• N&PD Moderators: Skorpio

would it be possible

This is ADD?

No. No, and no.

Not in any real sense of the word. You may feel depressed when you stop- but who fuckin knows if that's related.
 
He's right. You won't get W/D. But you'd probably end up depressed. Same way people can get addicted to tanning, which also releases endorphins. Ever notice those people that just don't seem like they're happy unless they're baking in the sun? Yeah, they need their fix.
 
You need to look at the reason people have withdrawal. It's caused by a severe disruption of endorphins. Anything you get from exercising and not exercising won't even begin to approach the sort of state you get from opioid withdrawal.

The dose needed for someone without a tolerance to obtain analgesia isn't all that much higher than the sorts of doses your body gives you. But it is higher, of course, and so some withdrawal will be felt after a long enough time. It just won't be particularly bad. Keep upping your dose to keep obtaining analgesia, and eventually you'll have to suffer severe withdrawal.

I don't know if there's any evidence to indicate that your body increases your dose of endorphins with repeat need.

Still, at the very most, I'm afraid the most you'll get is light depression- if anything.
 
likely it is a combination of natural endorphin and related compounds along with changes in the more common neurotransmitters such as DA, NA, SE, GABA

obviously it is a very "organic" and complex cocktail and has an evolutionary purpose
 
i don't feel any aching in the days after running unless i stop running regularly (every other day). could be endorphin levels lowered after i stop running, decreasing my pain threshold?

i also feel irritable in other ways, similar to mild opiate withdrawal
 
Well you get exercise junkies, who have to go to the gym or they get ratty, irritible & restless (although a lot of that will be due to psychological factors).

Best way to test it would be to administer a dose of naloxone half way through the workout regeime & see if it gets the same response as not allowing the person to exercise
 
Actually, after looking at the data, I don't think there's much good evidence to indicate that endorphins are even responsible for runner's high. I do like the endocannabinoid hypothesis.

Shit, to this day I can't say "endocannabinoid" without hearing the word "endoseconal" (I forget exactly how it came about, but I had suggested that for many operations, our bodies have multiple ways of doing things, analgesia coming from endorphins and endocannabinoids, and I suggested that our bodies aren't neccessarily going to fall apart if we don't have endorphins, since we have other methods of dealing with pain, ie- the endocannabinoids. I was then told that endocannabinoids were as likely as "endoseconals" (endo-barbiturate, see?) and I had a good laugh. Or something like that. He was a good sport about it, though. Unlike those bastards lately. lol
 
I've also wondered if this is possible. The thing is, it'd probably be difficult to sustain an increased production of endorphins for a long enough period to make your receptors change significantly - after all - they say that heroin is comparable to 100x the strength of endorphins released during sex or during pain, so it's probably downregulating your receptors that much harder too. I think exercise withdrawal is mediated probably by a lot of other factors - after all exercise increases like 50 different neurotransmitters and causes pleasure in a lot of different ways.


Anecdotes on the runner's high:
Sometimes the runner's high they're referring to is different than the post exercise buzz. I'm a dedicated endurance athlete and I definitely vouch for the idea that endorphins play some role in the buzz. However I think the people are definitely on to something w/ regard to endocannabinoids, especially during the peak phase of mental and physical exhaustion in the middle/end of exercising (which i think is the main thing referred to as the runner's high). I do know that cutting releases endorphins and capsaicin releases endorphins and I feel part of those buzzes are mixed in the running/exercise buzz, but the majority of the "high" effect is definitely something else.
 
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