An article described research into how exercise helps create resilience to deal with stress.
Bottom line: "Exercise helps animals cope with stress by enabling an uptick in a crucial neural protein called galanin, the study suggests. This process influences stress levels, food consumption, cognition, and mood."
Points to consider:
- "...increased exercise doesn't impact our immediate feelings of stress, but does allow us to cope with stress in a healthier way."
- "The amount of time the mice spent exercising in the third week correlated with the amount of galanin in the locus coeruleus, which in turn correlated with their degree of stress resilience."
- "...the increased galanin didn't influence other aspects of the mice's behavior, suggesting galanin may be recruited only during periods of high stress."
Putting it to use: "Aerobic exercise (like walking, running, biking, swimming) probably has a greater effect on stress resilience than non-aerobic exercise (like weight lifting)."
Read the article to get the whole story.
