STRESS, EXERCISE & ENDOCANNABINOIDS: UNTOLD RELATIONSHIP

Cannabis yoga from Break the Stigma Fitness
Words by Efraín Rodríguez
This is the era of longevity! As modern medicine approaches new frontiers, humans sustain disease and maladies that would kill our ancestors before like small pox, malaria and dysentery. This is good news, however, it means that we live a to be seventy years old and have our bodies go to hell on us. We instead succumb to Westernized diseases of slow accumulation of damage. These are very different diseases from the ones that got our ancestors, we are now living long enough to die of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.

The central question in Westernized medicine is why do some people succumb earlier than others to these diseases? Leading research in the field of neuroendocrinology suggests that this question has to do with the nuts and bolts of biology but also requires new inquiries into the social sphere. What are the key social factors influencing a person's physiological responses? For instance, the psychological makeup, the social status and interpersonal interactions of someone can impact his psyche. 
Weeping Woman, Picasso, 1937.
When we look at diseases of slow accumulation of damage most of them are caused by or made worse by chronic stress. Our way of living as a society exposes the individual to multiple instances of stress throughout a single day. We can think of stress as that stimuli which provokes the organism to be alert for an evident threat. The body releases glucocorticoids (stress-hormones) to mobilize energy, increase cardiovascular activity and blood oxygenation. This is exactly what your body needs if you are a normal mammal. However, we are not normal mammals, environmental threats like predators are not present in our daily lives. Humans in Western societies have prolonged secretion of glucocorticoids for purely psychogenic reasons which means bad news for us. Modern day stressors like college tuition, thirty year mortgages and socioeconomic status can have slow negative effects in the nervous system even to the level of neurotoxicity (neuronal death)! Both exercise and the endocannabinoid system mediate the physiological response to stress.
Hill et al, 2009 

A vast amount of scientific literature supports the system's role in the response and habituation of stress. The effects of stress in the endocannabinoid system are complex and regionally specific. However, endocannabinoids can serve as powerful modulators with a stress inhibitory role. Degradation of endocannabinoid Anandamide (AEA) is thought to contribute to the initiation of the stress response, while production of 2-Arachidonoylglycerol (AG-2) is associated with the termination of the stress response. Recent studies by Hill et al, 2016 suggest that a pharmacological and genetic blockade of the endocannabinoid system produces a neurobehavioral phenotype paralleling that of the stress response. Hence, chronic stress can bear negative functional changes in endocannabinoid signaling that might be associated with Westernized diseases like CB1 receptor downregulation.











Considering we live in a new and modern world, it is important to make positive lifestyle choices. Exercise and a healthy diet have a profound influence in preventing the negative effects of psychosocial stress. Aerobic exercise is recognized as a viable therapy for stress and anxiety. Physical activity is also a modulator that increases brain development and plasticity, thus it is an effective treatment for neurodegeneration considering it lowers the loss of neurons associated with aging. 

Curiously, some have also proposed that the positive physiological effects of exercise are mediated by endocannabinoid signaling. Studies in humans show that both endocannabinoid and neurotrophic factor concentrations increase in blood serum after endurance training. Endurance training is associated with a subjective sense of well being, low anxiety and analgesia reported by athletes known as the runner's high. Scientific inquiry into this phenomenon has the endocannabinoid system as the ideal candidate for a group of mechanisms involved in exercise-induced altered states of consciousness. 
CM Hueston et al, 2017 
Adding to this complex interplay, recent research shows the endocannabinoid system is required for enhancing cell proliferation in the hippocampus. This establishes both a neurogenic and neuroprotective role for the endocannabinoid system further supporting the endocannabinoid hypothesis for exercise induced alterations of mental states. 

This intricacy of the endogenous lipid system is implicated in virtually the majority of diseases ranging from mental health to chronic pain diseases. Since stress related pathogenic effects on the brain can be also associated with changes endocannabinoid signaling, it is relevant to note there are possible environmental modulators like exercise, which can activate this endogenous system and compensate for deficiencies. 

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