Scotland's Shetland Islands are windswept and rugged, full of wide-open vistas, thousands of squawking migratory birds, awesome rock formations, and winding trails. An epic place for long, lingering walks and time spent decompressing in the joys of raw nature.
It just so happens that doctors are increasingly
starting to realize time spent outdoors can be an excellent treatment for chronic health issues. So doctors in the Shetlands are
now issuing "nature prescriptions" as part of an initiative to address health issues without drugs if you can imagine that.
For everything from high blood pressure to diabetes, anxiety, and depression, the medical community is learning (though lots of us have always known) that many ailments and diseases can be treated with activities like birdwatching, maybe a little kayaking, perhaps combing a beach for shells, even skipping pebbles across a slow-moving stream. Even just sitting silently in a forest, meditating (see:
Japan, forest bathing).
Comment: Any sensible person should be able to look at the strategy of the government nutritional guidelines have been using for the past decades and see that they clearly are not working. But rather than look at the emerging science and adjust accordingly, the researchers continue to double down on the same old advice. Either people are going to wake up to the mess that are the dietary guidelines, or they're going to die. It's basically Darwinism.
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