Spark

I first read Dr John Ratey’s work when I read the book he wrote with Ned Hallowell, ADHD 2.0. Since he was already on my radar, and this book had great reviews, I decided to finally pick it up in the hopes that I could convince myself to finally get a movement habit going. Though I will note that the book can be dated at times, since it was published in 2008—it mentions investing in a heart rate monitor, for example, when everyone seems to have a smart watch capable of that and much more nowadays. However, even so, this book is still quite useful and worth reading if you are someone who likes to be sure of mainstream research behind a phenomenon before accepting it.

The premise of the book seems to be a hard sell. The blurb states that “exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer's”. Surely, that is belaboring the point; how can something as basic as exercise tackle so many disparate issues? Yet, Dr. Ratey explores the way exercise interacts with each of these domains with skillful ease, which makes this book eminently readable. The human body, at its core, has not evolved to sit at a desk all day or to move around just a few times a week. Rather, its function is to be moving almost constantly—at least every day—and getting up to an exertive heart rate for most of those days.

I will admit, when I read about Dr. Ratey explaining how several studies found improvements in the conditions mentioned above through exercise (either alone or in concert with medication), it seemed like a too-good-to-be-true panacea. Sure, exercise can improve mental and physical health; but Dr. Ratey’s point here is precisely that improving one’s physical health is secondary to improving mental health—the brain ‘gains’ that one can get from exercise are worth it alone, even leaving any physical benefits. Even if he has cherry-picked some of these studies, however, they were ultimately quite convincing and telling; even if you are skeptical, it is hard to entirely deny that exercise has important benefits—and seeing the brain as an extension of those benefits is not a hard leap.

Yes, after a time, this book felt like it was preaching to the choir and somewhat tediously repetitive in its message. Yet, Dr. Ratey keeps things interesting by interspersing anecdotes from his patients and even from his own family/himself. I did appreciate that Dr. Ratey qualified his assessments when the research was not quite definitive; but in those instances, he sometimes went on to presuppose exercise as being effective, which could feel disingenuous. At the very least, it couldn’t hurt; but the studies are not always so clear when it comes to causality. (We are very much in the realm of correlation when it comes to human studies… for mostly obvious reasons.)

My biggest gripe with the book was the lack of footnotes and citations, or even suggestions for further reading. Every time he mentioned a study, I wished there were a way to look it up and read it for myself. The primary researchers and scientists are mentioned, so in theory you can look it up, but it isn’t precise. This meant, on occasion, glossing over studies that seemed incomplete or less robust than other studies mentioned. Even so, I am constantly reminded of this book and the studies on exercise every time I try to reinforce the habit. It is hard… but having the evidence in front of you makes excuses harder to fabricate.