Spark

Product Information

Exercise is a readily available tool which we can utilize to enhance our life. You just need to take the first step and ignite that spark. As someone who works out 5-6 days a week and eats clean, I can vouch for all the benefits of exercise as I’ve already seen them first hand. If you’re someone who wants to start your own fitness journey and need a little push, this book will be really helpful and inspiring. The book opens with a visit to Naperville Central High School in Illinois where a young physical education teacher is introducing Zero Hour PE class as an educational experiment. The object of this experiment is to see if physical activity “sparks biological changes that encourage brain cells” creating an environment in which the brain is able to learn. Here there is a unique approach to physical education. The goal is to teach fitness instead of sports. They use a heart monitor to measure effort instead of performance. Students are graded on their effort not their achievement. They use “small-sided sports” like three-on-three basketball or four-on-four soccer to eliminate a lot of the inactivity found in most sports. Exercise, naturally, counteracts obesity on two fronts: it burns calories, and it reduces appetite. It should be no surprise that humans respond positively to exercise. We're descendants of hunter-gatherers who were optimized over thousands of years by evolution to walk and run around the equivalent of many miles per day (i.e. the couch potato of the caveman era died young). I enjoyed reading in detail about what goes on in the brain during various kinds of exercises performed regularly, as well as the overall body benefits. The preventive effects of neural degeneration have been outstanding. Exercise helps with alleviating the effects of stress, it helps with focus and with curbing withdrawal effects of addiction.

The next chapter in this book examines the affect of exercise on the brain to enhance learning. Here the science is explained. There is a lot of scientific jargon used to explain how this improves the brain’s potential for processing new information. The science used here seems to be repeated in each of the subsequent chapters dealing with Stress, Anxiety, Depression, Attention Deficit, Addiction and Aging. In a nutshell it seems that exercise increases the blood flow to the brain allowing the brain to build and strengthen the connections it needs to deal with these conditions. The author uses the term “Miracle-Gro” to describe this effect. Ratey does a great job of illustrating from the outset that the brain and the body work in tandem, and that what's good for one is good for the other. Exercise is as good for the brain as it is for the body. Using this knowledge as a foundation, Ratey presents us with scientific evidence showing how the neurological changes that occur with exercise have benefits for learning, memory, attention, the ability to handle stress, anxiety, depression, the ability to fight addiction, women's hormones, and the way we age. If you're skeptical about the usefulness of exercise beyond its ability to affect physique, Ratey presents plenty of proof that it is exponentially more beneficial than many realize. Oh my god. According to this book I am a walking recipe for Alzheimer's disease. This is a book by a Harvard psychiatrist about the link between mental health and exercise. As life-long depression sufferer with not one, but two parents who suffer/ed from Alzheimer's, I'm pretty much in the exponentially high risk category for dementia. But there is hope, if I get off my ass and start exercising. It fosters neuroplasticity. The best way to guard against neurodegenerative diseases is to build a strong brain. Aerobic exercise accomplishes this by strengthening connections between your brain cells, creating more synapses to expand the web of connections, and spurring newly born stem cells to divide and become functional neurons in the hippocampus. Ratey gets the writing here off on a good foot, with a very well-written intro. He's got a great writing style; that's both interesting and engaging. Unfortunately, science books with good flow like this are fairly hit-or-miss, in my experience...

Caution - don't read this book if you don't like to move. Because this book will motivate you get moving and hit gym consistently. Book is written in most convincing form that we will never think about impact of exercise on our body and brain in same way again.

ANP is secreted by heart muscles when we exercise, and it makes its way through the blood-brain barrier. Once inside, it attaches to receptors in the hypothalamus to modulate HPA axis activity. (ANP is also produced directly in the brain, by neurons in the locus coeruleus and in the amygdala—both key players in stress and anxiety.) Now, I normally enjoy reading about science. But the explanations in this book are stuffed with jargon, while at the same time being rather sketchy—a combination that made it, for me, all but impenetrable. Here is an example: Exercise is another tool at your disposal, and it's handy because it's something you can prescribe for yourself."I also found the formatting to be very well done here, too. The book is divided into well-defined chapters. The chapters; into short chunks of segmented writing with relevant headers at the top. I really like books formatted in this manner, and I find that I can retain information better when it is presented in this way. We all know that exercise makes us feel better, but most of us have no idea why. We assume it’s because we’re burning off stress or reducing muscle tension or boosting endorphins, and we leave it at that. But the real reason we feel so good when we get our blood pumping is that it makes the brain function at its best, and in my view, this benefit of physical activity is far more important—and fascinating—than what it does for the body.

The other, less important takeaway was that humans do terrible, awful things to rats in the name of research. Poor rats. I love the research based evidence presented throughout the book which not only convince us that exercise is beneficial but also explains how it's beneficial.Spark was an excellent look into the modern science around exercise. I would highly recommend this book to anyone reading this review. One thing about this book that might put off a lot of people is that it's quite technical and goes into A LOT of studies and case studies. That makes the book a big harder to digest, and adding to that the whole message of the book which is basically "Exercise is good for you." could probably be presented in a more attractive way. An excellent exercise motivator! This being a pop-science book it'll be most effective if you're a logically minded person or in need of some explicit reasons to overcome creeping apathy or procrastination. One of the best aspects of a book on exercise is that you can test and verify the essential ideas as they relate to your own experience; I often listened to the audiobook while jogging or at the gym. Knowing more about how something you're doing is good for you is an additional reward in itself, and for me this encapsulates the main value of reading this book. I used to find it extremely boring and exhausting in the past and, to tell the truth, I still do. But now I do it with a sense of mission to rewire the brain. The thing is that I am already quite sporty and I understand the importance of getting to the gym at least 3 times a week (yes, that often). But after this book, I also understood that exercise could be a kind of replacement therapy for a great many things that happen to the body and the brain.

I am already in the habit of exercising nearly every day, as is my husband. I already encourage my kids to be active: I strictly limit the amount of time they spend on screens; they're all in sports on a weekly or more basis (except for my youngest); I take them swimming, to the park, on bike rides etc. I already knew exercise is good for the body and mind but this book takes it to the next level. Basically the author says exercising literally grows brain cells. As you move your body, you move your brain connections. Exercise today puts a deposit in your brain's bank account for your golden years. I believe it and am even more motivated to stay active and to keep my kids active. I feel validated as a mom battling against screens for my kids. (Sorry, kids!) Oh, except I have to say, now I'm thinking about getting Just Dance for our Wii. The author begins the writing in the book proper by examining Naperville Central High School in Chicago, which adds a heavy emphasis on physical exercise, to great effect.It fortifies your bones. Osteoporosis doesn’t have much to do with the brain, but it’s important to mention because you need a strong carriage to continue exercising as you age, and it is a largely preventable disease. Osteoporosis afflicts twenty million women and two million men in this country. More women every year die from hip fractures — a vulnerability of osteoporosis — than from breast cancer. Women reach peak bone mass at around thirty, and after that they lose about 1 percent a year until menopause, when the pace doubles. The result is that by age sixty, about 30 percent of a woman’s bone mass has disappeared. Unless, that is, she takes calcium and vitamin D (which comes free with ten minutes of morning sun a day) and does some form of exercise or strength training to stress the bones. Walking doesn’t quite do the job — save that for later in life. But as a young adult, weight training or any sport that involves running or jumping will counteract the natural loss. The degree to which you can prevent the loss is impressive: one study found that women can double their leg strength in just a few months of weight training. Even women in their nineties can improve their strength and prevent this heartbreaking disease. This books explains why it is good to maintain health as it helps us to stay away from disease and helps us to recover fast when affected with disease. p. 65 "Two neurotransmitters put the brain on alert: norepinephrine arouses attention, then dopamine sharpens and focuses it." Imbalance => ADD people can focus only under stress--need norepinephrine to get dopamine. Thus the project firefighters who are really arsonists. Ratey goes in depth with research and science and explains the most complex parts and functions of brain, different neurotransmitters and different issues such as stress, anxiety, depression, attention deficit, addiction aging, hormonal changes and many more unfamiliar details about effects of exercise, everything written in well organized and in easy- read way that makes the reader not to put this book down. If you're the kind of person who needs to be intellectually convinced by mountains of research to confirm something you already know - as I am - and you're trying desperately to start a regular exercise habit - as I am - you need to run and get this book, like, yesterday. I'm actually very serious: I have a very athletic husband, who is the epitome of healthy living, as an example in front of me every day; I've read tons of articles about the benefits of exercise, and have known for practically my whole life the importance of getting my body moving. But my mind resisted, and has just never really gotten with the program, so to speak...