Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

by John J. Ratey

see your doctor about medication and get yourself some omega-3 supplements, which are proven to have antidepressant effects.

Exercise is not an instant cure, but you need to get your brain working again, and if you move your body your brain won’t have any choice.

At its core, depression is defined by an absence of moving toward anything, and exercise is the way to divert those negative signals and trick the brain into coming out of hibernation.

Let’s take one element of the attention system: motivation. While it’s true that people with ADHD “just need to get motivated,” it’s also true that, like every other aspect of our psychology, motivation is biological.

we would see distinct differences in activity at the reward center in each situation.

rainmaker—a high-energy personality with the social skills and business savvy to make deals happen.

the ability to hyperfocus is a common trait of ADHD,

it’s more of an inability to direct attention or to focus on command.

attention variability disorder;

whether exercise can replace Ritalin or Adderall or bupropion (Wellbutrin), and for the vast majority of cases I would say the answer is no.

For the first time in his life, he felt like he could steer his own future. He used running as his medicine.

exercise as a tool to help them manage their symptoms along with their medication.

The best strategy is to exercise in the morning, and then take the medication about an hour later, which is generally when the immediate focusin...

For a number of patients, I find that if they exercise daily, they need a l...

they need to develop militant vigilance in terms of scheduling and structure.

Arrange your day and your surroundings in a way that encourages focus and accomplishment—moving the ball forward rather than letting it ricochet off the walls.

The external accountability is a powerful way to help you maintain routines such as exercise and to meet your goals.

many ADHD kids are more active than their peers—studies show they have less body fat, on average—and I see plenty of adults with ADHD who are already exercising.

I tell my patients to make every effort to institute a regimen of daily exercise—or at least during the five weekdays, when they need to focus at school or work.

it’s important to get the heart rate up there—maybe 75 percent of your maximum for twenty or thirty minutes.

The truth is, everyone has a different level of attention deficit, and you’ll have to experiment to see what regimen works. My hope is that knowing how it works will allow you to find the best solution for you. If you want a minimum, I would say thirty minutes of aerobic exercise.

“It sounds obvious,” Tavolacci says, “But the only thing that we know about treatment is the longer a person stays in, the more likely they are to succeed.”

importance of community.

“Exercise is directly antithetical to drug-addictive behavior. Because you need lung strength, muscle strength, mental acuity to engage in physical exercise—lots of things that drugs deprive you of.

Exercise builds synaptic detours around the well-worn connections automatically looking for the next fix.

“Not everyone is going to become a marathon runner, but more and more we’re going from addict to athlete,”

“Is it for everybody? Probably not. Is it for most peop...

exercise’s benefits go well beyond the physical aspect of burning calories. Dopamine produced during exercise will plug into receptors and thus blunt the craving, and over time the activity will produce more D2 receptors and restore balance in the reward system.

A lot of people assume that an addict’s real problem is just a lack of motivation. On one level, this is true, but what very few people recognize is that motivation is a function of brain signals, and that those signals depend on reliable messengers and intact nerve pathways.

it’s a lot easier when we use exercise as a tool, one with great versatility.

Exercise isn’t necessarily a cure, but it’s the only treatment I know of that works from the top down as well as from the bottom up, rewiring the brain to circumvent the addictive pattern and curbing the craving.

Overall, exercise balances the system, on a monthly basis as well as during each stage of life,

including pregnancy and menopause.

The average woman has four hundred to five hundred menstrual cycles in her lifetime, each one...

Every month since she was about sixteen, if she doesn’t exercise Patty gets tired, irritable, itchy, anxious, agitated, and aggressive in the days leading up to her period.

“The week before my period I have to do an hour of cardio four days a week or I can’t stand myself.”

At least four days a week, I suggest getting out there and walking briskly or

jogging or playing tennis or engaging in some form of activity that will get your pulse up to 60 to 65 percent of your maximum heart rate.

It’s also important to mix in strength training a couple of days a week, to shore up your bones against osteoporosis.

it might be a good idea to mix in more intense bursts like sprinting on two of those days, though not back-to-back.

it’s important to keep up exercise during pregnancy, a recommendation that has finally been endorsed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

thirty minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity every day during pregnancy for healthy women.

it’s important to get clearance directly from yo...

picking up your routine as soon as possible after the baby is born, ideal...

moving will actually redu...

She walked because she liked to walk (and to compare prices at grocery stores a mile apart).

my mother’s level of physical activity is what kept her so sharp for so long.

she met another man and remarried in her midsixties.

he taught her how to play golf, and she learned how to swim.

Whenever I called, we would have detailed conversations about her earning master points in bridge or how she should manage her money.