IF you鈥檙e hooked on alcohol, don鈥檛 take up running. It induces similar symptoms to substance abuse, including mood changes, dose tolerance and withdrawal. So Stefan Bren茅 and his team at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm wondered if running would decrease alcohol intake. 鈥淲e had hoped we could exchange ethanol for running,鈥� says Bren茅.
Instead, the opposite happened. In a four-phase study on rats, the team let the animals run for two weeks, then let them drink for five. When they later restricted the booze, only some rats were allowed to run. Rats who鈥檇 been running while abstinent were more likely to up their alcohol intake when they got the chance in phase four.
The team report their results in a future issue of Behavioural Brain Research. They suggest running and taking drugs may involve the same biochemical pathway, triggering a release of dopamine in the brain.
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