From an interview with Psychiatrist John Ratey on “Here and Now”:
“A recent study out of Stanford University found that walking for at least 10 minutes enhances a person’s creativity.
Psychiatrist and author John Ratey is not surprised. Ratey has written several books about how the brain is improved by exercise. He says when his patients stopped exercising, many not only became depressed, by some actually developed adult ADHD.
“A bout of exercise is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin,” he tells Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson. “Because it does the same thing.” Ratey is especially a fan of walking with no purpose. He says that’s when the brain can pick up more information and walking can allow one’s thoughts to come and go in a way they don’t when a person is focusing on something specific.
“When we’re walking,” says Ratey, “We are stimulating the brain in many, many ways.”
