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Each week, Health Affairs' Rob Lott brings you in-depth conversations with leading researchers and influencers shaping the big ideas in health policy and the health care industry.
A Health Podyssey goes beyond the pages of the health policy journal Health Affairs to tell stories behind the research and share policy implications. Learn how academics and economists frame their research questions and journey to the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Health policy nerds rejoice! This podcast is for you.
00;00;00;01 - 00;00;27;25
Alan Weil
Hello and welcome to “A Health Podyssey”. I'm your host, Alan Weil. Most of us have an intuitive sense that art and esthetics can improve our well-being, whether it's listening to music, doodling, dancing, or taking a walk in nature, we feel better when we engage our senses. Meanwhile, scientific advances are giving us access to new ways of understanding how our brains function.
00;00;28;00 - 00;00;52;20
Alan Weil
It's now possible to explore the connections among art, health and well-being with more rigor than we could in the past. And in our metrics driven health care system, that rigor is a precursor to incorporating this emerging field into clinical practice. And maybe even payment. How can we understand the role of art in advancing health? How can we use this knowledge to improve our health and well-being?
00;00;53;01 - 00;01;12;19
Alan Weil
And what will it take to bring the benefits of art into the mainstream of health care? These are some of the questions we’ll be discussing in today's episode. I'm really excited to be here in Aspen as part of the Aspen Ideas Health Program with Susan Magsamen, founder and director of the International Arts + Mind Lab at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
00;01;13;00 - 00;01;32;07
Alan Weil
And Ivy Ross, vice president of design for hardware products at Google. Ms. Magsamen and Ms. Ivy recently published a book entitled Your Brain on Art, which landed on the New York Times best seller list as soon as it was released. I've had the pleasure of working with Susan over a few years on this topic, and I'm just getting to meet you.
00;01;32;10 - 00;01;36;01
Alan Weil
Ivy, I'm so excited to have you. Susan, Ivy, welcome to the program.
00;01;36;18 - 00;01;37;27
Ivy Ross
Thank you. Great to be here.
00;01;38;14 - 00;01;40;05
Susan Magsamen
Great to see you. Thanks so much.
00;01;40;15 - 00;02;11;14
Alan Weil
So this is not our typical podcast topic, but I think it's great that we're able to introduce it to our audience. To me, the key starting point in this conversation is sort of what I said in the introduction, which is, yeah, we know art's good for us. I mean, it makes us feel better. But how do we move from sort of this intuitive sense of a positive effect of art and esthetics to an understanding of the how and what the actual implications are.
00;02;11;14 - 00;02;14;15
Alan Weil
In addition to just sort of, yeah, that's a nice thing to do.
00;02;15;00 - 00;02;35;10
Susan Magsamen
Yeah, well, it's really a pleasure to be here. And I think that this will be the first of many times we have these conversations because we are starting a new field and this field is really about the neurobiology of how the arts and esthetics measurably change our brains and bodies and how and this is really important, how this information can be used in health and well-being.
00;02;35;21 - 00;03;01;29
Susan Magsamen
And so, you know, when you're really thinking about how do you build a field, you have to really step back a little bit and think about what's required. And so there are three basic things that I think are required. One is evidence, and there's a lot of different types of evidence and ways of knowing. So we're certainly interested in the neurobiology and the basic science, but we're also interested in the social science looking at also things like public health and people with lived experience.
00;03;02;00 - 00;03;25;04
Susan Magsamen
So this is a highly interdisciplinary endeavor, and that's really important because we're not going to solve these very intractable problems without us all coming together with different expertise. And then the second is infrastructure. How do you put these systems together, and thinking about implementation, science and complexity, how do you create systems where you know, you're thinking about health care, you're thinking about public health?
00;03;25;20 - 00;03;46;23
Susan Magsamen
I think education is also really important in terms of prevention and intervention. And then the last area is really looking at community. How do you build these communities, both the professional communities and the general public. And so I think you know a bit about the neuro arts blueprint that was created to really think about how do you build a sustainable field.
00;03;46;24 - 00;04;10;14
Susan Magsamen
The short piece of that is that the North Star for the neuro arts blueprint is to be able to create a field where the arts and esthetics are mainstream in medicine and public health. And we have five for recommendations. The first is advancing the research. Second is really honoring all the different types of practitioners. The third is building educational on ramps and pathways for training.
00;04;10;21 - 00;04;35;25
Susan Magsamen
And that's really a democratizing statement because equity, diversity, inclusion are really essential in building the workforce for this field. And then the second to the fourth is looking at policy and funding. And the fifth, and this is where Ivy comes in, is really looking at capacity building, leadership and communications. And so what Ivy and I did was put together this book called Your Brain on Art.
00;04;36;04 - 00;05;05;16
Ivy Ross
Through writing this book, it's been clear that the arts are our birthright. We were literally wired for them. And I think we've been optimizing for productivity since the Industrial Revolution, pushing the arts aside, thinking that this mindset of productivity would make us happy and healthy, and it clearly has not. So what Susan and I are really hoping to do by sharing the research and the stories is to show that we need to bring the arts back in our life, whether you're good at it or not.
00;05;05;16 - 00;05;14;14
Ivy Ross
And we'll, I'm sure, get into that because you don't have to be good at any of these arts to have the benefits and have a healthy diet between productivity and the arts.
00;05;15;07 - 00;05;35;15
Alan Weil
So I like that way of thinking about it. I guess I jumped so quickly and I'm sorry, I'm going to maybe push on this point too much during our conversation, but I jumped so quickly to, yeah, I know it's good, but what what does that really mean? Like how much of the mechanics of understanding how art affects the brain,
00;05;35;15 - 00;05;52;07
Alan Weil
you do call it neuro arts, how much do we really need to know how it works, or do we just need to sort of observe and see that people who are engaged in art do better? You know, so I'm sort of looking I guess it's because so much of my work, I'm not a clinician, but I work in health care.
00;05;52;14 - 00;06;23;03
Alan Weil
And, you know, there's all this talk about evidence based evidence base. And of course, in drugs, we have clinical trials and in devices and a lot of procedures we have other processes that we use. And in health services research, we don't have trials, but we have various methods that we use, econometrics, things like that. So I'm I'm trying to think about how do we go from what, again, sort of there's this intuitive sense, you know, i.e., the moment you say the focus on productivity clearly is not making us happy.
00;06;23;03 - 00;06;42;14
Alan Weil
I think a lot of us go, yeah, that's right. That's right. But what's the evidence that will pull us back from that as opposed to, I think about and you write about in the book, you know, we lost art from schools just like we lost PE from schools. How do we what evidence do we need to say, this isn't a nice to, want to maybe do.
00;06;42;14 - 00;06;44;15
Alan Weil
It's a core essential, critical.
00;06;44;21 - 00;07;07;26
Susan Magsamen
Yeah. I mean, I think this idea of the the evidence being essential is really important and I can give you three huge examples of where this has really mattered. One is in sleep science as we've understood the value of sleep, we have learned how to sleep better. Once we understood the value of exercise, we exercise more and we understand for what and why and when and how much.
00;07;08;02 - 00;07;34;01
Susan Magsamen
And the same is true of nutrition science. And so the arts are really a lane right there. Lane like those other three. And as E. O. Wilson, the evolutionary biologist, shared with us, they are as essential to our survival as those three other things. But we don't know a lot about things like dose and dosage we don't know a lot about some of those mechanisms because there has not been funding to really support this work, because we thought it was ancillary.
00;07;34;01 - 00;08;03;11
Susan Magsamen
We thought it was a yes and maybe if you have time, we thought it was a hobby. So the neurobiology of the foundational information around the arts is important. And and that is when you think about the fact that you're born with 100 billion neurons, and those neurons are really there to bring in from the world through your senses, all of this content, all of this information, there's no other way to really function without bringing all of that into your body.
00;08;04;03 - 00;08;33;04
Susan Magsamen
You know, we can’t possibly process all of that sensory information. But what we do process is the salient information, the things that are either practically important to us or emotionally important to us. And it turns out that arts and esthetic have that saliency. So that lays the groundwork. And from an evolutionary perspective, that's how really we moved from being a species like many other species that lived on the planet to a very intelligent species that grew.
00;08;33;04 - 00;08;58;26
Susan Magsamen
And it was really when we captured fire and brought that into the campfire. And at night we started to tell stories. We started to dance and move to embody the cognition and the emotional resonance that made those bonds between us. Right? So we danced, we sang, we told stories, we created drawings, and that laid the foundation for these kinds of neurobiological connections that really create neural pathways.
00;08;59;07 - 00;09;29;28
Susan Magsamen
An interesting the thing that we're learning with some of the noninvasive technologies is you can literally see that multiple systems simultaneously are activated through different art experiences, and there's nothing else that does that. So, you know, when you really start to peel back what we know about the science, and that's basic, right? And then you start to look at diseases and disorders, mental health, learning, each of those have their own research bases that rely on different parts of the brain and different art forms.
00;09;30;01 - 00;09;31;23
Susan Magsamen
But you need the basic science to start.
00;09;33;22 - 00;09;53;11
Ivy Ross
That's why we wanted to write the book now is because we have been able to get inside our heads in the last 20 years. And so there is proof that all of these different modalities and when we say the arts, visual arts, music, singing, dancing, theater, even even digital arts have this profound effect on us.
00;09;54;11 - 00;10;17;14
Alan Weil
So I love that you use these examples where we can go, that's right, we kind of knew that was good for us, and now we know a lot more. And by knowing more, we're better at it. I think that's very powerful. Those sorts of metaphors are helpful and and guide us, I think, in some of our work. But it actually, maybe Ivy, it’s where you ended right there listing a few of these.
00;10;17;14 - 00;10;45;20
Alan Weil
And Susan, you said some of them earlier, and they certainly appear in the book. So one of the questions I think I had that popped out for me as I started the book and as I've, you know, tried to pay attention to this field, is commonalities and differences across different types of arts, as you've described. And you you group arts and esthetic.
00;10;46;13 - 00;11;21;28
Alan Weil
And I'm trying to figure out is that really a fair pairing or are they different? And then, of course, you look at the disease states and and the question is, are there commonalities? I guess and maybe this is the question you're posing. Do we even know enough now to know whether these are 20 different phenomena that we bundle under the term art and esthetics, or are they kind of one phenomenon with lots of variation depending on the art and depending on the body response that we're looking for?
00;11;24;11 - 00;11;49;20
Susan Magsamen
Yes. Yes. No, I think these are really, really great questions and these are the kinds of scientific questions that are really going to build the field not for the next five years, but for the next 50 years. Right? And so we do know a lot about the neuroanatomy of and that's in large part due to the brain initiative that NIH has funded.
00;11;49;22 - 00;12;20;29
Susan Magsamen
So, you know, we've created these really fabulous tools and more coming that help us understand different aspects of the brain, whether we're looking at neurotransmitters or whether we're looking at structural changes or even things at a neuronal level. We have much more ways to understand that. So in really stepping back and understanding the basic kind of neurobiology about what I mentioned earlier, about how we bring the world in, and so our sensory, these esthetic experiences become arts.
00;12;20;29 - 00;12;47;10
Susan Magsamen
You know, probably the the the one of the interesting things is the word arts in some ways catalyzes this work. It makes it seem like one thing. But we know that indigenous cultures, this was the way that they lived and still do live. And so, you know, bringing these esthetic experiences that turn into traditions and rituals, which is the way people lived.
00;12;47;18 - 00;13;11;05
Susan Magsamen
And so we've now turned them into, you know, fine art, high art, a Master's in art. And I think that actually makes it sort of seem like, well, it's a thing, but it's many things. So we understand a lot about the basic biology. Now we're moving into understanding what does music do at a very specific level and then what does music do when you tie it into a disease or disorder?
00;13;11;07 - 00;13;31;23
Susan Magsamen
What does music do just as homeostasis? What does painting do, what does dance do? And then what do they do when they're together? Right? So there's complexity there. Ivy can talk about this, but architecture and interior design, you know, those are fantastic art forms that really use all of these sensorial experiences.
00;13;31;26 - 00;13;58;28
Ivy Ross
Yeah. And at the core, you know, art is about expressing ourselves and esthetics is what happens when you, it’s all the ways you take in life through your senses and nature is the most neuro static place you can be because it has sound, color, temperature, shape, texture. And I think it's why we all feel good when we go out in nature.
00;13;58;28 - 00;14;18;08
Ivy Ross
You know, we spoke to E. O. Wilson. He pointed out that 98.9% of the time us humans have been on this planet, we've been in nature. It's just 0.2% that we've been in this master experiment in buildings that we now build proficiency and not to be life enhancing.
00;14;18;10 - 00;14;47;15
Alan Weil
I'm really struck by what sounds like sort of the fall of health, the decline of health associated with the removal of these stimuli in our lives. And I can't help thinking that if we want to reverse some of that, part of what we need to do is understand how we got here. So, Ivy, you've mentioned a couple of times sort of efficiency, and I certainly in the Industrial Revolution, I get that, right?
00;14;47;15 - 00;15;10;18
Alan Weil
We, we thought that by building more and making more, we would be healthier and happier. Maybe. Actually, I'm not sure we thought we'd be healthier, but we thought we'd be happier. Someone thought we'd be happier. And that created certain channels of how we do things that still live with us. I don't know the story nearly as well on art.
00;15;10;18 - 00;15;35;11
Alan Weil
Susan, you talk about, you know, the professionalization. And Ivy, earlier you said it doesn't matter if you're good at it, but I think all of us grow up thinking it matters a lot if you're good at it and you shouldn't do it if you're not good at it. So what's the what's the Industrial Revolution analog in art that's led us to be so estranged from these art forms that that make us healthy?
00;15;35;24 - 00;16;00;12
Ivy Ross
Well, I think unfortunately and Ken Robinson did this, he did the test in schools, how many is, how many kids are an artist? Starting in kindergarten, everyone's hand went up. By the time he got to third grade, no one's hand was up. And so I think we come in as little souls, being incredibly creative, expressing ourselves, and then someone tells us that's not the way you draw a tree, that's not the way you make this, and you stop doing it.
00;16;00;12 - 00;16;17;16
Ivy Ross
Or if you’re told you’re great at it, only if you are told you can make money at it, do you pick it as a swim lane. But I think as in our day it was about earning a living and what we how were you going to earn your living and anything else other than that was kind of frivolous.
00;16;17;19 - 00;16;44;22
Ivy Ross
And so I think that's how we not realizing that these arts weren't just about picking a profession. They were critical to our health and well-being. And I think right now we don't even play enough. The definition of play is not, the opposite of play is not work. It's actually depression because play is doing something different than you do every day without a preconceived outcome.
00;16;44;24 - 00;17;08;11
Ivy Ross
And we are so outcome driven. And this speaks to the productivity and efficiency, that we only do things if we feel the outcome will benefit us. And so this idea of taking a lump of clay for 20 minutes and just shaping it or coloring book and color inside the lines or outside the lines, that would never strike us as something that was productive or we should do.
00;17;08;11 - 00;17;15;03
Ivy Ross
And and actually we absolutely should do it because it does some amazing things for our body.
00;17;15;06 - 00;17;35;05
Susan Magsamen
I was thinking, when you said that, of the original sin, like, what was the original sin. Right? And, and I think, you know, when a boat is launched and it just goes one degree off, you know that's one degree. But you go out 100 years, 200 years, thousand years, and it's so off course, it doesn't even know where it is.
00;17;35;05 - 00;18;01;02
Susan Magsamen
And I think in some ways that's the story of this integration of self-expression and using these very basic biological requirements. The Renaissance also was, you know, if you're looking for nails in the coffin, there is a really there's a couple there right there, big ones, where we started to value rational thinking over the mystical, the intuitive, you know, the creative.
00;18;01;07 - 00;18;25;08
Susan Magsamen
And so that was when, there was, people said to me recently, well, there was beautiful art made then. And I was like, well, yes, there was, but they were the masters, right? So the peasants weren't making the art. It was the masters. And that's, I think, another one of those big cultural shifts that pushed us to this kind of developmental area that Ivy's talking about, which started to shame us and to start to say, well, it's not important, you need to be working.
00;18;25;15 - 00;18;56;20
Susan Magsamen
And then, you know, more of the Industrial Revolution was how do you keep the cogs, the human resources in the system? And so, you know, it's interesting because even though that was happening and there was tremendous oppression of the arts and and these esthetic variances, they bubble up everywhere because you can't keep them down, you know, and and I think in in thinking about in the book, we interviewed a person who works with the black community.
00;18;56;20 - 00;19;22;11
Susan Magsamen
And what he found was that you can trace back humming and swaying and calling and singing as a way to survive repression and oppression. And you can see that in Ukraine right now. You can see children drawing. You can see women coming to the squares singing the national anthem. You know, you can see people screaming out and singing out the windows with pots and pans during the pandemic.
00;19;22;13 - 00;19;51;25
Susan Magsamen
It is what holds us together. And I think we're coming back to it. And I think in part, the reason that this field and this movement is happening is because we were broken so hard with the pandemic and it was coming anyway, right, with youth mental health, with with health disparities. But the pandemic really broke it open. And I think this is, people are now seeing this gives us peace, this gives us a sense of well-being, connection to each other, a connection to ourselves.
00;19;51;25 - 00;20;12;27
Susan Magsamen
Those are all the things that the arts and these esthetic experiences bring us. And sometimes they bring them to us immediately. Right? There is a you certainly, you know, you want to have a practice, but some of these are 15 minutes in nature, right? Singing in the shower. Humming in the shower, even if you're not good at it, you know, it engages the parasympathetic nervous system in the vagus nerve.
00;20;12;27 - 00;20;22;14
Susan Magsamen
So, you know, this biology, combined with what we know is our physiology in the arts is pretty miraculous.
00;20;22;16 - 00;20;44;00
Ivy Ross
You know, Susan brought up the celebration of the rational. And I think what's happening is as technology and AI moves in, it will be doing some of the rational things for us. So the question is then what is our role as humans? And so I think it's an interesting full circle. In some ways you could say we've been operating a little bit as machines.
00;20;44;02 - 00;20;58;19
Ivy Ross
Now machines may come in and do some of this rational thinking for us. So what we have is the ability to amplify the arts and the sensorial and the poetry and the things that only you know us humans can do well.
00;20;58;22 - 00;21;29;14
Alan Weil
This raises some interesting equity dimensions. Susan, you alluded to them earlier, and I know you've given this a fair amount of thought. On the one hand, you describe some of the connection to art being in traditional Indigenous communities, and those communities have held on to these practices in some ways better than others. You also, of course, talked about the workforce issue and how critical it is to address equity there.
00;21;29;16 - 00;21;52;20
Alan Weil
At the same time it there is, I think, a risk that to say, oh, well, you know, we're not going to focus on productivity, we're going to focus on other things. If you're, you know, struggling to put food on the table, it's pretty hard to set productivity aside if that's what your employer is measuring and paying you on the basis of and creating space.
00;21;53;01 - 00;22;21;18
Alan Weil
So how do we, this is complicated. I'm not asking for a, I wouldn't be asking if I if I wanted a glib, glib answer, but I just wonder if you can help me navigate the thinking about how to make sure as this evolves, that we're we're embracing the the the reality of of of or I should say that we're avoiding the possibility that this is sort of an elite movement that sits with people who have resources.
00;22;21;20 - 00;22;44;03
Ivy Ross
I think one thing to be clear, we're not saying it's either or. It's and both, I mean, we're saying you need both. And in fact, and Susan can speak a lot to this, actually doing these arts can help productivity and executive function and does some things that will help us do our jobs better. And very much we're not talking about high art with a big A, you know, elitist.
00;22;44;03 - 00;22;55;11
Ivy Ross
I mean, you can you can doodle. Like we were saying, you could sing in the shower. This is just the awareness that these things are extremely helpful for our biology.
00;22;55;13 - 00;23;23;24
Susan Magsamen
I love that you asked this question because I think it's really important to implicitly open it up. And so, you know, these there's so much happening right now when you're really, you know, thinking about if you're going to really crush a culture, the first thing that you want to do is take away their art, right? So the democratizing of the arts and allowing for a thousand flowers to bloom is really important.
00;23;23;24 - 00;23;46;03
Susan Magsamen
And I think what we're saying is that, as Ivy said, it's a yes and that when you're engaged in these activities, you art creates culture. Culture creates community, and community creates humanity. And on an individual level, there's so many It's counterintuitive because you think, oh, we've been told this is a waste of time. Yet even with doodling, you retain information better, you recall information better, you stay more focused.
00;23;46;11 - 00;24;17;08
Susan Magsamen
I mentioned humming, even coloring can lower cortisol, expressive writing on something that's really traumatic for you can actually lighten cognitive load. There are so many very real things. We've done some work in our lab with youth, with gun and gun and street violence and looking at how that information by reading fiction can help someone by experiencing that make different decision, make better decisions, and also share that information in a way that feels safe.
00;24;17;10 - 00;24;46;00
Susan Magsamen
And so these are very complex issues, but it's really about democratizing the arts, not making them elite. There's another area that I think is emerging that will be interesting and it's called some people call it social prescribing, other people call it prescription on art or arts on prescription. And it's really looking at how do you make sure that everyone has access to these different art experiences and they're paid for.
00;24;46;02 - 00;25;20;23
Susan Magsamen
So that's happened in other countries. There's some really great examples of that happening in the United States. And it's not it's not solved, but I think there's a lot of work moving towards that. And I'll even add one other thing. I think having a sense of belonging and feeling like you're part of a community, whether that's your neighborhood, your school, the place you work, your family, also the social determinants of health for that are pretty, pretty powerful and, and ultimately move into things around productivity and innovation, consistency.
00;25;21;21 - 00;25;41;07
Alan Weil
So I'm sort of crushed by this, I have to say. I say with a bit of a chuckle, but it it's such a sign of our culture that at least as I heard it, you sort of begin by saying we have this obsessive focus on productivity and lack of focus on art and esthetics, and it's led us astray.
00;25;41;07 - 00;26;05;01
Alan Weil
And now we need to come back. And it turns out that actually if we do that, it we could increase our productivity and we could increase our well-being and I'm sitting there going, So here we are always, always, always operating on this sort of utilitarian platform, like if it's good for us in society and the economy and makes us more productive, we should do it as opposed to, well, art's just like a, you know, art for art's sake, right?
00;26;05;01 - 00;26;29;06
Alan Weil
We should just want people to do it and or people should want to do it, or it's good for people to do it, as opposed to the utilitarian frame. Unfortunately, again, we come we are in a world where that at least I should say, we're in a culture where that is a driver. And so you've alluded to this a few times, and I guess I'd ask to to sort of pull some of the threads together.
00;26;30;01 - 00;26;57;17
Alan Weil
We're a health policy journal, right? We're not clinicians. Plenty of clinicians do health policy work, but we're not a clinical journal. We're looking at sort of questions of health care, health system organization and financing and the like. And it is certainly the case that the health system is driven by people looking at what the outcomes are and they're looking for productivity in different senses of the word.
00;26;57;20 - 00;27;23;28
Alan Weil
So as you think about the research priorities, you think about social prescribing. As you've mentioned, what what are the questions you feel we need are poised to answer, maybe with appropriate investment that would help us integrate art and esthetics as a core functions of what we expect the health care system to pay attention to.
00;27;24;15 - 00;27;48;13
Susan Magsamen
Well, so with a neuro arts blueprint we've identified four research priorities, and I think it's really important to stay focused on the research and to have research drive policy, and then that ultimately drives funding. So the four research priorities are neurodegeneration. One in six people in this world have some kind of neurodegenerative disorder. Think about that. And the ROI on that.
00;27;48;16 - 00;28;13;27
Susan Magsamen
The second is mental health. The third is child development and the last is what we're calling rehabilitation. And so and we've started working on neurodegeneration and mental health in a pretty powerful way to really looking at what what are the implications to bringing these different arts experiences to these populations with these populations and really looking very carefully at the outcome measures.
00;28;13;27 - 00;28;40;27
Susan Magsamen
And so as you can imagine, the some of these outcome measures are are pretty extraordinary. I'll give you two examples. One is in neurodegeneration. We did our economic analysis and looking at singing with people with just Alzheimer's, you know, there's nine different kinds of dementia. So we're just talking about Alzheimer's. And what we found was that for just the patient, there was a 3 to 1 return on the investment that currently put in.
00;28;41;04 - 00;29;10;16
Susan Magsamen
So what if you could use those billions of dollars to be able to infuse that into other areas of society for humanity's growth and development? Another is really looking at youth mental health. We also know that it's estimated that 30 to 45% of children youth 14 to 25, are experiencing acute anxiety. The cost of that is in the trillions of dollars and downstream that means we aren't going to have a workforce.
00;29;10;20 - 00;29;44;00
Susan Magsamen
We're just looking at those economic outcomes. You have to know that you have a science based solution to addressing that. And we also know that the time that the immediacy of these interventions are pretty short term. So we're not looking at a five year, ten year outcome measure. We're looking at really immediate kinds of returns. And I think, you know, in some ways, this field you're helping me see this is like it's almost like amnesia or like, you know, Rip Van Winkle, like we kind of like fell asleep.
00;29;44;00 - 00;30;10;24
Susan Magsamen
We just forgot. And we have an opportunity right now. It's not a panacea, but we have an opportunity to open up a new lane. It's it's nonpartisan, It's totally effective. And we know that the cost is lower than pharmacological interventions alone. And, you know, we're Ivy and I are both about, yes and, and so I just think we're at a moment where and here's here's the rub.
00;30;10;27 - 00;30;16;04
Susan Magsamen
It's fun and it's joyful. Right? So, I mean, it's like, what's not to love?
00;30;17;00 - 00;30;27;15
Ivy Ross
Yeah, I like you say, people are doing it because just for the pure joy. So to know that there's these other implications and they could be used as medicine, it's amazing.
00;30;27;27 - 00;30;54;26
Alan Weil
It is. Because, you know, when you think about health care, most of what people interact with the health care system, they're not very enthusiastic about it. It's sick care. And to combine and I really like also this, just as you've brought together art and esthetics, although they have different dimensions, Ivy I like how you differentiated, health and well-being also have commonalities and differentiators.
00;30;54;26 - 00;31;20;15
Alan Weil
And to have a combination of an actual health outcome that's measurable against a disease state that we know is common, just as the ones you described are Susan, as well as improvements in general well-being that just make you feel better and probably position you for better health in the general sense to be able to pair the general and the specific is pretty exciting.
00;31;20;15 - 00;31;48;26
Susan Magsamen
You know, two thoughts. One is Renee Fleming, who is the co-chair of our advisory board for the NeuroArts Blueprint, started something called Healing Breath during COVID, and she brought in other singers to teach all of us how to breathe better. And now that's expanding for prevention and protection because pulmonologists and respiratory people believe that if you know how to breathe, downstream you're going to avoid other kinds of serious pulmonary issues.
00;31;48;29 - 00;32;03;17
Susan Magsamen
That's amazing, right? And singing and, you know, humming and all of those kinds of really amazing voice activated exercises lower your stress as well. So that's that's pretty that's pretty amazing.
00;32;03;20 - 00;32;27;19
Ivy Ross
Sharon Salzberg, who's been a big proponent of meditation, says that art is the best form of meditation. And we've seen how meditation has caught on and increased because of the benefits to our health. So the fact that art is another way in to meditation because you're getting out of your cognitive mind and into a whole new set of systems when you're involved in an art project.
00;32;27;22 - 00;32;43;05
Susan Magsamen
You know, the other thing that made me think about was that it's really interesting because, you know, people are people will say, well, where's the science? Where's the science? Where's the science? Yet, you know, your hands are tied behind your back. You had a blindfold on and you're in a closet because there's no funding, there's no sort of systems in place.
00;32;43;07 - 00;33;09;29
Susan Magsamen
And I think that this field has absolutely elbowed itself out of that to get the science is extraordinary. And big shout out to NIH and Francis Collins and his whole team because they have actually begun to build protocol and outcome measures and use of technology. So on the science side, which again is highly interdisciplinary, we're really starting to have ways to build on the research of the person that came before.
00;33;10;05 - 00;33;34;14
Susan Magsamen
And that's how good science grows. You know, neuroscience is only 100 plus years old. It's because there are these systems quality control standards of practice that got put into place. And that's what we're in the process of doing now. And so as people come on after and the and the future of this field is young people, you know, being able to build the science, use the practice, and it's a translational field.
00;33;34;16 - 00;33;37;00
Susan Magsamen
So I love that too. It's, you know, research to practice.
00;33;38;19 - 00;34;00;13
Alan Weil
Well, I'm so excited. I got to catch up with the two of you. This is an area that I have no doubt we're going to be seeing more of and learning more about. And from the perspective of health systems and health care, I'm excited to see who is forward thinking enough to start taking the evidence that does exist.
00;34;00;13 - 00;34;28;26
Alan Weil
It's I completely understand that we're behind where we should be. But there's also an incredible evidence base that you cite in your book. I'll be interested to see which innovative, forward looking health systems start saying, we're going to take this evidence seriously. We're going to do more with it, and then give us a whole different kind of data, not just the neuroscience data, but the population health data that you can only get when you apply an intervention to a larger population.
00;34;28;27 - 00;34;42;12
Susan Magsamen
We should put a challenge out to all of those great health care policy practitioners who, you know, and there are some fabulous groups doing amazing work and they're interested in this. So let's put some real policy behind this. Let's put some practice behind it.
00;34;42;12 - 00;34;43;10
Ivy Ross
This is the future.
00;34;43;27 - 00;35;03;19
Alan Weil
Well, I can't wait to where this future takes us. I'm so pleased that you all were able to put these thoughts together in an orderly way that gives people a sense of where we are and where we could be, and to create a blueprint and a research agenda, all of these things. And as I say, I suspect it will make its way into health policy before we know it.
00;35;04;03 - 00;35;14;16
Alan Weil
Susan, Ivy, thank you so much for being my guest on “A Health Podyssey”. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode, I hope you'll tell a friend about
00;35;14;23 - 00;35;17;14
Alan Weil
“A Health Podyssey”.