food for thought: SPARK

[exnerd]

When there is so little traffic I feel uncomfortable double-posting, but what's the use of holding back potentially useful information?

A reading recommendation: "Spark" by John Ratey (http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutiona ... 941&sr=8-2)

The book brings up dozens of studies which unequivocally prove (at least in my layman's view) that exercise does not just benefit the body, but also the mind, and perhaps to even greater extent. Virtually any cognitive or emotional function that can be quantified in a scientific study benefits from regular exercise that increases your heart rate above base level.

Reading how daily exercise boosts high school kids' test scores to international excellence, or that exercise fights depression at least as successfully as Zoloft, is a great motivator for me to drag my sorry butt out of bed half an hour earlier to get my daily dose first thing in the morning.

As a downside, the book does not include very specific recommendations on how to set up your routines and workouts to achieve the greatest effect (which for me underscores Ratey's scientific rigour – it would have been easy for him to present some kind of supposedly brain–boosting wonder workout without any empirical backing).

However, this lack of specificity may also be an advantage: The two most important conditions for exercise to have the effects mentioned above seem to be regular exposure and increase of heart rate into the "aerobic zone" (both of which are achieved by daily shovelglove work). So there is lots of room for individual customization.

[oolala53]

As I ease towards my 60's and experience the problems of not finding the right word to say quickly when teaching my Advanced Placement English students, hearing of the cognitive benefits of regular exercise is another nudge to get me into it.