Research Shows Those Who Are Fit Fight Drugs Better

[enquirewithin]

Research Shows Those Who Are Fit Fight Drugs Better

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/114170.php
Article Date: 08 Jul 2008

Research by a Davidson College neuroscientist and students demonstrates that the benefits of regular exercise include a lowered tendency to become addicted to illegal drugs.

The online version of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence published this week the results of the study by Associate Professor Mark A. Smith that shows that exercise can help prevent drug addiction.

Smith said his research provides scientific validity for a long-standing suspicion among drug abuse researchers that exercise plays a role in helping people avoid and overcome drug addiction. "We've known that individuals who engage in exercise have lower rates of substance abuse," said Smith. "But there were previously no data that showed a cause and effect relationship."

Smith's findings take on added importance in light of a newly announced initiative by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) to support research on exercise and drug abuse. Recent studies show that about 20 million Americans age 12 and older (about 8.3% of the population) have used an illicit drug in the past month. Speaking at a NIDA conference June 4-5, director Dr. Nora Volkow committed $4 million for studies about the effect of exercise on drug use. Smith's Davidson research was not published until after the NIDA conference.

He did, however, present his findings in a poster to enthusiastic researchers attending a conference of the College on the Problems of Drug Dependence in mid-June. "I've never had so many people interested in my research," he said. "I felt like a rock star. At the end of the two-hour session I had to ask people to contact me later by email so we could all go hear the next speaker."

Smith worked for about two years on the study with three Davidson student research assistants Karl Schmidt, Jordan Iordanou and Martina Mustroph all of whom graduated in May. They compared the tendency to self-administer cocaine between two groups of rats. One group of rats lived in laboratory cages equipped with a running wheel, and the other group lived in a standard cage with no wheel. During six weeks, the rats in the wheel cages increased their running to about 10 kilometers per day, while those without wheels got no exercise at all.

At the end of six weeks, all the rats were connected to an infusion pump that would provide a dose of cocaine if they pushed a lever in their cage. However, the number of pushes necessary to deliver a dose increased geometrically for each subsequent dose.

The researchers found that the fit rats abandoned the task when 70 lever presses were required for a cocaine infusion. However, sedentary rats kept pushing the lever even when 250 lever presses were required for an infusion. In addition, the rats that ran the most on the wheel abandoned the task at a lower number of pushes than their fellow exercising rats.

"We concluded that aerobic exercise reduces the rewarding effects of cocaine, and probably also has protective effects against cocaine abuse." Smith said. "That shows me that in the real world, exercise can be an effective intervention in drug abuse prevention and treatment programs. As a treatment, it's widely available, easy to execute, inexpensive, and feasible for use in diverse patient populations. In addition, its principle side effects are all positive weight loss, lower blood pressure, and increased confidence and self-esteem."

Smith said exercise works because both exercise and illicit drugs prompt the same release in the brain of the euphoria-inducing protein, dopamine. Long-term exercise alters the number of dopamine receptors in the brain, meaning that drugs then have less of a euphoric effect.

Smith said he expects other researchers to begin working on exercise studies with human patients. His subsequent project at Davidson, however, will determine whether exercise can help mitigate the effects of relapse to drug use among rats.

Smith and student researchers Katie Walker '10 and Kathryn Cole '09 are beginning by having the entire group of rats self-administer cocaine. The drugs are then stopped, with one group abstaining in wheel-equipped cages and the other in standard cages with no wheel. After a period of time, they will reintroduce the self-administration of cocaine to determine whether exercise lessens the relapse rate in those rats that were able to exercise. The study is funded by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Davidson Research Initiative, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Smith believes exercise can prevent not only addiction to cocaine, but other drugs as well since they all affect dopamine levels. In the future, he plans to conduct a similar study at Davidson with heroin.

Smith is enthusiastic about the contribution of his study. He said, "Exercise has long been known to produce positive cardiovascular effects. We're now also finding that it has positive psychological effects as well, in the treatment and prevention of drug abuse, depression, and anxiety disorders. I think there's even more and we're just beginning to scratch the surface."

Reputation Comments on this post:

Excellent find, thanks for posting it here.

[snapper]

SWIM never considered that exercise increases tolerance to illicit drugs. SWIM's gotta stop exercising !
SWIM would like to know how much regular exercise and a good diet offsets damaging effects of drugs. SWIM suspects much illicit drug damage is from cut (ie toxic intermiediates, etc) in the drugs, poor hygene, poor eating habits, binge use and no exercise. The actual drugs themselves are probably far less toxic with these factors controlled for.

Reputation Comments on this post:

lol

[Bajeda]

Of course there are always exceptions to the rule, but my Tasmanian Devil used to work out voraciously when he was younger and play many sports. He would run every other day and lift weights at least three times a week. This did not stop him in any way from indulging in psychoactive substances.

The article mentions "becoming addicted" to illicit substances but doesn't specify very well. My Devil never became addicted to anything, but maybe according to the gauge used in this context his frequent cannabis use and casual use of many other substances would qualify him as an "addict", which is stupid. If you look at drugs from the perspective that any frequent recreational use of psychoactive substances (regardless of whether or not you use different ones or different classes and aren't dependent on one) is addiction, then working out doesn't seem to have done much to help many of Taz's friends or himself (includes alcohol use too). But as for serious drug addictions, Taz did notice that the people he knew who were addicted to something when he was younger didn't work out much, but its easier to attribute that to the fact that they were too busy with drugs to get a good workout routine going, and not that the people who worked out didn't get addicted because they were too busy working out.

Thinking about it; aren't many hardcore bodybuilders big drug users? Steroids, amphetamines, cannabis, GHB, etc. etc. Some of them seem to use everything they can get their hands on. Working out actually contributed to their problem, rather than preventing it.

That said, I'd like to see the actual study before making any judgements, as we all know how great the media is at reporting on scientific research.

[enquirewithin]

The research was done with rats on cocaine, so I don't know how much real relevance it has to humans. Surely moderate exercise, not obsessive and competitive, without steroids or stimulants, might help people with drug overuse problems?

[allyourbase]

swim thinks this information probably applies more to fat residing lipid soluable substances rather than all psychoactive substances. regardless, the math would seem simple enough, exercise increases metabolism, drugs are metabolized.

[stoneinfocus]

Originally Posted by allyourbase

swim thinks this information probably applies more to fat residing lipid soluable substances rather than all psychoactive substances. regardless, the math would seem simple enough, exercise increases metabolism, drugs are metabolized.

No, maybe, ...but definately no. This thesis suggests, that drugs, being faster metabolized in the one group of rats, were selfadmistered more fequently by those, thus, balancing out the faster metabolism to come about the same drug-effects, in accordance with the drug-seeking in the non-trained group of rats.

If it were like that, they'd might even escalate quicker in drug-use, because of the re-inforcing effect of cocaine, which were definately a given, due to the expected more frequent use. So your thesis definately holds no substance, twice.;-)

The key term is: Cocaine is re-inforcing, as such, this study is definately representative, with all the until yet known and warranted evicence on addictive behaviour.

[tinytom]

SWIM agrees with some points in this thread but not all.

SWIM would say my life would be in a much worse place if i was not so keen on bodybuilding.

if SWIM is recovering from the night before SWIM is unlikely to keep to his diet or make it to the gym.

i am happy living like a monk for 3-5 weeks at a time then just taking 48 hours off from the world.

he does not know how good it is for his head though.

[stoneinfocus]

It's about aerobic exercise, not bodybuilding, though bodybuilding has a positive effect on aerobic capabilities, too.

This all taken to a concious human mind, we might be consent about the fact, that we'd not chose a destructive behaviour over what we like to do on a regualar basis and are also way too strong to give into a destructive behaviour long enough, that it might become overhand and dictating over our regualar hard earned exercisisng.

This study indicates, that this also manifests itself in our brain chemistry, but I doubt, that any forced exercise on addicts might give any success, because freedom and utmost unifluenced selfmotivation together with loving and enjoying what one's doing is a paradigm for all success in humans.
Humans baby, freedom, if letting one another free weren't just that hard to accomplish.

Too simple, it seems, better ingore the first priciple and make up infinite bull-shit, and fix the unevitable forced failures by the resulting symptoms, with the utmost forced efforts and logistics to be granted.

SuDoKu anyone?

Mathemetical approach to freedom: 1. define pride and oppression, by empirical data of succes, afforded in reaching a goal, e.g. destructive and non-destructive substance use, methods applied with the methods principles and optimize the function, by letting different parameter go to their maximum/minimum/saddle points; e.g. tried and true empirical success of people, adapting to self-motivated and selfdetermined methods, opposed to the empirical success of knowledge of methods, forced onto endangered people.

Define success and missuccess(e.g. resulting health hazards and co-facotrs like socializablity, linked to a substance and their use, in different empirical models of liberal and forced systems), print it into a coordination system, change the principles if needed, for achieving better success. I guess this could be taken to the point, in which we needn't even prove by falsification, when the trend of a method's principle can't be optimized for granting success and the priciples themselves ought to be changed, as they're then not the priciple of the human nature and doomed to fail, a failure. If this were possible, one could, with enough data on the human nature assess an individual nature and letting it run through such a mathematical optimization system, as an priciple approach to an individual's nature, but as one might be a masochist and the principle of pain needed to be involved and relativized to the priciple of self-determination and freedom.... maybe not possibly a full blown mathematial approach, by the mere flood of chaotic factors, but a nice approach in thinking about an issue, I think, very graphic and abstract in a good way, too.

[ai]

i live in a chem free house, and I ride the stanionary bike for 25 miles 6 days a week and work out 3 days a week. i've sheet 25 pounds in about 3 months and the thought of using doesn't cross my mind. well from time to time.

i think it's a little deeper than that. people who work out generally give a damn about themselves. People who don't work out for the most part, don't.


people who exercise in general feel better about themselves than people who don't.

I can go on and on.

[moda00]

This is true. It's also been studied that exercise releases endorphins, so rather than exercise reducing the reward effects of the cocaine as posited in the article, wouldn't it make sense that the body's own reward systems are being activated from the exercise, thus decreasing the need/compulsion to seek external chemical "rewards?" And if one is fit one is likely to feel better overall physically as well as mentally, thus perhaps decreasing desire for drugs in a more general sense, although this is perhaps oversimplified, because I don't believe that people just use drugs because they are feeling bad (although in the case of addiction, it can often become that way). And I have always had an issue translating animal studies to humans without additional research, while it can be helpful- especially in terms of substance use and addiction, I just feel that there are much more complexities than are acknowledged- so while it is awesome that they are able to research these very specific mechanisms and outcomes, it doesn't necessarily mean we have all the info we need to utilize the data for recovery. That said, it makes sense that this could be a factor, as it is an effective treatment for depression, and depression has been found to be linked to addiction in general, and more specifically to cocaine use (study in Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, I'll archive it if not there already..)