Review
Did you know you can supercharge your thinking, beat stress, lift your mood, fight memory loss, sharpen your intellect, and function better than ever, simply by breaking a sweat? Exercise physically remodels our brains for peak performance, so, for your brain to function at its peak, your body needs to move. In Spark!, Dr John Ratey explains the science of how exercise cues the building blocks of learning in the brain, how it affects mood, anxiety and attention, and how it even reverses some of the effects of aging in the brain. He embarks upon a fascinating and entertaining journey through the mind-body connection, showing how exercise is truly our best defence against everything from depression to ADD, from addiction to Alzheimer's. And, with a simple plan to get you moving, Spark! could change forever the way you think about the gym - or, for that matter, simply the way you think.
302pp, 152mm x 232mm, softback, 2009

Extract
Why should you care about how your brain works? For one thing, it's running the show. Right now the front of your brain is firing signals about what you're reading, and how much of it you soak up has a lot to do with whether there is a proper balance of neurochemicals and growth factors to bind neurons together. Exercise has a documented, dramatic effect on these essential ingredients. It sets the stage, and when you sit down to learn something new, that stimulation strengthens the relevant connections; with practice, the circuit develops definition, as if you're wearing down a path through a forest. The importance of making these connections carries over to all of the issues I deal with in this book. In order to cope with anxiousness, for instance, you need to let certain well-worn paths grow over while you blaze alternate trails. By understanding such interactions between your body and your brain, you can manage the process, handle problems, and get your mind humming along smoothly. If you had half an hour of exercise this morning, you're in the right frame of mind to sit still and focus on this paragraph, and your brain is far more equipped to remember it.

Everything I have written over the past fifteen years has been aimed at educating people about their brains. Your life changes when you have a working knowledge of your brain. It takes guilt out of the equation when you recognize that there's a biological basis for certain emotional issues. On the other hand, you won't be left feeling helpless when you see how you can influence that biology. This is a point that I keep coming back to with my patients, because people tend to picture the brain as a commander mysteriously issuing orders from an ivory tower, untouchable from the outside. Not at all. Exercise breaks down those barriers. My hope is that if you understand how physical activity improves brain function, you'll be motivated to include it in your life in a positive way, rather than think of it as something you should do. Of course you should exercise, but I won't be preaching here. If you can get to the point where you're consistently saying to yourself exercise is something you want to do, then you're charting a course to a different future - one that's less about surviving and more about thriving.

In October of 2000 researchers from Duke University made the New York Times with a study showing that exercise is better than sertraline (Zoloft) at treating depression. What great news! Unfortunately, it was buried on page fourteen of the Health and Fitness section. If exercise came in pill form, it would be plastered across the front page, hailed as the blockbuster drug of the century.

Other fragments of the story I'm presenting bubble to the surface, only to sink back down. ABC World News reports that exercise might stave off Alzheimer's disease in rats; CNN flashes stats on the ever-expanding obesity crisis; the New York Times investigates the practice of treating bipoloar kids with costly drugs that are only marginally effective yet carry horrendous side effects. What gets lost is that these seemingly unrelated threads are tied together at a fundamental level of biology. I'll explain how, by exploring volumes of new research that hasn't yet appeared anywhere for the general public.

What I aim to do here is to deliver in plain English the inspiring science connecting exercise and the brain and to demonstrate how it plays out in the lives of real people. I want to cement the idea that exercise has a profound impact on cognitive abilities and mental health. It is simply one of the best treatments we have for most psychiatric problems.

I've witnessed this among my patients and my friends, a number of whom have given me permission to tell their stories here. Yet it was far beyond the walls of my office that I discovered the exemplar case study, in a suburban school district outside Chicago. The implications of the most exciting new research merge in this tale of a revolutionary physical education program. In Naperville, Illinois, gym class has transformed the student body of nineteen thousand into perhaps the fittest in the nation. Among one entire class of sophomores, only 3 percent were overweight, versus the national average of 30 percent. What's more surprising - stunning - is that the program has also turned those students into some of the smartest in the nation. In 1999 Naperville's eighth graders were among some 230,000 students from around the world who took an international standards test called TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), which evaluates knowledge of math and science. In recent years, students in China, Japan, and Singapore have outpaced American kids in these crucial subjects, but Naperville is the conspicuous exception: when its students took the TIMSS, they finished sixth in math and first in the world in science. As politicians and pundits sound the alarm about faltering education in the United States, and about our students being ill-equipped to succeed in today's technology-driven economy, Naperville stands out as an extraordinary bit of good news.

I haven't seen anything as uplifting and inspiring as Naperville's program in decades. At a time when we're bombarded with sad news about overweight, unmotivated, and underachieving adolescents, this example offers real hope. In the first chapter, I'll take you to Naperville. It is the spark that inspired me to write this book.

From Spark! How Exercise Will Improve the Performance of Your Brain, ?2009 by Dr John J. Ratey & Eric Hagerman, published by Quercus.