and getting snacks and seeming stressed. And then as they moved through the gardens and experience more and more of what the plants had to share with them, I would see them relax, become more social, and just seem happier. So that to me was a real clue that somehow this connection with the natural world and the horticultural world was having positive effects on people.
Lauren Stenger: And it seems, honestly now more than ever, this conversation is really relevant because people are spending way less time in the outdoors and way more times on their screens. So it's really great to hear about the importance of nature. In that regard, do you mind telling everyone about the biophilia hypothesis and how this relationship with nature is maybe evolved over time?
What is the biophilia hypothesis and how has this relationship with nature devolved over time?
Dr. Don Rakow: There was a now late but great entomologist at Harvard, named Edward Wilson. And Wilson wrote a 1984 book titled Biophilia. He didn't actually coin that term, but he certainly popularized it. What Wilson meant by that term “biophilia” is the innate connection that we humans have with the natural world, and his hypothesis was that we have become increasingly dissociated from that innate connection. And certainly, in the four decades since Wilson wrote that book, we've only become more dissociated from the natural world with the rise of electronic technology. You know, as I think about the biophilia hypothesis, it's easy for people to really romanticize about earlier centuries. And certainly, if we go back to the medieval period or the Renaissance period, we were initially much more involved as hunter- gatherers. And then as agriculturists that doesn't mean necessarily that we had a greater respect for the natural world. What it does mean is that we had a much greater dependence and an awareness of the natural world: awareness of the changing seasons, awareness of the severity of storms, awareness of predators and animals that could be threats to us. So I think what we've really lost in our very highly technological, very fast paced world, is that awareness of nature and its importance to us.
Lauren Stenger: Definitely. And it seems as if we've seen this awareness go away especially among kids in their childhood, in those really critical years. So can you talk to us a little bit about the consequences of the nature-deficit disorder and how kids are spending less and less time in nature?
Can you talk to about the consequences of the nature-deficit disorder and how kids are spending less time in nature?
Dr. Don Rakow: In the 1990s, the journalist author Richard Louv wrote a seminal book called Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. This book gained tremendous recognition and popularity, and what Louv was basically laying out in that text was that our young people are becoming even more separated from the natural world than a decade and a half earlier, when E.O. Wilson had written Biophilia. And I would argue that the problem has only gotten worse in the few decades since Louv’s book. I guess one needs to ask, “Why are young people so separated from nature? And how is that impacting them?” I think that the answer to the first part of that question is, again, the ubiquity of electronic media, whether it's social media, or the various ways that we message from Facebook, to texting, to email, to think about this, how often have you gone into a restaurant or a bar, and there are TVs blaring, or gone on to an airplane and there's music blaring? It just seems like we can't really escape from the constant presence of noise. And I think that this is increasingly what young people are facing. And how is that affecting them? Well, I think it's making them more stressed, more anxious. I think it impacts their cognitive abilities, their memory recall, and therefore, their performance in the classroom. So I think that there's real life implications for how this nature-deficit disorder that Louv first identified is impacting our young people psychologically and even academically.
“I think that there’s real life implications for how this nature-deficit disorder that Louv first identified is impacting our young people psychologically and even academically.”
Lauren Stenger: I've even seen this in my own life. In my classes, everything is digital. I'm taking notes on my iPad, I'm watching the PowerPoint on the screen, it's all digital. And then I go home, and I want to relax, and then how do I relax? Oh, I watch TV, or go on social media. It's just constant information, and it feels inescapable. I've personally just been trying to learn a lot about this. I've been doing my own research the past few months, and you’ll have to correct me, I'm not a scientist. But I'd love for you to explain what are phytoncides and how that nose brain connection really plays a role with trees emitting those chemicals.
What are phytoncides? How does the nose-brain connection play a role with trees emitting those chemicals?
Dr. Don Rakow: This is really a fascinating area of research currently. I think that term phytoncides was first coined by a Russian scientist back in the 1930s. But basically, it's referring to the volatile organic chemicals that certain plants give off like members of the onion and garlic family and members of the pine family. The plants have evolved these chemicals as natural defenses against predators, mostly insects. But what is of most interest to us humans is that when we take in those volatile chemicals through our noses, they act to both reduce stress in our bodies by reducing sympathetic nerve activity and they activate the synthesis of what are known as natural killer, or NK cells. Recent research has shown that these NK cells have a powerful impact on fighting viruses in our bodies. So it could be that as we take a walk in the forest, we actually are increasing our resistance to various common viruses in the environment.
“When we take in those volatile chemicals through our noses, they act to both reduce stress in our bodies by reducing sympathetic nerve activity and they activate the synthesis of what are known as natural killer, or NK cells.”
Lauren Stenger: Additionally, with nature walking and just simply spending time in nature, do you mind talking about the research that shows how nature affects our attention spans and the idea of the attention restoration theory?
How does nature effect our attention spans and what is the attention restoration theory?
Dr. Don Rakow: You know, it's so interesting Lauren, when I first became involved with this field as a researcher and communicator, there were relatively few articles and research articles, that focused on the human benefits of time in nature. Now, there is an overwhelming number of articles, and I have trouble keeping up with all of them. But most of them fall into either the psychological, the physiological, or the behavioral arenas. Psychologically, spending time in nature has been well proved to reduce stress, reduce anxiety, reduce in individuals dealing with extreme problems such as suicidal ideation, to make people feel calmer, overall. And those are all quite significant. Physiologically, spending time in nature has been shown to reduce heart rate variability, pulse rate, improve sleep patterns which is quite important to college students, to improve memory, recall and cognition. And again, these are all huge benefits. Even behaviorally, time in nature has been shown to have positive impacts, improving overall mood, sense of well being, feelings of excitement about life, and also sociability. A number of studies that have shown that spending time in nature can actually reduce loneliness because going for a walk in the woods with one other person can be a great way of bonding.
Lauren Stenger: It’s so interesting, because if you go to a doctor and you have those symptoms, they'll probably prescribe you medication, or you get on some waiting lists for some other doctor. But it's just really, actually amazing that all of this is just in our backyard, right? It's free, and it's hopefully becoming more accessible for everybody. It's really cool to hear about, honestly, how simple some of this can be, you know, just simply getting outside,
Dr. Don Rakow: Simply getting outside. Many people, when they learn of the benefits of time in nature, are really attracted to them because it is a non-pharmacological approach to human health and wellbeing. Now, I think it's important that I point out that spending time in nature will not solve every psychological problem or medical condition, and I don't want to give the misimpression that it can. But we have such a body of knowledge at this point, supporting the benefits of nature time that I feel very confident speaking about that.
Lauren Stenger: It seems like a great supplement to those other treatments solutions.
Dr. Don Rakow: Exactly.
Lauren Stenger: So, you started a really cool program called Nature Rx which really focuses on the intersection between college students and the effects of nature. I'd love to hear about what inspired you and led you to create this program for universities.
What inspired and led you to create the Campus Nature Rx Network, a nature program for universities?
Dr. Don Rakow: It’s rare that you can look back to a particular time and place or where a program got started, but I remember that I was at an on-campus conference and during a break was meeting with a couple of colleagues. We were talking about the fact that the Cornell University campus is regularly viewed as one of the most beautiful nature-filled campuses in the US, and yet we had one of the highest rates of students with serious psychological issues. We started to talk about given all of the natural beauty on this campus, can't we somehow better utilize that to try to improve the overall wellbeing of our student body? That really is what led to the development of the Nature Rx program. I led the program for better than five years during my last years of my serving on the faculty at Cornell, and during that period, I also partnered with a faculty member at William and Mary, Dr. Dorothy Ibes. She and I together developed something we call the Campus Nature Rx Network. We started with four campuses, Cornell, William and Mary, University of Minnesota, and UC Davis, and that was in 2019. And in the years since, that network has grown to nearly 70 colleges and universities that either currently have Nature Rx programs or are intending to develop them for their campuses.
Lauren Stenger: Wow, I should get that started at my university.
Dr. Don Rakow: Please do! Just Google “Campus Nature Rx”, and you'll see our website. From that website, there is a link to apply to have your campus become part of the network.
Lauren Stenger: Dallas has some amazing trails so yeah, I should definitely look into that.
Dr. Don Rakow: We put on an annual fall virtual symposium that's very well attended. We have a regular newsletter, we're developing YouTube instructional videos, and starting this coming August, we're going to be providing a yearlong Campus Nature Rx Academy Certification Program.
Lauren Stenger: Oh, that's really cool. A lot of stuff happening there.
Dr. Don Rakow: Another area that I've been quite involved with and feel very strongly about is the inequitable access to nature, particularly for underserved communities in our inner cities. And I'm encouraged that there are a number of national initiatives underway today to try to regreen some of our least nature filled neighborhoods, in our inner cities. But I really feel that access to nature is not a privilege, it's a basic right for all people. So we do need to be exploring ways of making nature more available to all people.
Lauren Stenger: I'm really glad that you brought that up. Access to nature should certainly not be a privilege but a basic right for everybody. It's really admirable and the ways that you're mitigating this through creating public gardens, especially in areas that may not have as much exposure to nature.
Lauren Stenger: You have done a lot of research also more specifically with gardening and public gardens. I myself, love gardening. I think it's really relaxing, and it's also really cool to see the plants grow throughout the months. What are the benefits to gardening?
What are the benefits to gardening?
Dr. Don Rakow: Well, I'll start by saying since you're in university in Dallas, I'm going to encourage you to go to the Dallas Arboretum.
“I feel two of the real benefits of gardening is that it teaches us two qualities we often don’t have enough of: patience and resilience.”
Lauren Stenger: I’ve been wanting to go there!
Dr. Don Rakow: Make sure you do that. I would say that there are a number of both physical and mental benefits of gardening. We talked earlier about the need to get children back out in nature, and really one of the best ways of doing that is to engage children in gardening. Children cannot help but be absolutely amazed when they see a seed that they've planted emerge from the ground to see the first seedling, to see the first true leaves emerge, perhaps to then plant that seedling, and it's in their garden, and to see a turn into a pumpkin plant or tomato plant or pepper plant. So that's one of the great, great benefits. But really, for anyone in any stage of life, gardening can be tremendously ratifying because you are using natural elements to produce either produce to go on to our tables, or flowers, to go into vases or beautiful plants to grace our lands, and escapes. In addition to that, I feel two of the real benefits of gardening is that it teaches us two qualities we often don't have enough of: patience and resilience. I have gardened for enough years that I know, sometimes you have to wait a long while before getting the result that you're looking for. In the garden, perhaps one type of tomato became diseased before you got many fruit to harvest. And you really need to start over again the next season or the next year. And that relates to resilience. We need to move beyond what has become an all too common mindset in our culture, which is instant gratification. I want to listen to a song, so I'm just going to download it. I am in the mood for particular food, I'm going to go to the restaurant and be served that. Gardening says we need more patience to really realize the things that we desire. Sometimes we fail, and we need to be resilient in overcoming those failures.
Lauren Stenger: That's a great perspective in regard to spending time in nature and gardening. What your opinion, and what does the research say about having headphones in while you're outside. Does that kind of cancel out all the positive effects, or is there some compromise?
Does wearing headphones while outside cancel out all the positive effects, or is there some compromise there?
Dr. Don Rakow: Well, I won't say cancel out. Going back to our earlier discussion about volatile phytoncides, your nose is going to take those in whether you're wired or not. But I will say that the true connection with nature and the sensory connection with nature cannot fully occur if we're listening to heavy metal through our earbuds while walking through a forest.
Lauren Stenger: Definitely. So, you've done so much research on this topic throughout your amazing career. Doing a little bit of reflecting, how have you applied this research in your own life, and how has nature affected you maybe physically, emotionally, and mentally?
How have you applied this research in your own life? How has nature affected you physically/emotionally/mentally?
Dr. Don Rakow: It's a great question, and I would respond by saying that being out in nature is really important to me. My wife and I are very fortunate to live on a large property. I'm looking out at the winter landscape right now at our pond and Cayuga Lake beyond that, and that provides me with great joy. Not everyone has that opportunity. But what many people have found and there was a real resurgence of this during the pandemic is that simply having a few houseplants in your apartment or home can provide that connection to nature. So you don't need to have a large property to really benefit from time in nature. But personally, I'm also a very avid gardener during the growing season, and a hiker and cross-country skier during the winter months. Currently, I'm being trained by an organization called the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy to become a certified nature guide. The idea behind certified nature walks is that the forest is really the therapist. The guide simply opens the doors to that experience.
“The idea behind certified nature walks is that the forest is really the therapist. The guide simply opens the doors to that experience.”
Lauren Stenger: That is going to be amazing. When will you be certified for that? When will that be completed?
Dr. Don Rakow: This coming spring, and I'm looking forward to being certified and offering my services as a certified nature guide.
Lauren Stenger: That's really exciting. Thank you so much for spending some time with me this afternoon. I learned so much, and I'm just really grateful I was able to learn from someone so educated and such an expert in this field. So thank you so much.
Dr. Don Rakow: Well, you are very welcome and thank you so much for reaching out to me.
