The Real Happy Pill Page 8

  It is also the frontal lobe that is largely responsible for controlling our ability to concentrate. Simply put, we have a lot of turbulence in the deeper reaches of the brain. The frontal lobe suppresses this commotion and behaves like a filter that removes the noise and allows us to focus.

  The ability to wait for reward

  How the frontal lobe works plays a pivotal role in the way our lives turn out. In the 1970s, professor of psychology Walter Mischel revealed that children’s ability to delay a reward—a function that exists primarily in the frontal lobe—can predict their future personality profile. Mischel’s test in delayed gratification showed four-year-old children who had to choose between enjoying a marshmallow right away or two marshmallows if they could wait twenty minutes to get them. Most of the kids found the temptation too great and could only wait two to three minutes before eating the treat. Some children could restrain themselves a little longer, and some managed to hold out for the entire twenty minutes in order to get the two marshmallows.

  Mischel followed these test subjects for several decades and noted that those who could delay gratification did, on average, better academically, reaching higher educational levels as adults. They’ve encountered fewer problems with alcohol abuse, drugs, and obesity. They also handle stress better. The variances in how people’s frontal lobes function are visible early in life and have lifelong consequences.

  Exercise is effective medicine for improving concentration, with no side effects whatsoever.

  To control the impulse to eat the candy requires a great deal of discipline from a four-year-old child (this is true for adults, too), which is a function that is connected to concentration. An important reason why some children do better on the test than others is that they are able to focus better, thus succeeding in zeroing in on the future reward. In a video of the study, you can see some children straining to the breaking point, kicking frantically against the chair in front of them to distract themselves. When those who could wait were asked how they did it, many replied that they thought intensely about the fact that they would soon get two marshmallows.

  This kind of concentration and ability to delay gratification are executive functions also known as cognitive control, which are part of what Walter Mischel calls the brain’s “cooling system.” The Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman calls it “System 2”—the brain’s slower, more deliberate system. Other scientists and authors throughout history have used different designations, but they all basically refer to the same thing: the system we have for our higher thinking that keeps a lid on impulses and has its origin in the frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex. It’s a system that is strengthened in many ways when we are physically active.

  You control your brain, not the other way around

  As you saw earlier in the chapter Run away from stress, the frontal lobe is one of the brain’s areas that is strengthened the most by physical exercise. The frontal lobe of a person who works out regularly becomes better connected to other parts of the brain, which is critical for its ability to influence and control the rest of the brain. New blood vessels are also created in the frontal lobes in people who are physically active, which allows for better blood supply and removal of waste products. The processes that lead your walks or runs to a stronger frontal lobe are powerful, but not immediate. You won’t notice anything different after one loop around the track, but rather after several months of regular activity.

  Because the frontal lobe is changeable and malleable, the marshmallow test’s creator, Walter Mischel, is careful to stress that the test does not mean that those who can’t resist temptations are condemned to have problems later in life. You can practice resisting temptations, and physical activity is probably a very important step in doing this. It is not your brain that controls you—it is you who control your brain through your actions. If you want to ensure the best possible conditions for yourself, stay physically active.

  CHILDREN WITH ADHD NEED EXERCISE AND PLAY

  When you come to terms with how important the frontal lobe and dopamine are for concentration—and how they are influenced by exercise—you realize that, at least in theory, it should be possible to treat ADHD with physical training. But as you know, theory and practice don’t always converge, so what does the research tell us? Is exercise so effective in sharpening our concentration that we can even use it to treat ADHD?

  A group of scientists decided to explore this question by using seventeen children as test subjects, all of whom exhibited such hyperactive behavior that they were at risk of being diagnosed with ADHD. Over the course of eight weeks, the kids enjoyed extra physical activity in the form of play before the start of the school day. The goal was to get them winded and raise their heart rate. At the end of those eight weeks, the kids performed a battery of tests that measured their ability to concentrate and socialize with other children. Additionally, the kids’ parents and teachers were asked if they had noticed any progress.

  It’s not your brain that rules you—it is you who rule your brain through your actions.

  Did all this activity have any effect? It did. According to the parents, teachers, researchers, and instructors, more than two-thirds of the children were reported to be more focused. Progress was noted especially in what is called response-inhibition, the ability to suppress actions and to not act impulsively on every little thing, which tends to be very difficult for children with ADHD.

  Despite those promising results, it couldn’t be ignored that this was only a very small study, so the same test was repeated on over two hundred children. It was estimated that half of the test subjects were at high risk of being labeled ADHD. Over the course of twelve weeks, the children played in groups for half an hour each day, with the goal of getting their heart rates up. As a control group, one set of children engaged in quieter activities, such as painting and drawing.

  The scientists decided to forgo the battery of psychological tests and simply asked parents and teachers, who were in daily contact with the children, how they perceived them. They were asked to judge how the children had changed in terms of attention span, hyperactivity, ability to focus, and how they got along with other kids. The children in the group who got to play didn’t merely improve their ability to focus; they also experienced fewer mood swings and threw fewer temper tantrums. A real difference was felt at home. And while this effect was noted in all the children who had been allowed to play, hyper or not, the biggest impact was seen in the kids who were thought to have ADHD.

  This is more than simply burning off excess energy

  The test subjects participated in regular physical activity over several months, but positive effects on concentration are swift to manifest themselves—as little as a single five-minute exercise session improves concentration and lessens ADHD symptoms in children! Perhaps you think they simply burned off some excess energy, which was why they calmed down. It wasn’t quite as simple as that. The impact on their concentration was far too significant to be simply due to exhaustion.

  Everyone’s concentration improves

  So far, the tests I’ve described have focused on how physical activity affects concentration in people with ADHD, primarily in children. But what about us, adults who do not have ADHD? Can we, too, expect to see an effect on our powers of concentration? Absolutely! Vivid proof of this can be found in the outcome of a test performed on two hundred pairs of seventeen-year-old identical twins. To measure the twins’ day-to-day levels of concentration, scientists decided to let their parents grade the twins in fourteen different categories, including attention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Three years later, when the twins were in their twenties, the parents conducted another round of grading, which showed that most of the twins had gained better concentration over that span of time. However, one group stood out by having markedly improved their ability to focus, and it was the twins who had been physically active in their free time. The more intensely physical the activity, the more concentration improved.
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br />   This was evident even within a pair of twins, in which one twin was active and the other was not. In those cases, the twin who exercised had better concentration than his or her sibling. The results were due to differences in lifestyle, not on genes or environment. The interesting fact here is that this study analyzed people in their twenties who did not have ADHD; nevertheless, it was obvious that the twins who were physically active showed better concentration and impulse control than the sedentary twins. The improvement wasn’t immediate but happened over time; there was a three-year gap between the parents’ ratings, after all.

  As short as a five-minute training session improves concentration and lessens symptoms of ADHD.

  WHY IS CONCENTRATION IMPROVED BY MOVEMENT?

  Indeed, why is concentration improved by movement? We can answer that by looking to the past, because it’s probably thanks to our ancestors and their lives on the savanna. They were physically active for reasons other than those that drive you and me to run on a treadmill. Today, most of us run because it makes us feel good, it’s healthy for us, and it keeps our weight under control. Our forefathers probably didn’t think about that stuff. They ran to catch food or to avoid danger; in either case, you’d better pay attention. There’s no room for error when there’s a lion behind you or when you’re getting ready to catch an antelope. Sharpened concentration is a survival asset in such situations. Your chances for survival increase with your brain’s ability to harness additional focus. Our brains haven’t evolved much more since our ancestors’ days on the savanna, so it’s the same mechanism that comes into play today, even when we exercise: the brain believes that we’re engaging potentially vital activity that requires an all-out effort, which leads us to concentrate better.

  ADHD can also be an advantage

  We often consider attention disorders and ADHD to be negative attributes. That’s not surprising, since symptoms must become a problem before a diagnosis can be made. However, qualities such as impulsivity and hyperactivity can also be turned to our advantage. Many restless and driven people get things accomplished because they don’t have the patience to wait around for results. It’s no accident that many successful business leaders and entrepreneurs have personality traits that call to mind the characteristics of ADHD.

  The Ariaal tribe from the desert of northern Kenya is a good illustration of how ADHD need not be a negative trait. The tribe’s members live the same way today as they did thousands of years ago, constantly moving livestock in their search for water and food. However, in the past few decades the tribe has split into groups. One group has put down stakes in one location and lives off agriculture, while the other has kept up its nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

  Scientists examined the tribe members’ genetic profile through blood tests—what interested them specifically was a gene that’s essential for dopamine in the brain. The gene, called DRD4, is present in all human beings, and it plays an important role in concentration. DRD4 has a few variations, one of which is more common in people with ADHD. Although no single gene can cause ADHD, and even DRD4 by itself can’t be held responsible for it, it is one of the single most important genes involved in ADHD.

  The tests revealed that certain tribe members carried the DRD4 variant connected to ADHD (it’s a bit clunky, but I’ll call it the ADHD-variation of the gene for now). Other members carried the regular variation of the gene—the gene not linked to ADHD. This was not unexpected. What was a surprise, however, was that the nomads of the tribe who carried the ADHD-variation of the gene were better nourished than those who expressed the regular variation of the gene. In other words, hunter-gatherers carrying the ADHD-variation of the gene seemed to have an easier time finding food than the hunters without the ADHD gene. The situation was reversed when the farmers were examined. The ADHD-gene carriers were undernourished compared to those who didn’t carry the gene. It appears the ADHD gene is an advantage to the hunters, but a drawback for the farmers, which illustrates that the same gene can be a plus for people living in one type of environment and a weakness for people living in another. But we can’t blame outcomes on people’s different genetic origins, because the Ariaal tribe only split into farmers and hunter-gatherers a few decades ago. Instead, one conclusion we can draw from these observations is that the qualities we link to ADHD—namely, impulsivity and hyperactivity—can be an advantage for hunters in an energetic environment in which they need to make quick decisions. On the other hand, the need for farmers to act quickly isn’t as urgent, since it’s more important, in their environment, to concentrate on long-term results and work patiently, a situation in which ADHD traits might be a hindrance.

  The perfect ADHD environment

  That the ADHD gene seems to be useful for the Ariaal tribe’s hunters points to something interesting. There is reason to believe that even among our hunting ancestors (which most of them were until about ten thousand years ago, at which time agriculture developed), there was a benefit to carrying this type of genetic heritage. In an environment where you hike, hunt, and move from place to place depending on where the food is, restlessness and impulsivity may mean that you have energy to make snap decisions. It’s almost perfect for someone who has ADHD. We’ve lived in that kind of environment for most of humanity’s history. From that perspective, we realize that the traits we associate today with ADHD have, historically speaking, been a boon. Conversely, if impulsivity and hyperactivity had caused only problems and had not provided some advantages, we would hardly encounter so many people with ADHD nowadays, since these characteristics would have been wiped out by natural selection.

  Interestingly, the ADHD gene isn’t an advantage for just hunters; it also seems to be more common in nomadic populations (I don’t mean “nomadic” in the way we change apartments or jobs every so often; I use the term to refer to primitive people who move around frequently). The gene appears to be associated with the desire to move around and explore new environments—a sort of “explorer gene,” if you will.

  The human race originated in East Africa and gradually made its way across the planet over the past one hundred thousand years. Discovering new environments and seeking out unknown vistas is a fundamental trait in our nature and has been crucial to our survival. We can suppose that this underlying drive to explore comes, to a great extent, from individuals who exhibit personality traits that we would now associate with ADHD.

  The brain is built for movement

  The Ariaal tribe isn’t the only case in which one lone gene can have both advantages and disadvantages depending on the environment in which it is expressed. It’s the same in our society, too. Characteristics that cause trouble in one social context or in one type of workplace might seem favorable in another. The problem is that there are no longer many occasions in which ADHD qualities are an asset. Risk taking and impulsivity are rarely viewed with approval in today’s world. These are types of behaviors we try to avoid and actively discourage in our children.

  In other words, that ADHD may have an advantage if you are a hunter on the savanna is a moot point. We don’t hunt for our food; we buy it at the grocery store. Having a gene that predisposes us to explore new environments isn’t that great a deal, either. We won’t be rewarded for finding a new, unknown fertile valley where we can settle down, because there aren’t any to be found. Instead, we’ll be punished for not being able to sit still. The sensory hypersensitivity that is inherent to many with ADHD means they’d be able to see the tiniest movements of their prey on the savanna, which in turn would increase the likelihood of their catching it. However, in school students are punished when the smallest sound distracts them and renders them unable to concentrate on what the teacher is writing on the blackboard. Ours is a challenging time to live in for someone with ADHD. What was considered helpful at one time has become a bane to our modern, urban society—and something that we try to medicate away.

  From an evolutionary standpoint, looking at ADHD as only a problem is too obtuse. We
also know that there are other ways besides pharmaceuticals to try to solve issues that arise from ADHD. One way is to change your lifestyle and try to live the way we have evolved to. We can’t go back to the savanna, but we can go running on a trail or hit the gym. If we do, we’ll be better equipped to handle the world we have changed so quickly, one that puts such high demands on our cognitive abilities.

  Maybe that’s why training has such good results on people who have ADHD. They meet the physical challenges that we encountered so naturally in our distant past, which seems so vital to them. Everyone has a brain that is built for movement, but the brain of someone with ADHD is especially attuned to movement! Just as exercise and physical training help the ADHD sufferer to focus, it can assist the rest of us whose attention occasionally goes on a walkabout. After all, we’re all perched somewhere along the ADHD spectrum.

  As you’ve seen in this chapter, having trouble concentrating isn’t due to just one thing. The nucleus accumbens (i.e., the reward center) might be calibrated differently in different people, which affects concentration. The brain’s interior din levels can vary, and the frontal lobe might be more, or less, competent at quieting the noise and honing our attention.

  In other words, there can be a multitude of reasons for why our concentration is flagging; what all of them seem to have in common is that they are affected by our level of physical activity. Furthermore, once we change our sedentary habits for the better, our ability to concentrate improves.