Spark Quotes

“My high school patient needed the full complement of treatments: medicine, exercise, and talk therapy. But for my patient Amy, physical activity alone helped tremendously, both in the moment and day to day, and it cleared the way for talk therapy to get at the underlying issues. Aerobic exercise complemented her yoga and provided the calm necessary to look inside and observe herself, rather than spend all of her emotional energy on the task of not being overwhelmed. She became much more aware of her own psychology and behavior than she had ever been. She came to recognize that there is a natural ebb and flow to her challenges and negative feelings, and to realize that she has to ride the waves—and that she can.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“A lot of people who are treated for panic disorder can go on to have a completely different kind of life. The farther they get from their last panic episode, the less likely they are to have another panic episode. The same holds true for any brand and any degree of anxiety. The more your life changes, the more you engage with the world, the more likely you are to put the anxiety behind you for good. Exercise can have an even more dramatic effect on milder anxiety, the kind that isn’t bad enough for medication but is still troublesome.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“One big difference between combining exercise with antianxiety medicine and using medicine alone is that while drugs like benzodiazepine—and alcohol for people who are self-medicating—quickly stifle anxiety, they don’t guarantee that you’ll learn a different response to the fear. People with anxiety often have a hard time knowing or choosing what they want from life. In fact, all that most chronically anxious people want is not to be anxious. Activity or exercise can help them move toward something.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“7. It sets you free. Researchers immobilize rats in order to study stress. In people too, if you’re locked down—literally or figuratively—you’ll feel more anxious. People who are anxious tend to immobilize themselves—balling up in a fetal position or just finding a safe spot to hide from the world.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“6. It improves resilience. You learn that you can be effective in controlling anxiety without letting it turn into panic. The psychological term is self-mastery, and developing it is a powerful prophylactic against anxiety sensitivity and against depression, which can develop from anxiety. In consciously making the decision to do something for yourself, you begin to realize that you can do something for yourself. It’s a very useful tautology.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“5. It reroutes your circuits. By activating the sympathetic nervous system through exercise, you break free from the trap of passively waiting and worrying, and thus prevent the amygdala from running wild and reinforcing the danger-filled view of what life is presenting.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“4. It teaches a different outcome. One aspect of anxiety that makes it so different from other disorders is the physical symptoms. Because anxiety brings the sympathetic nervous system into play, when you sense your heart rate and breathing picking up, that awareness can trigger anxiety or a panic attack. But those same symptoms are inherent to aerobic exercise—and that’s a good thing. If you begin to associate the physical symptoms of anxiety with something positive, something that you initiated and can control, the fear memory fades in contrast to the fresh one taking shape. Think of it as a biological bait and switch—your mind is expecting a panic attack, but instead it ends up with a positive association with the symptoms.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“3. It builds brain resources. You know by now that exercise increases serotonin and norepinephrine both in the moment and over the long term. Serotonin works at nearly every junction of the anxiety circuitry, regulating signals at the brain stem, improving the performance of the prefrontal cortex to inhibit the fear, and calming down the amygdala itself. Norepinephrine is the arousal neurotransmitter, so modulating its activity is critical to breaking the anxiety cycle. Physical activity also increases the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA as well as BDNF, which is important for cementing alternative memories.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“2. It reduces muscle tension. Exercise serves as a circuit breaker just like beta-blockers, interrupting the negative feedback loop from the body to the brain that heightens anxiety. Back in 1982 a researcher named Herbert de Vries conducted a study showing that people with anxiety have overactive electrical patterns in their muscle spindles and that exercise reduced that tension (just as beta-blockers do). He called it the “tranquilizing effects of exercise.” Reducing muscle tension, he found, reduced the feeling of anxiety, which, as I’ve explained, is important to extinguishing not just the state but the trait of anxiety.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“1. It provides distraction. Quite literally, moving puts your mind on something else, just as using the elliptical trainer helped my patient Amy break out of her acute state of anxiety and focus on something other than the fear of her next panic attack. Studies have shown that anxious people respond well to any directed distraction—quietly sitting, meditating, eating lunch with a group, reading a magazine. But the antianxiety effects of exercise last longer and carry the other side benefits listed here.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“OUTRUNNING THE FEAR The elegance of exercise as a way to deal with anxiety, in everyday life and in the form of a disorder, is that it works on both the body and the brain. Here’s how:”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Anxiety is fear, but what is fear? In neurological terms, fear is the memory of danger. If we suffer from an anxiety disorder, the brain constantly replays that memory, forcing us to live in that fear. It all starts when the amygdala sounds the survival call, but unlike the normal stress response, in anxiety the all-clear signal isn’t working properly. Our cognitive processors fail to tell us there is no problem or that it has passed and we can relax. There is so much noise in the mind from the sensory input of physical and mental tension that it clouds our ability to clearly assess the situation.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Two neurotransmitters put the brain on alert: norepinephrine arouses attention, then dopamine sharpens and focuses it. An imbalance of these neurotransmitters is why some people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) come across as stress junkies. They have to get stressed to focus. It’s one of the primary factors in procrastination. People learn to wait until the Sword of Damocles is ready to fall—it’s only then, when stress unleashes norepinephrine and dopamine, that they can sit down and do the work.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Humans are unique among animals in that the danger doesn’t have to be clear and present to elicit a response—we can anticipate it; we can remember it; we can conceptualize it. And this capacity complicates our lives dramatically. “The mind is so powerful that we can set off the [stress] response just by imagining ourselves in a threatening situation,” writes Rockefeller University neuroscientist Bruce McEwen in his book The End of Stress as We Know It. In other words, we can think ourselves into a frenzy. There is an important flip side to McEwen’s point: We can literally run ourselves out of that frenzy. 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. It’s a fundamental theme of my work, and it’s particularly relevant in the context of stress. After all, the purpose of the fight-or-flight response is to mobilize us to act, so physical activity is the natural way to prevent the negative consequences of stress. When we exercise in response to stress, we’re doing what human beings have evolved to do over the past several million years.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“stress seems to have an effect on the brain similar to that of vaccines on the immune system. In limited doses, it causes brain cells to overcompensate and thus gird themselves against future demands. Neuroscientists call this phenomenon stress inoculation.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“One thing scientists know for sure is that you can’t learn difficult material while you’re exercising at high intensity because blood is shunted away from the prefrontal cortex, and this hampers your executive function. For example, while working out on the treadmill or the stationary bike for twenty minutes at a high intensity of 70 to 80 percent of their maximum heart rate, college students perform poorly on tests of complex learning. (So don’t study for the Law School Admission Test with the elliptical machine on full-tilt.) However, blood flow shifts back almost immediately after you finish exercising, and this is the perfect time to focus on a project that demands sharp thinking and complex analysis.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Now you know how exercise improves learning on three levels: first, it optimizes your mind-set to improve alertness, attention, and motivation; second, it prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another, which is the cellular basis for logging in new information; and third, it spurs the development of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hippocampus.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Dopamine, which is thought of as the learning, reward (satisfaction), attention, and movement neurotransmitter, takes on sometimes contradictory roles in different parts of the brain. Methylphenidate (Ritalin) eases attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by raising dopamine, thus calming the mind.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Norepinephrine, which was the first neurotransmitter scientists studied to understand mood, often amplifies signals that influence attention, perception, motivation, and arousal.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“Serotonin, which you’ll hear a lot more about in later chapters, is often called the policeman of the brain because it helps keep brain activity under control. It influences mood, impulsivity, anger, and aggressiveness. We use serotonin drugs such as fluoxetine (Prozac), for instance, because they help modify runaway brain activity that can lead to depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsiveness.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“About 80 percent of the signaling in the brain is carried out by two neurotransmitters that balance each other’s effect: glutamate stirs up activity to begin the signaling cascade, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) clamps down on activity. When glutamate delivers a signal between two neurons that haven’t spoken before, the activity primes the pump. The more often the connection is activated, the stronger the attraction becomes, which is what neuroscientists mean when they talk about binding. As the saying goes, neurons that fire together wire together. Which makes glutamate a crucial ingredient in learning.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“The brain is made up of one hundred billion neurons of various types that chat with one another by way of hundreds of different chemicals, to govern our every thought and action. Each brain cell might receive input from a hundred thousand others before firing off its own signal. The junction between cell branches is the synapse, and this is where the rubber meets the road. Synapses don’t actually touch, which is a little confusing because neuroscientists talk about synapses “wiring together” when they establish a connection. The way it works is that an electrical signal shoots down the axon, the outgoing branch, until it reaches the synapse, where a neurotransmitter carries the message across the synaptic gap in chemical form. On the other side, at the dendrite, or the receiving branch, the neurotransmitter plugs into a receptor—like a key into a lock—and this opens ion channels in the cell membrane to turn the signal back into electricity. If the electrical charge at the receiving neuron builds up beyond a certain threshold, that nerve cell fires a signal along its own axon, and the entire process repeats.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“The concept of plasticity is fundamental to understanding how the brain works and how exercise optimizes brain function by fostering that quality. Everything we do and think and feel is governed by how our brain cells, or neurons, connect to one another. What most people think of as psychological makeup is rooted in the biology of these connections. Likewise, our thoughts and behavior and environment reflect back on our neurons, influencing the pattern of connections. Far from being hardwired, as scientists once envisioned it, the brain is constantly being rewired.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“An imbalance of these neurotransmitters is why some people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) come across as stress junkies. They have to get stressed to focus. It’s one of the primary factors in procrastination. People learn to wait until the Sword of Damocles is ready to fall—it’s only then, when stress unleashes norepinephrine and dopamine, that they can sit down and do the work. A need for stress also explains why ADHD patients sometimes seem to shoot themselves in the foot.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“There’s certainly nothing wrong with taking medicine, but if you can achieve the same results through exercise, you build confidence in your own ability to cope.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“so as far as our brains are concerned, if we’re not moving, there’s no real need to learn anything.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“The body was designed to be pushed, and in pushing our bodies we push our brains too. Learning and memory evolved in concert with the motor functions that allowed our ancestors to track down food, so as far as our brains are concerned, if we’re not moving, there’s no real need to learn anything.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“How do they feel about being Mr. Duncan’s guinea pigs? “I guess it’s OK,” says Michelle. “Besides getting up early and being all sweaty and gross, I’m more awake during the day. I mean, I was cranky all the time last year.” Beyond improving her mood, it will turn out, Michelle is also doing much better with her reading.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

“The notion that it might is supported by emerging research showing that physical activity sparks biological changes that encourage brain cells to bind to one another. For the brain to learn, these connections must be made; they reflect the brain’s fundamental ability to adapt to challenges. The more neuroscientists discover about this process, the clearer it becomes that exercise provides an unparalleled stimulus, creating an environment in which the brain is ready, willing, and able to learn. Aerobic activity has a dramatic effect on adaptation, regulating systems that might be out of balance and optimizing those that are not—it’s an indispensable tool for anyone who wants to reach his or her full potential.”
― John J. Ratey, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

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