(Halanda Speaks)
Good afternoon. My name is Halanda Little and welcome to this breakout session as part of the
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future functions. This web webinar, excuse me, will be recorded and will be available on our website
after has been transcribed and captioned to comply with the ADA Accessibility Guidelines. Our speaker
today is Karen Cuttill. Karen is employed as a licensed professional counselor at Dallas College. She
provides mental health counseling and crisis intervention for students. She serves on multiple College
initiatives, as well as on our own campus. Karen's professional interests center on mental well-being and
stress management. As she helps people through counseling and psychoeducational programming. She's
a certified compassion fatigue professional, a certified clinical trauma provisional, and cognitive
behavioral therapist. She's also passionate about environmental and personal sustainability. Her motto,
to leave any situation better than when she had encounters it. Karen now to you.
(Karen Speaks)
Well, thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here. And first I wanted to say thank you to all of our
vendors supports. I should have a list of vendors for y'all. I don't have that slide in my apologies, but I
think you can find all of the wonderful vendors back on her webpage. Please try because they've done a
really great job of supporting us. And I just wanted to say thank you to them and let you know that
they're out there and we couldn't do these things without our vendor support. So back to nature R x
connection. So today I wanna talk about how we can, how we can respond to stress and crisis in a
natural way. The title is Nature RX. Adapting and Thriving after a Crisis naturally. We'll be focusing on
the good health and well-being. Number three, this sustainable development gold, goal. Number three.
And it is about good health and well-being, which is just really what I enjoy doing the most. By 2030,
the goal is to reduce by 1 third, premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through
prevention and treatment. And to promote mental health and wellbeing. The goal number three, it took it
the goal in kind of made it like this. You would have three components to it. You would have a physical
component which kind of refers to our physical bodies. You would have a mental component, which is
referring of course to our moods and our emotions in the way we think about things. All of that
cognitive piece, the part of us that kinda makes us, us in a way. And in the environmental part is it is our
environment that we live in. It is also the environment that we create are that we choose. So we have
some control over our environment in some ways are the ways we have very little or no control over our
environment. And we'll talk a little bit about that. First I want to ask you. And since we're talking about
how we respond to crisis, and I think crisis is a word that we've all kind of talked about this year
because 2020 has been unlike any other year for all of us, for the whole world we're in. Now think
everyone's been talking about it, right? We have Covid were in election year. We just things are different
this year. I'll be gone virtual. We'd just done things in a different way and we're learning to do new
things. And that's a positive side of this, is that we are learning and growing and we're expanding our
creativity and our ability to respond to different kinds of situations. But I'm gonna ask you, so we are
talking about crisis mode here because crisis is a little bit different than just regular stress.
How do you define a crisis? Well, for some of us it might be failing a major exam. Maybe the thought of
I'm going to lose a scholarship. I can remember those days didn't seem that long ago. Sudden change in
a relationship. You know, he doesn't love me anymore or, you know, wow, I think he wants someone
besides me or he has somebody besides me? It would be in my situation, it might be she her them
whatever it in another person's situation, for me, it would be he. A loss of transportation. That can be
really critical if you depend on your transportation to get to your work, to get someone to a hospital, to
get food. And if you are in a really tight budget and your car breaks down, this can be a real crisis. And
for many people it is a crisis. And for a lot of other people they've had to learn how to deal without
transportation. And in the Dallas, Fort Worth area, it's really hard to go by bus places or to go by train.
So loss of transportation could be a crisis for someone. Of course, job loss, financial struggles. And
we're seeing a lot of that since, you know, April, since we started having to close down, we've seen a lot
of people lose their jobs either permanently or hopefully just temporary. I'm a believer that everything if
we give it time and we're kind and helpful to each other, our economy is going to naturally come back.
There'll be some change that it will require. But if everybody helps everybody out, I think we'll get
through this. But again, it doesn't mean that this is not a crisis. And if it's happening to you, it's probably
a crisis. A lot of people think this crisises are just natural disasters. Wonder the hurricanes that have
come through the Gulf Coast, amazing more hurricanes ever. I think we are now tied. The amount of
ever in one season. So maybe it's the fires out west. Maybe it's an avalanche, maybe it's a tornado, and
maybe it's a flood. There are a lot of natural disasters. I didn't even say earthquake, but there's lots of
natural disasters and yes, sometimes we know they're coming, sometimes we don't, but they're almost
always a crisis, even if we prepare for them. A death of a family member. That can be a spouse, a child,
a parent, just a loved one, someone really close to the family that we see them as a member. It could also
be the pet, because pets are often family members. All of these can be crisis, especially if it's
unexpected. An unexpected change in health. Luck, lucky most of us are probably relatively healthy and
we will probably go through Covid being relatively healthy, but not everybody will. And some people
will get over it. Most people get over Covid, they get sick for a little while and they get better. That's
what happens to most people. But some people don't. And that kind of a crisis situation can really
destabilize, destabilize us. So, yes, are changing our health, whether it's Colbert or not, could be
considered a crisis.
Okay, so I've already said it once or twice or three times. Covid 19. It is a pandemic and it is in crisis
mode around the globe. It's not just us, it's not you, it's just maze dot Dallas is not Texas is not the
United States. It's the entire globe. The entire world is in the same situation. And I believe it can bring us
to unity if we let it. But there's also other epidemics going on besides Covid 19 is a pandemic. But
there's other epidemics going on and we'll talk a little bit about some of those that we're experiencing in
our country right now. The shutdowns. Again, you may lose work. Your you know, after a while, I've
been home for a while. After a while that the walls start counting, you know, closing in on your
whatever. Some people are harmed by themselves. And they are isolated. Even if they're with families,
they're beginning to feel isolated. A lot of students I work with, that's the number one thing they say, I'm
lonely, I'm isolated, I don't know how to do this. And it is a crisis. We perceive these situations as crisis.
Of course, if there's violence against ourselves or violence against others, those things can really, we can
look at that and we were close to that. We will do that as a crisis, social injustice and protests. We're
looking, a lot of us look at that as a crisis. We're seeing more of that happening. It's not the first time it's
happened, but we are seeing more of it right now. And that can be a crisis. We may feel like it's a crisis.
And of course, the 2020 elections, I think we've all, you know, if you're old enough to vote or if you're
there, this could be a crisis situation because it is probably the most important election we had had for
presidential election in a very long time. And a lot of us feel like we're at crisis were very polarized and
we feel like there's a crisis. There is one more crisis that I couldn't get on that you see them all balanced
there. I've got them, you know, kind of the same number on each side.
But there is one more crisis. And I saw this actually happened in person yesterday. And I think you all
may have you may have experienced this some. It is the loss of your cell phone, whether it's misplaced
and you don't know where to find it or if it's been stolen. Most of us feel like it's a crisis. We were like,
oh my gosh, where's my phone? If you've ever had one lost or stolen that you've had to replace your
probably even more anxious and more stress and there's even more of a crisis till you find that phone.
Anyway, it was just a kind of a way to hopefully I'll kinda laughed about that because it is kinda when
those little bitty personal crisis is the world's not going to fall apart, I hope, but we may feel like it is.
And oftentimes it's the way we feel that we react. So all of those crisises or immediate points of stress.
But sometimes those happen on top of other things. Such as our district, our college is going in and
reorganization. Right? And it's been planned it was planned ahead. It was we've working on it and we
were getting up to it, but suddenly Covid happened and it pushed a lot of that forward. It accelerated it.
So now we're not looking just at a reorg, but we're looking at Covid and a reorg. If anything was going
on in my family or your family at the beginning of the year, we were looking at that situation along with
a you know, if we're in it for in Dallas College of or an employee or a student were being impacted by
corporate or educational reorg. And so we got that kinda change going on. But maybe it was a change in
your life that you were going through at that time or something you were stressed with at that time? And
along came Covid and set on top of that. And along came everything that came with Covid and set on
top of that. So it's like we're building these stressors up. And what happens to us when we're stressed?
Well, we have a physical reaction to that. And that's why we're talking about this because stress is really
unique. Or we can have positive stress or we can have negative stress. Anyway, we stress for us usually
is what we look at something and we perceive it as being a threat. Now if you've got a lot going on and
you're juggling a lot of ball stuffing. You've got a whole bunch of stuff and you're running light and all
of these things. The threat there might just be dropping something, you're forgiving something or not
following through on something, or getting something turned in, or getting something finished, or being
at the right place at the right time. So that can be kinda little crisis stresses, but it's still stressful. And if
that situation will sit on top of anything else. What's really unique about humans, and I'm not sure if it
happens with animals, I suspect it does, but I'm a human, so I'm going to talk about what happens to us.
We are designed, we are designed to look at something that is not okay. Sum it up and decide, is this
stressful? Is this a danger? is as good a threatened me? Do I gotta worry about this? You know, if I'm
going along the road and I look down, I see a snake in front of me. I don't really care for snakes. And
although I've learned over the years that some of them have some very good. They're good for
something. We're not good in my, in my pathway when a walking. But if I look down and I see a snake
and it's all coiled up, I'm going to be getting, oh my gosh, you know what? I'm going to be looking at
that snake and thinking, is this threatening to me? or is it not? Gotta prepare myself and decide pretty
quickly what I'm going to do.
(Karen Continues)
If I'm looking at that snake and I noticed that it is making a noise like a rattle noise here in Texas. I
know right there, I am in a crisis moment. I have to figure out, should I stay very still and not move and
hope it doesn't think I'm getting hurt it. Am I going to try to collect, remove it from my path, not me. I'm
gonna, I'm gonna run the other direction. I'm going to try to figure out how to escape and get out of the
situation. But this is the way we're designed a long time ago when we were in caveman days and we
would go trotting along in our little tribe and we would come across a saber tooth tiger. That was really
important because we would look at that tiger and we'd say, if I engage his tiger and win I can bring
back food for the entire tribe, I'm going to be a hero. I'm going to be, you know, the member of the day.
If I engage the tiger and the tiger wins, I'm gonna be lunch. So again, we have to size up the situation.
And in order to do that, because we perceive a threat, not that threat, today's not a saber tooth tiger, but
maybe it's getting its traffic. Maybe it's it's a test. Maybe it's something to do with work, all of these
stressors, we react to them. Oftentimes as if they are saber tooth tiger or it was broad crisis. We have a
reaction of physical reaction to that so that we can either run like crazy or fight like crazy. So when we
perceive a threat, all lot of things happen. Our brain starts saying, well, threat, I think it's a threat. I'm
pretty sure it's a threat. And it starts saying, Okay, we're gonna get ready. And so what it does, it says,
OK, all you hormones, all of your adrenaline, your cortisol, actually some other hormones too like
epinephrine and norepinephrine. But we're going to talk really about adrenaline cortisol today. It says,
wow, we got to be able to move and we got, have strengthened we gotta pack power, we've gotta do it
fast. So it says give us everything of the adrenaline that we can get. Now if anything changes at that time
and we perceive it to be even worse situation, I'm going to give more adrenaline and it's going to send
that drill adrenaline out. And it's going to tell the heart, heart, you start pumping really, really fast. just
pump really fast to get all of that adrenaline. And when we shoot out cortisol is going to say you prompt
even faster to get all of the adrenaline and the cortisol all around the body so that all parts of the body
can react in a stressful matter. We can either run like crazy or we can fight like crazy. And this is good
that this does that because it's meant to be a short term reaction to something is perceived as life or
death. But well, that works really good again, is if it's something that is a life or death threat, but if it's
something that we perceive that is chronic, okay, so let's say we have the heart's pumping out. When the
heart starts pumping out really quickly, then the lungs start breathing really quickly and we get more, a
little bit more shallow breaths. So if you're thinking about few have test anxiety or if you get really
nervous right before you speak in front of people. We perceive that, often perceive that as a threat and
we'll have the same physical reaction maybe our. We don't have to digest food if we're fixing to be eaten
by a saber-tooth stagger. So our digestion slows. Maybe we get bubble, butterflies in our stomach.
Maybe our hands get sweaty, palms get sweaty, or maybe we get cold. Those are because we don't need
capillaries. If we're going to fight for our lives, we don't need capillaries. We just need all that blood in
the center of our system so that we can predict and we can have all the power we need. So our body
reacts to this dress in ways to promote us to be able, to be able to run like crazy or fight like crazy. Now
there is one more option. So it's fight, flight, and freeze. So if you have too much hormone response, too
much chemical response to the situation, your brain might actually overflow itself. And you'll get into
kinda stuck where you can't do it. You can't do anything. Kinda like what possums do. It's very effective
for possums were not possums, of course, but it's very effective for possums because they put
themselves at almost a comatose state and what it was chasing them will come up, they'll smell, they
won't see any movement that really don't smell very well. And they say, wow, this is, this is dead, this is
no fun, and they leave them alone. And when the threat is gone, the possum gets up and he walks away.
That overwhelm for humans doesn't work so well, but it does work for possums. So the truth is we have
stress and when we get into stressful situations, our brain gives out hormones so that we can survive the
stressful situation. We can deal with it and move on.
If it's a crisis. If it's something that we deal within, it's over with. It works go, we kind of go back to
homeostasis. And a homeostasis is kinda the way you are every day. It gives you a picture it kind of
aligned and issue where you are. Most people had good days and bad days, but they kind of stick around
the same level of homeostasis right? There. just kinda where we live at. When something bad happens.
Let's say a car breaks down. Well, we can stress level and it moves up. And let's say about the same time
somebody gets sick and the family not Covid just sick and that kind of moves up. But let's say another
thing happens and we're a little bit more stress, so we're windy up here. Homeostasis is way down here,
but the car gets fixed, that person gets well, but the other thing really doesn't get worked through yet, but
we feel so much better and so much relief that we can. But the truth is we're never back to homeostasis.
And eventually this chronic stress will begin to think it's normal. It's not, it's not where we're supposed
to be that we begin to assume it's normal and we begin to operate at this higher stress level. So when
something happens in would get even more chemicals going on in our body that we would normally,
because we're already at higher stress level. And so we really have to worry about how did we get
ourselves back to the homeostasis? If we're in a chronic stress state. Chronic stresses, those same
life-saving responses in your body that can suppress the immune system. It can suppress digestion, it can
wreck your sleep. It can cause problems with the reproductive systems, which may cause them to stop
working normally. A lot of women see this. Over time, continued strain on your body from routine stress
may contribute to serious health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other
illnesses, as well as mental disorders like depression and anxiety. The cumulative effect of chronic
low-grade stresses can have a greater impact on the health and well-being than an acute or an extreme
event that occur at frequent intervals. Humans are able to manage moderate and high stress levels for a
short period of time, we're designed to do so. But chronic stress with little opportunity for recovery, that
means it just keeps going and going and eventually we feel like there's nothing we can do about it. And
it's just the way things are gonna go. That kind of chronic stress leads to unhealthy levels of
psychological and physiological reaction. So kinda talking about the responding to stress. So that's
really important about how we respond to stress. But then you listen really closely, I'm sure. And you
heard that sometimes too much stress can actually cause problems in our bodies. And if we remember
that our sustainable develop, sustain ability development goal, it's non-communicable diseases. And so
let's talk a little bit about those non-communicable diseases. Now, right now, we've had goals for like
2030, 2035 and beyond. And non-communicable diseases was number three is really focused. A lot of
our focus for health and wellbeing has been shifted over to Covid because Covid is very important and
it's an pandemic level, and it is also wreaking havoc with people's mental and emotional well being, as
well as their physical well-being and their financial, the environment, the whole thing. But let's go back
to where we started from non-communicable diseases. Those are diseases that are not like Covid, not
gonna catch him from somebody else. It's diabetes, cardiovascular disease, it's cancer, it's chronic
respiratory diseases. It's these kind of non-communicable diseases that we want to eliminate. We want to
minimize, we went to mitigate the circumstances and minimize them across the world. So I want to talk
a little bit about each of them very briefly, cardiovascular health. This is a myth buster. I want you to
think about it. Is it going to be factor fiction? Heart disease runs in my family. So there's nothing I can
do to prevent it. Just kinda happened. Mom had it Dad had it. By grandparents have it Everybody's had
it. I'm just doom for heart is that factor of fiction? Now, we've got these facts, or fiction from the
American Heart Association. So if you want to know more facts and fictions and myths and things, go to
their website. They have a lot of wonderful information about keeping your heart healthy. But the truth
is, is that statement is fiction. Healthy living, including proper diet, exercise and rest, go a long way to
prevent in preventing and warding off heart issues no matter what the family history indicates. So you're
not stuck there. You can do something about it. Probably prevented if you work really. Focused. Fact or
fiction.
Number two, I should avoid exercise after having a heart attack. Well, isn't that a given, right? You
someone gets home, they've had a massive heart attack, is able to sit on the couch, Don't get stressed,
don't, don't move, you know, because everyone's afraid they'll have another heart attack, right? And that
might be the one, right. But is that, is that factor of fiction? This is fiction also. Proper exercise and
physical rehabilitation is actually recommended. And it's been official in several ways. It strengthens the
body, including the heart, and it can help in weight control and keep blood pressure it optimum levels.
So don't be surprised if you find, if you know someone that has a heart attack, they're gonna come home,
they get an exercise program. It's not like it was 20 or 30 years ago. Things are better now. The next
thing we were talking about was on cancer. Okay, so there's lots of different kinds of cancer and cancers
caused by a lot of different things, but it is not communicable. You're not gonna get cancer from
somebody else is going to be something that's going on in your body. And whether, that's all inside you,
you're not gonna catch it from somebody else. Here's the myth. So it's often genetic and it is, but you
can't do anything about it. Well, the fact is around 40% of all cancers, cancer cases can be prevented.
There's a lot you can do about yourself, your situation, your health, where you won't get cancer, you can
mitigate it. If you do. About 80% of cancers are survivable if they're caught early. The last part of this I
want to talk. It's not really the last part, but the next part of it, when we're talking about physical
illnesses or human lungs, our lungs, our respiratory systems. Now we all have them, right? We all have
lungs are we most of us have to. One of us might only have one, but hopefully we all have to lungs. And
we need to take care of those lungs and that they're a little bit harder to take care of our heart. It's a
muscle we can exercise. When you exercise your legs, you exercise your heart. When you take, relax
and calm yourself, you help your heart. Now those things help your lungs also. But there's this breathing
thing. And breathing can actually give us some stuff inside our lungs. It might not be so helpful. So the
first question I have, pollution, is pollution the number one cause of lung cancer after you rule out
smoking. So if you're smoking, if you're raping, go onto that American Cancer Society and learn a little
bit about what happens when you smoke or when you vape. It's not so friendly to your lungs. But
anyway, it's pollution. The number one cause if you get rid of smoking, is that the number one cause for
lung cancer? Actually, it's not radon is it's radon exposure. It's the second leading cause of lung cancer.
Radon is colorless, it's odorless, it's radioactive GAS that exist naturally in soil. Now you know if you, if
you have an electric I'm sorry, if you have a natural gas home, you might know that that natural gas that
comes from underneath the ground, we read, we drill for it, we get it out, and then we use it to heat or
homes or cook our food or those sorts of things. If you know about natural gas, you know, it also is
odorless, is so dangerous that they actually put smells in it so we can smell it if we have a gas leak,
alright, but radon, We don't have a way to, to make a smell right on where we don't do it. Maybe we
could, but we don't usually do that. Probably because we're not we're not bringing into our homes. It's
seeping into the cracks in our floor. Cracks in our wall or that sort of thing. It's seeping up from the
ground.
One out of every 15 homes. So if you're on, if you live in a block, a lot of blocks have 20 houses on that
block. If you look at it, especially the older neighborhoods, every 15 homes, one out of 15 homes is
subject to radon exposure. And it doesn't really matter if you're in a new home or an old home, they all
can get radon exposure. And exposure to radon combined with cigarette smoking or vapor being
seriously increases your lung cancer risk. So the number two reason that people get cancer after
smoking is actually radon, not pollution. Number three is hazardous chemicals. Number fours, particle
pollution. Now I'm going to back up a little bit and we're gonna say pollution, okay? If you jump all
those things together, the top three after smoking, except smoking, UV polluting the air around you or
someone else's polluting your air, right? So if you do all of those top four reasons that people have lung
disease, it's kind of related to pollution, right? It is. If you think about chemical pollution, there's lots of
chemicals. If you're, if you're claiming you're not going to use your comment or you're you know, you're
scrubbing stuff, you don't can put bleach in there because it's going to create a chemical reaction and it
could kill you, right? If you have a lot of particles in pollutions, like if you live close to a manufacturing
plant and it's always polluting the air with stuff. Well, it's going to be bad. That's particle pollution,
right? Sometimes people get evidence or some really long cases are very big cases when it comes to
hazardous chemicals. Back in the sixties and seventies, we were involved in a war called Vietnam War.
And we weren't doing so well in that war. And so the military decided we had to do something about the
vegetation because we were trying to save our troops lives. And so they decided they had to get rid of all
of the vegetation. So they got some stuff, they sprayed it on everything, any killed the vegetation. But
that hazardous chemical also impacted all of those soldiers lives. And so now almost all of them have
type two diabetes and is directly related to the chemical exposure. And if you, if you want a question
about the agent orange exposure, if you want a question that go look at some of the the chemical spills
that we have and the United States we've had over the last 20 or 30 years. And you're going to discover
in many of them, Type Two Diabetes is connected if they were if someone was involved in that chemical
spill, Type Two Diabetes is related to that. It's one of the things people is going to happen to people.
Particle pollution. We just gotta be careful. Lung cancer is not curable. I think I've said 80% for stage
one disease. So if you taking good care of yourself and you're noticing the symptoms, go to the
American Lung Association and say what are those symptoms? I need to make sure that I'm that I'm
seeing them if I have them. So you go and you look at those cure rates. If you get in stage 1 , 80% of
lung cancers curable. That's pretty good. American Lung Association has something called Stand Up for
clean air. Go check it out. It's really important to all of us who care about sustainability in an
environmentalism. Every once in while you are gonna see SDGs 3,6,7,10,13 through 15, you're going to
see different one of them. That's because this one thing, it isn't just about number three. The amazing
thing about number three is it intertwines with all of the other ones. You've looked at this and we look,
it's not just one here and one there. It's a system. In my, my goal is to help with number three. But by
helping with number three, I'm going to be looking at some other things like air pollution, radon
pollution, smoking, health care. One of the things out there. Diabetes, again, 3,6,10,13 through 15. Did
you know that the association between air pollution and diabetes is stronger for traffic associated
pollutants, gaseous nitrogen dioxide, tobacco smoke, and particle matter. So pollution just might lead
you to type two diabetes. Exposure to air pollutants is significantly associated with the increase of type
two diabetes. The WHO, the World Health Organization estimates that 50% trusted source of people
with diabetes die of cardiovascular disease, such as heart disease and stroke.
The American Diabetes Association reports that more than 71% of US adults with diabetes also has
hypertension or use medication to treat hypertension. That that's really important in Covid because if
you notice that one of the top four or five high risks or type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer,
high blood pressure, and lung diseases. Just saying, think about it. What happens at all out here? It can
really impact our lives in a crisis situation like Covid 19. The last part I want to talk about diabetes. It's
really about any chronic illness. The presence of diabetes doubles the odds of depression. Comorbid
depression just means you get depression along with something else. It is serious. From that point I want
to go on to well-being. Because when we get to mental well-being, that mental health part of it, you can't
really just like with diabetes leading to depression. You can't pull that apart and you can't do it. You can't
say, well, this is this and this is that we're all one human being. And so what happens to one, happens to
the other? So if you're looking at mental health, mental well-being, we are targeting through that
sustainable sustainability development goals. We are targeting depression, anxiety, substance use and
abuse, and suicide. Depression and anxiety are biologically their biological illnesses. We think they're
just emotional ones and we have a lot of stigma against mental health issues. But the truth is, is when
you're depressed, you have a biological reaction that's happening in your body that's making you
depressed. If you're really anxious, there's that whole fight or flight or whole anxiety thing going on. It's
making you anxious, right? The truth is, and I'm going to say very quickly, I believe that you can't have
an emotion without a thought first, I'm a cognitive behavioralist, I believe wether you recognizes the
thought or not. If you have a thought that thought leads you to an emotional response. The emotional
response generally in our culture that says do something or not do something because we based on our
emotions. And then you ruminate over that and it starts the cycle over. Do you have a life that event, you
think about it, you have an emotional response. You do something that you don't do something, then you
think about it again and it sets the cycle over. If you change any one of them, he changed the whole
cycle. But this is a story for another another presentation. Substance abuse comes in when you have
depression and anxiety. People don't like the way it feels. So they want to change the way they feel. So
they stop and they get a drink, or they go and smoke a joint, or they do something else. Well, it works
for a little bit of time. Not one with that cycle, anything that you do for just change your emotional. If
you're just looking for the emotional feeling, it's temporary and you have to do it again and again. And
then you get substance use that turns into substance abuse, and then we turn into addictions. So all the
things are really, really important that we recognize that our mental health is just as important as our
physical health and it works in tandem. It is not separate health, it's really all the same health. And I
wanted to talk a little bit about overcoming depression because depression can be fatal. A lot of people
don't realize it. But depression, anxiety, untreated anxiety often leads to depression. And depression for
some people becomes a fatal disease. A fatal illness. Suicides not about being weak. Suicide is about a
chemical imbalance in people's brains that leaves him in a point that they feel helpless and hopeless and
they don't have really a choice at that point. They do have a choice, but they don't see the choice. Their
emotional state is impacted by their physical chemical levels. Overcoming depression, really important
for the whole world right now, right? So I wanna talk a little bit about nature because you come to hear
about nature and what we can do naturally. So I am not going to ever say you shouldn't take medication,
you shouldn't go to the doctor because I kinda think you ought to. Right. There was a place for
medication, there's a place for medical care, there is a place for surgery, there's a place for all of that.
(Karen Continues)
Even in mental health, there is a place and a time and a place for it. However, I want you to pay a lot of
attention this when we talk about getting Meeting crisis and being sustainably sustainable after them as
ourselves. Duke University Medical School study now it's a medical school, they took a 156 patients
with major depressive disorder. Now already knew these people were depressed and major depress
means they're really depressed and for a long period of time, right? It's not the blue's a couple of days.
These are really depressed people. They took a 156 people in. The actually had a little bit more than
that. But the other people, the people that came that that were over that the extra people that used them
as their control group. Right. So nothing happened to them. They didn't they didn't do any of the things
that we're doing, you know, like what they're gonna do to the test groups because there's the control
group. They want to see what happens to that group if you don't do anything to it. So that's your base.
That's their control. Now in this case, when you are having major depression, you don't want to say, hey,
we're gonna put everybody over here. But do you think you're waiting for a place in line then the next
set and not do anything that wouldn't be ethical. So they gave every body cognitive behavioral therapy.
Ok, so they're helping people through counseling, which actually works. And it's natural. It's what we
naturally do. We go to someone we talked, we want people to listen. It's a natural process. Just say, okay,
Duke University Medical School took a 156 patients with major depressive disorder and they separated
them after the control group into three groups. The first group is a psychiatric medication group. Them
that gave them whatever psychiatric medication they were using at the time, a Zoloft or whatever. And
you remember some of these have some major physical symptom hazards that go along with them. But
Psychiatric group, that's the gaze in the end they expected, they anticipated good success. The next
group they said, okay, you can get the medication and we're going to see what this looks like. So we're
gonna throw some exercise in there. They didn't expect it to, expected may be a little bit better, but they
didn't expect exercise. So do much different because they are a medical school and they're looking at big
pharma right there, looking at pharmacological impact because they're a medical school. Medical
schools are changing by the way. They took the last group and that gave him the psychiatric medication.
And the middle group is psychiatric and exercise. The last group they took the medication part out and
this is what we needed. Another groupers go let them exercise. We're not gonna do anything to them
except the cognitive behavioral therapy there. We're going to get them to exercise. And they expect that
to be crazy, crazy grip. Nothing was going to happen to them. There were just exercising. 16 weeks later,
that's four months later, all groups improved seriously. They all groups are about the same. They all
improved rabbit 60%. They could see no difference between those two groups. Now that really shocked
them. So they said, hm, well all of this stuff helps people. They all got better. So what we wanna do is
we want to keep people from relapsing, right? We don't want them to get depressed again. So we say,
okay, Duke University said oops. Oh, here we go. There we go. They did a ten month follow up. Okay.
Now this is ten months after the thing stopped, right? They wanted to see after they did four months of
treatment, what would happen? Ten months later? They got through a 156 people in and they said, oh
look, medication alone, 38% of those people got depressed. Again. That means, you know, where it's not
bad, it's not good, but it's not relapse, right? With medication, no, they got excited. 31% of that. There's
something about exercise that makes a difference physically moving your body. They almost forgot to
check the last group where they looked at. Exercise alone group. The relapse rate was 9%. That is
astounding. And they've repeated this multiple times since then. They've done different versions of it.
They repeated it. Exercise alone is the number one way to fight depression and anxiety. It's totally
natural. Just get up and move your body. And that is the first way I want to talk about nature. Let's see if
I can get onto the next screen. Now. Prolonged stress becomes environmental stress. It becomes to the
point that once one thing you can't do it in your can't deal with it. It gets worse and worse and it
becomes environmental stress, and then it becomes chronic stress, and that becomes a problem. So we
want to talk about natural choice, right? We want to talk about natural choice. So I'm gonna do this. I
have a video to show. It's a short little video and we still have a little bit of time for it. And it's about a
four minute video, so it's a little bit long for videos. I'm actually going to pull it over because I don't trust
that it's going to load right through my thing. So you're going to see a little bit more, but I'm going to I'm
going to start play here. I apologize if it's not totally clear. I hope it is. No sound. Sound. Well, my
beautiful music and don't know why you couldn't hear it. So my apologies, but I hope you were able to
read the subtitles. And here she was actually summed up everything I said. So I'm gonna run really fast
through a handful of slides and you can always email me or asked him questions in a moment.
So in the year 2020, what can we do? What we can exercise? We've already talked about the benefits of
exercise. Take that walk in nature. Alright, got rid of that. Can figure where it was coming from. Sorry
guys, I'm learning too. So taking a walk in nature, they did a study, Stanford University. They took a
bunch of people. They had them walk along an urban four lane highway road about a half a mile. And
they had them while another group walk along a natural Oak Woodland setting. The people they gave
them before and after tests that tested cognitive ability and their mood. And what they discovered was
that the people and the natural path. They had a lot more calmer. They were happier. They actually had a
better short-term memory on tests afterwards. So if you've got a test coming up, guys, if you've got
something you had to do and got have short-term memory, get out, do some exercise, get into nature,
environmental stress and distress. About 50% of people inlet today live in urban areas and won't be long
until we're gonna see about 70%. On average, people both have lower mental distress and higher
well-being. It's early living in urban areas with more green space. Okay. We're gonna talk about is
attention overload. Basically, if you're on your cell phone, you're gonna miss most of what's going on.
And they did that with a study of people walking through arboretum. The public piece of green space is
important because green space helps us build our immunity. It helps us with our mental health. When
your mental health is good, the rest of your self comes in line. When the rest of yourself, isn't so good,
then your mental health suffers. So the public use of green spaces is really important. So now we're
talking about additional sustainability goals. We're talking about infrastructure, and we're talking about
the planning of finding a build of designs for cities. They found out that the birth weight of babies
increases. Death rate of newborn babies decrease if the mother's while they're pregnant or exposed to
green space, that's pretty important. ADHD, it helps with lots and lots of things. It helps people become
more creative. Lots of stuff, lots of tests, lots of research, lots of important people did lots of research. I
think I read it all. So ecosystem services are being incorporated into decision-making in all levels of
public policy and they need to keep doing that. Please support that in your area so that you will have a
natural place to go to so you can get natural healthy, right? Plants, a tree. Trees are really important. All
that air pollution, trees are the largest thing to bring him in and give ourselves more oxygen. Plant a tree,
healthy trees, healthy lives. Check out the website is a little thing. You can click on things and it will tell
you all about what trees do for you. If you want to know where to find green space, Dallas parks and
recreations, that Dallas parks system alone, and you can do that. You have to live in Dallas, but as the
largest municipal park system in the nation right here to have doorsteps. 397 parks totaling 20,118 acres
have developed and undeveloped park land. A lot of people don't know that the largest urban hardwood
forest is in Dallas, Texas. That's unbelievable, right? The largest urban forest, hardwood forest in our
own backyard. Go and check it out. Discover the forrest would tell you where your closest forest is. And
I'll also tell you where you can find parks near your house. Tex parks and wildlife. Well, we pay. Go out
and they're all open now, so go enjoy them. National parks service, depending on what the park is there,
open. Go learn about them. Recreation dot gov willl give you a lot of places to get out in nature so you
can start helping yourself feel better emotionally and physically. There's a list of these if you want them
later. Email me and I'll give those to you. The Washington University has a whole thing. Finally
remember that kindness is the most important superpower. Random acts of kindness build not only your
mental health, your physical health, and someone else's. Kindness reduces stress. If you volunteer and if
you volunteer with somebody you know. So when you volunteer yourself, you can get this dopamine
and all this good feeling stuff because we are social creatures. We are designed to help one another. We
are not designed to go it alone, were designed to be in community. When you go and volunteer with
someone you know, or someone you meet and you go back and volunteer again. A crazy thing happens.
Oxytocin is given your body gives you oxytocin. Oxytocin is what happens in orgasm. It's also what
happens when women deliver babies. They get a ton of oxytocin. So they look at the baby and they
loved the baby and they don't want to kill the baby because it was really hard to have the baby. Self-care
is not self-indulgent and indulgence itself preservations, and thank you very much. Are there any
questions? I may have a couple of moments left. Here.
(Halanda Speaks)
We do have one we have, we have one question that came through and they actually wanted this. What
is your view about people being part of an inseparable from the environment? And then it goes on to say,
The North American environmental education association argues that nature is not for humans, but not a
medicine not an Rx, but humans are nature to disassociate from nature is to dissolve being human.
(Karen Speaks)
I do actually. So when I think about nature, I think about going walking in trees. You sell a lot of
pictures and trees is because I really, I loved nature, I love living out doors, likes vitamin D from the
sun. I like getting it. It does all these things that the research shows happens for me. Nature is a really
great place. But I think these things happen because they're meant to happen. We are meant to be in the
nature. We are part of the nature. If you think about wildlife, take Africa, right, they have all. If you
think about Africa, you're gonna think about rhinoceroses and zebras and, and do you think of that as
part of Africa, all that nature is Africa, right? Well, there's also people in that people or animals too. And
I think we were created and designed to live in nature and be part of nature. So I can yes, I kind of agree
with that. I think we get benefits from nature and we should be giving benefits to nature. It should be a
backend, a give-and-take. So I do believe that nature is natural. So I hope that answers your question.
(Haland Speaks)
Okay. We have one more question that came in and we have one minute when it says working full time,
how much time would you say would be good to spend in nature? 30 minutes, one hour? What do you
say about that?
(Karen Speaks)
I say anytime you can carve out of your schedule, spend it in nature. If you get a lunch break, go
outside, get look at nature on a screen, whatever you can do to make it extra. Well, most people, if they
work 40 hours a week to get lunch break and they get maybe a break or coffee break. Coffee, not too bad
for you. It's supposed cigarettes. But take that break, go outside, get up and move, get up and do
something natural which is like moving, take it outside if you can. That's what I would say. They say
basically 15 minutes twice a day is awesome. But you don't have to do that much any bit is better than
none of it.
(Halanda Speaks)
Anymore questions. It looks like that is it. And we have one minute before we conclude. So any closing
thoughts? I'm itemizes say before that. Just don't forget to take the evaluation to help us improve. Karen
take it away.
(Karen Speaks)
I really appreciate everyone listening and being patient. This is all new for most of us. All everything
that's happening is something new. And I appreciate your patience and my apologies again that you
didn't have any sound because it was really cool music. But you had the words, at least, yea, if anybody
wants any part of this, if you want the Site, I have citations for everything. I've talked about, it. You
want them. I'll be glad to give them to you if you want to know where to find it, this information, feel
free to, to email me at K C U T T I L L at D C C C D dot edu But in the byline, nature or nature
programs summit or something. And I'll be glad to help, you know a lot more, but there's not any time
left.
(Halanda Speaks)
Thank you so much. That concludes our session.
(Karen Speaks)
Thank you Halanda. You're so welcome.