Exercise and the Brain: The Many Benefits

Exercise and the Brain: The Mental Benefits

How cutting-edge research is showing the positive mental effects of moving the body.

Nearly every American can probably remember their doctor telling them to exercise, but for what reason? Many people think that this recommendation simply benefits the physical body. For instance, people may lift weights to look muscular or run for miles to burn the pizza they ate last night. However, in his groundbreaking 2013 book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, Dr. John Ratey from Harvard Medical School explains that the true benefits of exercise are found within the brain. While there are physical benefits, these pale in comparison to the profound mental benefits exercise causes.

In this article, I will explain the numerous benefits of exercise. First, I will describe how exercise is scientifically proven to increase learning and motivation. After that, I will discuss how exercise is as effective in treating problems like depression and stress as prescription drugs. Lastly, I will talk about what you can do to reap the positive mental benefits of exercise. 

Learning and Motivation

The objective of most gym classes is to get children to move around and improve students’ physical well-being. However, the paradox is changing to shift PE programs from sports based to intensive fitness exercise based. In Naperville, Illinois, one such fitness based physical education program began in the early 1990s with the intent to stress fitness. What exactly does “fitness based physical education” look like? The teachers use heart rate monitors to track the physical workload of students as they exercise aerobically, whether this be while students run miles or exercise on high-end Schwinn stationary bikes. The monitors allows teachers to track the intensity of the students’ workouts (relative to their maximum heart rate value).

Heart rate monitor. Courtesy of heartratemonitorz.com

Since the program’s implementation, not only have the Naperville students become physically fit, but their tests scores increased along fitness level. As Ratey explains, “When the students in Titusville or in Naperville go for a mile run in gym, they are more prepared to learn in their other classes: their senses are heightened; their focus and mood are improved; they’re less fidgety and tense; and they feel more motivated and invigorated.” Why has students’ learning increased as they have exercised more? Exercise literally creates new nerve cells from stem cells, thus creating new mental capacity (New York Times). “In addition to priming our state of mind, exercise influences learning directly, at the cellular level, improving the brain’s potential to log in and process new information.” (Ratey) There is education data to backup this theory. The Naperville 203 school district scored number one in the world in math and number six in the world in science for the TIMSS education test. For context, the average US school scored eighteenth in science and nineteenth in math relative to the world.  

Regulating Emotions

Another non-physical, mental benefit from exercise is its ability to combat stress, anxiety, and depression. When people are stressed out, the brain gets locked into a pattern of stress. Over time, this pattern can be damaging and makes people feel like the stress will never end. However, moving the body can combat the stress. Exercise controls stress on a cellular level, thus leaving people feeling emotionally and physically because the cells repaired while the body moves. Due to the fight-or-flight phenomenon, in which human beings evolved to either fight or run during stressful situations, when people exercise when stressed, they actually are doing what the human body was built to do. This is a main reason why moving the body can help relieve stress.

Approximately 18% of the US population suffers from anxiety. In the brain, anxiety is when the sympathetic nervous system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis increase activity. As doctor Ratey explains, “By using exercise to combat the symptoms of anxiety, you can treat the state, and as your level of fitness improves, you chip away at the trait. Over time, you teach your brain that the symptoms don’t always spell doom and that you can survive; you’re reprogramming the cognitive misinterpretation.” Overall, exercise while anxious provides a distraction, reduces muscle tension, builds brain resources, teaches different outcome, reroutes your circuits, and improves resilience.

With the emergence of function MRI and PET scans, scientists have been able to see what depression looks like in the brain. Essentially, depression is a change to the “emotional circuitry” of the brain and its messengers such as norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin. This leads to a breakdown at the cellular level, in which the brain is trapped in a negative cycle it cannot work its way out of. Dr. Ratey finds that exercise is as good if not better of a prescription for a person suffering from depression than modern drugs like Zoloft or Lexapro. Scientific literature reinforces this idea. In fact, “a review of studies stretching back to 1981 concluded that regular exercise … may play a supporting role in treating severe depression” (Harvard).

What Kind of Exercise and for How Long?

After reading about the numerous positive effects of exercise, you might wonder what types and for how long you should exercise. Unfortunately, it is not clear which type of exercise brings about the best mental benefits. As a rule of thumb, some exercise is better than nothing and more is better than less. Research has shown the more in-shape you are, the better your cognitive health (Wall Street Journal). A variety of studies have shown that aerobic exercise can increase capillary volume in the memory area of the hippocampus, increase neurotransmitters and neurotrophic factors, and encourage neuroplasticity. There is essentially a positive relationship between mental and physical strength. So whether you run, cycle, or swim, you should mix up medium intensity workouts and high intensity workouts to gain the benefits of exercising different muscle groups.

As previously mentioned, although exercise has many physical benefits, there are numerous mental benefits too. Exercise has the ability to help people learn better and increase their motivation. Furthermore, exercise can combat problems such as stress, anxiety, and depression.

Works Cited

"Exercise Boosts Brain Power." Wall Street Journal, 11 Feb. 2011.

Ratey, John J., and Eric Hagerman. Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. New York: Little, Brown, 2008. Print.

"Regular Exercise Changes the Brain to Improve Memory, Thinking Skills - Harvard Health Blog." Harvard Health Blog RSS. Harvard, 09 Apr. 2014

Reynolds, Gretchen. "How Exercise Could Lead to a Better Brain." The New York Times. The New York Times, 21 Apr. 2012.