Your Body’s “Natural” High…

Like delicious peanut butter to toast, I apply the term ‘stimulant’ liberally. Oxford English Dictionary agrees. Stimulant, noun: Something that stimulates. Specific ol’ Merriam-Webster can feck off. Oxford English Dictionary also defines ‘running’ well: “The action of run”. Thanks OED. You’re the only dictionary I need.

As OED proves once again, simple is best, and running is as simple a stimulating activity as you can get. As a famous movie simpleton once said: “I just kept on running”. Simple!

Running was invented way back. For as long as people have been bipedaling around on two legs, chasing or fleeing something tasty or sabre-toothed, people have been running. Nowadays, it’s not socially acceptable to run that much in our daily lives. There are less big cats to run away from; there are less tasty deer to catch. These facts are sad, because the impulse to run is still very strong. Furthermore, it’s apparently not OK to run away from bosses/relatives/children/teachers/students/people you don’t like/vomit/wasps/long jump/mathematics/making a mess on the counter in Starbucks/churches/golf/peas/irrational numbers etc., and that’s a darn shame. I’m a big fan of just running away from things for fun and profit.

So assuming that we have to sit tight and brave our way through peas and vomit and so on without bolting, how can we satisfy this deeply ingrained instinct to run? We have to make an event of it and schedule it outside our 9 to 5. Thus we have created ‘the run’: the ultimate stimulant package.

Have you ever gone for ‘a run’ and just felt really freakin’ good afterwards? It’s a thing – it’s often called a ‘runner’s high’. Why does this happen? Many people would mumble something about ‘endorphins’. But what are these endorphins? Are they responsible for that delicious high at all?

Endorphins are chemicals in the brain and the blood that are the body’s natural opiates – functionally and chemically very similar to other opiates like heroin, codeine and morphine. As part of the body’s stress response when running, endorphins are released in the blood stream. However, endorphins are too large to travel into the brain so the increase in bloodstream endorphins can’t have an effect on the brain directly. There might be an increase in brain endorphins at the same time, but it’s so hard to tell: until only very recently, science was unable to ‘look inside’ brains with any accuracy.

Are these euphoric chemicals responsible for the ‘runner’s’ high’? Studies have been conflicted. The discovery of endorphins was timed almost simultaneously with the popularization of running in the 70s and for this reason many people think it is simply folk body chemistry that is easy to understand and thus easy to repeat. “Going for a run, eh?”… “Yes, I’m addicted to endorphins”, is a possible (lame) conversation you could conceivably have with someone. But does this idea of ‘running = endorphins’ have any steam?

A bunch of studies say: no. Or rather, that endorphins aren’t primarily responsible for the high. One recent contender to replace endorphins as a reason for the high is ‘anandamide’, one of the reasons chocolate gets you high. Anandamide binds to the cannabinoid receptors in the brain, the same ones as the THC molecules in cannabis binds to.

On the other hand, there are recent studies using relatively recent PET (positron emission topography) that show that endorphins have an effect on the brain post running.

So running is either the body’s heroin or the body’s cannabis.

Either way, something pretty magical is happening when you run. Many would be content say that a high from running is more of a psychological phenomenon brought about by achieving some goal. I can’t help be quite a physical reductionist when it comes to psychology so I feel it necessary to place significance on chemicals that are banging about in the brain after a run. At the end of the day (or run), a simple jog can be a stimulating, satisfying, slightly-euphoric way to explore your neighborhood (I found 3 parks last run!), and the massive energy required justifies ever more liberal spreadings of peanut butter.

“End Note”: Oh and if you think all this running is ‘just getting high’, check this innovative method of generating renewable energy from marathon runners:

http://www.runnersworld.com/general-interest/paris-marathon-runners-footsteps-will-generate-electricity

Sparling PB, Giuffrida A, Piomelli D, Rosskopf L, Dietrich A (December 2003). “Exercise activates the endocannabinoid system”. NeuroReport 14 (17): 2209–11.

Raichlen, David A.; et al. (April 15, 2012). “Wired to run: exercise-induced endocannabinoid signaling in humans and cursorial mammals with implications for the ‘runner’s high’”. Journal of Experimental Biology (215): 1331–1336.

Boecker H, Sprenger T, Spilker ME, Henriksen G, Koppenhoefer M, Wagner KJ, Valet M, Berthele A, Tolle TR (February 2008). “The Runner’s High: Opioidergic Mechanisms in the Human Brain”. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) 18 (11): 2523–31