Spark Quotes

“I tell people that going for a run is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin because,”
― John J. Ratey, Spark!: How exercise will improve the performance of your brain

“BORN TO RUN In his book Racing the Antelope: What Animals Can Teach Us about Running and Life, biologist Bernd Heinrich describes the human species as an endurance predator. The genes that govern our bodies today evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago, when we were in constant motion, either foraging for food or chasing antelope for hours and days across the plains. Heinrich describes how, even though antelope are among the fastest mammals, our ancestors were able to hunt them down by driving them to exhaustion—keeping on their tails until they had no energy left to escape. Antelope are sprinters, but their metabolism doesn’t allow them to go and go and go. Ours does. And we have a fairly balanced distribution of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers, so even after ranging miles over the landscape we retain the metabolic capacity to sprint in short bursts to make the kill.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“The average seventy-five-year-old suffers from three chronic medical conditions and takes five prescription medicines,”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“The amount of data in the world is doubling every few years, but our attention system, like the rest of the brain, was built to make sense of the surrounding environment as it existed ten thousand years ago.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“One of the first symptoms of depression, even before your mood drops to new lows, is sleep disturbance. Either you can’t get up or you can’t get to sleep or both.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“exercise has yet to be embraced as a medical treatment. It doesn’t simply raise serotonin or dopamine or norepinephrine. It adjusts all of them, to levels that, we can only presume, have been optimally programmed by evolution.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“In Britain, doctors now use exercise as a first-line treatment for depression, but it’s vastly underutilized in the United States,”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Just as the mind can affect the body, the body can affect the mind. But the idea that we can alter our mental state by physically moving still has yet to be accepted by most physicians, let alone the broader public.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“After a stressful event, we often crave comfort food. Our body is calling for more glucose and simple carbohydrates and fat... And in modern life, people tend to have fewer friends and less support, because there's no tribe. Being alone is not good for the brain.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“If everyone knew that exercise worked as well as Zoloft, I think we could put a real dent in the disease. Reading”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“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.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Over time, regular exercise also increases the efficiency of the cardiovascular system, lowering blood pressure.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Zero Hour grew out of Naperville District 203’s unique approach to physical education, which has gained national attention and become the model for a type of gym class that I suspect would be unrecognizable to any adult reading this. No getting nailed in dodgeball, no flunking for not showering, no living in fear of being the last kid picked. The essence of physical education in Naperville 203 is teaching fitness instead of sports. The underlying philosophy is that if physical education class can be used to instruct kids how to monitor and maintain their own health and fitness, then the lessons they learn will serve them for life. And probably a longer and happier life at that. What’s being taught, really, is a lifestyle.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“As for how much aerobic exercise you need to stay sharp, one small but scientifically sound study from Japan found that jogging thirty minutes just two or three times a week for twelve weeks improved executive function. But it’s important to mix in some form of activity that demands coordination beyond putting one foot in front of the other. Greenough worked on an experiment several years ago in which running rats were compared to others that were taught complex motor skills, such as walking across balance beams, unstable objects, and elastic rope ladders. After two weeks of training, the acrobatic rats had a 35 percent increase of BDNF in the cerebellum, whereas the running rats had none in that area. This extends what we know from the neurogenesis research: that aerobic exercise and complex activity have different beneficial effects on the brain.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“People think of exercise in terms of physical health, but not mental health,” says Jennifer Shaw, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Brookline, Massachusetts, who is a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Indeed, in a 2007 study of humans, German researchers found that people learn vocabulary words 20 percent faster following exercise than they did before exercise, and that the rate of learning correlated directly with levels of BDNF. Along with that, people with a gene variation that robs them of BDNF are more likely to have learning deficiencies.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“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”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“The mental and physical diseases we face in old age are tied together through the cardiovascular system and metabolic system. A”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“The more we build these networks and enrich our stores of memory and experience, the easier it is to learn, because what we already know serves as a foundation for forming increasingly complex thoughts.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Far from being hardwired, as scientists once envisioned it, the brain is constantly being rewired. I’m here to teach you how to be your own electrician.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“What better way to start filling the vessel than exercise,” Provet suggests. “I strongly believe that exercise can serve as an antidote and as a type of inoculation against addiction,” he says. “As an antidote, you’re giving the individual an avenue of life experience that most have not had—the goals of exercise, the feeling of exercise, the challenge of exercise, the pleasure and the pain, the accomplishment, the physical well-being, the self-esteem. All that exercise gives us, you’re now presenting to the addict as a very compelling option.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Intensity was particularly important in his case because of the evidence that only rigorous exercise alleviates sensitivity to the physical arousal of anxiety.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“The beauty of exercise is that it attacks the problem from both directions at the same time. It gets us moving, naturally, which stimulates the brain stem and gives us more energy, passion, interest, and motivation. We feel more vigorous. From above, in the prefrontal cortex, exercise shifts our self-concept by adjusting all the chemicals I’ve mentioned, including serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, BDNF, VEGF, and so on. And unlike many antidepressants, exercise doesn’t selectively influence anything—it adjusts the chemistry of the entire brain to restore normal signaling.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Like synaptic plasticity, “neurogenesis is clearly involved in our interactions with our environment, both emotionally and cognitively,” says neuroscientist Fred Gage, of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“in a 2007 study of humans, German researchers found that people learn vocabulary words 20 percent faster following exercise than they did before exercise, and that the rate of learning correlated directly with levels of BDNF.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“exercise provides an unparalleled stimulus, creating an environment in which the brain is ready, willing, and able to learn.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark

“Genes determine our risk for a disease, but our lifestyle and environment can either trigger or suppress those risks.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“About 20 percent of older adults who break a hip die within a year.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“One small but scientifically sound study from Japan found that jogging thirty minutes just two or three times a week for twelve weeks improved executive function. But it's important to mix in some form of activity that demands coordination beyond putting one foot in front of the other.... Aerobic exercise and complex activity have different beneficial effects on the brain. The good news is they're complementary.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Students would be assessed on effort rather than skill. You didn't have to be a natural athlete to do well in gym.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain