In the first key, we compared your brain to a car. Now if you have any fondness for F1, you will be aware that there aren't many overweight drivers squeezing themselves into the cockpit of a McLaren or Ferrari to roar around a Grand Prix circuit. If they were carrying much excess flesh, first, they wouldn't fit, but second, the stress on their bodies would compromise their ability to make high-performance decisions in a split second. Lewis Hamilton gained the nickname of ‘Chubby’ when he was not doing so well in the rankings. Coincidence?

There's one thing that every future brain needs. The research shows it to make by far the biggest impact on our cognition, mental flexibility, memory, mood and wellbeing. It's so powerful, nothing comes close to offering the benefits it provides.

It's the one thing pharmaceutical companies would love to get their hands on and patent, because they would become instant squillionaires. They can't, though, because it can never be produced as a potion or a pill. You can't rub it on or take it as a supplement. But it does need to be taken daily.

What is it?

You've probably guessed. It's called exercise.

Yes, good old-fashioned exercise, the physical sort, has been shown to help optimise how well your brain works for you by strengthening existing neural networks, promoting neuroplasticity (the production of new synaptic connections) and neurogenesis (the production of new neurons).

Business on the move

Exercise brings benefits to businesses, large and small, that are immeasurable in terms of employee wellbeing — and highly measurable in terms of the bottom line. Brains that work out work better and last longer. We feel more energised, competent and confident. Exercise helps us to manage our heavy workloads, think faster on our feet and enjoy greater mental agility.

In its 2013–14 Staying@Work Survey Report, Towers Watson identified stress (78 per cent), lack of physical exercise (73 per cent) and obesity (75 per cent) as the top health issues listed by employers. Increasing physical activity at work naturally helps to resolve the other two issues.

Business wellness programs offer far more than just improved health and wellbeing. The cognitive edge gained through exercise and increased wellness is rewarded by higher staff retention, lower rates of absenteeism and presenteeism, greater productivity, higher morale and greater loyalty to the organisation.

Far from being a ‘nice to have’ value-add, investment in employee wellbeing is now recognised by brain-savvy businesses as making good business sense on many levels:

• A study by Katherine Baikler and others revealed in the US every dollar invested in health and wellbeing has an ROI of $5.82 in reduced absenteeism costs.
• According to a study by Dishman and others, workplace health programs have been shown to reduce sick leave by 30 per cent, increase productivity by 52 per cent and reduce workers compensation and disability costs by 32 per cent.
• Exercise lifts levels of engagement, focus and application to the work performed — and lifts the bottom line.
• The company gets a public image boost, being seen as caring for the health and wellbeing of its staff, which increases its attraction as a place to work.

Despite the image of the bronzed and sports-loving Aussie, even though we're so often portrayed as fit and buff lifesavers, Ironmen, footy players and cricketers, the reality is the vast majority of the population prefers to sit and watch rather than participate in sport.

But it's not just an Australian problem. While 70 per cent of Australians are not physically active enough to maintain good health, 80 per cent of American adults don't get the recommended amount of exercise each week.

Self-reported statistics in the UK found 67 per cent of men and 55 per cent of women claimed that they fulfilled the recommendations for aerobic activity, but it seems, as is often the case, what they believed they were doing didn't come close to matching the reality. Objective measures of these fitness levels found 70 per cent of men and 80 per cent of women fell below their age-appropriate activity level.

The size of the problem reflects not only how inactive we have become, but the lost potential and profit that a healthy, active workforce can offer.

Functional MRI (fMRI) studies by Sandra Chapman and others have shown how exercise leads to increased blood flow to two key areas in the brain, the anterior cingulate and the hippocampus (see figure 2.1).

The anterior cingulate has three main functions: first, it's an error detector that helps us spot when something is different about our environment; second, it's involved in how we prepare and anticipate task performance; and third, it is involved in the regulation of our emotions. The hippocampus, meanwhile, relates to spatial learning and memory.

An increase in blood flow indicates increased cerebral metabolism and neuronal activity, with extra oxygen and nutrients being delivered to the brain. This is what leads to better performance. From an evolutionary point of view, keeping your wits about you while running from a predator, for example, may help you escape harm.

Equipment order: one hamster wheel please

We need to take the lead from the kids screaming around the schoolyard. Incorporating exercise into our daily routine boosts our energy levels, sharpens thinking, hones focus, boosts memory, enhances creativity and elevates mood. The challenge lies in creating a working environment that encourages us to be active so we can produce our best.

Having a great office environment with nice furniture, a pleasant outlook and a positive vibe certainly helps, because it's a fantastic place to work. But on its own it's not enough. Early studies showed that rats living in ‘enriched’ environments were happier. Good to know if you want to keep your local rat population off the sauce.

But happiness apart, it was essential to find out exactly which aspect of an enriched environment made the rats want to stay away from the local bar. Justin Rhodes and his colleagues at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and the University of Illinois decided to find the answer. It turned out not to be about the toys, bells and whistles the rats had to play with.

It was having access to a running wheel.

Installing a running wheel in the office may not be a practical option. It's really about what to invest the workplace budget in that will make the biggest difference to boosting performance. If the choice is between new office furniture and putting in an office gym, I think you know the answer.

Besides increasing blood flow, exercise boosts the release of neurotransmitters in the brain, and this is where the real magic lies. Exercise leads to an increase in the amount of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor, for short) the brain secretes. John Ratey calls BDNF ‘Miracle-Gro’ for brains because this is what boosts neuronal health, strengthens synaptic connections and stimulates neurogenesis — the production of new neurons and their incorporation into our existing neural architecture.

In other words, exercise helps us to grow and strengthen our brain, allowing us to learn, remember and recall information better. And to maintain the healthy thinking, innovation and creativity we need to keep moving.

Is there an optimal time to exercise?

Yes and no. In an ideal world, exercising every morning for 20 to 30 minutes is perfect. That's because exercise is brilliant at increasing blood flow (hence sending extra oxygen and nutrients to specific brain areas) and swooshing extra BDNF around your brain, but the mental results come later.

Exercise is the primer that enables your brain to work at its best (see figure 2.2).

However, if early-morning exercise doesn't suit your lifestyle, exercising at other times is fine as well. At lunchtime why not book a gym session, go for a jog, walk around the park or maybe practise some yoga. This works especially well if you've got a hard afternoon coming up with back-to-back meetings, a brainstorming session (more on brainstorming later) or a big project to finish that requires ongoing stamina and focus.

Last but not least, exercising after work is a great way to relax and unwind after a long day. It gives your brain breathing space to consolidate thoughts and perhaps come up with new ideas. It also gives you time to transition your focus from work to home.

The only caveat here is don't exercise too close to bedtime (within two or three hours), as it can interfere with the brain's ability to quieten down in preparation for sleep.

The best time for exercise is the time you have available. And let's face it (pardon the pun), if we have time for Facebook, we have time for exercise.

Is there a best exercise for our brains?

The short answer is: anything that gets your heart rate up and makes you puff a bit.

A 30-minute-plus session of aerobic exercise is ideal. What you choose doesn't matter. The main thing is to pick something you think you will enjoy, because this is something you will be doing for the rest of your life! So whether it is walking, swimming, running, cycling, table tennis, kayaking, rugby or golf, the trick is to schedule it in on a regular basis, start slow and gradually increase the number of sessions each week, and their duration. Once you get started, you will begin to experience the natural endorphin rush that makes you feel good and motivates you to want to do it again.

Interval training has become all the rage, with many exercise physiologists telling us you can get all the benefits of a longer session in a short, high-intensity burst. That is certainly true for cardiovascular and general fitness, and the latest research supports the idea that this is also true for the brain. For time-poor business owners, workers and executives this is great news.

Adding in a couple of stretching and strength sessions each week has also been shown to be useful in boosting good cognitive health and function.

The solution for exercise phobia

If the thought of donning lycra and going to the gym or being asked by a friend to join them for a jog brings you out in a cold sweat, it's okay. The solution is simply to move more.

Unless you are a complete couch potato, spending all your days and nights in a reclining or horizontal position, there will be opportunities for you to become more physically active. (Note how much less threatening ‘moving more’ sounds than the prospect of all that hard, sweaty, uncomfortable exercise.)

While moving more is a great start, there is no escaping that exercise is the crucial path to staying healthy, both physically and mentally. Ideally, aim for 20 to 30 minutes of moderately intense exercise every day, and two to three sessions of weights or stretching per week. Even just 12 minutes of aerobic activity will boost memory and cognition. So don't just sit there, move!

If you need a little encouragement to keep on keeping on with your exercise program, then plug in some upbeat music you enjoy. There's a very good reason why gyms play music: it stimulates you to persevere a little longer with your session. On a treadmill, your speed will pick up, your endurance will increase and your stride will start to match the beat of the music you're listening to.

Charles Emery, a psychologist at Ohio State University, investigated the difference listening to music during exercise had on mental performance. In a group undergoing rehabilitation following myocardial infarction, he found that those who exercised while listening to music (he chose Vivaldi's Four Seasons) performed twice as well in verbal fluency as those who exercised without music. If Vivaldi isn't your thing, choose something that is.

We can walk, run, swim or cycle our way to better brain health and function, and if music helps us get there, so much the better.

The perils of too much sitting

‘Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of wellbeing and walk away from every illness.’

Soren Kierkegaard

So when it comes to creating a fitter, healthier future brain, nothing beats exercise. Except, sadly, all that benefit can be lost through the one activity we humans have unfortunately become far too familiar with: sitting.

Sitting disease is a recognised phenomenon that is integral to our modern lifestyle and way of working. It is linked to poor health (increased risk of certain cancers, including bowel cancer; cardiovascular disease; varicose veins; poor posture; neck, back and hip pain; obesity; poorer thinking; and cognitive decline) and a shortened lifespan.

But sitting disease isn't new. The perils of sitting too long for our occupational health was recognised by an Italian physician, Bernardino Ramazzini, in his published work ‘Diseases of workers’ back in 1713:

Those who sit at their work and are therefore called “chair workers,” such as cobblers and tailors, become bent and hump-backed and hold their heads down like people looking for something on the ground. These workers … suffer from general ill health and an excessive accumulation of unwholesome humors caused by their sedentary life.

Ramazzini noted how runners (messengers) avoided many of these health problems and was an early advocate of sedentary workers taking an exercise break. Clearly the message has taken a little while to filter through.

You're probably thinking there are far greater threats to your health than sitting for too long. We know, for example, that smoking is also bad for your health, and indeed it is no longer permitted in Australian workplaces. But according to Mayo Clinic cardiologist Martha Grogan, sitting most of the day gives you about the same risk of heart attack as smoking.

For many, sitting is the new smoking.

A study by the American Cancer Society found if you are sitting for more than six hours every day, your chance of dying from any cause over the next 15 years is 40 per cent higher than for someone who sits for less, even if you exercise. That's right, sitting too long shortens your life by two to three years and is really bad for your brain.

The problem we have today is the far greater proportion of workers who sit for prolonged periods of time for their work.

Have you ever totted up how much time you spend sitting each day? Be honest. Is it four, six, eight hours — or more? It's possible that you may be spending 13 hours sitting each day, far longer that you spend asleep in your bed!

How can this be? For many of us, we start our day by getting up and then sitting down for breakfast (okay, I know some of you do this differently, standing or running out the door, coffee in hand), and then we sit in the car, the bus or the train on our way to work.

Once at work many of us sit at a desk in front of a computer screen all day long, maybe getting up briefly to take lunch (which we sit and eat) then back to our desk to work hard until it's time to go home again. Travelling home we sit in the car, the bus or the train again. We sit to eat our evening meal, and we may then sit while relaxing in front of the TV or doing some work on the computer before bed. It's easy to see how much of our time is consumed by sitting.

According to a study from Vanderbilt University, the average American is sedentary for 7.7 hours each day. The reality is that for many of us this is a gross underestimate. Statistics from the Mayo Clinic indicate that:

• 50 to 70 per cent of people spend more than six hours each day sitting
• 20 to 35 per cent of people spend at least four hours every day sitting watching TV.

Stand up for your brain!

When we sit for long periods (more than three hours at a time), our inactivity leads to reduced blood flow to the brain, and hence less oxygenation and nutrient supply. James A. Levine says that every two hours spent sitting significantly reduces blood flow and sugar levels. This leads to reduced brain activity, particularly in the energy-hungry prefrontal cortex (PFC).

The PFC is the executive suite we use for all that heavy-duty thinking, planning, organising and decision making. With reduced blood flow, we run out of mental juice and feel mentally tired more quickly. Continuing to press on at this stage further compounds the problem. We would be far better off to stop and take a brain break by getting up to stretch and move for 10 to 15 minutes.

Worse still, all that sitting means the exercise we put all that time and effort into may as well not have happened. That's right, prolonged sitting negates all the benefits we derive from exercise. Genevieve Healy, who has done a lot of work in this area, reports that ‘we have become so sedentary that 30 minutes at the gym may not counteract the detrimental effects of 8, 9, 10 hours of sitting’.

The solution? We have to move more.

Join the movement

Note that I'm talking about movement here, not exercise. Some companies and businesses have become aware of the problem posed by sitting disease and introduced measures such as standing desks, which have become popular recently. Standing by itself helps to increase metabolic activity and is preferable to sitting. But many people dislike standing for too long, or get backache, or find it hard to work while standing. A better solution may be having a desk that allows you to alternate your posture — sitting for some of the time, standing for the rest.

Going beyond the standing desk, there are treadputers: treadmills with an attached workstation and computer. Here, you can set your preferred speed and basically walk while doing your work. I can see how this would be okay for some office work but not for others. Drawing, for example, would be a serious challenge! I can also see how the office jokester would relish being able to ‘adjust’ a colleague's treadputer speed. Or is that just my suspicious mind at work?

Gretchen Reynolds, in her book The First Twenty Minutes, suggests, ‘The first twenty minutes of moving around, if someone has been really sedentary, provide most of the health benefits’. Rather than feeling guilty next time you don't get to the gym (again) and your trainers have expired from lack of use, get up and have a stretch, go for a five-minute walk and commit to developing the habit of doing things that involve moving more every day. From there it becomes easier first to start building this into longer sessions and then to ‘up’ the physical component by walking more briskly. Start small and then look for new opportunities to move more, especially at the beginning of your day.

Moving includes walking. The ideal distance to preserve brain function is to walk around 15 kilometres each week. Walkers grow bigger brains and preserve memory better.

Nilofer Merchant, a walking meeting advocate who holds around four walking meetings every week, finds they allow her to:

• avoid the guilt around allocating other time to exercise instead of being at work or with family.
• listen more effectively because her attention is better focused on the person she is walking with.
• be less distracted by technology such as her mobile phone.

Moving towards a positive thinking space

The statistics around the incidence of mental illness, anxiety and depression in the workplace are, in a word, depressing.

One in five Australian adults is at risk of experiencing an episode of mental illness in any given 12 months. That's 20 per cent of the population.

The impact of stress on mental wellbeing is discussed in Key 7, but it is appropriate to mention here how encouraging regular physical activity in the workplace can help to reduce stress levels and the symptoms associated with anxiety and depression. The costs associated with the loss of work hours, absenteeism, presenteeism, injury and disability, along with the impact on individuals, their work colleagues and their family, are frightening.

Exercise stimulates the release of endorphins that make us feel better and promote a sense of wellbeing. Higher levels of serotonin enable us to better resist negative thoughts and feelings.

It's thought that more active people experience less stress and depression because exercise stimulates the production of norepinephrine. Its role is to modulate the action of other neurotransmitters involved in our response to stress, so it's not just the endorphins that play a role in how well we cope with our everyday stressors.

In a group of people diagnosed with mild to moderate depression, a 12-week course of exercise reduced their symptoms of depression by 47 per cent compared with a group that just did stretching. This improvement was equivalent to that experienced by those prescribed an antidepressant.

It has been estimated that just five minutes of aerobic activity can reduce symptoms of anxiety. If you have a presentation to deliver that's freaking you out, taking time beforehand to go for a jog or brisk walk can make a big difference. Regular exercise can also be very useful for helping ward off feelings of anxiety and depression.

While much of the public focus has been on the escalation of depression in our society, anxiety too can paralyse performance. In the Stress and wellbeing survey in Australia 2013, Lyn Casey reported that 28 per cent of Australians experience anxiety, with 12 per cent falling into the severe to extremely severe category.

Anxiety can manifest in the workplace as avoidant behaviour. It activates the stress response and creates a feeling of fear. Concern about meeting deadlines or the expectations of others or our own expectation of performance can put us at risk of increased levels of stress that later manifest as symptoms of anxiety and/or depression.

Exercise has been shown to build resilience to the impact of anxiety on the brain by enabling the hippocampus to regulate the impact of anxiety on the thinking part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.

Don't stress me out!

A study from Bristol University in 2008 found that those who worked out before work (or in their lunch break) were happier and more resilient and coped better overall. The researchers studied three areas of work performance: mental–interpersonal, output and time demands. Exercise days brought improvement across all three areas. The summary findings included:

• 72 per cent found time management was easier on the exercise days
• 79 per cent reported getting on better with others and feeling well on the days they exercised
• 74 per cent reported finding it easier to cope with their workload.

It also made a difference to levels of stress, motivation and attention. Feeling better about your work is a powerful way to energise your approach to it and get it done. Of course, sometimes the best-laid plans can go awry and there will always be times when our intentions don't work out. Rather than feeling guilty or giving up on the idea altogether, don't stress — because the researchers found that on the days when participants missed an exercise session they maintained a positive mood, reflecting their regular habit, the only deficit being a lower sense of calm.

As with many habits, once the regular routine is established, the benefits continue to accrue despite missing the occasional session. However, while the occasional lapse is insignificant, abandoning a routine altogether quickly negates the benefits of all the hard work you have put in.

Developing a brain-healthy work culture that places a high value on exercise can start by providing all employees with better access to some form of physical activity regime, either at work or somewhere close by, such as a gym or exercise class. If your staff are fitter, happier and more engaged they will be more productive. That has to be good for business.