John J. Ratey Quotes & Sayings

After a stressful event, we often crave comfort food. Our body is calling for more glucose and simple carbohydrates and fat... And in modern life, people tend to have fewer friends and less support, because there's no tribe. Being alone is not good for the brain. — John J. Ratey

By showing that exercise sparks the master molecule of the learning process, Cotman nailed down a direct biological connection between movement and cognitive function. — John J. Ratey

But nutrition affects BDNF, too. Eating a diet high in sugar decreases BDNF. Eating foods with folate, vitamin B12, and omega-3 fats increases BDNF in the brain, just as exercise does. — John J. Ratey

One of the prominent features of exercise, which is sometimes not appreciated in studies, is an improvement in the rate of learning, — John J. Ratey

Chronic stress is linked to some of our most deadly diseases. — John J. Ratey

exercise is as effective as certain medications for treating anxiety and depression. — John J. Ratey

you are born to move with grace, born to embrace novelty and variety, born to crave wide-open spaces, and, above all, born to love. But one of the more profound facts that will emerge is that you are born to heal. Your body fixes itself. A big part of this is an idea called homeostasis, which is a wonderfully intricate array of functions that repair the wear and tear and stress of living. — John J. Ratey

About 20 percent of older adults who break a hip die within a year. — John J. Ratey

the message I want to leave you with is that even as your body changes, exercise will keep your mind firm and taught. — John J. Ratey

In Britain, doctors now use exercise as a first-line treatment for depression, but it's vastly underutilized in the United States, — John J. Ratey

The more we build these networks and enrich our stores of memory and experience, the easier it is to learn, because what we already know serves as a foundation for forming increasingly complex thoughts. — John J. Ratey

Today, of course, there's no need to forage and hunt to survive. Yet our genes are coded for this activity, and our brains are meant to direct it. Take that activity away, and you're disrupting a delicate biological balance that has been fine-tuned over half a million years. Quite simply, we need to engage our endurance metabolism to keep our bodies and brains in optimum condition. The ancient rhythms of activity ingrained in our DNA translate roughly to the varied intensity of walking, jogging, running, and sprinting. In broad strokes, then, I think the best advice is to follow our ancestors' routine: walk or jog every day, run a couple of times a week, and then go for the kill every now and then by sprinting. — John J. Ratey

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. — John J. Ratey

One of the first symptoms of depression, even before your mood drops to new lows, is sleep disturbance. Either you can't get up or you can't get to sleep or both. — John J. Ratey

The average seventy-five-year-old suffers from three chronic medical conditions and takes five prescription medicines, — John J. Ratey

The amount of data in the world is doubling every few years, but our attention system, like the rest of the brain, was built to make sense of the surrounding environment as it existed ten thousand years ago. — John J. Ratey

What better way to start filling the vessel than exercise," Provet suggests. "I strongly believe that exercise can serve as an antidote and as a type of inoculation against addiction," he says. "As an antidote, you're giving the individual an avenue of life experience that most have not had - the goals of exercise, the feeling of exercise, the challenge of exercise, the pleasure and the pain, the accomplishment, the physical well-being, the self-esteem. All that exercise gives us, you're now presenting to the addict as a very compelling option. — John J. Ratey

I tell people that going for a run is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin because, — John J. Ratey

This pattern of balancing between comfort and exploration of the unknown is how we build our brains, — John J. Ratey

The essence of physical education in Naperville 203 is teaching fitness instead of sports. The underlying philosophy is that if physical education class can be used to instruct kids how to monitor and maintain their own health and fitness, then the lessons they learn will serve them for life. And probably a longer and happier life at that. What's being taught, really is a lifestyle. The students are developing healthy habits, skills, and a sense of fun, along with a knowledge of how their bodies work. Naperville's gym teachers are opening up new vistas for their students by exposing them to such a wide range of activities that they can't help but find something they enjoy. They're getting kids hooked on moving instead of sitting in front of the television. — John J. Ratey

The mental and physical diseases we face in old age are tied together through the cardiovascular system and metabolic system. A — John J. Ratey

Cognitive flexibility is an important executive function that reflects our ability to shift thinking and to produce a steady flow of creative thoughts and answers as opposed to a regurgitation of the usual responses. The trait correlates with high-performance levels in intellectually demanding jobs. So if you have an important afternoon brainstorming session scheduled, going for a short, intense run during lunchtime is a smart idea. — John J. Ratey

BORN TO RUN In his book Racing the Antelope: What Animals Can Teach Us about Running and Life, biologist Bernd Heinrich describes the human species as an endurance predator. The genes that govern our bodies today evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago, when we were in constant motion, either foraging for food or chasing antelope for hours and days across the plains. Heinrich describes how, even though antelope are among the fastest mammals, our ancestors were able to hunt them down by driving them to exhaustion - keeping on their tails until they had no energy left to escape. Antelope are sprinters, but their metabolism doesn't allow them to go and go and go. Ours does. And we have a fairly balanced distribution of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers, so even after ranging miles over the landscape we retain the metabolic capacity to sprint in short bursts to make the kill. — John J. Ratey

we sometimes lose sight of the fact that the mind, brain, and body all influence one another. In addition to feeling good when you exercise, you feel good about yourself, — John J. Ratey

about the biology of stress and recovery, stress seems to have an effect on the brain similar to that of vaccines on the immune system. In limited doses, it causes brain cells to overcompensate and thus gird themselves against future demands. Neuroscientists call this phenomenon stress inoculation. — John J. Ratey

Getting older is unavoidable, but falling apart is not. — John J. Ratey

Over time, regular exercise also increases the efficiency of the cardiovascular system, lowering blood pressure. — John J. Ratey

What it means is that you have the power to change your brain. All you have to do is lace up your running shoes. — John J. Ratey

Exercise is another tool at your disposal, and it's handy because it's something you can prescribe for yourself, — John J. Ratey

From an evolutionary perspective, exercise tricks the brain into trying to maintain itself for survival despite the hormonal cues that it is aging. — John J. Ratey

Students would be assessed on effort rather than skill. You didn't have to be a natural athlete to do well in gym. — John J. Ratey

In the context of stress, the great paradox of the modern age may be that there is not more hardship, just more news - and too much of it. The 24/7 streaming torrent of tragedy and demands flashing at us from an array of digital displays keeps the amygdala flying. — John J. Ratey

physical activity counts as novel experience, at least as far as the brain is concerned. — John J. Ratey

Exercise Is Medicine," so — John J. Ratey

Hippocrates, who recommended that all people in a bad mood should go for a walk - and if it did not improve, walk again. — John J. Ratey

Scientists induced Parkinson's in rats by killing the dopamine cells in their basal ganglia, and then forced half of them to run on a treadmill twice a day in the ten days following the "onset" of the disease. Incredibly, the runners' dopamine levels stayed within normal ranges and their motor skills didn't deteriorate. In one study on people with Parkinson's, intensive activity improved motor ability as well as mood, and the positive effects lasted for at least six weeks after they stopped exercising. — John J. Ratey

One small but scientifically sound study from Japan found that jogging thirty minutes just two or three times a week for twelve weeks improved executive function. But it's important to mix in some form of activity that demands coordination beyond putting one foot in front of the other.... Aerobic exercise and complex activity have different beneficial effects on the brain. The good news is they're complementary. — John J. Ratey

like every other aspect of our psychology, motivation is biological. — John J. Ratey

The way you choose to cope with stress can change not only how you feel, but also how it transforms the brain. If you react passively or if there is simply no way out, stress can become damaging. — John J. Ratey

Exercise is not an instant cure, but you need to get your brain working again, and if you move your body your brain won't have any choice. — John J. Ratey