

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Spark" by John Ratey. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Does exercise help with stress? How can exercise relieve stress if exercise itself is a stressor?
Exercise has a powerful role in controlling the brain’s stress response system. Specifically, exercise induces mild acute stress (which makes you stronger) and helps combat chronic stress (which wears down your body over time).
Keep reading to learn about the benefits of exercise for stress relief.
Exercise and Stress
To understand the benefits of exercise for stress relief, it’s important to understand what stress is in the first place. Ratey defines stress as anything that initiates activity at the level of our cells. By this definition, our environments present countless stressors. For example, when we move, we stress both our muscles and the brain cells involved in controlling that movement. When we eat vegetables such as eggplant, our cells activate as they work to process toxins the plant has created to protect itself. When we hear an unexpected noise, our brains initiate a stress response as they work to assess the source of the noise and whatever threat it might pose.
(Shortform note: Another biological understanding of stress is that it’s anything that threatens homeostasis. Homeostasis is a state in which the body’s physical systems are in balance. So anything that disrupts that maintenance is a stressor.)
Under this narrow, biological definition, stress is neither inherently good or bad; it’s a fundamental biological process. If the body can handle the effects of the stress—for example, if cells can clean up the waste produced by oxidative stress—then the stress won’t have negative effects at the cellular level. It’s when the body can’t keep up with the cellular effects of stress that it starts to feel negative effects. When that happens, we end up feeling stressed, which Ratey explains is a psychological and emotional reaction to cellular stress events.
(Shortform note: Some experts take a different view of just how stress is neither good nor bad. Defining it as a psychological challenge, they observe that people who seem to handle stress well are motivated by it—seeing it as an opportunity to rise to a challenge. By contrast, those who don’t handle stress well are demotivated by such a challenge. These experts suggest that cognitive reframing (thinking of the stressor differently) can help to make stress work for you.)

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Here's what you'll find in our full Spark summary :
- How exercising can help with addiction, anxiety, and depression
- A look at how exercise optimizes brain function and supports mental health
- What exercises are the most beneficial, and how to stick to a routine