Runners, high: Could cannabis before exercise encourage fitness?

New research explores the pros and cons of mixing weed and workouts.

01 March 2024

By Emma Young


Cannabis is generally associated with sedation and relaxation. In recent years, however, amateur and even professional athletes have been advocating for its use while exercising, write the authors of a recent paper in Sports Medicine. Given this — and increasing acceptance of its usage around the globe — there’s an urgent need to properly investigate the impacts of cannabis on exercise, according to Laurel P Gibson at the University of Colorado Boulder, and colleagues.

In their paper, the team describes the first study to explore the effects of commercially available cannabis products (i.e. with concentrations of active ingredients that are generally available to consumers) on how people felt about exercise in a lab environment. The nature of the research meant that the study had various limitations, but the results suggest that cannabis may indeed make work-outs more enjoyable some ways — though was also a drawback: the drug made exercise feel more effortful.

The team studied 42 physically fit adults, all of whom exercised regularly and had previously used cannabis while running or jogging, with no negative effects. On two separate visits, each participants ran for 30 minutes on a treadmill; once without cannabis, and once after having used either 1 gram of a product that mostly contained THC (the main psychoactive ingredient of cannabis) or 1 gram of a CBD-based product (which mostly contained cannabidiol, with very little THC).

The participants bought these doses from a local dispensary and were told to consume the product as they typically would (in a joint or pipe, for example) until they reached their own desired high. For legal reasons, the participants had to do this at home, with the team immediately taking a blood sample from them and droving them to the lab for the treadmill challenge. On average, the delay between using the cannabis and starting the exercise was only about half an hour.

The researchers used results from earlier treadmill sessions to set individualised speeds and inclines, so that all the participants were exercising at about the same moderate-to-vigorous intensity. While they were jogging, they answered questions about their perceptions of the exercise.

The team’s analysis of the responses led them to some key insights. Firstly, cannabis made the exercise feel more enjoyable and put the participants in a better mood, especially in the CBD group. Both groups also reported feeling more of a ‘runner’s high’ after using cannabis.

However, cannabis (and particularly the THC product) also made them feel that they were working harder. This might have been because THC raises heart-rate, and earlier work has found that a faster heart rate during exercise makes people feel that they are exerting themselves more.

The researchers acknowledge that the study has a number of potentially important limitations. The participants were far from representative of the general population, so the results may not generalise more broadly. Also, because they knew when they had used cannabis, how they felt while on the treadmill could have been affected by how they expected to feel. Even so, the team argues, this new work “marks an important first step in a nascent field.”

Other research has found that cannabis — and the ingredient THC, especially — can affect psychomotor skills, and lead to feelings of paranoia, anxiety, and tiredness, at least for some users. But if further work confirms that cannabis can make workouts feel more fun and shows that it can be safe for most people to use while exercising, the drug might potentially help people to get off the couch. Angela Bryan, one of the study’s US-based authors, commented in a statement, “We have an epidemic of sedentary lifestyle in this country and we need new tools to try to get people to move their bodies in ways that are enjoyable. If cannabis is one of those tools, we need to explore it, keeping in mind both the harms and the benefits.”

SOURCE:

https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/runners-high-could-cannabis-exercise-encourage-fitness(accessed 4.3.24)

What are the psychological dynamics when a couple tries to change a habit together?

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Changing an unhealthy habit depends a lot on your belief that you can do it, something psychologists call self-efficacy. Take smoking, for example. Your belief that you are capable of quitting will influence the likelihood you will decide to quit in the first place, the amount your smoking reduces, and your chances of staying smoke-free in the long-term.

This self-belief doesn’t come out of nowhere. Besides seeing ourselves make progress (called “mastery”), health psychologists will tell you that one of the most important inspirations is seeing others successfully make the changes that you desire. To test how true this is, Lisa Warner from the Freie Universität Berlin and her colleagues looked at the impact on smokers of having a partner whose own attempt to quit is going well. Their findings, published in the British Journal of Health Psychology, didn’t fit the expected pattern – but there’s news that co-quitting couples can help each other make a difference.



Warner’s team asked 85 couples, made up of partners who had chosen to quit together, to keep a diary of their progress. At the end of each day, every participant recorded whether they had smoked any cigarettes that day (to indicate their mastery) and also their feelings of self-efficacy regarding the challenge of quitting, rating their agreement with items such as “I am confident that I can refrain from smoking tomorrow even if it is difficult”. The researchers expected that when one partner improved their mastery, this should boost their other half’s self-efficacy the next day.

This isn’t quite what the researchers found, but partners certainly mattered. The day-by-day analysis showed that a participant’s self-efficacy was more likely to go up when their partner had shown increases in their own self-efficacy the day before. So partner confidence was contagious. The same was true for mastery: one partner’s success predicted their other half’s next-day success (or another way to see this: when one person gave in, it was more likely that their partner would succumb on the next day). Intriguingly, however, partner mastery didn’t seem to affect a participant’s next-day self-efficacy.

The fact that witnessing success in a close other wasn’t a driver of self-efficacy is a puzzle for the researchers, but overall this is still important news for couples trying to make healthy changes together – one way or another, a determined partner can be a source of support for finding your way out of smoking – a habit that kills around six million people a year. So put your mind to it, lean into that success cycle, and know that your efforts are feeding those of the person you love.

SOURCE:

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/02/16/what-are-the-psychological-dynamics-when-a-couple-tries-to-change-a-habit-together/(accessed 1.3.18)

Λιγότερο άγχος μετά το κόψιμο του τσιγάρου

Επιστημονική έρευνα απαντά στις φήμες που θέλουν αγχωμένους όσους σταματούν το κάπνισμα
ΔΗΜΟΣΙΕΥΣΗ: 02/01/2013 10:31

Μια νέα μελέτη αποδεικνύει πως η διακοπή του καπνίσματος είναι τελικώς... αγχολυτική




Απάντηση στις φήμες περί χαλάρωσης μέσω του τσιγάρου σπεύδει να δώσει νέα βρετανική μελέτη. Σύμφωνα με τα αποτελέσματά της, οι καπνιστές που κόβουν τη συνήθεια, έχουν λιγότερο άγχος στη ζωή τους.


Οι ερευνητές των πανεπιστημίων του Κέιμπριτζ, της Οξφόρδης, του King's College του Λονδίνου και άλλων ακαδημαϊκών ιδρυμάτων, που έκαναν τη σχετική δημοσίευση στο περιοδικό Ψυχιατρικής «The British Journal of Psychiatry» μελέτησαν περίπου 500 καπνιστές που παρακολουθούσαν προγράμματα διακοπής του καπνίσματος σε κλινικές της Βρετανίας.


Σημαντικά μειωμένα επίπεδα άγχους


Οι επιστήμονες διαπίστωσαν σημαντικά μειωμένα επίπεδα άγχους στους 68 ανθρώπους που είχαν καταφέρει να κόψουν το τσιγάρο μετά από έξι μήνες προσπαθειών, σύμφωνα με το BBC. Μάλιστα η μείωση του άγχους μετά τη διακοπή του καπνίσματος ήταν ακόμα μεγαλύτερη μεταξύ όσων είχαν εξαρχής αγχώδεις και άλλες ψυχολογικές διαταραχές, σε σχέση με όσους κάπνιζαν απλώς από ευχαρίστηση.


Οι βρετανοί ερευνητές τόνισαν ότι η μελέτη τους πρέπει να καθησυχάσει όσους καπνιστές φοβούνται πως αν το κόψουν, θα αισθάνονται μεγαλύτερο άγχος στη ζωή τους.


Αντίθετα, οι επιστήμονες επεσήμαναν πως μια τυχόν αποτυχημένη απόπειρα κοψίματος του τσιγάρου φαίνεται να αυξάνει σε μέτριο βαθμό το επίπεδο του άγχους του καπνιστή. Αυτό ισχύει κυρίως για όσους εκ των προτέρων είχαν αυξημένο άγχος.


Η μελέτη έδειξε ότι όσοι καπνίζουν κατά κύριο λόγο για να βρουν ένα ψυχολογικό στήριγμα στο άγχος που τους κατακλύζει, είναι αυτοί που συνήθως αναζητούν να ανάψουν ένα τσιγάρο μόλις ξυπνούν το πρωί. Όταν όμως το κόβουν, τελικά νιώθουν λιγότερο αγχωμένοι, σύμφωνα με την έρευνα.


ΠΗΓΗ:


ΤΟ ΒΗΜΑ Science : http://www.tovima.gr/science/psychology-sociology/