Narrator:
0:01
Welcome to MedEvidence, where we help you navigate the truth behind medical research with unbiased, evidence-proven facts, powered by ENCORE Research Group and hosted by cardiologist and top medical researcher, Dr. Michael Koren.
Dr. Koren:
0:17
Hello, I'm Dr. Michael Koren and I'm actually really excited about today's session of MedEvidence. We like to explore traditional areas of medicine, but we actually also like to explore alternative areas of medicine and alternative areas of helping people with their health in many, many different forms. So we have that opportunity today with Dr. Trey Wilson, who's going to teach us and me particularly about horticultural therapy. So why don't you just give us a brief bio, Trey? You're not a horticulturalist throughout your career, so why don't you let people know who you are and how you got to where you are now?
Dr. Trey Wilson:
0:56
Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here with you. So I started my first career. I was a cosmetic dentist in New York City and specialized, actually, in dental phobia. Really so for the people who were terrified of the dentist, that's how I built my business. So I was a busy guy and I did that for 37 years and then decided the purpose of life is to be happy and decided that horticulture had always been a hobby of mine.
Dr. Koren:
1:25
So hopefully it wasn't 37 years of not being happy.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
1:29
No not 37. But the last seven years were tough. I was ready to get transplanted. Excuse the pun, okay.
Dr. Koren:
1:40
And so you went from dentistry to horticultural therapy. So explain a little bit about the transition and then tell people what that means exactly.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
1:50
So on a personal level, dentistry has a reputation and statistically is proven that our jobs are very, very stressful. There is a high level of depression and suicide amongst dental professionals, and the last seven years of my career I was really struggling and I was not able to take medication successfully. I was not able to focus as a dentist and I was not able to get much help from conventional therapy. But I did know that every time I had my hands in the dirt.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
2:30
I felt different. I didn't know why, I didn't know that it was actually rooted in science, but I knew I felt better, and so it was a self-prescribed therapy that I was on. And then one day I found out that this was actually something I could study, and so I went to the New York Botanical Gardens for five years and took courses and just absolutely enjoyed it and decided that I wanted to help other people who might benefit from horticultural therapy. And so, yes, might benefit from horticultural therapy.
Dr. Koren:
3:04
So, wow, yes, so you had your dental practice on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, an area that I happen to know, since I did my training at New York Hospital, Cornell Medical Center in Sloan Kettering, and that's a strange place to work on horticulture you would think. Like where did you plant your garden and all that sort of thing. So tell us a little bit about that.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
3:26
Well, my parents were convinced that when I made the announcement that I was moving from Cincinnati to New York, it was so that I'd never have to garden again, because my father was a very passionate gardener, and he felt nothing about employing his three young boys every summer weekend, from sunup to sundown, to plant and work in his garden. And I actually ran away from home twice because of how hard he worked us, but it was all in there.
Dr. Koren:
3:58
So you came back to your roots. I did. Pun intended. Yes, I did.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
4:02
I came back to my roots and when I started school my professors were how do you know so much about plants? And I said, dad. So yes, but yes, New York. But it's changing, people are starting to recognize the importance that houseplants have in purifying the air, that hospital design, when we have a view of nature or even a poster of nature, that people have better healing time. So people are starting to catch on and I see when I visit young friends in New York now why they may not have a garden, that they've got something going on in their apartments, that reminds them that there is a beautiful natural world for all of us.
Dr. Koren:
4:48
So it's interesting. So Central Park is not that far from the Upper East Side. For people who don't know Manhattan very well, are you allowed to set up your own little private garden there? I think over the time I've seen some gardening activity there. Is that possible?
Dr. Trey Wilson:
5:02
Not in Central Park, but Riverside Park, I think Madison Square Park, they have some community garden spaces which are really a huge uptick in community garden space activity for lots of different reasons. But I think Central Park no, I don't think there's any place for community garden.
Dr. Koren:
5:23
Okay, so explain to me a little bit about gardening, when you're approaching it for therapeutic reasons, obviously, uh, plants and nature make us feel good. You mentioned that just getting your hands in the dirt seemed to have some positive impact on your mental health, but tell me a little bit more about how this translates to something that you're now helping other people. How do you project it on people that are quote patients or people that need our help as health care professionals?
Dr. Trey Wilson:
5:54
So we can divide this up into different realms or domains of health and wellness. So we want to take the physical side. So horticultural therapy works great if it's just gardening activities as green exercise, just for caloric burn. It's a very, very enriching workout, I can tell you. You work eight hours in the garden, you're sore, at the end of the day.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
6:22
So it actually also. We have a built-in response to soil. So there are hormones in the soil that are released after a rain called geosmins, and the human nose has three parts per billion sensitivity to these hormones, which then increase our levels of cortisol. Really interesting. So there's a huge soil mechanism to it as well. Socialization that people who garden together have it just is a safe container for people to get together and enjoy having conversations that maybe involve sharing garden stories you know.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
7:04
So socialization is a big part of what we're doing, particularly when I'm working in an assisted living facility. But there's also, you know, neurologic activities, so the whole neuroplasticity of the brain. And how does our brain change when our senses are stimulated, when we're in the presence of nature? So we move away from this part of our brains into a different part of our brains.
Dr. Koren:
7:35
So for people who don't have visual parts, you're talking about the frontal parts of your brain, the cortex.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
7:40
We move from the cortex to the liminal system Right.
Dr. Koren:
7:43
So it's more our primitive emotional elements are in the back of the brain and our intellectual elements are more in the front of the brain.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
7:51
Right, thank you.
Dr. Koren:
7:57
And smell, by the way, goes to that very primitive part of the brain. So it's very interesting comment you brought up about how maybe there are specific chemical elements to the soil that make us happy.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
8:08
Yes, it's pretty cool actually, well, but for some people it can be triggering.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
8:12
So if you're working if I'm working with persons with dementia, for instance- you know I have to have an interview, an intake session with the nurse or the physician about the medical histories and if they're able to provide me information with what might be triggers for different clients. And so the smell of a soil may be triggering for some people, or the smell of certain flour or spice may be triggering for a person. So that's why horticultural therapy in a clinical setting is really well monitored, that we work in very close relationship with doctors and nurses and PTs and OTs and dieticians to actually create these activities with specific health and wellness goals in mind.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
9:00
But, yes for the most part yeah the smell of soil. Doesn't it take you back to like your first camping trip or the first time you know, the first time you smelled soil?
Dr. Trey Wilson:
9:16
In our olfactory brain it's one of the early ones.
Dr. Koren:
9:20
Well, I played competitive soccer for a number of years. So often the smell of the soil is when I was fouled and I ended up on my face. So that's a little bit of a different story.
Narrator:
9:29
But, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, that is very different, right.
Dr. Koren:
9:33
It made it a little less painful when I could smell the soil before I had to get up. In any event, . It made it a little less painful when I could smell the soil before I had to get up. I find this fascinating. So you use the word clients. I want to explore that a little bit with you. So have you made a business out of this? And who are
Dr. Koren:
9:46
the clients and how do they pay you and all that. Yes, why don't you let people know about that? It's pretty cool.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
10:03
In some settings to I call them clients, because it it makes it less clinical, yeah, I think, and more of just a shared activity that we're doing together right, so right. So my clients can be, you know, hospitals or rehab centers um, as I mentioned, assisted living places but, also on the private side, you know for you know for a person who may be afraid of being outside, being with other people, you know I can bring horticultural therapy into a private setting in someone's own backyard. Yeah.
Dr. Koren:
10:33
And so how do you market this? Do you go to different nursing homes and say this might be something that helps in a number of ways? I'm just curious. I've knocked on a lot of doors down here.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
10:45
Yes, and just introduced myself and said you know, have you ever heard of horticultural therapy? My mother said "horticultural therapy, Is that smoking grass?
Dr. Koren:
10:59
Well, it's a form of it.
Narrator:
11:01
Yeah, it could be, I suppose.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
11:04
So most people are unfamiliar with horticultural therapy.
Dr. Koren:
11:06
I guess just smoking grass is not horticultural therapy, but if you grow it first, it is yeah, yes, okay, we can agree on that.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
11:16
I like that. I'm going to have to use that one, so yes, I knock on a lot of doors and most people, with the way medicine is challenged these days, most of them don't have a budget for it. And when I try to prove you know, provide evidence, you know a lot of it is subjective. It's really subjective.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
11:39
So, it's really hard to find rigorous research that shows the benefits of horticultural therapy. And when I'm doing an intake and then an outtake form for all the clients, you know I know that it's going to be subjective, and so when the doctors and I are interpreting the results of this data and whether or not it was successful or not, it's utterly subjective.
Dr. Koren:
12:05
Sure Interesting. Well, I definitely want to get into that a lot more with you, sure, but I think this was a great introduction to our audience and for our next session, I'm going to ask you a bunch of things about does it matter what you grow? Does it matter the exposure time to things? Does it matter for different patient populations, different processes, I guess growing trees or trimming trees versus actually putting seeds in the dirt. So with that, I want to give our audience a tease. And growth for the future, or planting the seed for the future. You can see that I do like dad jokes and I've been accused by my kids of being the worst teller of dad jokes of all time.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
12:54
So now I've got a litany of dental jokes to match them too.
Dr. Koren:
12:58
Okay, well, we may also get into that in our third session.
Dr. Trey Wilson:
13:04
I don't want to subject the audience to these. They're pretty bad.
Dr. Koren:
13:08
Well, I'll give them one, since it's speaking about my kids. When is the best time to go to the dentist? I'm sure you've heard that right
Dr. Trey Wilson:
13:18
Tooth-Thirty. Thank you for that and thank you for listening.
Narrator:
13:22
Thanks for joining the MedEvidence podcast. To learn more, head over to MedEvidence. com or subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
