Exercise terminology is a funny thing. Just as you don't need to be a tennis player to get tennis elbow, neither, so it seems, do you need to be a runner to experience a "runner's high". In fact, research suggests that many runners have never experienced the profound sense of wellbeing -- supposedly due to the brain being flooded with endorphins -- that sometimes occurs during, or just after, exercise. Yet other exercisers, who wouldn't be seen dead in a pair of trainers, have blissed out on activities as gentle as yoga and walking. So what gives?
While early research concluded that, to get an exercise high, you had to work at 76 percent of your maximum heart rate -- and may need to keep that going for two or more hours -- more recent findings suggest that nothing like that intensity is required. "Recent studies have found that, as we get closer to our limit in physical terms, far from reaching a euphoric state, we actually feel negative emotions," says Stuart Biddle, head of the school of sport and exercise sciences at Loughborough University, England. "We're coming round to thinking that you don't have to be on the edge of your threshold to feel pleasure from exercise."
Nanette Mutrie, a sport psychologist at Glasgow University's department of physical activity and health science, offers an explanation: "I think the exercise high is a lot to do with what sport psychologists call flow -- a sense of oneness and total absorption in what you are doing," she says.
To experience flow, your ability needs to match the task.
"If a novice nine-minute-mile runner attempts to run a marathon in three hours," she says, "the challenge is most likely beyond their capability, so they are unlikely to reach a state of supreme enjoyment, and will probably simply feel anxious and uncomfortable. If, however, their goal time is within reach and they achieve it, they get a sense of having mastered something challenging and feel awash with joy."
This theory has currently found favour with sports psychologists. But whatever happened to those pleasure-giving endorphins? It is now known that the body has two endorphin systems: the central system in the brain and the peripheral system in the bloodstream. And since the two are divided by something called the blood brain barrier, elevated endorphin in the blood does not necessarily reflect anything happening in the brain.
"Endorphins might play a part in the exercise high, along with a whole host of other brain chemicals that are hyperactive when we exercise," Mutrie says. "While endorphins are only part of the brain chemical picture, brain chemicals are, in turn, probably only part of the overall exercise high," she says.
One problem lies in the fact that it's difficult to know what any individual means when they talk about a rush. For some, it may just be feeling good that they have notched up another workout, while for others it's almost spiritual in its intensity.
One study asked marathon runners to describe their experience. The most frequently picked phrase was "general happiness," rather than "euphoria."
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
The Chinese public maintains relatively warm sentiments toward Taiwan and strongly prefers non-military paths to improving cross-strait relations, a recent survey conducted by the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center and Emory University showed. The “China Pulse” research project, which polled 2,506 adults between Oct. 27 last year and Jan. 1 this year, found that 86 percent of respondents support strengthening cultural ties, while 81 percent favor deepening economic interaction. The report, co-authored by political scientists at Emory University and advisors at the Carter Center, indicates that the Chinese public views Taiwan’s importance through a lens of shared history and culture rather than geopolitical
Cannabis-based medicines have shown little evidence of effectiveness for treating most mental health and substance-use disorders, according to a large review of past studies published in a major medical journal on Monday. Medical use of cannabinoids has been expanding, including in the US, Canada and Australia, where many patients report using cannabis products to manage conditions such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep problems. Researchers reviewed data from 54 randomized clinical trials conducted between 1980 and May last year involving 2,477 participants for their analysis published in The Lancet. The studies assessed cannabinoids as a primary treatment for mental disorders or substance-use
RSS