The Joy Of Movement

The Joy Of Movement is just what you need to finally find the motivation to get out and exercise more often by teaching you the scientific reasons why it’s good for you and why your body is designed to enjoy it.

We now know the phenomenon of pleasure that comes from a good jog as “runners high.” But did you know that people were talking about this idea as early as 1885? A Scottish philosopher named Alexander Bain compared the blissful state to a spiritual experience. Others say it’s like love or even mind-altering drugs.

In fact, when it comes to the way activity affects our brains, it’s similar to what cannabis does!

Endocannabinoids are chemicals in our brain that decrease pain, improve mood, and set off positive neurotransmitters like dopamine and endorphins. Cannabis only mimics these effects. But when you exercise, the production of endocannabinoids gives you all of these benefits!

These effects also act as a defense against mental illness like depression and anxiety. One weight loss drug tried to reduce appetite by inhibiting endocannabinoid receptors. The effect was more mental illness and it eventually got banned!

Research also confirms that these chemicals improve the way you interact with other people. Participants in the study exercised for 30 minutes before playing a social game. As a result, they cooperated better and were far more generous.

And don’t worry, if you hate running so much that you’d rather eat a mop, every kind of exercise produces these same effects!

The addictive effect of exercise is powerful. It’s so strong that when researchers in the 1960’s were beginning to study it, they had a really hard time finding people who worked out regularly that would stop the habit to see what would happen! Even many of those that they could convince cheated and still kept it up. Part of the reason physical exertion is so addictive is that it activates the brain’s reward system similar to how cocaine and heroin do. It’s those chemicals we talked about before that are present both in substance abuse and exercise. People who have the habit of exercising even go through similar withdrawal symptoms of drug addicts who try to quit. They get anxious and irritable after missing only one workout and can develop insomnia and depression after several. And when you show people who work out regularly pictures of someone working out, their brains fire up similarly to the way smoker’s minds do when shown images of cigarettes. The best news about all of this though is that with exercise, you don’t get the nasty effects of substance abuse! It also takes longer for you to get addicted to running, for example, than…