Stand Up for Thinking - The Proper Care and Feeding of A Thinking Machine

Think: Why You Should Question Everything - Guy P. Harrison 2013

Stand Up for Thinking
The Proper Care and Feeding of A Thinking Machine

Eating well is extremely important for the brain, but it’s not enough by itself. If you want the thinking machine perched on your shoulders to come anywhere near its potential, then you need to get moving. Based on very good research, we now know that exercise can have a significant positive impact on stress, anxiety, depression, and age-related problems such as dementia. We also know that exercise boosts brain performance for all ages, from the very old to the very young.3 Exercise even causes your brain to grow new cells. This is amazing when you think about it: Exercise grows your brain. According to John Ratey, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the brain benefits from physical activity primarily because of the increased blood flow that comes with doing things like walking, running, swimming, and cycling.4 In the same way that exercise stimulates blood flow and delivers nutrients to muscles, it does so for the brain. Just think of your brain as a three-pound vampire; it needs blood to live—the more, the better.

Physical activity is a must. Again, I don’t want to preach any readers into a corner and make them feel uncomfortable, but there is a hard and necessary truth to be told here: If you are spending virtually all of your waking hours sitting on couches, car seats, and office chairs, then your brain is not functioning at optimal levels. You are crippling it and wasting its potential with your physical inactivity. It’s as if you are living your day-to-day existence with a pillow case over your head. You are here and you are awake, but you aren’t really in a position to do your best at anything. The solution is clear: Stand rather than sit when possible and move rather than be still when possible. It’s as simple as that. You need to be active and you need to sweat. Inactive and sweatless is a state better left to the dead. It’s also important to put some stress on your bones and muscles in order to make and keep them strong. This is nothing personal. Nobody is being mean to you. I am not the ghost of your sixth-grade PE coach haunting you. This is a basic truth based on who you are. If you don’t like it, then you picked the wrong species to be born into.

Like it or not, you are a member of a particular life-form that spent the last 99.999 percent of its existence on its feet and active. We walked and we ran, probably several miles per day. You are stuck with a body and brain that do not respond well to inactivity. Homo sapiens evolved on the go. We are not lichens or sloths. Virtually every one of your ancestors over the last few million years at least spent their days walking rather than sitting. This means the human brain evolved inside of mobile bodies. Because of this, our biology today works best when we are standing rather than sitting, and walking rather than standing. Every time you sit for hours and hours, you are rebelling against who you really are. And, unfortunately, it’s a fight you can’t win.

As with nutrition, there is no reason to feel the need to become obsessive about physical activity. If you want to run marathons and lift small cars, go for it. But don’t be discouraged if things like glacier climbing and triathlons don’t appeal to you. Thanks to science, there is very encouraging news for those who would just like to have healthy and highly functioning bodies and brains. It turns out that it’s not so difficult to turn yourself into something that will pass for a fit modern human being. Combined with good eating habits, you can do it on as little as twenty minutes of moderate activity six or seven times per week. That’s all! It can be walking, running, swimming, cycling, or maybe a mix of those and others. Just find what works for you and get busy. Try to include at least a couple of weekly weight-training sessions, too. And don’t forget to eat well.

Many people who don’t fully appreciate the connection between physical activity and brain/body health probably assume that they don’t have the time for exercise and hide behind that excuse. My life is just way too busy and hectic for me to find twenty minutes a day to improve my life. I’m so tired after thinking all day at school and work that I don’t have any energy left to exercise in order to become more energetic and a better thinker. The reality is that there is almost always time for exercise if one looks for it. For example, the average American spends nearly forty hours per week watching television.5 That’s like a full-time job by itself. Compared to that, walking or running and lifting weights for a total of just 140 minutes or so per week, barely more than two hours, is not a very big sacrifice of time and effort, especially when you consider the huge payoffs. There is no place for excuses here. Again, don’t fail your brain because you equate exercise with training like a professional athlete and feel intimidated. Just find a way and start moving. It doesn’t matter if you have sore knees, bad legs, or no legs. Virtually everyone can do something. If nothing else, do jumping jacks and push-ups in your living room during one thirty-minute episode of your favorite TV show every evening. Until you do, your brain will remain trapped in a fogbank. Set it free.

Age is irrelevant. Young, old, or somewhere in the middle, we all need to be active, or our brains won’t be able to do their best work. According to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report about young students in school, there is now “substantial evidence that physical activity can help improve academic achievement, including grades and standardized test scores.”6 Researchers have also found that the benefits of physical activity for young students include “enhanced concentration and attention as well as improved classroom behavior.” Regardless of income or culture, any brain that is lost inside an out-of-shape, sedentary, and poorly fueled body is thinking uphill and against the wind. There is no avoiding this; if you want to be a good skeptic with a sharp mind, then don’t just sit there, get moving.

Just like it is with eating well, being physically active shouldn’t be thought of as a burden. Try to make it fun, or at least as tolerable as you can. Then, before you know it, physical activity will turn into a habit. Exercising has been a part of my life for so many years, for example, that I’m hopelessly hooked. It’s just part of who I am and what I do. I begin to feel terrible if I go more than three or four days without running or lifting weights. I also draw on some of the amazing research that has come from brain science for additional motivation and reassurance. For example, when I was in my twenties, I would skip working out if I couldn’t find the time or couldn’t summon up the energy for an epic workout that left me feeling like I had summited Everest. Now, however, thanks to science, I know that even just twenty minutes of walking or slow running helps my brain and body in numerous ways, so it’s well worth it. Doing something is better than doing nothing. I have even taken to standing as much as possible when I write and read because it turns out that sitting for hours is bad for long-term health.7 Brain scientist John Medina, author of Brain Rules, was so impressed by the research on the relationship between standing/moving and brain fitness that he put a treadmill in his office and attached his laptop to it so that he could work and walk at the same time.8 He says it took no more than about fifteen minutes for him to adapt to typing and mouse clicking while walking. This might seem crazy to some, but it makes sense. Remember, we evolved to be upright and active, not planted in chairs twelve hours per day. Medina envisions a total revolution in the offices and classrooms of the future if society ever catches up to the science. “If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain is good at doing,” he explains, “you probably would design something like the classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain is good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle.”9 I can see the future. No more workers imprisoned and immobile in their cubicles. No more students chained to desks. There will be plenty of standing and lots of movement, and we will be better thinkers as a result. Can’t wait.

Gretchen Reynolds, author of The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer, noticed that all the brain scientists she interviewed while writing her book had at least one thing in common: “Every researcher I spoke with on this topic exercises. Some run. Some walk. There are a few bike racers. Tennis is popular, too. But none are sedentary. They know too much.”10 I’m not surprised by that at all. When you understand what science has revealed about who we are, where we come from as a species, and how activity helps our brains and bodies work well, feel well, and last longer, it’s difficult to stay in your seat. For the record, I wrote the last several paragraphs while standing.