Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain - John Ratey

Partial Excerpts (antilibrary)

2: Learning

Overall, it improves the function of neurons, encourages their growth, and strengthens and protects them against the natural process of cell death. And — as I hope to make clear throughout this book — BDNF is a crucial biological link between thought, emotions, and movement.

By showing that exercise sparks the master molecule of the learning process, Cotman nailed down a direct biological connection between movement and cognitive function. In doing so, he blazed the trail for the study of exercise in neuroscience

He’d just finished working on a long-term aging study designed to see if the people whose minds hold up best share anything in common. Among those with the least cognitive decline over a four-year period, three factors turned up: education, self-efficacy, and exercise

3: Stress

At the same time, aerobic exercise increases BDNF production. Taken all together, these factors combine forces to make the brain bloom and prevent the damaging effects of chronic stress from taking hold

5: Depression

While extremely high levels of cortisol can decrease BDNF, antidepressants and especially exercise do just the opposite.

9: Aging

The major implication is that exercise not only keeps the brain from rotting, but it also reverses the cell deterioration associated with aging.

THE LIFE LIST

10: The Regimen

It’s a similar story with BDNF: it may take longer for you to get over the hump of forming a routine and to feel good while you’re exercising, but once you do your brain becomes more and more efficient at producing Miracle-Gro

He came to a number of telling conclusions. First of all, daily exercise ramps up BDNF more rapidly than alternate days — at a rate of 150 percent versus 124 percent after two weeks. Curiously, after a month, the alternate-day exercisers had caught up with the daily group.

When the rats stopped exercising, regardless of the routine, it took just two weeks for levels of BDNF to return to baseline

But the most interesting finding was that when the exercisers were allowed access to their running wheels again, BDNF levels shot back up in just two days