Just finished reading John J. Ratey’s “Spark – The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain”. It’s full of tons of interesting and surprising insights about exercise that I’d bet even regular athletes aren’t aware of.
“At every level, from the microcellular to the psychological, exercise not only wards off the ill effets of chronic stress; it can also reverse them.”
“The advantage of using exercise to inoculate the brain against stress is that it ramps up growth factors more than other stimuli do.”
He talks about what he calls the “ever-widening gap between the evolution of our biology and our society”… and goes on to talk about our paleolithic ancestors. “Our average energy expenditure per unit of body mass is less than 38 percent of that of our Stone Age ancestors… Paleolithic man had to walk five to ten miles on an average day, just to be able to eat.”
In his conclusion he really drives home the points about stress, and I want to quote that more fully here.
“Both stress and inactivity — the twin hallmarks of modern life – play big roles in the development of arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and other autoimmune disorders. Reducing stress by any means, and especially exercise, helps patients with their recovery from these diseases. The diseases result from a weakened immune system, and as is evident in the example of Robert Pyles, exercise can dramatically improve immune function.”