What Is Actually Happening Inside Your Body During Treatment?
Nature heals.
We have always known it, but now research is confirming what we have long believed: Time living outside, exercise, movement, stretching your comfort zone, good sleep, clean food, meaningful social connection and freedom from screens heal your body and your mind.
The science of how this healing happens — at the cellular and metabolic level — is what Legacy and Juniper Canyon are now measuring in real time.
The question driving this work is simple: when a young adult spends 90 days in the Utah wilderness what actually changes in their body? And can we prove it?
We feel this is so important because emerging research shows that mental health is deeply connected to overall health, especially metabolic health. When the systems regulating your body’s energy production improve, so does your mental health. When they’re disrupted, the brain suffers. Our goal is to help your body recover these functions and measure the results.
Legacy is among the first residential treatment programs in the country to track this biological transformation in real time. Using comprehensive blood panels, urine based metabolic tests, and a wearable device called an Oura Ring, we measure what is actually changing inside your body during your time in the program.
We utilize those results to help you better understand your physiology and how it relates to your mental health and to help you build your personal wellness plan and after care plan.
What the Science Already Shows: The Biology Behind the Legacy Experience
Metabolism is the sum total of all the processes your body uses to convert food and nutrients into the energy that powers everything you think, feel, and do. Research is now confirming what we have observed for years: each element of our program triggers biological changes that create the conditions for genuine mental health recovery.
Here is some of what the existing literature shows is actually happening inside your body:
Digital Detox
Cutting out screens and social media lowers stress hormones, restores dopamine balance, and allows the nervous system to shift out of fight-or-flight mode.
Nature Immersion
Time spent outdoors in the sunlight reduces inflammation, lowers cortisol, and improves heart rate variability.
Daily Physical Activity
Exercise, which for us is hiking, climbing, and horseback riding at altitude, improves glucose regulation, reduces inflammation, and enhances mitochondrial functioning.
Clean Nutrition
Whole, unprocessed, nutrient dense foods and the absence of refined sugars reduces inflammation, improves insulin sensitivity, restores depleted vitamins and minerals, and begins to repair the gut microbiome.
Restorative Sleep
Going to sleep with the darkness and waking up with the light, as well as time spent away from screens and stimulants, helps clients sleep deeply… often for the first time in years. Deep sleep allows the body to repair itself at the cellular level.
Meaning social connection
Loneliness is physiologically toxic and genuine human connection reduces stress and inflammation and helps restore hormonal functioning and nervous system balance in measurable ways.
What We Collect And Why It Matters
We collect data at three points: when you arrive, midway into your stay, and when you leave. This gives us a clear picture of what is changing in your body during your time at Legacy. Specifically, we collect data from the following sources:
Blood Panel:
Urine Organic Acids Test:
Oura Ring:
What This Means for Families: A Different Kind of Evidence. A Different Kind of Hope.
The metabolic health program adds a dimension that goes beyond traditional measures of success and offers biological proof of what happens to the body during our outdoor program.
The goal is to give the client an objective record showing what changed in them at the cellular level. For families who have watched someone they love struggle through addiction, mental health crises, and painful setbacks, this data is something no questionnaire can produce. It is the body’s own testimony that recovery is real. It is concrete, personal proof that their body changed during treatment, and that protecting that change is worth every hard day that follows.
We want every client to leave Legacy knowing not just that they feel better — but why their body is better, and what it takes to stay that way.
A Biological Roadmap for Aftercare
A client leaving with a metabolic health discharge report can offer their next providers something almost no other treatment graduate has: a documented biological baseline, a 90-day arc of physiological change, and data-informed recommendations for continued metabolic health.
Aftercare providers don’t have to start from scratch. They can see where the client was biologically at admission, where they are now, and what the data suggests about ongoing support — whether monitoring specific markers, addressing residual hormonal dysregulation, continuing nutritional protocols, or tracking HRV through continued Oura Ring use.
Recovery is not an event. It is a process that continues long after discharge. This metabolic health approach gives that process documentation that can be turned into a road map to maintain the gains that have been made.
Functional Medicine Interpretation with Dr. Sam Shay
For families who want the deepest level of analysis, Dr. Sam Shay, DC, IFMCP — Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner — provides full interpretation of all biological panels and Oura Ring biometrics, with individualized aftercare recommendations.
This is available as an ongoing add-on at any time.
Oura Ring Purchase: Families may purchase the Oura Ring outright so the client keeps it post-discharge, enabling continued biometric self-monitoring through aftercare. Current retail: approximately $299–$499 depending on model.
Research: The Gap Legacy Is Filling
Existing science tells us what each element of the Legacy environment should do — but not what happens when all those elements work together for 90 days inside a structured clinical program. No outdoor behavioral health program has ever systematically measured biological change during treatment using functional medicine biomarkers.
Legacy has more than a decade of data showing clients improve psychologically. This initiative asks the next question: what is happening in the body that makes it possible? The answer matters beyond any individual client. If peer-reviewed research can demonstrate that 90 days of integrated wilderness treatment produces measurable improvements in biological markers related to metabolic health, it changes the landscape of the field itself.
At this time, Legacy is conducting an in-house “Pilot Study” that is allowing us to prototype future services. We also see this effort as a precursor to a larger more academic study that we hope will become peer-reviewed publishable research.
That broader vision is Legacy’s contribution to that future and is being developed with university partners, IRB ethics oversight, and the Wilderness Therapy Institute, with findings rigorous enough to reshape how health systems understand nature-based treatment. Your participation makes it possible.
Legacy’s 11-years of gathering psychological data and helping to publish research helped set the standard for the field, and now we hope this biological data will open a new chapter of what the field measures and demands of itself.
What Participation Looks Like
Joining the Pilot Project means consenting to have your anonymized biological data included in an aggregate research dataset. Participation is entirely voluntary — your clinical services are identical either way. The only difference is whether your results help build the evidence base that future families will benefit from.
Full informed consent documentation is provided before any data is used for research purposes.
You may withdraw at any time.
Common Questions
Josie Oyler, MSN, FNP-C — Legacy’s on-site nurse practitioner. Everything happens in Loa, Utah. No outside clinic visits, no disruption to treatment.
Josie provides clinical interpretation for all clients. Families who want deeper analysis can add a full consultation with Dr. Sam Shay, DC, IFMCP — a certified functional medicine practitioner who reviews both admission and discharge panels and provides personalized aftercare recommendations.
Josie has full clinical authority to act on any finding immediately. Mild findings are documented and shared with aftercare providers. The client is always the first to know.
Yes — fully HIPAA compliant. Your biological data belongs to you. Before you agree to participate, you will receive a full disclosure of our privacy policies. Research use is entirely separate and requires its own explicit consent. All research data is fully de-identified.
The clinical service is yours regardless of research participation. Joining the research study simply means your de-identified data contributes to our broader findings. No extra testing. It is voluntary and you can withdraw at any time.
Yes. It’s waterproof, rugged, and stores data locally when there’s no signal. Most clients forget they’re wearing it within a day or two.
The Team Behind This Work
This initiative took decades of combined experience, the right partnerships, and a shared belief that wilderness therapy deserves the same scientific rigor as any other model of care.
Rob Meltzer, MA, CEP – Pilot study design and oversight. Rob is the Founder of the Wilderness Therapy Institute and 30-year veteran in wilderness immersion programs. Rob conceived the initiative, built the research protocol, and assembled the team.
Josie Oyler, MSN, FNP-C – Board Certified Family Nurse Practitioner, on-site at Legacy. Leads all clinical sample collection and provides interpretation of results for participating clients.
Dr. Sam Shay, DC, IFMCP – Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner. Provides in-depth interpretation of admission and discharge panels with personalized aftercare recommendations.
Derek Daley – Co-founder of Legacy Treatment Center and Juniper Canyon. Drives the on-the-ground implementation of the program across both sites.
Dr. Joanna Bettmann Schaefer – Faculty researcher at the University of Utah and nationally recognized wilderness therapy researcher. Leads academic partnership and IRB ethics oversight.
Institutional Partners include Oura Ring, Diagnostic Solutions Laboratory (DSL), and The Wilderness Therapy Institute.
