"I believe this endorphin in runners is a total fantasy
in the pop culture," said psychobiologist Huda Akil, Ph.D.,
from the University of Michigan.
The endorphin theory had several problems, the most serious
being that endorphins are too large to pass through the
blood-brain barrier that border-patrols your gray matter.
As with most of the neuroscience research, there exists a counter evidence to this -
Boecker, H., Sprenger, T., Spilker, M.E., Henriksen, G., Koppenhoefer, M., Wagner, K.J., Valet, M., Berthele, A., Tolle, T.R. (2008). The Runner's High: Opioidergic Mechanisms in the Human Brain. Cerebral Cortex DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhn013[http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/11/2523.full]
See I never questioned this, yet this makes total sense now. Thanks for posting this, I am surprised I didn't know about this before. Kind of, opens my eyes.
There's a lot of personal (anecdotal) accounts that it's real. I don't care if it's placebo or something more sciencey. It works for many people, and it works for me.
http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-243-297--1102-...
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