When Exercise Stresses You Out

Scientists at the Centre for Neuroscience at the University of Colorado at Boulder recently decided to study the emotional effects of forced and voluntary exercise on anxiety and emotional resilience.

The began by gathering a group of healthy adult male rats of a type that generally enjoys running. Then they gave some of the animals access to unlocked running wheels and let them exercise whenever and for as long as they liked. The exercise was fully under the animals control.

Having determined how the animals spontaneously liked to run, the researchers next placed other rats in mechanized, lockable wheels that were controlled exclusively by the scientists.

 The scientists then forced these rats to run. To the extent possible, the researchers mimicked the animals normal, spontaneous exercise pattern, having the rats run during the portion of the day when they naturally would be active and creating frequent stops and starts in their running, just as the rats that ran freely had done.

The animals daily mileage was equivalent to that of the voluntary runners.

Mean while, a third group of rats ran on little mechanized treadmills, at a steady, even pace, with out fits and starts of voluntary running. The animals could not control their speed or distance.

A final group remain sedentary.

All of the animals exercised, or lounged, for six weeks. The next day, the animals were placed in a large, unfamiliar maze-like cage designed to determine their levels of anxiety or confidence. If they froze or scurried to the darkest corners of the cage and refused to explore, they were considered to be highly anxious and unsettled.

The treadmill runners and the sedentary animals were, the results showed, extremely anxious. The froze or ran for the darkness at the first opportunity. But the animals that had exercised on the running wheels, whether they could control their exercise regimens or not, provide to be quiet resilient. They bounced back emotionally from the imposed stresses and were willing to explore the lighted regions of their new surroundings on the next day.

What this suggests, says Benjamin Greenwood, a professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado who designed and led the study, is that “even forced exercise increases stress resistance.”If, in other words, you are being cajoled to exercise, whether by your conscience, your partner are likely to wind up feeling less anxious, more relaxed and happier afterward, even if you’re not having fun during the workout.

NYT News Service

Thanks ,

Sunday Times of India- Times Trends,

17/03/2013