RockneCAST

Hike for Mental, Physical and Spiritual Wellbeing (#253, 7 Oct. 2024)

Just went on two amazing hikes this past weekend and it reminded me about the powerful mental, physical and spiritual benefits of a nature hike.

What's the difference between a "hike" and a "walk"? Walking involves a paved surface while hiking involves walking on a unpaved trail out in nature.

In this episode, I explore the health benefits of hiking versus walking and also try to convince you that it surpassed running in terms of your health.

I also explore the cognitive benefits and share a book recommendation relating to intentionally creating "A-ha" moments of creative insight, The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain." by Mark Beeman and John Kounious.

Get out there and hike!!

Broadcast on:: 07 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

What is going on guys, I'm going to give you a great gift today. The gift of getting out into nature and going on a hike. I'm going to remind you of something that you likely already know, but I'm going to remind you with details in reading and research why hiking is so important to your emotional, physical and spiritual well-being and I'm going to give you an awesome hike near Decora Iowa that you can check out, but if you don't live in Decora Iowa, you know your old places. There's a ton of good places to hike and you can discover your own, but this is going to be a really good one because I'm not only going to tell you to go out on a hike, I'm going to explain to you why it is so awesome and explain and explain to you why it's so awesome. Likely, all I'm going to be able to do is to remind you of something that you already know. This is true with most pieces of wisdom, you already know it, but I just need to remind you if you don't do beakly hikes about how awesome hikes are for your physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. So let's start off with my recommendation. There is an awesome hike right outside of Decora Iowa, called Milanife Springs. When we think of awesome places to hike in Decora, oftentimes we'll recommend hikes that are right in Decora itself, like the one at Twin Springs, there's a lot of really good challenging hikes around Dunning Springs, there's a lot of ones that shoot off of Palisades, but oftentimes we forget to recommend Milanife Springs, and Milanife Springs is as good, perhaps better, than a lot of these other springs, but it's not as well known, I mean it's known, but not that well known. So this past weekend, I went to Milanife Springs and it is awesome. So first let me describe the hike itself. The hike itself is about 0.8 mile long, and this would be considered about a mildly to moderately difficult hike. There's hardly any incline or decline on this hike. There's a few, but not very much. There are very little obstacles, there are some tree roots that you got to watch out for, and it basically is like between a bluff in the river, so the hike itself is like you're on this special cantilever, like this little place between the top of the bluff and the river, so it's really cool because in thinking about great hikes around Decora, I don't know where there's any really other hikes that are kind of like that, where it's kind of like you're halfway up between the river and a nature hike, and the bluff itself. Now there's one that's very similar along the Upper Iowa River at the Trout Run Trail, which we used to call Doug Road. However, that hike is paved. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about going on a walk on a paved trail. I'm talking about going on a hike on an unpaved trail, so this is the only one that I really know of where you're really hiking halfway up between the bluff and the river. What will you experience as you go on this hike, especially during the fall? So if you're hearing this in your close by it all now, you will experience in a beautiful exploding cascade of colors and images of yellow birch and deep red maples and beautiful sloped flowing trays and a sun dappled Upper Iowa River right next to it and a beautiful vista of the flowing corn as it's about ready to be harvested in this beautiful valley just northwest of Decora. At the end of the hike, you will see one of the few waterfalls in northeast Iowa. Now at least at this time of year, it was not a huge waterfall, so it's not like a spectacular waterfall. It's definitely not as nice as Dunning Springs, but as far as I can tell, it's one of the big three that we have around the Decora, Iowa area. I'm going to check out and see if there are other ones, but we got Dunning Springs, which is awesome, which could have pulled us all over any place. We have Seaver Springs, which is just south of Decora, which is also awesome, and there's a hike located near there, but you generally don't go there to hike because the hike is really steep. It's a little dangerous, not great for elderly people or kids. Maybe a really youthful early 20-something, but that's about it. And then there's Miami Springs, and this is one of the few that really couples a hike with a waterfall as a destination, and it was freaking awesome. Now I went on this hike after I had gone to church with my partner and my mom, and then we went to this little cute little church called St. Bridget's, and kind of spur the moment we decided to go to Malanithi Springs, and it was so glad, and I didn't have to bring my mom. It was just my partner and me, and it was like awesome. It was like such good exercise, and I felt so good after I hike, and it just kind of reminded me, oh my gosh, I've not really done a rocky cast on the benefits of hiking in terms of the physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being that you get with hiking, and I did a little bit of research to give you some details as to why hiking is so freaking awesome, and even better than walking, that I thought I would do a rocky cast for you. So let's get into some of the physical benefits of hiking versus walking, and I think you'll be a little bit surprised about how intense hiking is as opposed to walking. First off, let's talk about the calories burned, and I'm going to use the example of a 210-pound man. Now note, this is without a rucksack, so if you're wearing a 20 to 25-pound rucksack, you are tripling the amount of calories burned. If you wear a 20 to 25-pound rucksack and you have moderate to steep inclines, you are probably quintupling the calories burned, but I'm only talking about walking versus, and walking is defined as walking on a paved trail as opposed to hiking in which you're on an un-baved trail, meaning there's going to be some variation there, there's going to be some things you have to step over, there's going to be some ruts, the trail's not going to be perfectly graded, you are hiking. So here's the results that you'd get based upon hiking, walking at a moderate and a brisk pace, and that'll also compare to running at a moderate pace in relation to hiking. So for about one hour of hiking, a 210-pound man can expect to burn about 504 calories versus walking at a moderate pace. That's pretty cool. And then a 210-pound man versus brisk walking, and brisk walking would be like one of those Olympic walkers, maybe not quite that fast, but you're kind of like really running along, you're not quite running, but you're really walking fast enough that you're at a zone two-carding, moderate zone two-cardio when you're doing your very brisk walking, hiking will allow you to burn more calories at a moderate pace than brisk walking on a paved trail. For brisk walking, it's 475 calories for one hour versus 504 calories for moderate pace walk, hiking out in nature. So how freaking cool is that? That not only are you most likely getting more tranquility and more solitude, which is also really good for your mental health, and I will get into that, you're also getting a greater calorie burn by just doing hiking as opposed to walking, and it doesn't feel that different. Like I definitely feel like when I was hiking yesterday, I was definitely sweating more than I otherwise would have had I just gone out on a walk. The other thing that you get with hiking, and here I didn't look up any studies with this, but it's just, you know, it's just true, you'll experience it once you do it. What it does in terms of your balance is significant. In fact, that may be one of the reasons why you would choose to hike versus walk. One of the things that you'll notice on any good hiking trail that's in forest, for example, you're most likely going to come across some roots, and I almost botched it once, I almost fell once yesterday on the basis of those roots that were on the ground, these tree roots. Now, they're an obstacle, and they do give a greater degree of difficulty, but what do they also give you? They give you an sense of awareness and focus and balance and presence while you're walking. Now, right now, I'm 49 years old. One of the key things that you lose as you grow older, as you grow into your 50s, 60s, 80s, and 80s is the ability to balance yourself while walking and to focus while walking. Now, when you're used to just walking along with no obstacles, you just lose your sense of balance, use it or lose it, baby. And so when you're hiking, you are looking out for these things, and you're having to lift your feet more than you do if you want. That act of lifting and your muscles, not quite knowing how they're going to land, causes a lot more instability in your walking environment, which then requires your own body to compensate to concentrate, to focus, to work on your balance, and to look while you're walking. And this is really, really good for you. The other thing that you're going to get with most moderately difficult, I'd say even easy hiking trails, most hiking trails are going to have some hills, some incline, and some decline. Now, if you have a steep incline while you're hiking, you're going to significantly increase increase your calorie burn. You're not likely to do as much, but so for a moderately difficult hike, you're going to have some incline and decline. That is going to give you a significant calorie advantage while you go walking. I think you'll really be surprised at what level of cardiovascular you will get while hiking. And it's just the difference, same distance, same relative difficulty in terms of how much you're breathing in and out, and the calories are significant because your body is just working. But it's not, you know, it's one thing when you're working a lot harder and you feel like, "Oh my gosh, I'm really working more," but I'm stressing myself more and so it makes it more difficult to do. As you hike, your experience of pain is no more than it is while you're doing a similarly difficult amount of walking. Hiking versus walking, you don't feel like you're working that hard, but your body is working harder and you're burning a lot more calories. So you get a lot more bang for your buck in terms of your cardiovascular, your amount of calorie burned, and in your balance by engaging in moderately difficult hiking environments, which is described, moderate is described as a one to five percent grade. Now if you really want a turbo charge, you're hiking at a 20 to 25 pound rucksack and you're going to triple the difficulty or the amount of calories burned without the corresponding eating, it will feel that much more difficult. Now if you rock and you do some steep inclines, you're going to quintuple that. So there's ways to kind of do that, but if you're going to go out for your first hike, just go out without any excessive weight and just start hiking. So this is so huge that you get physically while hiking versus walking. And of course walking has its own benefits too. So if you're not close to nature areas, go out and get some walks in to get some sunlight and fresh air and that has its own benefits. There's other physical benefits too, but I wasn't able to get into all those other ones that you can do your own research. Now let's take a look at the difference between the calorie burn that you get from moderately paced hiking versus moderately paced jogging per hour. So for the same hour of hiking, you're going to get again about 504 calories burned. The same amount for jogging would be 1046 calories burned. So you're going to about double your amount of calories burned with jogging versus walking, but are hiking, which I described as walking on an unpaved trail. But I still think hiking is much superior to running and here's why. I'm kind of down on running in most cases. One of my favorite health influencers, Andrew Huberman, does about one day of moderately difficult cardio per week, which I think he would just describe as jogging, otherwise he does some sprinting, he does some walking. Why doesn't he do more than that? The issue that I have with running, if you're going to be on paved trails, you're going to have a lot of pounding on your knees, your joints, and your hips, which over time will definitely accumulate. The other issue I have with running, even though you do get some good cardiovascular and mental health benefits with running, if you've seen anyone who runs a lot, and especially if they're a dude, and I've also seen that whether they're a dude or they're a woman, you tend to see that they get this skinny look. I think that there's a concept called an ectomorph, which I don't mean to insult ectomorphs, but it's definitely better than looking like you're totally morbidly obese, but it's basically the opposite of that, where you look skinny. And at least I don't think that looking really skinny looks that good. So if you're looking to look really skinny and bony, go run a lot, but I don't think most of us want that, most of us want some degree of musculature. And so if you run a lot and you become one of these people that get up and put in three to five miles every day, great, you're going to get really, really good cardio. You are going to have great mental health benefits with that. So there's definitely benefits of that. But the impact on your hips and your knees, I just don't think is worth it, especially based upon you don't really get that much more calories burned. Now keep in mind, I think this holds true that if you add in a rock to your hike, well there you're going to get 1500 calories burned and you're going to have more fun and you're going to be able to go for longer. I'm not really aware of any physical downside of excessive amounts of hiking. The only downside that I can see of hiking physically is it's a little bit more dangerous. So the hikes that I like to do in Dicora typically involve walking alongside a bluff. And yeah, you could slip and you could fall into the ravine. So this is true in a lot of places in Dicora, my hometown. There's a lot of places where if you don't pay attention, it can kind of be a little bit dangerous. So I think to me, and of course if you fall, you're probably, if you're not going to die, you're going to get seriously hurt. So that's the only, but that's the only physical downside. As long as you pay attention, it's just the right amount of danger for you to kind of experience. And of course that helps enhance your focus, make you feel more alive. That's sort of, it's about the right amount of danger should do pay attention. Don't take a selfie while you're hiking, then you might slip and you could die. But other than that, I can't really identify any significant physical downside to hiking. I think it's something you can do a lot. The other advantage that I think hiking has over running in terms of calorie burn, it's much easier to go on a two to three hour hike. And yeah, you can do a two to three hour run, but again, I think you're much more less likely to do that. You're harder to do. And number two, you're just less likely to do it. Number three, especially if you're talking about running on paved trails, that is just devastating to your hips, your knees. And I also believe that it can be, you can get damage to your heart. If you do it too much, I'd encourage you to research that even more, if you're like a real cardio person, I don't think the human animal is really designed to run all the time. I think we're designed for chase hunting occasionally to get meat. So I don't know how often hunter-gatherers chase hunted meat. I guess is it was probably, you know, one to two times a week, four or five times a month. Certainly if you're getting a woolly mammoth and you can stay in the same place, shit, that could probably keep you going for like a month. I don't think you were hunting every day. I really don't think you were doing that. You were most likely hunting, getting a good stash of protein and meat. And then you might be using, you know, eating your tubers, eating your berries, getting some honey, kind of walking around, chilling out, because as cavemen, you weren't thinking about eating in shape because they were all ripped and jacked at that time. That was just humans. They all looked ripped and jacked. And if you look at modern hunter-gatherers now, they're all jacked. They're all jacked. They're all in good shape. None of them are obese. They're all in good shape. The only ones who are obese are like ones that have contact with missionaries and they're stuffing them full of pasta and bread and things like that. So I think hiking, if you can set aside the time to do it, it can really be one of the most life-changing things for you in terms of the physical. But so let's talk about the mental. The mental is kind of self-evident on its face. So I'll just offer a personal observation and then back it up, I think, with some research that I've done on this. But I think most of you know how the endorphins flow when you get kind of a light amount of exercise, plus you're able to get out into nature. It's so visually stimulating, looking back and forth, observing the trees, hearing the rustle of the leaves. It's kind of a multi-sensory experience through your eyes, through your ears, through the different environment that you're experiencing. It is like an emotional high, except it's just awesome. You will feel so good. I can see the cascade of colors in my head right now that I experienced yesterday and I so want you to be able to experience this. So yes, there are significant mental benefits. I think most of you probably already know that. But there's also significant, even for some very significant, you think about the twin horses of mental dysfunction, that a lot of people experience and a lot of people experience. Depression and anxiety. I've never experienced a lot of depression. I've had moments where I've had kind of down days. My big one was anxiety. That is something that I think, I don't know, it's just because of the way that I'm wired or because I drink a lot of coffee. I don't know. But that was something, at some point in my life, I really struggled with a lot. And I think a lot of people experience that one too. That's just a fact of life that we're wired to kind of fear the unseen into the future. If properly channeled, it can be incredibly healthy. If not, it can be incredibly destructive. And so there was a peer-reviewed study that was done by Simone Gressinini, who did a peer-reviewed meta-analysis of the Nature Walk in the 2022 Journal of Clinical Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical journal. And essentially what Simone Gressini did is she did a meta-analysis of all the studies that have been done on the cognitive benefits as nature as kind of an intervention for anxiety and depression. So a meta-analysis is an analysis of all the reviews. So instead of doing their own research, they're essentially analyzing all the individual studies and then summarizing that research in its totality. You've known for a long time that we think it feels good. But medicine can't just, you just can't pull stuff out of your ass and say, I think you would feel better if you would go on a nature walk. Well, this particular study, this meta-analysis, essentially confirmed that a nature walk, now they talk about a nature walk versus a nature hike, but I'm not going to quibble with that. But it effectively improves your mental health. And here they were looking at people that were suffering from anxiety and suffering from depression and their emotional well-being significantly elevated, not only during the time they actually afterwards, but for the significant times afterwards. So I'm not going to do a super deep dive into this topic, but I think that this is an aspect of the benefit of a nature walk that is present that is so, so important. I think one of the big problems or critiques I have of conventional medicine is to use the pill as the first level intervention when there are so many free and effective interventions that do not involve any kind of pill whatsoever. You know, many of you know that I just did a rocking cast on Casey Means' Good Energy Book, and she highlighted in that book that a lot more doctors now are actually prescribing nature as a medical intervention for some of these chronic medical conditions that really seriously affect people. You know, the fact that you need a pill to address it doesn't mean that this chronic condition isn't severe. Chronic are defined as conditions that don't kill you today, but if left untreated like type 2 diabetes meant severe depression, anxiety, it could have some significantly acute events if these issues aren't treated. And of course, the problem with a lot of the artificial interventions is, yeah, you address one variable, but how many other negative variables flow out of that. And so before you go into see a psychiatrist or anyone else, before you go to them, really look about ask yourself, how much nature time am I getting? How many nature hikes am I doing? And I think this isn't true just for me. One of the things you'll feel as you go out at a nature hike, you will feel like a human being. Like, I think this is to walk is to be human. To walk out in nature is to really tap into every ounce of your evolutionary biology. When you do that, when you tap into your evolutionary biology, and you align with that, you create this incredible power within you. And that's why I think you get this cascade of mental emotions when you go out on a walk. Because you're doing what we were literally put on this earth to do. Human beings evolved to walk significantly. Every day for extended periods of time, we were hunter gatherers, meaning we were not located to one place. We got up and walked every single day. Note, I don't think that we got up and ran every single day. I don't think we got up and sprinted every single day. But one of the things we did do is we walked every single day. And I think that's why we feel so good when we walk. But there's another aspect that I want you to consider when you're thinking about the health benefits of walking and the health benefits of hiking in particular in nature. And that is to be able to solve some deep financial scientific or even emotional problems that you're working on through the tapping into the power of your alpha waves within your brain. And here I'm going to rely upon the work of John Kooniev's, a professor of psychology at Drexel University and co-author of the Eureka Factor, the aha moments, creative insight and the brain. I have not read this book, but I'm definitely going to review it. And I'm definitely going to do a rocky cast on this book. This is something that I'm really interested in. How do we actually intentionally engage in certain activity that's likely to give us moments of creative insight? And after doing the research, experiencing it myself, I think more and more companies should demand that their employees go out on hikes during the work day, especially those that are entrusted with coming up for creative solutions that they're working on. If they're a scientist, if they're an executive, I think that they should be required to go out on walks at least once or twice a week to tap into the creative power of their unconsciousness. And why is that? Well, Kooniev's in this book, Eureka Factor, aha moments, creative insight and the brain, talk about these things called alpha waves. And I've only, his collaborator was Dr. Mark Beeman, I believe in the Department of Psychology from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. And they looked at this thing. What actually happens in the brain when we have a mental or creative breakthrough? Now, there's two ways that creativity can arise. One is like when you're playing chess, like you're consciously concentrating on a problem. You're trying to solve a math problem. You're trying to do a particular task. You're aware that you're doing it and you're focusing on that task and you're aware that you're engaging in that activity. The other one is where you are tapping into your unconscious mind. And here we get into daydreaming, the benefits of daydreaming or tapping into your alpha waves. I recently did a podcast on picking up sticks and the merits of picking up sticks in your own yard. And of course, it was deeper than just picking up sticks in your yard. But it was this process of picking up sticks in my yard allowed my brain to tether itself from the conscious mind, the day to day anxieties of the conscious mind and let my mind wander while I was out there picking up sticks. I was unplugged from my phone. I was unplugged from my people calling me. I was just letting my mind freely associate. This is one of the things that we found when we like take a shower, for example, why so many people have this creative aha moment while they're taking a shower because unless you are talking down your phone, like you have a waterproof cell phone, and if you do that, dude, you got issues, most people don't have electronics while they're taking a shower. They're unconnected and they're just letting their brain flow and they're letting their brain relax. And usually other than like conscious or thinking about washing your hair or scrubbing your balls, you are just relaxing five to 10 minutes of just a warm shower, letting your body relax. And your mind is wandering. And it's a lot of times when it's wandering, you are picking up these free associations and your mind is making these associations. So it has value and that aha moment that Kunios writes about in this book, Eureka Factor, aha moments, these creative things seem to come out of nowhere. They seem disconnected from your ongoing stream of thought. And it's a particular part of the brain that is not conscious. It's connected to a lot of other parts of the brains, but this particular area of the brain, which he says, the burst of activity, that they've actually measured this, it occurs in the right temporal lobe of the brain. It's the particular area that's connected to a lot of other areas in the brains. And it seems to make those connections or association between different ideas or sensations according to Kunios. It's also the area associated with understanding of jokes and metaphors, which sometimes requires a mental leap to get it. And more interestingly, the brain blinks. There's a moment where all of a sudden, like it connects with all parts of the other brain. And there's a brush of alpha waves in the back of the brain, shutting down the activity in the visual cortex. But part of the brain that processes visual and perceptual information, in the same way that you might close your eyes or look away from a problem before reaching an epiphany. And he concludes, just before you have this infoid insight, you momentarily become less aware of your environment. It cuts out distraction and allows us to focus inward so that our subconscious can make these connections between the ideas and bits of knowledge that are already stored in the brain. Am I making sense here? Now, of course, while you're hiking, you're not going to want to hike blindfolded, because you're going to trip and you're going to fall down the ravine and you're going to dice and don't do that. But when you hike and when you disconnect from your cell phone, from your day-to-day cares and worries, you do get into this kind of meditative state that allows you to kind of freely associate. And the only thing I would encourage you to do is that you may not always get these aha moments, but just to bring a notebook with you, just in case you have one, to kind of write down what pops into your brain while you're kind of relaxing. Because one of the things, I don't think I've ever felt stressed out in nature. You feel relaxed. And even if you don't have one of these aha moments, you are going to feel relaxed. You're going to feel purpose-driven. If you're with your partner, you're going to feel even more connected. And best yet, this is something that anyone can do. It's absolutely free and it has power to completely transform your life if you engage in these intentional acts of allowing your brain to freely associate and make these different connections. And I think it works best when you couple it with intentionally reading, absorbing, learning, engaging, and then disconnecting. So plug in and then plug out. Plug in by doing the reading, going to lectures, learning from your friends, learning from your family members. I think one of these solitary walks, you can make these kind of free associations. So that's it for this episode of the Rachne cast. The purpose is to share what I've learned in mind, body, and spirit so that you can transform your own life and pass it on. So I hope you found this particular episode awesome. I hope you go on a hike to Malanithi Springs and if not at Malanithi Springs that you hike in your own locale, if you're in Britain, Australia, California, you know where the hiking spots are. This is your command to hike and to get out in nature and to tap into all these powerful mental health, physical and spiritual benefits of your weekly height. So that's it for this episode of the Rachne cast. Until next time you and I see each other on the Rachne cast.

Just went on two amazing hikes this past weekend and it reminded me about the powerful mental, physical and spiritual benefits of a nature hike.

What's the difference between a "hike" and a "walk"? Walking involves a paved surface while hiking involves walking on a unpaved trail out in nature.

In this episode, I explore the health benefits of hiking versus walking and also try to convince you that it surpassed running in terms of your health.

Get out there and hike!!