John J. Ratey Quotes

“Don’t drink sugar water. In any form. Not a Big Gulp Coke. Not a Knudsen’s 100 percent natural and organic fruit juice.”

“Hippocrates recommended that all people in a bad mood should go for a walk — and if it did not improve, walk again.”

“Hormesis is a biological response to low doses of a stressor, such as a toxin, that improves the ability of the body to handle that toxin. It can be applied to exercise. Unlike homeostasis, hormesis does not return the body to a normal state. It returns it to a better-than-normal state.”

“Humans cannot be born with fully formed brains simply because the resulting head would not fit through the birth canal. Rather, our brains are built and formed after we are born, like a ship in a bottle, a process that takes fifteen, maybe twenty years.”

“This pattern of balancing between comfort and exploration of the unknown is how we build our brains.”

“You are born to move with grace, born to embrace novelty and variety, born to crave wide-open spaces, and, above all, born to love. But one of the more profound facts that will emerge is that you are born to heal. Your body fixes itself. A big part of this is an idea called homeostasis, which is a wonderfully intricate array of functions that repair the wear and tear and stress of living.”