Increasing Mental Fitness

Review:
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
by John J. Ratey. Little, Brown and Co., www.hachettebookgroup.com. 2008. 294 pages. $24.99.

In Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John Ratey gives the majority of Americans and the 60% of the world’s people who do not exercise enough for good health even more reason to get off their duffs and start moving. Ratey effectively summarizes recent research and case histories to show that exercise is good for you mentally as well as physically — a regular exercise program can literally heal a troubled mind.

The first chapter, “Welcome to the Revolution,” sets the stage by discussing the innovative physical-education program at Naperville Central High School in Naperville, Illinois. The program emphasizes cardiovascular fitness rather than development of skills for team sports. The students are continually moving rather than waiting for a turn to shoot a basket or bat a ball. They are self-motivated by comparing their current to their past performance, so that even the most uncoordinated or overweight kid can get a sense of accomplishment.

While Ratey does not tie the exercise program directly to the students’ academic success, he points out that Naperville Central students do exceptionally well on standardized tests. The reader gets the feeling that a lot more adults would be physically active in their leisure and mentally healthier if everyone’s high school had a physical-education program like that at Naperville Central. In subsequent chapters, Ratey explains how exercise makes one sharper mentally and, in combination with — or even instead of — medications, improves mental health and relieves mental illnesses. He explains the biological mechanisms involved, cites relevant scientific studies, and relates his experiences with patients. He shows that exercise helps one to learn better, relieve stress, control anxiety and depression, live with attention-deficit- hyperactivity disorder, recover from addictions, alleviate the undesirable effects of hormonal changes, and stave off the deleterious effects of aging. The beneficial effects of exercise on some of Ratey’s patients are particularly interesting:

Susan learned to deal with the stresses of motherhood by jumping rope instead of drinking wine.

Amy went off Prozac and gained control of her anxiety with an exercise routine consisting of yoga and workouts on a treadmill.

Rusty found that playing the exercise video game Dance Dance Revolution blunted his drug cravings, keeping him free from drugs and out of jail.

Stacy relieved her postpartum depression by workouts on a treadmill, which she and her husband bought immediately after leaving Ratey’s office.

To stave off the cognitive decline, emotional decline, and dementia that can accompany aging, Ratey recommends that anyone over 60 years old exercise six days a week: aerobic exercise on four days and strength training, balance, and flexibility exercises on two. One of his most interesting examples is 80-year-old Harold, who lives with his wife in a retirement home because she has Alzheimer’s disease. The retirement home, University Living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has a fitness center called “Preservation Station” with aerobic and strength-training machines. Preservation Station is headed by an exercise physiologist who specializes in aging. Under her supervision, Harold works out on a weight machine, does balance drills on the physioball, and completes 30-minute drills on the NuStep exercise machine. The payoff from this regimen for Harold is that he is able to play 18 holes of golf twice a week in the summer and ski in the winter. Ratey begins the concluding chapter, “The Regimen: Build Your Brain,” with this significant statement: “The point I’ve tried to make — that exercise is the single most powerful tool you have to optimize your brain function — is based on evidence I’ve gathered from hundreds and hundreds of research papers, most of them published only within the past decade.” Significantly, he recommends more exercise than the familiar 30 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and the American Council on Exercise.

“Americans are so inactive that the experts are wary of providing guidelines that are too stiff for fear the whole country will give up,” he says.

He recommends aerobic activity six days a week for 45 minutes to an hour, plus strength training. And he echoes the familiar recommendation to stick with whatever exercise routine you start. Perhaps the soundest advice buried in the concluding chapter is that “the most important thing is to do something. And to start.”

Ratey is optimistic that attitudes are becoming more favorable to exercise, particularly in the medical community. The president of the American Medical Association has urged all AMA members to read a pamphlet called “Exercise Is Medicine” to help each patient plan an exercise regimen.

Based on my own studies, I am also optimistic that Americans and others in the developed world are increasingly heeding the advice of Ratey and others and becoming more physically active in their leisure time, or at least feeling that they should. In a world where medicine is increasingly high tech and increasingly expensive, simple behavioral changes like starting and sticking to an exercise routine can also contribute significantly to good health. We cannot afford not to keep urging people to adopt them.

About the Reviewer
Kenneth W. Harris is secretary of the World Future Society, chairman of the Consilience Group LLC, and transportation field editor for Techcast.org. E-mail kenharris39@mac.com .