so the runner’s high is true after all…

THE runner’s high: Every athlete has heard of it, most seem to believe in it and many say they have experienced it. But for years scientists have reserved judgment because no rigorous test confirmed its existence.

I for one have experienced the runner’s high and it is this exuberant feeling you get only after you have ran a certain amount of distance…. For example, i was doing my 11 and 17km runs last week and i got the runner’s high feeling at about 8 and 12 respectively. It is this indescribable feeling of continued momentum and indestructibility. You feel you never want to stop. You feel NOTHING can stop you. You feel like you can keep on going forever. You don’t want to stop. You think for once, maybe this is the run when i can break my personal best. You feel good. You feel high.

And so in short that is why i run. That is why i have signed up for the Great Ocean Road International Marathon, attempting a ultra-marathon distance of 45km. I competed last year in the half-marathon event, which was 23km. I figured this year i should challenge myself further. Moreover, you pay the same entry fee of 75 AUD. Why not, right?

Back to more scientific basis behind the runner’s high, researchers seem to have finally put a conclusion to this matter.

Researchers in Germany, using advances in neuroscience, report in the current issue of the journal Cerebral Cortex that the folk belief is true: Running does elicit a flood of endorphins in the brain. The endorphins are associated with mood changes, and the more endorphins a runner’s body pumps out, the greater the effect.

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The idea was to use PET scans combined with recently available chemicals that reveal endorphins in the brain, to compare runners’ brains before and after a long run. If the scans showed that endorphins were being produced and were attaching themselves to areas of the brain involved with mood, that would be direct evidence for the endorphin hypothesis. And if the runners, who were not told what the study was looking for, also reported mood changes whose intensity correlated with the amount of endorphins produced, that would be another clincher for the argument.

Dr. Henning Boecker of the University of Bonnand and colleagues recruited 10 distance runners and told them they were studying opioid receptors in the brain. But the runners did not realize that the investigators were studying the release of endorphins and the runner’s high. The athletes had a PET scan before and after a two-hour run. They also took a standard psychological test that indicated their mood before and after running.

The data showed that, indeed, endorphins were produced during running and were attaching themselves to areas of the brain associated with emotions, in particular the limbic and prefrontal areas. (full article here)

So get your running gear, which really isn’t much is it? Any tshirt and comfortable shorts will do. A decent running shoe will suffice. Add the music player for extra motivation. Does it really? Read all about it here in my previous article, “Music and running: the science behind”