Athlete In The City

Continuing with last week’s theme quoting from Ratey’s book “Spark – The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain”, I wanted to touch on some of the new research related to depression.

As a trainer I can confirm one of Ratey’s first observations that a client “felt more passionate about life once he got into an exercise routine.”  He goes on to talk about what became known as the “endorphin rush”…

“Candace Pert had recently discovered that there were opiate receptors in the brain, meaning the body had a built-in way of killing pain with molecules that worked like morphine.  Endorphins, as they became known, dulled pain in the body and produced euphoria in the mind.  When elevated levels of endorphins were detected in the blood samples of a group of runners, everything seemed to fit.  The theory that exercise fills your brain with this morphinelike substance matched the good feeling everyone got.  It gave us the expression “runner’s high” an extreme version of the effect.”

“Blumenthal concluded that exercise was as effective as medication.  This is the study I photocopy for patients who are skeptical of the idea that exercise changes their brain chemistry enough to help their depression, because it puts the issue in terms that are as black-and-white as psychiatry can hope to deliver, at least for now.  The results should be taught in medical school and driven home with health insurance companies and posted on bulletin bouards of every nursing home in the country, where nearly a fifth of the residents have depression.  If everyone knew that exercise worked as well as Zoloft, I think we could put a real dent in the disease.”

“In short, exercise affects so many variables in the brain that its nigh impossible to isolate its effect as we’d like — in the name of hard science.  But the evidence is there, from the action of microscopic molecules to massive surveys of tens of thousands of people over the years.  Yes exercise is an antidepressant.  But it is also much more.”