Spark

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But perhaps I did not like the book as much as I expected because it did not resonant with my own experience. Three years ago, I went from hardly ever exercising to running four or five times a week. However, I really cannot say that I feel mentally sharper, or significantly calmer, or even less anxious than I did before. (Ratey promises quite a lot!) If anything, I feel slightly dumber. If you are a person who wants to exercise daily but unfortunately procrastinates it every time, this is the best book you can read. It will motivate you to exercise regularly by telling you all advantages of doing exercise in the best possible manner with the help of adequate scientific data from multiple research studies. In some areas, we can even see the author using philosophical musings to convince us regarding it. 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.) Exercise is a preventive medicine as well as an antidote. Exercise particularly affects our executive function - planning, organization, initiate or delay a response, consequence evaluation, learning from mistake, maintain the focus, working memory and it helps us to access the front part of the brain 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:

Incredible read. Everyone knows the benefits of exercise on the muscles and heart but now studies have discovered what it does to the brain, which is even more impressive. Now, it is a universal fact that exercise is good for you. It’s been said and done so what’s so different about this book? Well, 'Spark' dives deeper and attempts to find out the effect of exercise on the brain. The book provides a detailed explanation of how different parts of the brain work on a biological level to carry out the everyday functions and what part of the brain is responsible for different tasks. We get to learn how the brain is able to function at a cellular level like how the neurons communicate with each other to carry the signal that governs our actions. It was interesting to know how the role of different neurotransmitters and how exercise helps to balance them out.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). First published in 2008 by PhD and M.D. John J. Ratey, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of many other awesome books. At the same time I really enjoyed the details, I think it does help the reader to "buy-in" more into exercise as a lifestyle as the benefits are enormous no matter what age, gender or lifestyle you have right now. 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. Author John J. Ratey, MD, is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an internationally recognized expert in Neuropsychiatry. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles, and 11 books published in 17 languages.

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. 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. 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. 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. In any case, I concur with another reviewer that the explanations were also quite repetitive. I suppose that the authors wanted each chapter to potentially be read as a stand-alone statement; but as a result, the same principles were explained again and again, somehow not becoming any clearer. What is more, so many of the studies cited were performed on rats, the results of which do not always translate neatly to humans.What I love about this book is the way he explains everything in scientific detail--no oversimplification or handwaving. The explanation of the stress response really brought together and cleared up a few other things I had read about how stress affects your body. Now I feel like I really understand it. He gives the full story, yet the style is engaging and never obfuscated. This is the best thing I've read in months. This book is simple and straightforward. I went into it with a view to get to know more about the effects of exercise on the brain but learned a lot of important things about the working of the brain. The important thing I learned is that brain can be analogous to a muscle: it can change and improve, it grows with use but withers due to inactivity like it follows the principle ‘use it or lose it’. For people out there, the points stated in the book about how exercise affects your learning and how it can improve your physical and mental health will certainly be a powerful motivator to get them to adopt the habit of exercising in their daily life. Exercise increases levels of insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), which regulates insulin in the body and improves synaptic plasticity in the brain. By drawing down surplus fuel, exercise also bolsters our supply of BDNF, which is reduced by high glucose.