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Doing sports can create a propensity for addiction
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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In some cases, persistent sports do not relieve drug addiction, but, on the contrary, hinder, journalist Gretchen Reynolds says in a blog on the website of The New York Times, citing new results from the mice experiment in Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology Institute of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign).
Male mice were divided into 2 categories - some of them had wheels in their cages, in which they could be worn, in others there were practically no "sports shells". For 30 days, the mouse, in whose cells the wheels stood, could run in them, as many as you like.
After this, the mice were transferred to a narrow aviary with a large number of compartments and allowed them to try cocaine. Mice liked this substance, and they became almost addicts.
The next step of the experiment: some mice were allowed to run in the wheels for the first time. Mice, whose wheels in the cages were originally, also had the opportunity to use them as before.
Then the scientists stopped giving drugs to mice and began to find out whether they would quickly get drug addiction.
"From the number of mice that were both" addicts "and" runners ", there were 2 exact trends: mice that started to rush in the wheel only after they became drug addicts quickly and apparently effortlessly lost their drug addiction ", - is told in the note. Conversely, mice that often ran before they first tried cocaine, recovered from cocaine addiction slowly, or did not recover at all.
"In our results there are 2 novelties - good and not too much," concluded one of the authors of the study, a psychology specialist Justin S. Rhodes. Undoubtedly, this study shows that drug dependence is harder to get rid of, if it is acquired during an intense physical overload. "Although in fact, the study has proven how deeply physical exercise has a big impact on the learning process," added Rhodes.
The analysis of the brain of the test mice showed: the "runners" had almost twice as many new brain cells as the animals that retained the seated lifestyle. These new cells were concentrated in the hippocampus - the brain department, which is responsible for associative learning.
"Scientists suggest that animals that, before exploring cocaine from time to time, had an abundant supply of new brain cells tuned in for training, and that these cells learned how to crave drugs, which made it much harder to forget what they had learned and get rid of drug addiction, "the article says.
Conversely, mice that started running after the drug addicts, thanks to their own new brain cells, survived the "breaking" easier.
"In fact, the results are encouraging," Rhodes concluded. Physical exercise spurs associative training, he explained.
A psychologist, among other things, pointed out that previous studies have proved that playing sports seems to spur the pleasure center in the brain and can serve as a substitute for drugs.
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