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Well - Tara Parker-Pope on Health
Phys Ed
How Exercise May Protect Against Depression
By Gretchen Reynolds
October 1, 2014 12:01 am October 1, 2014 12:01 am
Photo
Credit Getty Images
Phys Ed
Phys Ed
Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.
Exercise may help to safeguard the mind against depression through previously un
known effects on working muscles, according to a new study involving mice. The f
indings may have broad implications for anyone whose stress levels threaten to b
ecome emotionally overwhelming.
Mental health experts have long been aware that even mild, repeated stress can c
ontribute to the development of depression and other mood disorders in animals a
nd people.
Scientists have also known that exercise seems to cushion against depression. Wo
rking out somehow makes people and animals emotionally resilient, studies have s
hown.
But precisely how exercise, a physical activity, can lessen someones risk for dep
ression, a mood state, has been mysterious.
So for the new study, which was published last week in Cell, researchers at the
Karolinska Institute in Stockholm delved into the brains and behavior of mice in
an intricate and novel fashion.
Mouse emotions are, of course, opaque to us. We cant ask mice if they are feeling
cheerful or full of woe. Instead, researchers have delineated certain behaviors
that indicate depression in mice. If animals lose weight, stop seeking out a su
gar solution when its available because, presumably, they no longer experience no
rmal pleasures or give up trying to escape from a cold-water maze and just freez
e in place, they are categorized as depressed.
And in the new experiment, after five weeks of frequent but intermittent, low-le
vel stress, such as being restrained or lightly shocked, mice displayed exactly
those behaviors. They became depressed.
The scientists could then have tested whether exercise blunts the risk of develo
ping depression after stress by having mice run first. But, frankly, from earlie
r research, they knew it would. They wanted to parse how.
So they bred pre-exercised mice.
A wealth of earlier research by these scientists and others had shown that aerob
ic exercise, in both mice and people, increases the production within muscles of
an enzyme called PGC-1alpha. In particular, exercise raises levels of a specifi
c subtype of the enzyme known unimaginatively as PGC-1alpha1. The Karolinska sci
entists suspected that this enzyme somehow creates conditions within the body th
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