Peter Attia· MD
that's ultimately gonna sort of capture more attention going back to the hunting thing i i find it takes two days for me on a hunt to find my senses um we were talking a little bit about this before we started the podcast you know one of the reasons i like axis deer so much not only is it you know just from an environmental standpoint it's you know you're doing something very positive for the environment um the meat itself is incredibly healthy tastes great but the challenge of hunting that animal is so high right it's just you know if you can shoot an access deer with a bow you have earned that animal um and the reason for that is they have really good senses like their sense of hearing their sense of smell it's insane and so if you try to go and hunt them in a clumsy way where your senses aren't heightened it's a joke it's like they're they're toying with you right like they'll smell you a mile away they'll see you a mile away they'll hear you a mile away you're not going to get within their zip code you can only get up on them if you become as attuned to the wind as attuned visually to what's going on as attuned to every sound you're making and again i'm sure a guy like donnie can get in that zone in one second i need like a day or two and and again i like you don't have your phone with you you know you're not listening you don't have earbuds in as you're making this move um and i i remember each you know on almost every hunt i've been on i remember kind of what that transition feels like and getting there is hard like it is it is boring as hell it's totally boring but you have to kind of go through that for your senses to wake up at least for me yeah i mean i think two things one that's short and one that's long um i think that that's kind of a metaphor for the book as a whole is you have to go through that to get that benefit and i think there's a lot of different things that we've removed from our lives that going through can benefit us the second thing is that what you're saying it totally jives with not only my experience but there's this concept uh called the three-day effect and it basically shows that after three days in nature a lot of good things tend to happen to people so in the modern world your brain tends to ride what are called beta waves frenetic sort of go-go-go associated with sort of stress burnout and this sort of thing after your third day in nature brain tends to start to ride what are called alpha waves and these are found in experienced meditators they're like calm more focused more aware and you just feel like ah like i'm sure you felt it when you're out there when you first get into nature you're kind of to your point you're like what's going on you don't really feel in tune you're worried like did i put the garage down uh is this my you know my daughter have a ride to school that sort of thing once you get to day three it's like focus center like you just feel like like a zen monk or something right and i think there's a good reason for that there's a lot of things that are happening and this is why one reason why some researchers are thinking of extended time in nature as a way to help help people with ptsd specifically veterans because the benefits don't seem to wash off immediately so this idea of the three-day effect it's at the top of this concept that i write about in the book called the nature pyramid and it basically prescribes different amounts of time you should spend in different types of nature so this idea of three days and sort of more back country removed nature is at the pinnacle of this and it basically says we should try and hit that at least once a year