EXERCISE PREPARES US FOR STRESS
For years doctors have recommended exercise to enhance our moods, but the reason it actually works has never been that clear. Thanks to a group of overworked rodents, we may be closer to finding out. Researchers (at Princeton University) recently conducted a study comparing sedentary rats with active ones. Both were dunked in cold water. It turns out that even though all the rats were equally stressed out swimming around in frigid water, the brain activity of the more active rats was calmer overall. The scientists say the rats had created, through running, a brain that seemed biochemically, molecularly, calm.
November 27th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Putting a rodent in fridig water makes it stressed? Really? And this comes as a surprise because? Maybe these types of tests should be conducted by actual people instead of animals or rodents. I wonder if the results of this study would be the same if you took some active scientists and some resting scientists and threw them in a pool of frigid water. I’d pay to watch THAT experiment!