Park Prescription

Brush College Park

It has been well documented that time spent in the great outdoors is not only good for your emotional well being, but also good for your actual physical health. We recently watched a TV show where a pediatric physician has decided to take this to heart and makes an actual prescription up for her patients to spend time outdoors.  She calls it a Park Prescription. It may be as simple as sitting on a park bench 10 minutes a day listening to the sounds of nature, the chirp of birds, the chatter of a squirrel, and the sound of the wind in the trees,  or it might include going for an hours walk in the park three times a week; but the point is to require the patient to spend time outdoors. Her goal is to match every prescription for medicine with a prescription for time in the park.  To this end she writes up a specific prescription for time to be spent in the park.

I totally buy into this life style.  Today we went to Brush College Park, about a mile from home, and took our first bird walk since getting out of the hospital a week ago.  We called it our "Park Prescription".  We walked for  41 minutes, covered 3/4 of a mile, and counted 10 different species of birds.  We plan on taking our Park Prescription on a daily basis.