Some of the most impressive scientific work regarding exercise is currently being conducted and it seems that their findings are still changing the way people think about their lives every single day. Researchers at Princeton have just completed a study on how a rat’s neurons respond to stress with and without exercise. As it turns out, their neurons will react differently based on whether or not they have exercised. It’s not news that exercise seems to encourage growth of new brain cells but it is a really big discovery of just how these brain cells might function differently than other neurons.
The scientists made the rats live their lives as normal but let one group run and prevented the other group from doing much exercise at all. Both groups of rats were then put in cold water, not something they are very fond of, and interpreted the data they were collecting from the rats brains. The stress of swimming in cold water activated brain cells in all of the rats but many fewer in the rats that had exercised. Because exercising promotes brain cell production, the youngest cells in the rats brains did not seem to be activated as often as the older cells were. It is inferred that the cells that were born during a time of exercise were used to it; they didn’t seem to worry too much about the sudden requirement for the body to perform physical activity. This means that the rats that were allowed to exercise had created new cells that were biochemically and molecularly ‘chilled out’.
Humans have long assumed that exercise can radically alter mood for the better. However, prior to this, there was never really an explanation as to how something physical could influence something psychological like states of mind and mood. Thanks to new research methods and a better understanding of the genome and how it works, we are beginning to make significant leaps in these areas of science. For example, in Boulder, Colorado, scientists have been studying serotonin, which is often regarded to be the chemical that creates happiness in the brain. The simplistic view of serotonin hasn’t necessarily been widely accepted in the science community and the scientists at the University of Colorado are taking it a little bit further. In their experiments they found that, when introduced to stress, rats lacking exercise had increased serotonin production and activity in their brains. On the other hand, rats who were allowed to exercise didn’t seem to produce the same levels of serotonin even though they were subjected to the same stress routines. It was as if their brains were more capable of handling stressful situations.
There are different studies currently happening that are watching the levels of dopamine in the brain. Still more studies are being undertaken focusing on the antioxidant powers of exercise. The anxiety levels in rodents and people have both been linked to oxidative stress, which is a contributing factor in cell death including the precious neurons in the brain. Even just moderately exercising, however, seems to dampen the effect of the oxidative stress. The University of Houston has been conducting research on rats by artificially increasing their oxidative stress levels and observing their anxiousness in unfamiliar situations. When they run the same tests on rats that had exercised, they were rather composed during stressful situations and make informed decisions even though they too had been given the oxidizing chemical. These calm rats would explore the new terrain, rather than hide from it in a dark corner.
It must be noted that stress reducing changes did not happen immediately. For instance, in the research done at the University of Colorado, rats that were allowed to exercise for three weeks did not show much evidence of lowered stress levels but rats that were allowed to run for six weeks did. There is definitely a difference between the amount of time exercise has to be done before you notice any difference and we still have little idea just how this will translate into humans. It doesn’t give us exact data as to how much or how little exercise is required to reduce stress levels but it does further cement the fact that exercise does indeed affect our moods and stress levels. Eventually, with enough data and scientific research, these questions and many more will undoubtedly be answered.
