Group: All Else Lounge

Created: 2011/12/31, Members: 42, Messages: 22740

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Do you adapt to endorphines?

Yxven
Yxven
Posts: 76
Joined: 2004/09/05
United States
2006/08/07, 05:24 PM
I know that physical activities such as weight training causes your brain to release more endorphins which is why it's a great treatment for depression.

I, also, know that your brain will adapt to certain chemicals like caffeine and E. If you continue to use E, your brain will start to rely on it, and it will stop producing serotonin naturally (or at least at lesser levels) (and I have no idea if that capability comes back eventually).

So does your brain begin to rely on physical activity to produce endorphins?

I've noticed for a while now that I feel terrible whenever I stop weight training even for brief periods like a week. Am I weird or is this normal? (It's not due to guilt triping since I only stop if school requires it)
BILL06
BILL06
Posts: 755
Joined: 2006/08/08
United States
2006/08/09, 02:12 PM
Hoped this will answer your question yxven.....

Some runners are known to get high. No, not from smoking drugs or doing anything illegal, but from running. For a long time, people have associated runner's high with endorphans, but some are critical of that point of view:

What's wrong with the endorphin theory? "Everything," Dietrich said. "The endorphin theory has only survived as a popular myth. In pharmacology, it's been dead a long time. Endorphins are peptides. The beta endorphin is a 31-amino acid chain, a molecule too large to get through the blood-brain barrier."
While endorphans are produced from strenuous exercise, and they are known to reduce our sensitivity to pain, they are not what causes the high feeling some runners get. The high feeling may be directly related to higher anandamide levels. Anadamide levels increase during strenuous exercise, and - unlike endorphins - can cross the blood-brain barrier. Anadamine may also influence brain dopamine levels.

The article also compares runners high with illegal drug usage:

"Releasing dopamine in a natural way, like listening to music or running, does not do the damage a drug does by short circuiting that path," Allan said. "You don't develop a tolerance because the brain doesn't adapt. You have natural mechanisms to handle it. The brain knows how to measure it and how to get rid of it. Whereas with an amphetamine or THC, the brain can't regulate it. You've essentially hit yourself with a sledgehammer. Consequently, your brain doesn't know how to get rid of it. So it soaks up the receptors, thereby creating a tolerance."

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For as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. proverbs 23:7

Bill
bigandrew
bigandrew
Posts: 5,146
Joined: 2002/10/21
United States
2006/08/10, 12:11 AM
I'd say no.....endorphines...adrenline...are a bodies way to either be in a "fight or flight" scenerio.

The body will know the difference between you going for a 4 mile jog....and somone stabbing you with a knief and you running from them.

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Get your bicep curling, cut off shirt, matching workout outfit wearing,flexing in mirror "toned" wanna-be ass , out of my squat rack!

People don't reach thier true potental, only those who seek it.