November: Ecstasy

   Think back to a moment when you could run forever: an impossible confluence of energy and effort, a perfect pace, and the exultant feeling that the ground beneath your feet had relinquished its tug. Even the air tasted sweet. All runners have had these moments. Many strive with every workout to regain them. Are we seeking the legendary runner's high, which, like the G-spot or the ability to speak in tongues, is known to the initiated even as it remains an enigma to everyone else?

   The science is at best speculative. Though endorphin levels rise in the bloodstream after an intense workout, there's no evidence these chemicals reach any of the complex receptors in the brain. Besides, the amounts involved are too small to explain anything on the scale of what you or I would call ecstasy.

   This doesn't shoot down the runner's high--or close the case on whether running is addictive. In fact, evidence gathers that a hard workout sends a ripple of dopamine through the nucleus accumbens region of your brain, resulting in something loosely regarded as desire or drive. Cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines do the same thing. Dopamine is the stuff of addiction.

   On the other hand, perhaps addiction is nothing more than love with the poetry removed. Runners who leave jobs and marriages that interfere with their workouts clearly suffer from an obsessive disorder-chemical or otherwise. But what about those of us who slip away from a company cocktail party in order to work out? Are we motivated by dopamine, by the love of running, or by the dread of our boss's old golf jokes?

   This same pop-science muddle now descends on depression. Moderate exercise fights depression by raising the amounts of phenylethylamine-PEA, pronounced "pee", in the brain, according to one British study. James Blumenthal, a medical psychology professor at Duke, has found that exercise is virtually as effective as the antidepressant Zoloft. Even better, the more you exercise, the more your symptoms decline.

   But Dr. Blumenthal admits it's not clear whether exercise makes depressed people feel better or whether they feel better and so exercise more. Working out with friends or loved ones creates a support group. Many runners set goals--distance, competition, weight loss, you name it. All of these psychological tools have proved effective in fighting depression.

   Running, it seems, provides no end of chemicals that make us feel good--or, in any case, less bad. Still, scientific explanations shortchange the runner's elation. The substances that course through your body when you run don't account for the effects of solitude, progress, agility, speed, exhaustion, and, occasionally, victory. They don't explain why the air tastes sweet.

   For some of us, ecstasy comes the hour after a workout. Showered and with our favorite beverage pressed into our paw, muscles seem to hum with pleasure and relaxation. Is this the bliss of endorphins? Is it PEA on the brain? Who cares? Don't mess with my buzz.