Go Wild

by John J. Ratey

  All of this made me a solid citizen of the Prozac nation, medicated like many for years at a stretch and advised by physicians that these pills would be a condition of the rest of my life. Then I heard about neurofeedback. This technique is a modification of neuroscience’s EEG, but it is not simply a passive measure of brain activity. A therapist designates desired areas of the brain and levels of activity that will open up underused neural pathways. The patient watches a display that looks like a video game and that rewards him for using these neural pathways—simple rewards like brighter colors or richer, louder music. No one knows why the patient is able to, almost at will, activate those pathways to achieve the reward, but he does. And because depression, like many other problems, stems from locking into old pathways, using new ones helps make it abate.

  I got better, but the technique here is not the point. Plenty of evidence says there are other ways to get a bit better when you have depression, and Prozac is one of them. In retrospect now, though, three years later and unmedicated all that time, I think the real point is how I treated that improvement, not as a cure but as an opportunity, a bit of breathing room, a platform of strength that could be the basis of what else needed to be done.

  I have since come to categorize neurofeedback or medication or tricks like heart monitors and treadmills as essentially the same: they are not solutions. I am not opposed to using them, but they must be used in the right, limited way, the way a builder might use scaffolding as a necessary support to allow the foundation to be built, but then remove it once the project is on more solid ground. If I had stopped with neurofeedback, I would be stuck inhabiting the scaffolding of a life, not a real life.

  I began to think very differently about the whole business, and this was the key shift in attitude, the foundation, the core idea that I hope you can take from this book. I abandoned the notion that I was correcting a deficit or fixing a fault. Take the pill and good to go. It occurred to me that I had taken a small step and felt better, so how much “better” was there, how much better could I feel? Were there limits on this? At the outside, what are the limits on human potential for happiness?

  July 25, 2011. Unmedicated. Two hundred and ten pounds. A knee sprain has healed to the point of allowing running. This is the day I have chosen to begin, and I quit drinking. I put on a heart monitor. I have selected a marathon, 26.2 miles, and it is five months hence, on New Year’s Eve, in Bellingham, Washington, called Last Chance Marathon. Training begins. This is an easy step to plan. Enough people have done this, and enough research has been done that the prescription for a guy in my position—old, fat, and somewhat out of shape—is a matter of consensus. Stay aerobic. Establish a base mileage you can run comfortably and then increase it by no more than 10 percent a week. One long run a week, long and slow. A couple of rest days each week, with no running at all. Maybe a rest week every three weeks or so. There are apps for this. The process is dialed in, and it works pretty well. I finished the marathon. Slow, but finished. I weighed then 185 pounds—25 pounds lighter than when I had begun training five months before.

  But what’s next? More races out there. I signed up for a thirty-mile trail run, an ultramarathon, in April 2012. I finished, but I was a wreck, crashed into “the wall,” not once but at least twice during that run. The wall is that horrible state of fatigue, disorientation, and confusion that strikes distance runners when they have depleted glucose to below the point that the brain needs. The deal was, I was following the standard advice on nutrition, which included heavy doses of carbohydrates and sugar gels administered during long runs. This remains the boilerplate advice of the sport, and I should have known better, understanding well by then the dangers of a high-carb diet. But I figured athletics were the exception, so I took the standard advice. My experience in that first ultra sent me back to the drawing board and resulted in a happenstance change in direction that I now think was my most important discovery.

  The reasoning that fronted my doubts about sugar gels and carb-fueled marathons paralleled that found in Born to Run: that we’d evolved running without shoes so didn’t need them, and in fact probably did damage by running in heavily padded, stiff, heeled shoes. I had taken that advice from the beginning, trained from the start in minimalist “barefoot” shoes, and it had paid off. It allowed me to gear up for ultramarathons without injury. I am a minimalist runner to this day, and it pleases me simply because I have learned that running with unrestricted feet is more fun. No other way to put it. More giggles and smiles in it.

  So what about the sugar gels? Hunter-gatherers didn’t suck on foil pouches of corn syrup every half hour or so, just as they didn’t have foot coffins. Had anyone thought about this? It turns out that people had, especially a guy named Peter Defty and the researchers Steve Phinney and Jeff Volek. They have developed and advocate an ultra-low-carbohydrate school of nutrition called ketogenic, named for the forms of fat that become your fuel. You limit your body to about fifty grams of carbohydrates a day, the total from maybe an apple and turnips at dinner. Fat is your fuel, and in a matter of a couple of weeks, the body adapts. The brain gets the glucose it needs by making it from spare molecular parts, and the metabolic cycle runs on fat. This is probably a reasonable approximation of the way our ancestors ate most of the time, before agriculture. It is of the same order as other low-carbohydrate diets, such as the paleo diet or the Zone, although it’s set off from the former by including dairy products. Dairy and lactose are indeed important considerations in finding your particular path, but I seem to have no lactose issues and I like yogurt and cheese, so this is mine.

  My goal in this was to run long races without resorting to sucking on sugar water and without crashing with wild undulations of hyper-and hypoglycemia. It worked. Simply and quickly. I can now run as long as seven hours without any food whatsoever, and I never think twice about it. I have since gone for many runs of four hours or more and have never once crashed into a wall. The conventional nutritional wisdom of the sport says this is not supposed to be, but it is, and it’s easy.

  Almost immediately after changing the way I ate, weight began to fall off my body, although I was not trying to lose weight, nor did I change my running routine, not a bit. I was then and still am running about forty miles a week. But from day one of my ketogenic diet, I began losing about a pound or two a week, step, step, step, in a straight uninterrupted curve until I hit 160 pounds, and then it plateaued and my weight has not varied by more than a pound or two in a year or so since. I pay no attention whatever to total calorie intake, mileage, or the amount of food I eat. Just no sugars. No grains. No processed foods. Lots of nuts, cheese—fat, runny cheeses—bacon, eggs, sausages, sour cream, and vegetables. No high-glycemic fruits like bananas, but apples, pears, and berries, fresh and simple. Lots of venison. Salmon at least once a week. Grass-finished beef. Not a diet. Just the way I eat, and it makes me happy. I repeat, I do not count calories. I am never, ever hungry.

  My new eating habits had another unexpected brain benefit, but there is no way I can say for sure that the sum total of my better life stemmed from food choices. Maybe that was just the last piece, the keystone of the arch. Remember, I’d already made the changes with exercise and was at a point in training when I could expect to see some real benefits from running alone. Truly, I had. But remember, too, that this is not about a single intervention; it’s more about building a foundation for life.

  Still, it was clear that something had worked: my head was getting better. The depression was gone. These changes were no longer an intervention or therapy or cure. They had become my life.

  Indeed, I am giving you the barest of outlines of my life during the period, and much that I have left out may in fact be relevant: my solid marriage; the fact that I live in Montana, a wild place; that my work schedule is my own; that I have a dog who runs with me; and that I play music with friends. All of this is relevant, too, and maybe even more so. This is why we can’t serve up recipes for others or even research
these matters in epidemiological precision. Lives vary, and through time.

  OUR PRESCRIPTION FOR YOU

  So now it all comes down to the ultimate question: what do you do about all of this? We hope by now it’s clear that only you can answer that question fully. But it should also be just as clear that the weight of the evidence offers some sound advice on how one goes about getting better.

  First, find your lever. Remember the lever? Beverly Tatum introduced the concept when she told her story about how correcting her sleep deprivation meant she was soon thinking about her nutrition and exercise; the simple act of shutting off her computer at ten each night led to better health on a number of fronts. For Mary Beth Stutzman, the lever was food, specifically carbohydrates. One thing leads to another, and the lever is the key change in your life that triggers others. The first step. Food, microbiome, movement, sleep, mindfulness, tribe, biophilia—all are pieces of the whole.

  We don’t know what your lever is, but from our own experience, we’d suggest you begin by looking at food or movement or both. We have talked about many issues here, but food and nutrition have been researched the most, are best understood, are profoundly different today from the food and nutrition that formed us as a species, and are so basic to the human condition that it would be hard to imagine anyone getting better without getting these on the right track.

  The good news, though, is that it’s pretty easy and straightforward to get them on the right track. Here are the basics, and they are simple enough:

  Food. Eat no refined sugar in any form. Fructose contained in fresh fruit is okay if not excessive. But no fruit juices. And pay special attention to avoiding sugar dissolved in water: soft drinks but also energy drinks and juices that contain sugar in any form. Don’t eat grain. Don’t eat anything made from grain. Get your calories from fat, but avoid manufactured fats, otherwise called trans fats. Don’t eat processed food. Don’t eat fast food. Look for foods high in omega-3 fats, like eggs, grass-finished beef, cold-water fish like salmon, and nuts. Go for simple fresh fruits and vegetables. Go for variety. Eat as much as you like. Enjoy what you eat.

  Movement. Look for a form of exercise you like. That comes first. Something you can do easily and as part of your daily routine. Look for forms that involve a variety of movements, full body, with lots of variability, as in both trail running and CrossFit workouts. The gym is okay in a pinch, but look for ways to get outside. Exercise in nature is exercise squared. Feel the sun but also the wind and the rain in your face. Slog through the snow. Get cold. Get hot. Get thirsty. Gear up and go. And especially look for exercise that involves other people. Move with your tribe. Look also to time-honored forms of movement, like dance, qigong, or tai chi. Buy a heart monitor and know your heart. Begin slowly and carefully. Schedule rest days and even rest weeks. And don’t stop experimenting and trying new things until you are having fun, until you look forward to each day’s run or dance.

  If you do these things, you probably will find a lever. Now follow that process as it leads to other steps. Remember, you are no longer checking boxes or putting out fires or whacking moles; you are exploring potential. This process is iterative. Take a step. Assess. Then take another. This whole business becomes not an assignment or duty—rather, an exploration, a process of discovery. It’s guided by rewards. So you’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks. Do you feel better? Want to feel better still? What else is out there? Does the lever lead to better sleep? Awareness? Better engagement with your tribe? Better brain? It should. In time, and not much time, it should.

  There is a frustrating irony buried in this whole topic: The more you understand about what needs to be done, the less you are inclined to write about it. Someone once said (the real source is a matter of some debate) that writing about music is a bit like dancing about architecture. The Zen Buddhists have another way of saying pretty much the same thing: meditation is not something you think about; meditation is something you do. Same with well-being. No matter what ails you, you are not going to think your way out of it or read your way out of it. Living well is something you do.

  So then it’s not something we can do for you as authors, and this realization, too, is informed by our own experience with wilderness. All our lives, we have hiked trails and learned much about life from the experience. Part of the learning comes with finding one’s way. This is the lesson of the wild, and to fully realize it, you need to go to the woods and get lost and find your own way, find a trail that suits you.

  But we can take you to the trailhead. That’s what we have tried to do here, to reveal that there is a series of pathways leading up the mountain and point you to the trailhead. After that, you are on your own.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was a true collaboration throughout, so the authors accrued common debts to people who helped that process.

  We are, of course, grateful to the people we depended on to share information that helped shape and develop our ideas. We identified a number of those when we introduced and quoted them in the text. We have cited key sources and pivotal books. In addition, a number of other people were generous enough with their time and ideas to grant us interviews and give us information and ideas that we used on background but that were still crucial to this work. They include Jennifer Sacheck, a nutritionist at Tufts University; Frank Forencich, who lives in Portland, Oregon, and writes and thinks about the role of movement and play in people’s lives; Daniel Lieberman, who is at Harvard and is famous for his ideas on running and evolution; Dennis Bramble, now retired from the University of Utah, who collaborated on a series of pivotal papers with Lieberman; Bryon Powell, editor of the iRunFar website, which covers the world of trail running; Nikki Kimball, a world-class competitive trail runner and a hunter; Martha Herbert, the researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital known for establishing connections between nutrition and autism; Richard Deth, a researcher in autism at Northeastern University; and Alan Logan, who, with Eva Selhub, wrote Your Brain on Nature.

  We also got particular help, support, and access from the staff at the Center for Discovery, the forward-looking autism treatment center in New York. We especially thank Terry Hamlin, Matthew Goodwin, and Jenny Foster.

  As is the case with most books, this one was borne along to publication by people in the business. Our agent, Peter Matson of Sterling Lord Literistic, served us well in finding a home for these ideas. Tracy Behar, our editor at Little, Brown, was bold enough to take a chance on a big, unruly idea and helped us develop and refine it into what we present here.

  In addition to these debts accrued jointly, we also made some severally.

  JOHN RATEY

  My debt extends to many people who have contributed to my always asking why and why not! It began as an undergraduate when I was a philosophy major at Colgate and was pushed to think critically of all that I read or thought I knew. It was the late ’60s, and exploration of the self and striving for change was the norm. While there, I also lived as a Zen monk for a month and experienced the benefits of meditation, nature, and being in the present.

  Then, in medical school at the University of Pittsburgh, I gravitated to some of the best doctors in the land, who seemed to know everything but were secure enough to say they did not. Their honesty was very apparent despite the orthodoxy of medicine. This learned background of uncertainty grew tenfold at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, were I was guided by my mentors Les Havens, George Vaillant, Richard Shader, and Allan Hobson, who were giants in their fields yet challenged themselves constantly and were never satisfied with the party line. There I began my lifelong association and great friendship with Edward Hallowell, who has been a source of courage and challenge—which has kept me moving toward this end. This determination allowed me to follow the serendipitous leads to develop my work with aggression, then ADHD, and now Go Wild.

  This “go for it” attitude to pursue the new or unpopular allowed me to concentrate on the benefits of exercise for the brain. Here
I was backed by the science emanating from people such as Carl Cotman, James Blumenthal, Ken Cooper, and Mark Mattson. This eventually led me to what is now a more global appreciation of the brain, mood, and cognition benefits of good living, when most of my tribe were counting on the next drug to come along to push the field forward. I witnessed firsthand the squabbles over the first “scientific” DSM-III, which reinforced the fact that science was unduly influenced by economic and political issues.

  I owe much to Phil Lawler and Paul Zientarski, true pioneers who revolutionized their school’s physical education program at District 203 in Naperville. In addition, they enlisted me to try to lead their whole profession to change into a more health-and-wellness-oriented discipline. This mission led me to travel the United States, Canada, and around the world to meet many scholars, educators, and movers and shakers who were aware of the problems of the present and wanted to do something about it. The growing awareness that something was not right with our world and the way we were living led me to challenge my own habits.

  Finally, I owe a great deal to Richard Manning, a true iconoclast who is a brilliant and tireless intellectual. He is a throwback to the truth-seeking reporter, and our time spent together continues to guide my thinking and sharpen my constructs. Also I am truly grateful to my dear wife, Alicia Ulrich, who continues to share the ideas and ideals we portray in the book.

  RICHARD MANNING

  My largest debt in any book is usually on the ledger even before I begin, with the help I get leading up to the genesis of an idea. This one is no exception, and goes way back to the 1980s, when I read a profile of Wes Jackson in Atlantic magazine. Jackson, the great agronomist and MacArthur genius, had the idea of reinventing agriculture to make it wild, “farming in nature’s image,” he called it. This revolutionary notion led me to years of thinking about wildness, food, and the essence of who we are.