When I saw this headline, it actually made perfect sense to me. There is gathering research, which the government is keen on continuing, and which I am in this case, willing to support (I usually think government spending is wasteful, but this would be worth it), that exercise can help prevent addiction to addictive substances such as alcohol and cigarettes.

When I think of how I feel after a work out, I would actually compare it to the “high” I would achieve as a smoker, or after having the occasional drink, which I still do - I no longer smoke by the way, but I do remember how good it tasted and felt to smoke a cigarette back in the day. If you think about it, if you have something to replace that feeling of a near euphoria that you know you can achieve, does it not make it easier to pass on the “quick fix” pick me ups?

It makes sense to me but I’m sure it doesn’t to everyone else, nor does it work for everyone else because Lord knows there are plenty of people who are addicted to things that work out. The thing is, that working out has been shown to affect areas of the brain that affect the mood, and this is the very reason why most people get addicted to things, because of that temporary “feel good” rush it gives them.

Also, working out has shown to improve areas such as academic achievement and motivation, which are all in the same brain area function as the exact same thing that gets taken over when we get addicted to substances, so working out may actually prevent addiction in this way too. Additional research shows that teens who smoke were shown to be much more likely to be sendentary than their non smoking counterparts, which further points to the fact that moving and exercising helps protect us from addiction.

Another interesting point brought up by those heading the study is that exercise and movement is an innate pleasure inducer in children - children actually want to move around all the time and don’t like sitting still, so part of their studies wants to see why, as adults, we lose this innate sense of pleasure from moving and view it instead as a chore. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you had that same sense of joy from exercise back that you had as a kid? I doubt the couch potato thing would be such a problem then.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Health and Fitness News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.