Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious - Well Blog - NYTimes.com

November 19, 2009

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excerpt:

The stress-reducing changes wrought by exercise on the brain don't

happen overnight, however, as virtually every researcher agrees. In the

University of Colorado experiments, for instance, rats that ran for only

three weeks did not show much reduction in stress-induced anxiety, but

those that ran for at least six weeks did. " Something happened between

three and six weeks, " says Greenwood, a research associate in

the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado,

who helped conduct the experiments. Dr. Greenwood added that it was " not

clear how that translates " into an exercise prescription for humans. We

may require more weeks of working out, or maybe less. And no one has yet

studied how intense the exercise needs to be. But the lesson, Dr.

Greenwood says, is " don't quit. " Keep running or cycling or swimming.

(Animal experiments have focused exclusively on aerobic, endurance-type

activities.) You may not feel a magical reduction of stress after your

first jog, if you haven't been exercising. But the molecular biochemical

changes will begin, Dr. Greenwood says. And eventually, he says, they

become " profound. "

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