about seven hours a day staring at screens.“ We just aren’ t built for this,” she says.
Atop-down approach rarely works to change any behavior; physicians who want to urge their patients to eat better, move more, stop smoking, or go outside work with their patients to agree on achievable goals.
Stump, an assistant professor of medicine, says the biggest barrier for her patients is time— and she has two responses to that.“ A lot of time is not necessary,” she tells them.“ Five or 10 minutes of sunlight and outdoor time has really been shown to be beneficial for your sleep and your mood.” And then she will ask,“ What else do you find yourself doing for five or 10 minutes that you could cut out? And a lot of it is scrolling, and … mindless device use.”
Assistant Professor of Family Medicine Max Cohen, DO, adds:“ The word that comes up a lot in my sessions is‘ sustainability.’ Even if it’ s a small [ change ], it is going to dramatically improve your quality of life and reduce risks for all kinds of chronic health conditions.”
Cohen and Stump co-lead the Providence chapter of Walk with a Doc, a group that meets weekly at different locations in the city, chats briefly about a health topic, then walks for about an hour. No matter where they walk, they benefit not only from the exercise, but social interaction and the time outdoors. Cohen adds that when they walk in Roger Williams Park, in Providence’ s south end, they can look at, listen to, smell, and touch nature too.
“ It’ s a really wonderful multisensory, multifaceted experience that is improving your health in a number of really diverse ways that is hard to capture through a different experience,” he says. Compared to, say, working out in a gym,“ when you’ re out in nature, walking with a group of people,
PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES / AZMANL
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