I get up and do a couple of laps around the lake near my house. I listen to noisy birds and croaky frogs. Finally, I don't go on Facebook first thing in the morning.

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. It’s important to have plans and goals and appointments, and this is why sports such as golf and tennis are great. They require constant self-monitoring and the motivation to improve. The other, less important takeaway was that humans do terrible, awful things to rats in the name of research. Poor rats.

Moving the body keeps the brain growing by elevating the supply of neurotrophic factors necessary for neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, which would otherwise naturally diminish with age. Contracting your muscles releases factors such as VEGF, FGF-2, and IGF-1 that make their way from the body into the brain and aid in the process. All these structural changes improve your brain’s ability to learn and remember, execute higher thought processes, and manage your emotions. The more robust the connections, the better prepared your brain will be to handle any damage it might experience. As a gym teacher, I am all about movement. I want my kids to be active and engaged for as much of class as possible. But even though I was already on the exercise bandwagon, I had no idea how extensive the benefits of exercise really are. In Spark, John Ratey explains why the benefits of exercise to the heart, lungs, and muscles, are secondary to the benefits of exercise to the brain. The first chapter is the most engaging, where he shows how a few rogue school systems boosted test scores and lowered behavioral issues by introducing morning exercise programs. One school scored in the top 5 in the world in math and science.

To some extent the discoveries aren't surprising, but then it is always nice to actually have hard-evidence for something many people just intuited. With this book as well as a few others I have now adopted the paradigm of the baseline human body template being that of a stone-age hunter/gatherer. In the stages of evolution of the human body and mind we spent most of our time in that time period, with our bodies being finely tuned to that lifestyle. Now anytime we deviate too far from that active lifestyle and diet we start to experience the detrimental effects. Our sedentary easy-access-to-processed-food lifestyles are in direct contradiction to what our bodies were optimized for hence all the multitude of obvious ailments plaguing the industrialized world. In my opinion three types of people can grab this book without getting further delay, first- those who do exercise and second - those who doesn't do exercise and third one who love to do but doesn't do exercise. And so on. Perhaps this will make me sound very ignorant, but most of the science boiled down to: exercise makes the body produce chemical X, which is beneficial to the brain.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...

I loved that the first chapter didn't immediately hit the reader with the neuroscience. Instead, the book begins with a heartwarming and inspiring case study of a school program that improved students' grades, test scores, social skills and emotional wellness through exercise. While the rest of the book provides a lot of fascinating studies and sympathetic anecdotes, I felt that the beginning chapter was the most powerful. It draws you into the book with the subtle reminder of the power of exercise in shaping the bodies and minds of the future. One takeaway from the book is that does not mention longevity. This book is about enhancing the quality of life not prolonging it. Its purpose is to keep the brain healthy so that you can enjoy doing the things you like for as long as you have. This book gets a bit repetitive after awhile (I quit after reading about 3/4 of it), and the conclusions he drew from some of the research studies seemed to really be stretching what you could reasonably conclude from the actual results. Neuroscientists have just begun studying exercise’s impact within brain cells — at the genes themselves. Even there, in the roots of our biology, they’ve found signs of the body’s influence on the mind. It turns out that moving our muscles produces proteins that travel through the bloodstream and into the brain, where they play pivotal roles in the mechanisms of our highest thought processes. They bear names such as insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and they provide an unprecedented view of the mind-body connection. It’s only in the past few years that neuroscientists have begun to describe these factors and how they work, and each new discovery adds awe-inspiring depth to the picture. There’s still much we don’t understand about what happens in the microenvironment of the brain, but I think what we do know can change people’s lives. And maybe society itself..."It reduces obesity. Aside from wreaking havoc on the cardiovascular and metabolic systems, body fat has its own nasty effects on the brain. The CDC estimates that 73 percent of Americans over sixty-five are overweight, and, given the potential problems obesity can lead to — from cardiovascular disease to diabetes — the agency is right in declaring it a pandemic. Simply being overweight doubles the chances of developing dementia, and if we factor in high blood pressure and high cholesterol — symptoms that often come along with obesity — the risk increases sixfold. When people retire, they figure they deserve a break after working their whole lives, and they start piling on the food. But what they don’t realize is that having dessert with every meal is no treat. What makes aerobic exercise so powerful is that it's our evolutionary method of generating that spark. It lights a fire on every level of your brain, from stoking up the neurons' metabolic furnaces to forging the very structures that transmit information from one synapse to the next." 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 first few chapters in this book begun as a delightful and insightful exploration into a high school that revolutionised the way they did exercise/gym class and the significant positive effects that had. I was delighted by the book in the first few chapters and excited to read the rest. but from then on i was very disappointed.