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Exercise is medicine for the brain, not just the body

John Ratey draws on neuroscience to show that physical exercise may be the most powerful tool we have for mental health and learning.

The conventional case for exercise runs through the heart and the waistline. John Ratey's Spark, published in 2008, makes a different argument: that exercise may matter even more for the brain than for the body, and that its effects on mood, attention, learning and neurological health are underappreciated by almost everyone, including most doctors.

Ratey, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, builds his case on research into neurogenesis — the creation of new brain cells — and on a protein called BDNF, which he describes as fertiliser for the brain. Exercise, he argues, reliably increases BDNF levels, promoting the growth and survival of neurons in regions associated with memory, learning and emotional regulation. This is not a marginal effect.

The book devotes individual chapters to conditions including depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder and addiction, in each case reviewing evidence that exercise produces significant and measurable improvements. Ratey draws on a remarkable natural experiment: a physical education programme in Naperville, Illinois, that restructured exercise around cardiovascular effort rather than athletic performance, with striking results in academic scores and student behaviour.

Spark is careful to present exercise as a complement to other treatments — medication, therapy, lifestyle change — rather than a replacement. But Ratey's overall argument is that the current prescription is systematically too low, and that a doctor who does not ask a depressed or anxious patient about their physical activity is missing an important clinical variable.

Based on the work of

John J. Ratey & Eric Hagerman

Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and practising psychiatrist

Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain · 2008

Ratey's psychiatric clinical perspective gives the exercise-brain argument more credibility than most fitness writing manages.

Read the original on Bookshop.org

Fact-checked · AI can err — read the source

Some of the specific studies cited, particularly early neurogenesis research, have been refined since 2008; the core conclusions are supported by subsequent research but some details have evolved.

AI-summarised · always labelled (EU AI Act, Art. 50).

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