By Abby Scholer. Abby is a Philosophy major at Harvard University and is also an avid runner.
If you’re like most of us, you generally don’t associate thoughts of exercise with extreme happiness. Checking a box, a scratch-mark off your to-do list, a convenient answer to the hovering existential question of how to begin the process of self-improvement, sure. Maybe even a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. But shrugging on a pair of ratty sweatpants and an old t-shirt softer than your waistline, dragging yourself to a gym where you’ll keep your eyes downcast against the seemingly pointed glances of the more toned, not to mention putting off all the other responsibilities that any moment of your scarce free time demands of you, tends to inspire something less than absolute euphoria. However, the realities of science suggest that these experiences don’t tell the full story.
Inevitably, you’ve heard of exercise’s benefits for the most important aspects of physical vitality. You’ve learned of exercise’s benefits for lean muscle mass, heard of its benefits for circulation, and caught wind of its benefits for anti-aging. You’ve been bombarded with advertisements for gym plans that promise to slim you down and tone you up, to tame all your physical imperfections by the consistent thud of feet on the treadmill and smack of weights against plastic mats.
Even in line at the grocery store or in the waiting room at the dentist, the Instagram-perfect grinning gazes of fitness models and the lifestyle of health and vitality which they represent point to something enticingly desirable. What, you wonder, (aside from the million-dollar contracts and dashing good looks), is making them so happy?
The answer to that lies in a tiny chemical molecule called a neurotransmitter, a chemical messenger that carries, boosts, and balances signals between neurons, or nerve cells, and other cells in the brain and body. Enabling the nearly 100 billion neurons in the human brain to communicate with each other, neurotransmitters control your heart rate, sleep, appetite, and mood, not to mention concentration and learning.
They also regulate emotional responses, particularly those of fear and elation. Along these lines, it’s apparent what neurotransmitters have to do with happiness and our experience of it. But what do they have to do in relation to exercise and its benefits?
The answer lies primarily in a particular kind of neurotransmitter called endorphins. With a name derived from a combination of the words “endogenous,” meaning from within the body, and “morphine,” the opiate pain reliever, endorphins are the body’s built-in natural mood boosters and pain relievers.
When released into the nervous system, endorphins trigger feelings of happiness and satisfaction, an experience often described as euphoria. They reduce the perception of pain and negative emotions while also supporting deeper, more restful sleep. Even more, according to sports psychologist Dr. J. Kip Matthews, endorphins are also involved in natural reward circuits related to activities such as feeding, drinking, sexual activity and maternal behavior, boosting performance in reward-dependent everyday activities. By these means, the release of endorphins is accompanied by a positive and energizing outlook on life.
With these benefits, endorphins definitely inspire feelings of “Sign me up!”. So how, exactly do we unlock the power of endorphins and all that they have to offer? The short answer is that endorphins are released in many ways during everyday activities. These include eating, completing tasks, and having sex. But the most surefire way to catalyze the release of the maximum amount of endorphins? That would be, you guessed it: exercise!
When you exercise, your body releases increasing amounts of endorphins in areas of the brain associated with pain, reward, and emotion. Endorphins’ impact on these areas generate feelings of increased satisfaction, calm, and overall happiness, providing untold emotional benefits.
As if this were not enough, endorphins are not the only neurotransmitter released into the brain in response to exercise. Another neurotransmitter with resoundingly positive mental health benefits is serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter believed to help regulate a rich variety of functions essential to the human experience, including mood and social behavior, appetite and digestion, sleep, memory, and sexual desire and function. The release of serotonin during exercise has been proven to promote increased well-being in these regards.
Exercise further prompts the release of norepinephrine from the brain and adrenal glands. Both a neurotransmitter and a hormone, norepinephrine is a component of your body’s natural fight or flight response that provides an evolutionarily-necessary energy boost, useful in escaping danger or becoming more active. When more norepinephrine flows into your bloodstream during exercise, you become more alert and focused.
Research supports the idea that exercise improves focus, attention, and the ability to concentrate, as the norepinephrine release improves your brain’s ability to accomplish tasks and resist distractions. Norepinephrine also boosts memory retrieval, so you become better at retrieving information stored in your brain. This enhances performance across all domains of daily life’s important moments, boosting self-esteem accordingly.
A further neurotransmitter whose release is increased by exercise is dopamine. More than any other neurotransmitter, dopamine is responsible for the experience of motivation and reward. In this way, dopamine release supports the establishment of healthy routines, the achievement of goals, and the overall sense of satisfaction that accompanies meeting a goal, making our experience of everyday efforts seem more meaningful.
Along these lines, research published by the British Journal of Pharmacology demonstrates that dopamine is implicated in a variety of essential functions, including the ability to focus, retention of motor control, maintenance of a sex drive, harnessing cravings and addictions, inspiring motivation, prevention of compulsions, and experience of pleasure and satisfaction. Over time, the dopamine released during the process of exercise ideally supports and improves these functions throughout the lifespan.
The final element increased during exercise is a pivotal one: brain-derived neurotrophic factor, abbreviated as BDNF. Imperative for fostering long-term brain health, BDNF is a protein that acts as a growth catalyst and promotes the formation of new connections between cells in the brain. Moreover, BDNF supports the repair of damaged cells in the nervous system, even in the brain. Active throughout all areas of the brain, BDNF appears to be particularly hard at work in areas of the brain implicated in memory function, suggesting a role in recall.
Fortunately for neurological health, studies suggest that regular exercise triples the brain’s release of BDNF. For this reason, exercise promotes long-term brain health in guarding against injury and preserving cognitive function, boosting overall well-being for years to come.
By these means, exercise’s capacity to generate feelings of happiness beyond increased physical well-being is evident. Aside from the individual specific roles of each exercise-ignited neurotransmitter, their release works together to improve overall mental health. This effect is particularly pronounced in the case of mental health difficulties plaguing people of the modern era, including anxiety, depression, and excess stress.
In regard to anxiety and anxiety-related disorders, exercise can be a proactive way to release pent-up tension and reduce feelings of fear and impending concern. As you already know, exercise accomplishes this on a chemical level by releasing endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine. The release of these neurotransmitters results in a reduction of stress hormones throughout the body.
On a more readily apparent visual level, exercise proactively reduces anxiety by alleviating some of its most prevalent and devastating physical symptoms. For example, exercise can help release tension, lower blood pressure, and slow a racing heart rate. Moreover, exercise deepens and slows breathing patterns, and loosen muscle tension throughout the body. Overall, in these ways, exercise decreases a person’s sensitivity to the body’s reaction to anxiety, as well as decreases the intensity and frequency of anxiety’s symptoms.
Further, exercise holds parallel mental health benefits for alleviating depression’s causes and symptoms. Depression is debilitating precisely because it starves the brain of essential neurotransmitters, limiting the ability of dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine to foster communication throughout the brain. “Not only is the [depressed] brain locked into a negative loop of self-hate,” Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John J. Ratey, MD, the author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, “but it also loses the flexibility to work its way out of the hole.” Exercise, Ratey says, counters that by boosting the production of BDNF (brain-developed neurotrophic factor), helping neurotransmitters perform their function and in turn helping the depressed brain to return to higher functioning.
In this regard, Ratey describes BDNF as “Miracle-Gro for the brain.” Additionally, exercise helps improve self-image and social self-perception, boosting mood as well as cognition. In this way, exercise proves incredibly effective at enhancing mental health by alleviating some difficulties of depression.
Finally, exercise improves overall mental health by increasing the mind’s ability to deal with stress. Implicated in many mental health difficulties such as anxiety and depression, stress creates a vicious cycle of fear and guilt. Exercise, in addition to its physical benefits, arms the brain with invaluable tools to cope with times of heightened stress. According to sports psychologist J. Kip Matthews, PhD, “What appears to be happening is that exercise affords the body an opportunity to practice responding to stress, streamlining the communication between the systems involved in the stress response. The less active we become, the more challenged we are in dealing with stress.” Conversely, the more active we are, the more adept we are in dealing with difficulty.
All in all, exercise holds untold benefits for mental health. Contributing to relief from anxiety, depression, and stress, exercise cultivates neurologically-sourced mental well-being that can even help you escape society’s focus on image and perception, enhancing overall health and happiness.
What do you think? Is exercise your favorite drug?
