The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #343 - Julia Hotz

TRANSCRIPT

Julia Hotz
exercise was just as, in some cases, more effective than the medication was for treating symptoms of depression.

You're tackling depression. You're tackling anxiety. You're tackling stress. You're tackling chronic pain. You're tackling ADHD. That is the idea behind social prescribing, connecting people to what matters to them, using it to treat all kinds of ailments. Even through Alzheimer's and other forms of cognitive decline, having a sense of purpose can get you through some of the worst parts of that.

Melanie Avalon
Welcome to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast, where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health, mindset, longevity, and so much more. Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind, we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics lying herein.

So friends, are you ready to join me? Let's do this. Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast. Friends, I simply adore Julia Hotz, and I cannot recommend her book, The Connection Cure Enough. She is such an incredible woman raising awareness about this fascinating concept of social prescriptions. I thought this was going to be mostly about loneliness and fostering social connections and those effects on our health. Yes, it was that, but that is only a tiny fraction of what we're talking about. We're gonna talk about how various countries and places have implemented incredible programs focusing on things like movement, art, nature, service, and belonging to radically change people's health for the better. And what I love about Jules is just how hands-on she got with writing this book. She visited all these places, met the people, saw the effects, tried the things herself to share it all with you guys today.

We talk about so many cool concepts, including things like the benefits of theater and birdwatching, dementia farms to address Alzheimer's, the benefits of nature and forest bathing, and what to do if you don't like going outside like me, cold water swimming, sense of coherence theory, the practical, actual, and ideal future of healthcare, and so much more. The show notes for today's episode will be at melanieavalon.com slash connection. Those show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about, so definitely check that out. I can't wait to hear what you guys think. Definitely let me know in my Facebook group, I have biohackers, intermittent fasting plus real foods plus life. Comment something you learned or something that resonated with you on the pinned post to enter to win something that I love, and then check out my Instagram, find the Friday announcement post, and again, comment there to enter to win something that I love. All right, I think that's all the things. Without further ado, please enjoy this fabulous conversation with the incredible, wonderful Julia Hotts. Hi friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited and I've been looking forward to the conversation that I am about to have. So the backstory on today's conversation quite a while ago now, I'm not sure how long ago, it was a while ago, our dear mutual friend, Andrew McConnell introduced me to the fabulous woman I am here with now.

Melanie Avalon
I'm here with Julia Hotts. Andrew, I've had him on the show, I can put a link to that, but he is a fellow podcaster also in the biohacking health sphere. And when he introduced me to Julia, I can still remember his email and paraphrasing, but it was something to the effects of how hands down the conversation that he had with Julia was one of the most incredible podcast conversations he had ever had, which is quite the endorsement. And when I saw Julia's work, so she has a book called The Connection Cure, a better way of thinking about medicine and healing, the prescriptive power of movement, nature, art, service, and belonging. I obviously of course was an immediate yes just with the topic and with Andrew's endorsement and all the things.

And then diving into this book, friends, oh my goodness, what? So many radical paradigm shifts in this book. I will say, so when I first saw the cover, I think I was assuming it was mostly gonna be about like social connection, maybe loneliness, like the importance of friends. Like I thought it would be things that I have read a lot about before, which is amazing. I just thought it was gonna be that mostly. And it is, I mean, it's that, but it's so much more than that. It is actually, and we're gonna talk all about it in today's episode, but it's about this idea of social prescribing. So basically instead of pharmaceutical prescriptions and conventional things you would think of with healthcare, these comprehensive approaches to prescribing things like nature, well, I said it in the subtitle, but things like nature and forest bathing and art and connecting with people and gardening. And I really wanna talk about this community in Europe for dementia where people just live there and do things. And that really helps with their mental health condition. And it was so, so eyeopening. And so not only was it about that, but friends, Julia is one of the most immersive writers. So she, for each of these five pillars, she doesn't just talk about it. She actually goes to the places doing these things, meets the people, shares their stories, and then shares stories from her own life and how she's integrated these different modalities and approaches to help herself as well. And then she ends with a, I don't know if I should give it away or if we'll talk about it, but she has kind of like a surprise ending where she has a newish or a slightly different theory thesis that she proposes about what we actually should take away from all of this in a big picture approach. Oh, and she goes into how this works in all of the different countries. So it is so, so interesting. It's really a page turner. I learned so much. I can't wait to talk about it. Julia, thank you so much for being here.

Julia Hotz
Oh my gosh, Melanie, that is going to be the best intro of all time. Thank you so much for having me and for all the genuine enthusiasm you have for this. And I just can't wait to talk to you.

Melanie Avalon
No, no, thank you so much. And I'll just say like, just starting to talk to you now, you're exactly what I pictured talking to you was going to be like, I was like, she's gonna be so like, infectious in a good way and fun and like gratitude and sparkles. And I'm just I'm just enjoying this conversation so much. And we haven't even really gotten into it yet.

Okay, I have so many questions for you. Okay, well, so you are a you're a journalist as well. So you your work has appeared in the New York Times, Wired, Scientific American, Boston Globe time, all the places. So this book in particular, the thesis and the theory, because you have these five different pillars of, you know, these social prescriptions, which we can talk about that just that idea, was that something that you've always been interested in? What led you to the idea to actually write this book?

Julia Hotz
Yeah. Well, first of all, sparkles are very mutual. I knew from our first email, I think there was some like inside joke about Taylor Swift and I was like, Oh, we, we, we're on the same page. Um, but yeah, for me, and also this goes back to something you said in the introduction about, I think a lot of people hear social prescribing and they immediately assume it's about our social relationships, our social connections, friendships.

There for me as a journalist and someone before that who was a sociology researcher, my earliest intro into this topic was related to that. It was 2018 and I was a graduate student at the university of Cambridge and I really needed a thesis topic. And it just so happened that where I was in England that year, England became the first nation to establish a minister of loneliness, like government funding to appoint, you know, somebody to tackle the loneliness crisis. And I thought that was interesting and I realized it turns out loneliness has all of these, not just psychological effects, you know, super correlated with depression and anxiety, but also physical consequences as well. It's correlated with chronic pain, cognitive decline, even linked to premature mortality. There was a famous paper that came out a few years ago that said loneliness has the health consequences of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And I thought that was really, really interesting that England was like mobilizing government resources to tackle this, but I was also really interested as somebody who practices solutions journalism, what are they actually going to do about that? I mean, are they going to like assign friendships? Are they going to make you talk to your neighbors? And so that led into this whole deep dive of what really is loneliness? What is the opposite of loneliness? And what do people who are lonely actually want? And I did this in a very strange roundabout way by basically putting out these community surveys, seeing who among the community was lonely and bringing them in, not just to explicitly talk about loneliness, like in a focus group, but to have them do something together. So we all went to the farmer's market together. We made a meal together. We told stories about the food. And that's when we then got into, you know, the meat and potatoes pun intended of like, Oh, what is loneliness? So this is a long winded way of saying that that was the first time that I had heard about this thing called social prescribing, because a major problem for people who are lonely is that they don't know how and where to meet people. It's not that there aren't physically people around them. This is the difference between loneliness and social isolation, but it's that the people that are physically around you, you don't feel a sense of belonging and connection, companionship, trust, closeness with them. So that led me to get really interested and invested in the research of, well, what does alleviate loneliness? What does bring people closeness? What does make people feel like they belong? And a lot of times it's around shared interests in action, you know, people actually doing things they like to do together.

Julia Hotz
It sounds really simple. But for a lot of people, they'll say, well, I don't know where I can go in my community to do that. Or I don't know the first thing about how I would even get a group to go there.

That is what sort of birthed my interest in something called social prescribing, which is you teed up in the intro, the idea of healthcare referring you to a community based activity or resource based on not just what's the matter with you, but what matters to you. So that could be anything from an art class to a cooking workshop, to mountain biking lessons, to swimming lessons, fishing, all things I talk about in my book. You know, again, the idea is that it's not, it's about bringing people together around a shared interest. And where I'm going with all this is that it turns out when you do that, you're not just tackling loneliness, which as we mentioned, is correlated with all these other ailments. You're tackling depression, you're tackling anxiety, you're tackling stress, you're tackling chronic pain, you're tackling ADHD. That is the idea behind social prescribing, connecting people to what matters to them, using it to treat all kinds of ailments. And that's what began my research and on the ground reporting into this.

Melanie Avalon
How long was the journey from that initial study group that you did coming up with the book idea, doing all the research? Because you, I mean, you'd go deep, like you'd go so many places and meet so many people.

So how long was that period?

Julia Hotz
Yeah, it was a long time. And I really just kind of followed the story. So 2018, seven years ago, that was when, you know, the minister was established. 2019 is when we had a commission that really came together and said we should put some healthcare resources into social prescribing.

In other words, we could talk about this later, but getting the healthcare system to actually invest money and staff into this. 2020, you might recall, we had this massive lockdown, which is hugely detrimental for people's physical health, mental health, loneliness. And yet that is what kind of got the world's eyes focused on what was happening in England, this idea of social prescribing. And I would say it was around then that I wrote my first really big feature magazine story on it. And then honestly, I never planned to write a book, but somebody emailed me and said, this was a really interesting article. I don't think anyone's written a book about this. I think you should. And so then I went through the whole book process and realized that, wow, this isn't just happening in England. This is happening in 30 countries around the world, including the United States. Talk more about that. And so I pitched a book in 2022 to go around the world and report on people who'd benefit from this. Yeah, that book came out last year, 2024. And here we are in 2025. So it was an eight year journey now that I'm realizing it.

Melanie Avalon
Amazing. Okay, I have some thoughts and questions about loneliness, but just really quickly while we're talking about the book production process, I always love talking about covers.

Did you get too, were you involved in creating the cover art?

Julia Hotz
I was involved in creating the cover art. As you tee up in the introduction, social prescribing, the word prescribing is something we, especially in the United States, often associate with pharmaceuticals, like prescribing pills.

Social prescribing can be complementary to prescribing pills, but really it's about using that same process through healthcare, but prescribing is something in your environment. And so for those who haven't seen the cover, it's like a little pill bottle, but with this scene of people biking in nature and creating art and having a great time together.

Melanie Avalon
I love it. I just, I love the creative aspect of things. And I'm always really interested if the publisher like sees the vision or not of the author and you know, all these little things are just so fascinating to me.

Julia Hotz
Yeah, I was lucky that they did. It was an idea that my friend and I came up with because originally this is kind of wild. I was going to go to a pharma conference in the US and try to pose as a person with a drug to offer, but I was going to come with these little social prescription pill bottles instead. So talking about the physiological benefits of time in nature, time exercising, time creating art. But long story short, that didn't quite work out.

It turns out it's really hard and expensive to get into those if you're an independent journalist.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my gosh, I love it. That's amazing.

That's actually interesting. I wonder have they because I don't think you mentioned any studies that were set up like this. Do you know if they have ever done a study, a placebo controlled trial where they actually do give a sugar pill to the people, but then the directions with the pill are like do this thing. So then people think it's the pill.

Julia Hotz
That's really interesting.

Melanie Avalon
like you have to take this pill at this group or like, you know, like somehow that's how I would set it up. Like make it seem like it's the pill.

Julia Hotz
Yeah. You know, that's really interesting. There is a study that compared effects of pharmacological versus non-pharmacological interventions related to depression and they had people take an antidepressant or do, you know, some form of exercise and compared that. Although I think it was not RCT. I have to double check, but I'm pretty sure that, you know, it's not like the exercise people were taking a sugar pill. I think it was, they were informed of their condition. But lo and behold, you know, that study showed that exercise was just as, in some cases, more effective than the medication was for treating symptoms of depression.

There was also a really interesting study small in one of Nordic countries that looked at rates of pill prescribing when there was nature easily accessible and essentially found that time in nature, in places where nature was easily accessible, there were fewer pill prescriptions. I'm talking really high level there. I'll try to find the exact study. But in other words, the study you're proposing, I'm not sure that exists yet, but there have been some that sort of compare, you know, pharma versus non-pharma for different kinds of social prescriptions.

Melanie Avalon
I have more questions about that too. Just to comment on the loneliness aspect, it's really interesting to me because I actually have this ongoing repetitive epiphany that happens to me every now and then because I've always felt very purpose-driven. I'm fascinated by purpose. I'm fascinated because I don't know where it comes from because I have always felt it. Ever since I was born, I felt like these are these things I'm going to do. It's just always been there. I'm like, where does that come from? Then I see people who don't seem to have purpose or struggle to find purpose. It's like, I don't know where to tell them where to get it because I don't know where mine comes from. But the correlation I've noticed is I also very rarely feel lonely.

Loneliness is not something that I experience that much. I can probably name the times I remember actually feeling lonely. I've noticed the connection between purpose and loneliness for me because I've noticed the epiphany that I have is I am never lonely because I always have this thing to work on, this thing to do. There's a focus there. I love friends. I'm also an introvert though. I don't do well seeing people 24-7 is the point. To bring this all together, how strong is that connection between loneliness and purpose? Also, I'm curious. This is two questions. Actually, I'm going to save that question because I have questions about how vulnerable you are in the book. First of all, just like loneliness and purpose. Are those really connected? Yeah.

Julia Hotz
Yeah. That's real. That's a great epiphany.

There was a great book that came out called Man's Search for Meaning, and it was this Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, trying to understand about him and other Holocaust survivors, like what was it that helped them survive? I mean, when the odds were against them and life was just so miserable and bleak, why is it that some people were able to carry on in spite of this horrific thing? And one of the conclusions he comes to in talking to people and looking at some of the literature is that having a why is so important, right? If you have a why, if you have a sense of meaning in your life, you are protected against some of the most terrible things, including loneliness, which is a part of life, particularly as you get older, right? I mean, I think that that epiphany holds particularly true for people as they get older, maybe they lose their social networks, maybe they lose their significant others, maybe they lose their regular social connections with their coworkers. But people who tend to do well in old age are those who still have a sense of purpose driving them through, whether it's, you know, tending to their garden, whether it's volunteering at a community center, whether it's, you know, creating art or music of some form, even through, I know you just had an incredible guest on speaking about Alzheimer's, even through Alzheimer's and other forms of cognitive decline, having a sense of purpose can get you through some of the worst parts of that.

I also think, you know, there's a very interesting framework that a lot of the doctors in the social prescribing movement use to try to understand, like, psychologically why social prescriptions are effective. And it's also related to that. It's called the sense of coherence theory. And it basically asks people in health care to ask their patients or assess of their patients, do people feel like their life has meaning? Do they feel like their conditions are manageable? And do they feel like they're in control? And the people who have those things, who believe that they have agency tend to do better in terms of all kinds of ailments. I'm speaking particularly in this case about a story I tell in the book of somebody who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, was also very lonely, was also a bit depressed, had also had kind of some rough things happen in his life. And everywhere he went, his doctors told him, Frank, you're gonna be on insulin for the rest of your life. This is just your fate. But then he meets this doctor who subscribes to this sense of coherence framework, believes that type 2 diabetes can be reversible, believes that insulin is something you can come off, and helps Frank try to understand what is his why? What matters to him? That's the golden question in social prescribing. Long story short, we can talk about this more later, but Frank realizes he loved cycling as a kid, gets prescribed a bicycle and a course to relearn how to ride it with people in his age group.

Julia Hotz
Lo and behold, he loses a hundred pounds. He's able to come off his insulin.

And more important than that though, he's reconnected with his why and he's made these friends. And through that, you know, the research tells us that having strong social connections, having something that we do regularly is protective against all kinds of future health consequences. So I'll stop there because that was an enthusiastic yes to your epiphany and to show that there's some real data behind that.

Melanie Avalon
It's so amazing and I'll get to the personal question, but do you have thoughts on this question I'm haunted by about where the purpose comes from and do you think everybody can find purpose?

Julia Hotz
I do. I do.

And I sometimes think that when people are at their lowest, low health-wise, that can be sometimes when and why they find their purpose. You know, to quickly summarize one other story from the book to show how this is not just for psychological struggles. This is also for physical struggles. I met this incredible woman named Akila who loved, loved, loved being a mother, loved being a caretaker, and loved her job working in a hospital. She just was born a caretaker, she says. But over time, you know, the caretaking responsibilities really got to be physically tolling on her back. And she develops this back injury, but she loves her work. So she pushes through it until one day the back pain gets so bad that she's no longer able to get out of bed. So she goes to the doctor and again, the doctor is trying to address the symptoms. He's trying to address the debilitating pain. So prescribes painkillers, prescribes antidepressants. That doesn't help her. Prescribes her, refers her to a therapist, a talk therapist. She says that made her feel worse. Finally, she gets referred to somebody in the social prescribing space, someone they call a link worker. We could talk more about that. Who sort of works within the healthcare space to try to like actually get to know what matters to the person and refer them to the proper local social prescription. And says to Akila, you know, Akila, I know why your back is hurting so much. I know why you're struggling physically and mentally. It's because you lost what mattered to you. You lost your sense of purpose. Being in the hospital, that might have been physically painful, but it's what gave you a sense of purpose. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to prescribe you something that gives you that similar sense of purpose, working in a healthcare setting, caring for other people, but without the physical pressure on your back. And so she ends up taking this volunteer gig, answering phones for families of children with complex medical issues, really, really loves it, is able to exercise her compassion, able to reconnect to that sense of purpose. Well, what do you know, lo and behold, Akila's back pain starts to diminish. So I'm saying yes, it is so important for us to be connected to our sense of purpose, not just for psychological reasons, but for physical reasons as well.

Melanie Avalon
Amazing. The personal thing I was going to ask, so you get definitely personal in the book. I will say one thing I really appreciated because you share your experience with a breakup and late night thoughts about it and everything. Something I really like is you talk about at one point how you're comparing your quote, suffering with your breakup to other people. I'm paraphrasing what you say, but something to the effect of other people are going through harder things than you.

So how can you be having these emotions? What are your thoughts on that concept? Because I'm pretty sure you comment something though about the realization about we all have our reactions to things. Also, you're pretty vulnerable when you mention... So somebody asked you before your 30th birthday, they asked you if you'd rather be never married or marry your last ex.

Julia Hotz
yeah that was supposed to be like a fun little would you rather game but it went wrong she's like my best friend you know it was with love and it was kind of in this way of oh like how are you doing but it was it was kind of funny how that unfolded yeah so you're right that well first of all thank you for saying that sometimes I sometimes I will just you know this thing of vulnerability hang over and think like wow I really shared a lot and I wonder if my ex is reading this like I definitely shared a lot but I shared a lot because I mean it's genuine and I will tell you something Melanie I didn't plan to go that deep as a journalist you know you're sort of instructed to like keep yourself out of it keep things objective but I was so compelled and moved by the science number one but really the stories of people who have healed through these social prescriptions from things like depression and anxiety and ADHD and chronic pain and I'd always got on purpose I'm getting to your question but you know I'd always kind of grown up thinking that those were like disorders black and white you know you either had this thing or you were healthy well the truth is that many of us can experience some symptoms of depression from time to time some of most of us will experience some symptoms of anxiety most of us will experience some symptoms of ADHD I say as I have 24 tabs open and like three to do lists around me and I think hearing the way that people recovered from their symptoms made me realize that these are strategies available to all of us and for me looking back you know I think I wrote this book in some ways to and this relates back to your great epiphany about you know the importance of having a sense of purpose I think a part of me wrote this book because I was so devastated by this breakup and sort of this impending loneliness and feeling like I don't know that I was a little bit lost in my life so I was genuinely compelled to try on these social prescriptions for the different parts of it and yeah I think my point with all that is to say that you know there's lots of different ways we can approach social prescribing sometimes in a healthcare setting it is helpful to think about it as analogous to you know a pharmaceutical prescription but the science tells us that for specific kinds of suffering sadness distraction worries frustration certain kinds of social prescriptions can be really really good for that so I'll stop there but I thank you for commenting on that and see and seeing the point of it that you know anybody can benefit from these things because we are all bound in our lifetime to experience some symptoms of them at some point

Melanie Avalon
No, I definitely applaud you. I loved those parts of it. Not that you went through that. I thought it really brought value to the book.

And like you're saying, it really shows how you can apply these things in your own life. Okay. I have a lot of questions about just different aspects of the five different pillars. Well, you mentioned that the Alzheimer's thing, I was so excited because I think actually, because you referenced the episode I aired recently, I'm pretty sure that was Dr. Heather Sanderson. And I think it was her book that I, yes, I'm pretty sure, where I first read about these dementia communities. And is it Denmark or Norway?

Julia Hotz
both actually, but the one I talk about is in Norway.

Melanie Avalon
Okay. And she, I'm pretty sure that was her book. She briefly mentioned it. And I was like, oh, I want to know more about this. This sounds so cool.

And then you actually like, you visited, right? You visited? I did. I was so excited. I was like, oh my goodness, this is like what I wanted. I wanted to hear all about this place. Which pillar was that an example of? And what did you learn from it? I'm just so, so fascinated.

Julia Hotz
Yeah. Well, I'll spoil it and say that was my favorite. I know they're like children, you shouldn't pick favorite, but I got the most emotional visiting and writing that chapter.

As we mentioned at the beginning, there's five pillars of social prescribing, movement, nature, art, service, and belonging. And that's true for a couple of reasons. One being that there's so much literature, even outside of formal social prescribing that suggests these five things are really good for our physical and mental health. But the other one, and probably why those health gains are such, is that we evolved to do those five things. The hundreds of tens of thousands of years ago, if we needed food, we had to move our bodies. We had to be able to pay attention to nature to see what kind of food was available and judge the seasons. We had to engage in art and storytelling. There's evidence from hundreds of thousands of years ago that there were cave paintings. Even our earliest ancestors were communicating via stories. Service is another one. There's nobody who was able to survive strictly on their own. We had to learn to figure out how to live with each other, cooperate with each other, live with animals, and belonging as well. That gave us our psychological sense that all the surviving was worth it. All this to say, I tell, I organize the book in terms of those five pillars. But in truth, almost all of the activities have a little bit of all of them. I put this one in the service chapter, and I can explain why, but they're moving. They're also exposed to nature. They're on the farm. There's some art involved because there's some storytelling and they do feel such a sense of belonging with each other. But the way this farm works is so, so cool. Norway became one of the first countries to require that every municipality have a dementia care plan. What that means is that if you are someone with dementia or you're caring for someone with dementia, they are entitled to government funded daycare, essentially. That is sort of the context in which this dementia daycare farm exists. It also exists in other countries like Netherlands, increasingly England. But yeah, that is the sort of like healthcare context of this. Now, what it looks like in practice is really, really cool. You have somebody who picks people up from their homes because a big thing with dementia is that people can't drive anymore. So somebody is picking you up in a minivan in the morning, taking you to this farm. The first thing you do is you're cooking breakfast together. You're cooking, you're cleaning up, you're using sharp knives, you're doing all the things. And then you go on a big walk around this property, a really hard walk to a walk that, if I'm being honest, got me a little bit winded. And then you come back, do the same thing for lunch, and you're telling stories around the table. And then in the afternoon, you're being put to work. You are feeding the cows. You are cleaning the eggs.

Julia Hotz
You are, even in some cases, cleaning up the animal manure. And where am I going with all this? The woman who runs the farm said to me, yeah, cleaning the manure, that might sound like it's not a lot of fun for a lot of people. But when you are dealing with dementia, or you're dealing with Alzheimer's, or you're dealing with Parkinson's, or you're dealing with some kind of cognitive and physical decline that makes you feel like you can't do anything anymore, one of the most rewarding things is being made to feel like you can still contribute.

And this woman who runs the farm, her name is Henriette, she told me it's taken a lot of trial and error. She was hesitant, for example, to have people, for example, using really sharp tools, because what if they hurt themselves? Or what if they forgot how to use it? But what's really beautiful on this farm, and I think this gets to the belonging piece, is that all of them are kind of in this same boat of having dementia. And if one person forgets, the other person can teach them. So yeah, I was so moved by this woman I met, her name's Marianne. And she, first of all, I think we have this picture of people with dementia, that, like I said, they can't do anything more, they can't remember anything. But Marianne, in many ways, is still very cognitively there. She spoke five languages, she's able to speak to me in five different languages. She tells me all about her life. And it's true, she repeats herself sometimes. But her big thing was that she lost her ability to drive. And she was left at home with her husband who told her she talked to her. So, for her, you know, being able to go to this space where she feels purposeful again, where she's out in nature, where she's laughing with people and talking to her heart's content. She says that this is the most medicinal thing that could have happened to her and she still deals with symptoms of dementia, but they, while she's on that farm, she's not reminded of that. She's just reminded of the beauty of the people and the scenery around her and what she can still do.

Melanie Avalon
I wish this was more well known because I, like I said, the first time I heard about it was I think when I read Dr. Sanderson's book.

And then currently right now, also this week, I'm interviewing the journalist Charles Pillar. I don't know if you've met him or know him, but he wrote all the exposés and science that expose the data and the fraud and Alzheimer's research. And he has a book called Doctord. And so reading his book, I don't normally like feel the emotion of anger, but reading his book, it kind of mirrors, I feel like the feelings I was feeling from you when you were talking about like the Sacklers and everything with the opioid epidemic in the book. It's just, it's so frustrating to see all of like just the lies, the lies and the fraud that happens in conventional pharmaceutical world for treating things like chronic pain like you talk about and Alzheimer's and dementia. And there's like, there are these other ways, you know, like there are these other things we could be doing. And I mean, it's really nice to hear, like you said, and that in Norway that they have that it's a program so that everybody can get the daycare.

Julia Hotz
It's amazing. And yeah, you definitely sense of anger in that chapter 10, where I talk about the Sacklers and, you know, there have been other really infamous cases in US history about the sort of pushing of pharmaceutical drugs and the covering up of the harms that they might have. And, you know, yeah, I was really angry. And my jaw was dropped writing that whole chapter.

But also what I do in that chapter is I try to understand the history of that. Like, what is the context of it? And it was a really interesting story to me. I don't want to give too much away because, you know, there's just so much detail there about the way that it was actually really a confluence of factors. And, you know, it's not as if there's like an evil cabal of people who are, you know, scheming for people to be unhealthy. At least that wasn't my understanding after digging into the research. It is true that there have been some bad actors, but it's also true that culturally, and this began in the 1950s, we have been drawn to quick fixes. You know, the very first instances of antidepressants and earlier versions of benzodiazepines coming on the market, they were seen as sort of lifestyle enhancers and people loved them. Hollywood pushed them, you know, Elvis, that one of the earliest versions of this was a drug called Miltown. You know, there were so many references in the 1950s and 60s about people at parties like putting them in martinis and just treating them as mood enhancers for anyone, regardless if they were sick or well. And then once that precedent was set, it became really hard for our culture to get away from that. And I think, you know, that was also a response to everything that was going on at the time. The 1950s and 60s was a time of tremendous change, tremendous turmoil. And, you know, maybe you've seen those like early advertisements of anti-anxiety medications for housewives who are super overwhelmed and need to please their husbands and, you know, like not get frustrated at the PTA meetings, whatever it is. There was a market for that at the end of the day. And so in writing that chapter, you know, I was all ready to just give a big middle finger to the pharmaceutical company. But I had to be honest with the way that I rely on pharmaceutical medication. People I love, my dad for his, you know, rare cancer really benefited from the, from pharmaceutical medications. So I think that, and I love, I'm really excited to read doctorate. And I'm so grateful that all those exposés came out because it is unbelievable that those things can still happen. I think we absolutely need to be paying attention to it. But I also think we need to be paying attention to the culture that lets that happen. And it's why I chose to focus most of this book on what we can learn from other places where this culture does not seem to point us to pills and quick fixes as much.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, and that in particular is what I found so, so helpful because I think I've been, especially being in the US, which like I said, you go through all the different countries, but the US is just so pharmaceutical driven. And like you mentioned, we're only one of two countries, I think New Zealand being the other one that allows direct advertisements to consumers.

And so it's like all we see. And so it was shocking to me, honestly, that there were all these programs and places, especially in other countries with such healing modalities. So it was, it's amazing.

Julia Hotz
It's funny. There's actually just real quick about that, you know, there's a bill right now to have that not be the case, to basically reban direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising. Yeah. Just a side note.

Yeah. It's, it's, I don't know if we want to get political, but it's one of the few like bipartisan areas of agreement that this has gone too far. But you're right that, and for me, I mean, I talk about in the book, you know, growing up, I first learned about what depression was through antidepressant commercials. I was eight years old, the Zoloft, right? Like watching this Zoloft commercial and thinking, Oh, okay. I guess depression is caused by a chemical imbalance, you know, and that this pill is going to correct that chemical imbalance. But we've learned now there was a great umbrella review that came out in 2022, like firmly stating that that is not true. Depression is not caused by an underlying chemical imbalance. And it's true that antidepressants selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which seek to address, you know, low levels of serotonin, they might make you feel better, but the root cause of that depression, they even say it in the Zoloft commercial, we don't know what causes depression. And so I just think that, you know, again, culturally an eight year old watching that commercial is going to grow up, thinking that, you know, depression is caused by this and I must need this thing to feel better instead of understanding that it's actually really complicated. And it's true that some people might feel better from taking this, but it's not the only way. And there are other ways people can feel better as well.

Melanie Avalon
I thought it was interesting that that was the one you focus on because I as well, that whole commercial campaign is like seared in my head. So I mean, they did a good job.

Julia Hotz
Yeah, they did. They did. And yeah, I mean, it's just so interesting that the idea of a chemical imbalance theory dates back to this 1965 paper that was seeking to understand not depression, but how antidepressants work, right? This was right after we had the earliest stage antidepressants. There's also a really cool origin story about how those came on the market. I'll say that for another time.

But, you know, the conclusion in that paper was this chemical imbalance theory is a very overgeneralized description of a very complicated state. But the people at Zolop said, nope, we're taking that. We're running with it. We're going to create this like viral campaign that people like you and me remember, you know, 20 years later. So yeah, you're right. I think it worked. And I have mixed feelings, to be honest, because I know a lot of people on antidepressants who feel really helped by them. And for me, my goal in writing this book was not to demonize or villainize any one type of support. You've got to do what's right for you. But I also wanted to uplift the ways that these social prescriptions, they're not just woo-woo, you know, there is evidence suggesting that these are on par, if not more effective than other types of medication. And why not at the very least have healthcare consider them on equal levels?

Melanie Avalon
So the nature one was fascinating because you talk about the role of nature and in particular how it can address, I mean a lot of things, but one of the things it can address is ADHD. I was really fascinated by this idea of like the soft focus of nature and how it gives us something to focus on.

So what all did you learn about nature as a prescription?

Julia Hotz
Yeah, I, gosh, that's some of my favorite research as well. Cause I think that most people, I actually heard you had another guest on recently talking about like time outside and, and recognizing that not everybody immediately may love nature and time outside. It's me. Yeah, which is fine because well, spoiler alert, art is considered in some ways to be an imitation of nature. So, you know, if nature's not for you, maybe art is for you. And in many ways it's doing some of the same things in nature, which is, as you mentioned, giving you this soft fascination. And there's a real evolutionary reason why we evolved to pay attention to nature. And I think I might've teed this up in the beginning, but it really has to do with this idea that it was essential for our survival. Like if you were the person who could understand, Hey, when the sun sets in this way, you know, we're able to get this much shade or this much sunlight or Hey, you know, I can catch more fish than that other guy. Like all of that was really important for ensuring our survival as hunter gatherers.

And so essentially what happened then is there were these researchers in the 1980s who became really curious about the demands on our attention. The 1980s was a time of all these new technologies, changing economy, and became really curious about something called directed attention fatigue, like the symptoms of which look a lot like ADHD, but it's basically characterized by feelings of distraction, inability to focus, feeling sort of burnt out and overwhelmed all the time. Well, these researchers also found that just as our environment, you know, our environments can absorb our attention, take our attention can deplete us of attention so that we feel like super distracted and frazzled and unfocused nature has the opposite effect because it was so important from an evolutionary perspective. They basically suggest that nature is one of the few things in our environment that we can pay attention to it. Like that metaphor super app, we pay attention to something, but it doesn't deplete our attention stores. It actually restores them. And there's been some really interesting physiological data to suggest that this is true. That people, for example, who take walks in really serene park based nature settings versus on busy roads have less activity in their subgenual prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that is associated with rumination and therefore depression and anxiety. We've seen studies that suggest children who have ADHD who spend time in nature have concentration capabilities by the end of that on par with taking Ritalin, a prescription drug to treat ADHD. So lots of interesting studies like that. PAND has this really interesting body of work where they also in the 1980s, I guess that was like the hot decade for people feeling stressed and burnt out and like they couldn't pay attention. Japan tried this thing called forest bathing where they sent these super stressed out, overworked, burnt out attention frazzled businessmen into the forest, did all the physiological workup, you know, salivary samples,

Julia Hotz
urine samples, blood samples, and found that after spending time in the forest, those men had significant reductions in their levels of cortisol, the hormone associated with stress. They had higher levels and activity in their natural killer cells, which are associated with increased immunity and cancer fighting. They had fewer inflammation markers. Later studies found less blood pressure, lower heart rate. I mean all, all the good things.

And they repeated that study many, many times over with women as well, with all kinds of people and have found that it's pretty robustly true that spending time in the forest especially has these amazing attention, restoring stress, reducing benefits.

Melanie Avalon
I love this topic so much. I have so many really random thoughts and questions about it.

One, I'm just thinking right now, I wonder if, do you have an Apple or Windows? I have an Apple. So is your background right now the default, the forest?

Julia Hotz
Oh my gosh, it is. I never noticed that.

Melanie Avalon
I wonder if Apple does that on purpose, like if they know this research.

Julia Hotz
That's so interesting. They're like, yeah, here we see your 50,000 tabs, but why don't you just look at this nature instead?

Melanie Avalon
Because I think they, I think it's always a nature related back. Um, I think so. Like my memories of them, I feel like it's been like a mountain before it's been, you know, so I, I wonder if they're doing that. I mean, I would imagine it would be on purpose.

And to that point, I was thinking about it because I was thinking about how I like, thank you for listening to that episode. I think I was talking about how I don't always like being outside. And so I'm haunted by this question of like, but it's good for you. But I do actually really love nature just in certain contexts. So like, I, like I love it on my background on my screen. It makes me feel good. And I remember, like, I remember in college, on my laptop and lectures, I would like literally like look up pictures of just like fall landscapes and stuff, because it just made me feel so calm. And it's really interesting to me that it can have that profound of an effect, not even being in it, but just like thinking about it or seeing it. And, and I think you mentioned in the book, like in one of the studies, it had a beneficial effect even on people who didn't like who weren't cognitively aware that they appreciate in nature, it still had a beneficial effect.

Julia Hotz
Yeah, that and also people who to your point of like, maybe you're not outside in nature, but you're just looking at it. There was this really interesting study by this incredible researcher, Roger Ulrich, who compared the recovery rates, post-surgical recovery rates of hospital patients who had a window in their room and they were overlooking the garden versus a brick wall. And they found that those who were overlooking the nature escape recovered faster. They took fewer pain medication. They, according to the nurses, were less agitated.

Part of that research and studies, you know, in that ilk that Ulrich continued to do is why many hospitals now will put a plant in your room and try to incorporate some nature escapes in there, even if not a window. So maybe it is, you know, the nature landscape portraits, like the one we see on our laptop.

Melanie Avalon
I know when I was apartment hunting, one of the number one important things to me was that it had to have lots of windows, it had to have a nature-ish view. Like you said, I didn't want to look at just another wall.

And I know when I've been vetting, when I was trying to find my current therapist and I was meeting a lot of therapists, if their office had no windows, I was like, I can't come in here and do mental health work if there's no window.

Julia Hotz
Yeah, for sure. For sure. I think that's so important.

Like, you know, I totally agree with you about for me being close to a park or having windows is like the only thing like I will, I will live in a box if I have to. But I think that you're tapping into something called biophilia. Like, we are all wired by virtue of being homo sapiens to have some kind of love for nature, even if it's not like, you know, explicitly touching grass, getting my nose up in the trees and on hikes. Appreciating the aesthetic beauty of nature is totally part of it as well.

Melanie Avalon
What I'm looking at right now, and I reflect on how happy it makes me, is I have all these arrow garden units for growing plants inside, but I specifically found seeds for plants that would trellis or trail, like climb up things. So it climbs up my windows. I'm creating a forest inside is the point.

And I also found, I actually made a conscious decision while reading your book because I go to Whole Foods every day. And there's two that are equidistant for me. And one takes the interstate and one takes like kind of back roads and like nature-y-ness. And I was like, oh, I should go to the one that goes through the nature every day. And that has actually had a huge benefit on my life. And that's like just a small little change. So yeah, so I love how we can integrate these things.

I have a super random question. I'll be curious your thoughts. I'm not sure how to properly word it. So in the... Was it also in the nature section that you talked about birdwatching or was that...

Julia Hotz
Yes, that was the, to your point in part three, where I tried them on myself. Yep, big bird watch girl now.

Melanie Avalon
Okay. Okay. So here's my question for you. Well, A, I'd actually like to hear about bird watching because I've only ever heard it as like a phrase. I've never like thought about it. So I was like, I was like, oh, it was another moment, kind of like the dementia farm where I was just so excited to like hear about what an experience is.

My question though, is I was reading, what was it? I think it was a poll and it was, it was like ranked activities that women find least attractive in men.

Julia Hotz
Oh no, don't tell me it was bird watching.

Melanie Avalon
No, I thought number one would be video games. That was number two.

Number one was birdwatching. So my question for you is what is the role here and all of these things of being concerned about if we enjoy something, being concerned about what other people think about us enjoying nothing.

Julia Hotz
That's a really good question. I've never thought about that.

It's also hilarious because, you know, as I make clear, when I was writing the book, I was single going through a breakup. I had a good girlfriend in the same boat with me and we both said, you know, where can we go to meet men? I think birdwatching. I think that's where, I mean, that wasn't, that wasn't, no, the initial part of it was for all the reasons I say in the book, like, you know, wanting to get some of those attention restoring benefits. But I'll be honest, at least it's the one in Brooklyn that I go to, there are a lot of very nice, eligible bachelors there, just saying to the writers of that article. But, you know, yeah, I think that that's a really interesting question. The whole ethos of social prescribing is flipping the script from what's the matter with the person to what matters to you. And what I hear oftentimes is even the process of thinking about that, whether it's in healthcare and you have like a link worker or a doctor or a therapist or a social worker, someone working you through that process, or you're asking it on your own through questions like, what's something you love to do as a kid but haven't had a chance to do since? Or if you had two more hours in your week, what would you spend it doing? Or, you know, when was the last time that you got goosebumps because you were in awe of how beautiful something was? Like these very specific questions that get at what matters to you, what matters to you as Melanie, right? That process in itself, I think, can be therapeutic in many ways. And then if you take the second step and you actually take small steps to do the thing, regardless of whether it's something that is cool or uncool, I think it's about reframing it as medicine, right? And for me, for birdwatching, like I have probably mentioned it many times in this interview, or maybe you could tell by the way I answer questions because I have a million thoughts I want to share all at the same time, that, you know, I struggle with my attention sometimes. And I got into birdwatching because of, as we discussed, all the attention-restoring benefits. And because by virtue of looking up at the sky, at the birds, being outside, I am not looking at my phone. I am not at my computer scrolling through my emails or my news feeds. I am not doing the things that make me feel the most distracted, attention frazzled. I'm doing something that requires my attention. You have to look through binoculars, right? You can't be scrolling on your phone while you're doing that. So, and yeah, did I maybe look a little dorky doing it? Probably, but in that moment, it wasn't about that. It was about doing something that matters to me and yeah, doing something that I could have permission to treat as medicine.

Melanie Avalon
Awesome awesome awesome. Yeah, I don't even know are there bird watching like places everywhere probably because they have to be birds

Julia Hotz
Right. They're doing for the birds. The one that I found was through my local parks department. So yeah, I could imagine for you like seeing what the Atlanta Parks Department offers. I've heard in other cities that that is often where the sort of free, the free bird watching experiences can come.

I think there are probably like trained guides that you could pay for, but yeah, I would recommend parks departments as a start.

Melanie Avalon
Awesome. I do think out of all the different things you touched on, the ones that I implement the most and resonate with me are, well, one of them you mentioned earlier, I think art. I really love, well, I love theater. And one of the reasons I love theater is it's kind of like what you were saying, you can't be doing something else. Like you're completely immersed and, you know, a lot of them are like narrative-driven and everything, but I went actually two nights ago to MOMIX. I don't know if you've heard of them, but they're just through your Instagram. They're kind of like Cirque du Soleil dance-ish, but it was an Alice in Wonderland theme. And there was no plot. It was very, I mean, I don't know, there was a loose plot, but it was very esoteric and like, you know, and just dance and immersive. But I was just reflecting on the good feeling you get from just being in an experience like that.

I just think it's so, so healing. And so I really liked the chapter on art and everything there. And then the cold I love, which I think was in the, that was in the movement chapter, right? Because of the swimming, the sea swimming. And you, so you're a better woman than I am. I've actually, I mean, I do cry out there every every day, but I've never actually, I've never even done an ice bath. So you went and did like the sea swimming.

Julia Hotz
I did. I did. I was going to ask you at the end of this what your favorite social prescription would be. What would your dream social prescription be? And I was going to guess it was theater because I know that that was something that you grew up doing and something that you seem to care a lot about and you're always recommending awesome shows. And I think you're absolutely right that theater can have all these tremendous benefits. Part of exactly why you said you have to be absorbed in it. You're absorbed, whether you're watching it or whether you're performing in it, you're absorbed in the story. And sometimes I talk about this in the art prescription chapter, but being removed from your own story, from your own suffering and putting it into perspective of the human experience, art, theater, music, this is something that often touches on themes of universal suffering. That in itself can be sort of a comfort and help us reframe our struggles as, you know what, this character got through this hard thing. I can too.

It sounds really corny, but when we do that with kids, for example, who are dealing with bullying or dealing with nighttime anxiety and we read them stories about people like them who overcome those challenges, lo and behold, they experience less anxiety. So a lot of truth to that. And I really like how you sort of, that's your birdwatching, you know, that is your environment that absorbs you. And I think that's beautiful. I'll share quickly cause you brought it up about the sea swimming prescription. You know, I'll be honest, that was not something that I would have been my first choice of a social prescription. You are in, you know, this seaside town in England. It's really, really cold. I, you know, did the sort of beginner thing and got this really thick wetsuit, but most of the people I met out there on the beach were just raw dogging it in their usual like bathing suits. And get this, most of the swimmers were people in their fifties and sixties and seventies, including the person who I write about in this chapter, Amanda, who dealt with debilitating depression, had these horrible things happen to her. You know, her husband was cheating on her. Her mom passed away. She loses her job. She loses her whole community. She has to move to a place where she knew nobody. And in the experience of sea swimming, she started that out being on the maximum dose of antidepressant and feeling in her words, like her life was sort of caught in a helmet. All these terrible things that happened to her kept replaying in her head. But once she's prescribed this sea swimming course where she and the other women are learning how to move their bodies in this really cold water, control their breathing, have control over their core and their legs, do these stretches on the beach before and after a lot of things are happening. Number one, she's moving. And we know there's a huge body of research suggesting that engaging in movement has all these mood boosting benefits. It can boost our serotonin. It can boost our endorphins.

Julia Hotz
It can boost our norepinephrine, like all of the same ingredients that are in pharmaceutical medications. Many times exercise produces those same things. So that's number one.

Number two is that as we talked about before, she's in nature. She's in this beautiful nature setting. She's not attached to a screen. She's literally in the sea, so she's not taking anything with her. She's trying something that's hard. You know, there's a lot of value in social prescriptions is about trying something a little bit difficult and feeling yourself getting better at it. And then the third thing, which ends up being perhaps the most important thing is that she's doing this with other people who soon become her friends, who soon meet up with her to do all kinds of non-swimming things.

And lo and behold, Amanda, you know, she does this sea swimming prescription. She ends up keeping it up, organizing with the women in the group to keep meeting up on the weekends, swim, and then tea after. And over time, she's able to go from the maximum dose of antidepressant to the minimum. I heard lots of stories like that. Oh, and of course we didn't mention that the cold water itself, you know, has been seen to have some anti-inflammatory and antidepressant benefits. So that one is a great one that combines a lot, even though it was something that I didn't necessarily see myself doing. It ends up being really, really fun and is something, you know, I would totally try again.

Melanie Avalon
Did you feel like a really big endorphin rush after?

Julia Hotz
You do. You feel that like, you know, people say, Oh, well, can't you just take a cold shower? It's like that, but 10X because yeah, you're smelling the sea. I mean, all five senses are engaged.

You did something hard. You did it with other people and you're kind of laughing about it, but you're going through it together. And I just remember feeling so awake and alive the rest of the time.

Melanie Avalon
day. It's amazing.

Amazing. I'll comment really quickly on the theater piece. I think one of my favorite studies, because they're and listeners friends, there's so many studies all throughout the book. Definitely get it now, get the connection cure now. I will say one of my favorite studies was the one you talked about where they said, I think they showed people like circles or something and people could not objectively describe the image. They gave it like a story like this, the circle is leaving. I don't know. I'm really, really fascinated by how we see the world and perceive meaning and add meaning to things. I think with the looking at theater and things like that for me, that's what really, really does it for me.

Julia Hotz
That's such a good call. That's one of my favorite ones to whip out at parties on this like 1944 study that showed, you know, when people were shown shapes moving, quote unquote, at random, nobody described, as you said, in objective terms, what happened. They all described a story to it.

And that in 1944, you know, among other research that was happening at the time about art therapy and kind of associating abstract images and incorporating that into therapy, all that was happening at the same time. It was very effective on veterans at first art therapy. People had experienced some serious traumas, but maybe lacked the verbs to express it and talk therapy. Maybe, you know, had, it was so deeply embedded in them and traumatized that we do this thing with trauma where, you know, we try to push it further and further down, art can bring that out in abstract ways and help people access it in the way they want to. And, you know, those two examples, we're talking a lot about visual art, but I think you're absolutely right that theater can do that too, because of this very human tendency we have to want to make sense of our life and want to feel and empathize with stories, whether it's our own or whether it's somebody else's. It's the way we make sense of the world.

Melanie Avalon
It's amazing, amazing. Well, I want to be really respectful of your time.

We didn't get as much in this conversation into all these different countries and how this is actually literally being implemented. So I guess for listeners, a lot of the listeners are US-based, some in Canada and then the UK, that would probably be the order. And then there's like random countries sprinkled throughout, but practically the future of this being implemented on both a, I guess first of all, like a government level or like a societal level, do you see these social prescriptions becoming more and more a thing, especially in the US, especially with things like insurance, like would insurance cover these and just what is the future here with this actually practically becoming more accessible and available to people?

Julia Hotz
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'll say two things. I'll talk about, you know, what actually is happening here in the US from the healthcare perspective. And then I'll talk about the plot twist that we kind of teased in the beginning. But you're right that most of the examples I talk about in the book are in England, because that is where social prescribing began. That is where in, you know, 2018, 2019, the National Healthcare Service, which is a government funded system of healthcare. In other words, people pay taxes into it and the government is the insurer. You pay taxes into it, you can show up to your doctor for free. Now, there's a lot of issues with that form of healthcare. We probably won't get into it now, but in other words, there was a national incentive to improve health outcomes, to have less pressure on that healthcare system and to reduce costs, right?

So it is true that in places that have universal healthcare, where this has spread, such as Canada and Portugal, there is more of a natural buy-in. But here in the United States, it is happening and it's happening in very interesting ways. You asked about insurance, for example. And on some level, it's true that, you know, our system of private insurers, they're a business and they don't have the same incentives as a government funded healthcare system. But at the end of the day, what do insurance companies want? They do want people to be healthy. They want you to pay for the sick care, but they want you to be healthy because if you're not healthy, they're going to have to pay more for your medications, for your surgeries that cover, for your therapies that they cover. And that is why you may have heard that some insurance companies have started to cover the costs of gym memberships, particularly for seniors, where healthcare costs really tend to rack up. Well, in that same vein, believe it or not, where I'm from, New Jersey, the Insure Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield has begun to cover art prescriptions for people at risk of overspending on their insurance. So six months of art prescriptions, whether that's theater, whether that's art classes, things in the newer community, they're starting with this newer population. They're also bringing it now to university students as well and other people in the area. And it's going really well so far. It's been found, as we've seen in the UK, that when people are connected to social prescribing, not only do they experience a reduction in symptoms, but they use less healthcare, emergency room visits go down, doctor's visits go down, costs go down. And it's through this logic that now, as I might have mentioned at the beginning, up to 30 countries now have forms of social prescribing. That said, in the US, it is going to be harder. A lot of it looks like grassroots initiatives. There's an amazing initiative called ParksRX that tries to partner with healthcare to systemically reconnect people to parks and rec opportunities near them. But we are seeing more and more examples of healthcare and health insurance buying into this.

Julia Hotz
Now, with all that said, we talked about the plot twist. And I am really hopeful and excited for social prescribing being more mainstream. There's an amazing group in the US called Social Prescribing USA that's kind of cataloging all those initiatives I talked about and trying to connect researchers and practitioners and students and educators to this end goal of making social prescribing mainstream. Now, I'm a big fan of that goal.

But what I realized in writing this book, and it's a belief that sneakily a lot of the people in the social prescribing movement share, is that the end goal of this is to not have social prescribing. The end goal of this is for people to reconnect with what matters to them in their communities, movement, nature, art, service, and belonging, and not have healthcare and health insurance have to be the middleman. But for us to treat those things as medicine on our own. So in other words, the end point is not social prescribing, but it's a health creating community. It's understanding that, hey, I may be experiencing some symptoms of what looks like ADHD. But instead of going to my therapist or my social worker, getting screened, getting diagnosed, and having them refer me to a birdwatching club, it's having the knowledge and resources to be able to prescribe myself to it. Plot twist that, yes, I believe in social prescribing as a intermediary to the long-term goal of people being able to prescribe themselves these things without barriers and without the idea that this is somehow less than medicine because it is medicine.

Melanie Avalon
Amazing, amazing, amazing. Julia, this has been absolutely so incredible. Everything I could have wanted and more.

So listeners, go get The Connection Cure now. It will be just so eye-opening and truly, truly change your life and give you so many paradigm shifts. And we just barely touched on everything in the book in today's conversation. So there's so much more there.

Are you writing another book?

Julia Hotz
Well, it's funny you bring up theater because I am unofficially, it's not official yet. I don't have like a book deal yet, but what I'm trying to explore is sort of a sequel of this book looking at kids and teenagers.

And one of the ones I'm really interested in is theater, all these programs that prescribe theater to kids with anxiety or prescribe stand-up comedy to young people dealing with depression. Maybe we'll have to do a part two because I think you're going to like what I'm fighting so far.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my goodness, this is so up my alley. Yes, yes, yes. Did you watch the movie Sing Sing? Was that what, no, no, no. Was that it?

Julia Hotz
Yes. That has been on my list, the prison one where they talk about the program. Yeah. That's been on my list. Have you seen it?

Melanie Avalon
Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, it was really good. And it's, you know, based on a true story, and they actually have some of the actual prisoners in it, like as the actors, which is because they are the actors. So it's, yeah, really cool.

Well, thank you so so much, Julia. The last question that I ask every single guest on this show, and it's just because I realize, again, more and more each day, the importance of mindset. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Julia Hotz
I am grateful for, okay, this is going to be a hot take, but I'm contradicting a lot of what I said earlier, but I am grateful for the technologies that connect us because, you know, as wonderful as it is to have movement, nature, art, service, and belonging. I was connected to you by our mutual friend and mutual connection who also found me through the internet, so I am grateful for the chance to talk to you and learn about how much we have in common and how we're totally going to go birdwatching together in New York because I think it is ultimately a great intermediary or precursor for the great in-person connection that can happen.

Melanie Avalon
I love that answer and I think it perfectly captures just a really good mindset to have about everything because it's kind of akin to what you're saying about the pharmaceuticals. Like everything, it's really like everything has a place in time and it's how you use it and how you view it and do you use it to detract from your life or enhance your life?

And I agree. I love email. It gives me dopamine in the morning and wakes me up and it lets me connect with people.

And so I love that answer. That's so great.

Julia Hotz
Yes, and after all, we do have our nature screensaver look at in the meantime.

Melanie Avalon
We do. I know. Thank you, Apple. All right. Well, thank you, Jules. This was amazing. We will talk soon and you're just the best. So thank you so much.

Julia Hotz
Can't wait to meet you in real life, but thanks for everything today.

Melanie Avalon
you too. Bye. Take care.

Thank you so much for listening to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. For more information and resources, you can check out my book, What Win Wine, as well as my supplement line Avalon X. Please visit melanieavalon.com to learn more about today's guest. And always feel free to contact me at contact at melanieavalon.com. And always remember, you got this.