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Key insights from
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of
Exercise and the Brain
By
John J. Ratey, Eric Hagerman
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What you’ll learn
Since working as a research fellow at Harvard in the 70s,
John J. Ratey has been researching the brain-body connection. Spark is his
way of checking in with the general public to share good news from the
field of neuroscience about the amazing impact of exercise on brain
development and the deterioration we suffer without it. Ratey argues that
exercise is one of the best treatments out there for many of the issues we
look to psychology to fix.
Read on for key insights from Spark.
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1. The modern
sedentary lifestyle is damaging our bodies and brains.
We are killing ourselves. When we sit in front of a computer
all day at work and then return home only to stare at another screen, we go
against the grain of nature. There is a mismatch between our sedentary
lifestyle and what our genetics have equipped us to do. We humans are
animals, and our species has been on the move for a couple million years. Modern
technology and convenience have reached the point that our food moves to us
rather than us moving toward it (and killing it and cooking it). This state
of affairs is a relatively brief hiatus from the hunter-gatherer norm and
high mobility our ancestors experienced.
Brain and body worked in tandem until recently. Now
two-thirds of American adults are overweight and exercise is far from
habitual for most. To add another layer of tragedy to it all, the modern
story has not been one of the mental life triumphing at the expense of the
body: Not only are our bodies breaking down without exercise, but our
brains are deteriorating, too.
Our culture has been splitting apart body and brain, and the
divorce has been hard on the kids (i.e., us, posterity). We need to reunite
both aspects of personhood, and aerobic exercise is an excellent way to do
so. Exercise strengthens the body and sharpens the mind, clears up mental
fog, and gives us more energy. This isn’t just the “runner’s high” that
outdoor enthusiasts relish. Exercise rewires the brain’s circuitry by
slowing aging, catalyzing the brain’s learning processes, and attacking
stress.
So if we want to save our bodies and brains, we need to
recouple what was never meant to be separated.
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2. Giving high
school students time to work out before tough classes revolutionized their
health and test scores.
Naperville, Illinois, gained national attention in 1999 when
its students scored 6th in the word in math and 1st in science on the TIMSS
(or Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). This put
Naperville ahead of China, Japan, and Singapore, which all routinely beat
the United States. What made Naperville District 203 such an outstanding
exception?
It all began when Naperville Central High converted its old
cafeteria into a fitness center and offered students the opportunity to be
guinea pigs in a fitness experiment. By giving students the opportunity to
work out before classes (“Zero Hour,” they called it) students came into
class ready to learn. Studies show this is not just a placebo. The students
who went to reading class right after Zero Hour improved the most
dramatically in reading. Their literacy scores were almost double that of
students who slept in or took the standard gym class. The experiment was
such a success that the school began rearranging students’ schedules so
their hardest classes would be right after Zero Hour. The results were
similarly impressive, and the initiative spread to the rest of the
district.
Naperville’s initiative has made their students both
healthier and smarter. Youth obesity rates there are a tenth the national
average, and their standardized test scores are often significantly higher
than national averages. These results are stunning and encouraging. With
robust debate around the educational system and the best ways to help
students who are often overweight and short on motivation, this is one of
the most heartening findings in decades—precisely because it is easier to
implement than many of the changes being debated.
Zero Hour offers students an experience very different from
the gym classes of yesteryear. In Naperville, students aren’t just graded
for showing up. They are graded for how long they spend in their target
heart range. In other words, they have to stay active—active enough to
bring up the heart rate to an aerobic level.
The Zero Hour model promotes fitness as a rhythm and
lifestyle of working out—not just to pass a class but to have a pattern of
life they can take with them into adulthood, one that will foster a happier
and healthier and probably longer life. Traditional gym classes feature
more team sports and competitions. The downside is that only 3 percent of
adults continue to pursue team sports after age 24. The model fails to inculcate
a lifestyle of fitness and training in the vast majority of students.
Naperville District 203's Zero Hour has been in place for
years now and the district continues to rank in the top 10 districts in
Illinois each year—even though Naperville’s schools have far less money per
student than other school districts in the top 10. Education money per
student is considered the best determinant of success, but Naperville found
another, more economical way forward: fitness.
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3. The stress
response of fight-or-flight primes us for action, so why not harness that
energy buildup for exercise?
In the 21st century, most of us don’t regularly run from
lions or fend off wolves like our ancestors did. The same mechanisms that
trigger stress, however, still live in us even if they manifest themselves
differently. If your boss yells at you, you probably won’t punch him in the
face or run out of his office in a fit of terror. But that doesn’t mean
you’re not stressed or that your body isn’t delivering adrenaline, tensing
your muscles, or constricting your breathing. The instincts are all still
there, operating before conscious thought. But you are not at the mercy of
your body’s fear response. You actually have control over how stress
impacts you.
The Department of Energy conducted an intriguing study in
the 1980s—one they never published because the conclusion did not align
with their hypothesis. They had two groups of shipyard workers in
Baltimore, with tens of thousands in each group. All were engaged in the
same kind of work. The sole difference was one group handled cargo that
emitted very low levels of radiation. Researchers expected that exposure to
radiation—even in trace amounts—would have deleterious effects on the
workers’ health. Scientists were shocked to find that those exposed to
radiation over years were healthier than those who were not. The mortality
rate was 24 percent lower among those exposed to radiation.
Massive amounts of radiation kills cells, but small doses invigorate them,
making them tougher, much like immunization.
This experiment with the dock workers gives us vital insight
into the stress-recovery cycle in nature. The brain cells of those dock
workers took the radiation as a challenge, and they were strengthened by
the stress the radiation brought on. We see the same stress-recovery
mechanisms at work in athletes, too. Muscles tear when people stress
them through exercise. As they rest, the muscles recover and grow stronger
than they were. The same thing happens with how we process stress. Assuming
the stress is not chronic and crippling, exposing ourselves to a moderate
amount of stress and working through it is healthy, a fact that most modern
de-stressing strategies tend to overlook.
We can think our way into a panic state simply by
envisioning a stressful scenario. We can also, quite literally, run our way
out of a panic. When we are stressed, the amygdala signals the adrenal
glands in a hundredth of a second that it is time to release epinephrine,
or adrenaline. Adrenaline coursing through our body triggers all kinds of
physiological responses: Blood moves from the digestive tract to the arms
and legs, the heart pumps harder, and we become hypervigilant. Endorphins
reduce sensitivity to the sensation of pain. We are already primed to fight
or flee—so why not just flee? Or at least go for a run.
When you exercise in response to stress, you are going with
the physiological momentum your body just generated. Leaning into your
biological cues is far healthier than sitting and stewing in your stress.
All the energy built up from fight or flight responses that we curb in
civilized society means we have to find other ways to release the pent up
energy accruing in our bodies.
Stress and recovery happens in the brain just as it happens
in the body. By exercising regularly, exposing your body to mild or
moderate stress, you raise the threshold of what you think you can
tolerate—mentally and physically.
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4. Exercise levels
some of the highs and lows of PMS, pregnancy, and menopause.
On average, women spend between four days to a week out of
every month or so in premenstrual syndrome or PMS, which adds up to about 9
years of pain and mood swings over the course of a lifetime. That’s a lot
of life to spend in discomfort. Three out of four women report experiencing
some kind of pain once a month. For 14 percent, the pain can be so severe that
they skip class or call in sick. Thankfully, exercise can help.
The hormonal peaks and troughs throughout a woman’s life can
be extreme. PMS floods the system with up to five times the usual supply of
estrogen, and progesterone spikes, too. During pregnancy, the body releases
50 times the standard drip of estrogen, and 10 times the average flow of
progesterone. Menopause is an extreme shift in the opposite direction, as
progesterone and estrogen levels dwindle to very low levels.
A lot of women are already aware of the connection between
exercise and reduced PMS-related pain. The research on this is not
extensive compared to other body-brain repair research, but there is a Duke
study that found women who exercised three times a week for an hour noticed
improvements in 18 of 23 factors, including irritability, erratic action,
and depression.
One popular myth surrounding pregnancy is that soon-to-be
mothers should avoid exercise because the jostling will disturb the
in-utero child, that rest and pausing exercise are best. But doctors are
changing their tune. The American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends light to moderate exercise for pregnant
women and those experiencing postpartum depression. It turns out staying
sedentary, allowing stress and depression and all the related hormones to
build up in the body, poses far bigger risks to the baby than exercise.
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5. Prescribing
exercise for depression is a matter of life and death.
Much of what we know about how exercise alters the body and
brain comes from studying depression. In England, exercise is the top
recommendation medical professionals give to patients feeling down. In the
United States, however, it’s not a common talking point in doctors offices.
That advice would serve the US well because depression is the number one
health concern, followed by cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Sadly suicide is prevalent in the United States, too: the
country has a successful attempt every 17 minutes. Exercise is literally a
lifeline for those struggling with depression. It could dramatically
reduce those heartbreaking figures. Ratey defines depression as an “erosion
of the connections in your life and between your brain cells.” Exercise can
help repair both.
Study after study from the United States and Europe has
found a negative correlation between exercise and depression. In other
words, as regular exercise goes up, depression tends to go down. A Dutch
study found people who exercised tended to be more outgoing and less
neurotic and cynical. Another study found that serotonin, dopamine, and
norepinephrine are produced in larger quantities when people exercise.
These factors all help undercut depression, stabilizing mood, boosting
motivation and satisfaction.
Duke conducted a study in 1999 that discovered that regular
exercise (three times a week for 30 minutes at 70-85 percent for this
study) helped participants feel just as good as participants who were
taking Zoloft. These findings corroborated a longstanding hunch that
exercise was a viable alternative to meds for treating depression. The Duke
study, now a landmark in the field, should be a wake up call for the entire
medical industry, from medical students to practicing doctors to insurance
companies to assisted living workers. Twenty percent of nursing home
residents have depression. Just think of what an exercise regimen could do
for the mental health of the elderly.
Blumenthal at Duke University followed up with students half
a year after the study and discovered that only 30 percent of the exercise
group were still depressed. From the group on meds, 52 percent were still
depressed. In other words, in the long-term, exercise was more
effective in treating depression than Zoloft. Interestingly, exercise also
proves more effective than meds and exercise taken together.
The time element matters a lot when talking about depression
and exercise. When people are depressed, they might feel happy for five
minutes, but wonder if it will last. The struggle for hope intensifies when
moments of hope last only a few minutes or hours. With prescription
medication, you might feel relief in just a few days, but it might not
deliver over the long-term. In the same way, if you go for only one run,
you might feel depressed after the endorphins wear off post-exercise. But
if you build up the habit, you give your brain a chance to transform itself
to build more dopamine receptors. Those dopamine receptors help strengthen
the association between aerobic exercise and reward.
There remains much to be learned about depression. We do not
know depression’s biological origins, but we are measuring its symptoms
with increasing clarity. PET scans and fMRI scans show us where they light
up the brain—and where they tend to deplete it, like the prefrontal cortex
and the hippocampus.
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6. Even if you are
not running everyday, something is better than nothing.
The results are in: If you want to improve your mental and
physical resilience, exercise. Most programs recommend walking for 30
minutes a day, but studies find that aerobic exercise like running tends to
beat stress, depression, and anxiety far faster.
As one physiologist at Duke puts it, “A little is good, more
is better.” He became an exercise guru hounded by journalists after his
study found that even just three hours of walking a week improved
cardiovascular function. He is modest in what he tells reporters as he does
not want to make the threshold for jumpstarting a workout rhythm so high
that people stop trying altogether. The main thing is to do something. You
have to start somewhere.
What is the right amount of exercise for you? Everyone is
different, but your best bet is to get fit and push that threshold of your
aerobic ability. To ensure you are getting the intensity you need, find
some way to monitor your heart rate. By running and building up endurance
you are tapping into ancient rhythms. Our ancestors could run for
days—literally. They would chase antelope for hours or days and eventually
wear them out. Antelope rely on quick sprints to evade predators, but
people are built for endurance, for the long game. Build up your endurance,
keep running, and you’ll likely see your stress levels drop, your
depression lift, and your mood stabilize.
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Endnotes
These insights are
just an introduction. If you're ready to dive deeper, pick up a copy of Spark here. And since we get a commission on
every sale, your purchase will help keep this newsletter free.
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