Gardens medicine hits the spot

A monthly “Walk with a Doc” in the Royal Botanical Gardens with Southbank’s Dr Edna Correal Granados has been building in popularity and racking up benefits for participants over the 11 months it has been running.

Back in the industrial era, it was mainly infectious diseases that killed people, according to Dr Edna Correal Granados.

“That has changed, big time,” she said.

“These days we have an overwhelming amount of chronic illnesses that can be prevented with a healthy lifestyle.”

“We have lots of cardiovascular illnesses, even some cancers at least in part related to unhealthy lifestyle, mental health issues and so on.”

“So, I thought, ‘well, we need to do something about it’,” the GP, who is also a lifestyle medicine fellow, or specialist, told Southbank News.

Hearing about international initiative Walk with a Doc, which was started in 2005 by a North American cardiologist who wanted to get people active and now has more than 700 chapters in 40 countries, Dr Edna thought it would be “very nice” to bring the concept to Melbourne.

“So, I reached out to the organisation. We had an interview via video, and they are really great and have been very supportive of our chapter,” she said.

The walking events Dr Edna started, on the last Saturday morning of the month in the Royal Botanical Gardens, involve “a five-to ten-minute presentation on current health topics, followed by a walk for the remainder of the hour, with participants setting their own pace.

Health topics so far discussed include the benefits of walking, gut health, goal setting, hydration, cardiovascular risk, nutrition myths and stroke awareness.

When she first kicked the sessions off midway through last year, the other participants were from her own family, the Columbian-born doctor says, then members of Melbourne’s Spanish-speaking community started to join in.

Nearly a year on, attendance has grown and diversified, and with the Southbank Evening Walking Group now starting to get involved, is increasingly local.

Participants, ranging in age from 11 months to their 70s, and from a variety of cultural backgrounds, are proactive and enthusiastic and clearly look forward to the walks, Dr Edna says, with an average of around 15 people turning up each time, including her husband, who has never missed a session.

While there hasn’t been any research done yet into the effects of participating in the group, its parent organisation has statistics that show the huge benefits.

Basically, they say that 90 per cent of participants feel that they are more educated … 71 per cent now get more exercise and 27 per cent say that they have maintained their level of exercise. So, the numbers are really inspiring to me, Dr Edna says.

For her the walks are “the perfect combination of movement, connection, nature and education”.

“I think people really enjoy it, and I think they are making the most of it,” she says.

“And I think we chose the right place because it’s beautiful [in the Gardens]. It really helps.”

The next Walk with a Doc health talk, on June 27, will focus on sleep.

For more information visit walkwithadoc.org or meet the group at 10am on the last Saturday of the month at the Botanical Gardens information centre off Birdwood Avenue. •