Dump the marijuana and get your running shoes. New research reveals that you don't need to smoke pot to get high. A study conducted last week at the University of Heidelberg in Mannheim, Germany released a thesis in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences aka PNAS proving that the endocannabinoids (EC), a marijuana-like substance that decreases blood pressure, are responsible for the high runners feel when on their heels.
Dr. Johannes Fuss, the lead author of the study, and his colleagues examined mouse physiology and managed a formal experiment with a population of mice to support their hypothesis that EC is the apt explanation as to why runners and cyclists are in high spirits when they train and exercise.
Fuss noted that a mouse can run for about half a day, every day, in a running wheel. His premise that there are strong biological processes behind this observable fact has been the foundation of their study. They wanted to understand why humans are motivated to do work out.
Fuss's team used two groups of mice to run on wheels. One group was made to run before undergoing some behavioural observations, measuring anxiety and pain sensitivity, and the other group was not. Results showed that the group of mice that was allowed to run experienced less anxiety and pain. EC's were shown to increase in the running mice.
In the last series of the experiment, a number of mice were genetically modified with no cannabinoid receptors. Meaning, these mice don't experience a runner's high anymore. Fuss observed that these mice don't run very much anymore after a couple of days because they don't feel good doing it anymore. "It's boring...them," Fuss explained.
Jacob Ward, a science correspondent for Al Jazeera, put it in plain words to Huffington Post on Tuesday. "Both will plug right into your cannabinoid receptors," Ward relates how our brain's cannabinoid receptors process pot high and runners' high similarly.
