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."
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS