Exercise and the ADHD Brain: The Neuroscience of Movement

“Think of exercise as medication,” says John Ratey, M.D., an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “For a very small handful of people with attention deficit disorder, it may actually be a replacement for stimulants, but, for most, it’s complementary — something they should absolutely do, along with taking meds, to help increase attention and improve mood.”While most of us focus on exercise as a way to trim our waistlines, the better news is that routine physical activity firms up the brain — making it a simple, alternative ADHD treatment. “Exercise turns on the attention system, the so-called executive functions — sequencing, working memory, prioritizing, inhibiting, and sustaining attention,” says Ratey, author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (#CommissionsEarned) (Little, Brown). “On a practical level, it causes kids to be less impulsive, which makes them more primed to learn.”The latest news about exercise and ADHD is that it helps kids with the condition push through past failures and attack things they didn’t succeed at before. “The refrain of many kids with ADHD is, ‘No matter what I do, I’m going to fail,'” says Ratey. “Rat studies show that exercise reduces learned helplessness.

In fact, if you’re aerobically fit, the less likely you are to learn helplessness.”[Free Download: The ADDitude Guide to Alternative ADHD Treatments]So how, exactly, does exercise deliver these benefits to the ADHD brain?

When you walk, run, or do a set of jumping jacks or pushups, your brain releases several important chemicals.Endorphins, for one, hormone-like compounds that regulate mood, pleasure, and pain.