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Mar 30, 2008

"Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person's physical, emotional, and mental states." --Carol Welch

The Runner's High

The runner’s high: every athlete has heard of it, most seem to believe in it and many say they have experienced it. But for years scientists have reserved judgment because no rigorous test confirmed its existence. But now, researchers in Germany, using advances in neuroscience, report that the folk belief is true: running does elicit a flood of endorphins in the brain. The endorphins are associated with mood changes, and the more endorphins a runner's body pumps out, the greater the effect. The lead researcher for the new study, Dr. Henning Boecker of the University of Bonn, said he got the idea of testing the endorphin hypothesis when he realized that methods he and others were using to study pain were directly applicable.