SAN ANTONIO -- What if you could boost your memory, improve your
mood, lower your stress, manage your hormones and reverse the aging
process, all without taking a single drug?
Well, you can.
The cure for what ails you?
Exercise.
"If exercise came in pill form, it would be plastered across
the front pages, hailed as the blockbuster drug of the century,"
writes John Ratey in "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of
Exercise and the Brain."
For Ratey, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at
Harvard, the brain is the primary beneficiary of exercise. The good
it does for the body is only a "side effect."
Ratey draws evidence from the fields of neuroscience,
epidemiology, kinesiology and psychiatry, as well as case studies
from his own practice.
"They found that exercise is the biggest promoter of growth
factors in our brain than anything else we can do, specifically for
the mother of all growth factors called BDNF (brain-derived
neurotrophic factor) which I've called 'Miracle-Gro' because it's
brain fertilizer," says Ratey.
From treating Alzheimer's to ADHD, from mood disorders to
menopause, Ratey argues that exercise is crucial to staying healthy
and happy. Most of the studies on the effects of exercise on the
brain have been done on elderly populations, where it has been
found to improve memory and maintain cognitive function. But
exciting new studies have followed the positive effects of exercise
on children.
Ratey begins the book by telling the story of the Naperville,
Ill., school district, which radically altered its approach to
physical education. Out went dodge ball and in came the climbing
wall. No more tests on the dimensions of a volleyball court, but
instead a focus on keeping heart rates in their target zone.
The result was a school district where kids weren't just fit,
but where test scores improved and disciplinary actions declined.
"Most of the PE classes taught (in this country) are still
focused on sports rather than on individual fitness, and that's a
big part of the problem," says Ratey.
"The revolution is to change it so that PE becomes
fitness-focused where each child is evaluated against himself in
terms of his improvement. If you've made some gains, then you get a
good a grade as opposed to being the fastest or the strongest or
being able to do 12 pull-ups."
It's really not all that surprising that the same aerobic
activity that's good for our bodies is also good for what's between
our ears.
But if exercise is "medicine for the brain" as Ratey calls it,
it's a mystery why more doctors aren't prescribing it and why more
people aren't taking advantage of this simple cure.
Perhaps because in a culture where we look to pills to solve our
problems, we can't quite trust our bodies to heal themselves.
So, if exercise can make us smart, alert and joyful, can the
opposite be true if our country continues down its path of sloth?
"Yes. Less motivated, more depressed, more stressed, more
anxious, more addicted," says Ratey. "We're already there and the
more sedentary we become the more likely we are going to remain
there."
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c.2008 San Antonio Express-News