We all know that exercise is good for you: it keeps you fit, it reduces stress and improves your mood. And also, sometimes, particularly after endurance running, it gets you high. The mechanism of euphoria reported by some runners after resistance training is unknown. Here is a nice paper trying to figure it out.
Boecker et al. (2008) scanned 10 trained male athletes at rest and after 2 hour worth of endurance running. By “trained athletes” they mean people that ran for 4-10 hours weekly for the past 2 years. The scanning was done using a positron emission tomograph (PET). The PET looks for a particular chemical that has been injected into the bloodstream of the subjects, in this case non-selective opioidergic ligand (it binds to all opioid receptors in the brain; morphine, for example, binds only to a subclass of the opioid receptors).
The rationale is as follows: if we see an increase in ligand binding, then the receptors were free, unoccupied, showing a reduction in the endogenous neurotransmitter, that is the substance that the brain produces for those receptors; if we see a decrease in the ligand binding it was because the receptors were occupied, meaning that there was an increase in the production of the endogenous neurotransmitter. The endogenous neurotransmitters for the opioid receptors are the endorphins (don’t confuse them with epinephrine a.k.a. adrenaline; different systems entirely).
After running, the subjects reported that they are euphoric and happy, but no change in other feelings (confusion, anger, sadness, fear etc.; there was a reduction in fear, but it was not significant). The scanning showed that it was less binding of the opioidergic ligand in many places in the brain (for the specialist, here you go: prefrontal/orbitofrontal cortices, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior and posterior cingulate cortex, insula and parahippocampal gyrus, sensorimotor/parietal regions, cerebellum and basal ganglia).
Regression analysis showed that there was a link between the euphoria feeling and the receptor occupancy: the more euphoric the people said they were, the more endorphines (i.e. endogenous opioids) they had bound in the brain. This study is the first to show this kind of link.
Reference: Boecker H, Sprenger T, Spilker ME, Henriksen G, Koppenhoefer M, Wagner KJ, Valet M, Berthele A, & Tolle TR. (Nov 2008, Epub 21 Feb 2008). The Runner’s High: Opioidergic Mechanisms in the Human Brain. Cerebral Cortex, 18:2523–2531. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn013. Article | FREE FULLTEXT PDF
By Neuronicus, 28 November 2015
The Science Portal 