A LEGAL HIGH!

Have you ever been for a run or a workout and after a few minutes begun to feel exhilarated, full of boundless energy, without a care in the world. This intense pleasure is the ‘runners high’.

For a long time, the explanation was ‘endorphins’, a natural opiate that our bodies are said to produce during exercise. But there may well be an alternative explanation. A new claim is that the high is actually the product of a group of natural chemicals called endocannabinoids. As the name implies, they are closely related to cannabis and they can be produced in response to exercise.

As part of an experiment by the University of Nottingham, blood samples were taken from volunteers before they went on a 20 minute run, straight afterwards and again a few hours later. On their return from the run, they had 30 per cent more endocannabinoids in their blood than they did before starting. After they stopped exercising, levels of the endocannabinoids gradually dropped back to normal.

This research is so new that we don’t yet really know how common the ‘runner’s high’ is, or why some people get it, while others don’t. Watch this space.