HORMONES AND CHEMICALS RELEASED DUE TO EXERCISE Hormones play a vital role in almost every aspect of our lives. For women, the hormones not only regulate the monthly cycle, but they affect moods, mental health, eating habits, hair and nails, the skin’s health, and even the memory! Exercising is the best way to really improve your overall health. Even if you feel tired and exhausted from lack of sleep, pushing through it all and exercising for at least twenty minutes a day, will help tremendously with your hormone imbalances! There is no need to engage in exercises that are exhausting and spend hours upon hours in a gym doing intense cardio . ENDORPHINS: These chemicals are released by your pituitary gland, which is located in the base of your brain. Endorphins make you feel exhilarated and happy and block any feelings of pain, so you can power through any discomfort caused by exercising. Thats why people become addicted to strenuous forms of exercises and experience runners high. INSULIN: Insulin is a hormone secreted by your pancreas. This hormone regulates your blood sugar levels. High levels of insulin can cause a sudden decrease in your blood sugar as it works to metabolize available sugar. This is not always a bad thing, as high levels of insulin can also help shuttle sugar into your muscles following a workout. After an intense training session, your blood sugar is low and your insulin levels are high. You can take advantage of high insulin levels by quickly consuming a shake composed of simple sugars and simple proteins, such as dextrose and whey. EPINEPHRINE: The hormone primarily generated by your fight-or-flight response is adrenaline, or epinephrine. Epinephrine increases your metabolism quickly to allow for sudden increases in activity levels. This hormone scavenges fat and sugar for energy, but will also cause you to burn muscle in the absence of sufficient sugar and fat stores. Your production of this hormone is directly proportional to both your exercise intensity and duration. The longer you can maintain intense training, the greater the metabolic boost you will get from epinephrine. Epinephrine is a contributing factor in raising your metabolic rate secondary to heavy resistance training. THYROID HORMONES: Your thyroid hormones are responsible for your metabolism and are produced by your thyroid gland. Thyroxine, or T4, increases the calories you burn while exercising by increasing the metabolic rate of many of your cells. While this is useful for disposing of excess sugar and burning fat, T4 does not discriminate and will assist in the conversion of amino acids for energy. The conversion of amino acids means in extended cardiovascular training sessions, if you lack sufficient sugar to burn, you may lose muscle. A solid nutrition program will help you avoid this. A decrease in lean muscle tissue does not just make you weaker, it lowers your metabolism. TESTOSTERONE: Both men and women produce testosterone, but men produce far more. Testosterone is the most anabolic hormone and contributes to muscle growth. If your goal does not involve getting bigger and stronger, this hormone is still critically important. Testosterone contributes to the rebuilding and repair of your muscles following training. If you are not training hard enough for this to be a factor, you must train harder. Testosterone is stimulated through intense exercise, most notably by training with 75 percent or more of your maximum lifts in the gym. GROWTH HORMONE: Growth hormone is a polypeptide hormone, or a hormone comprised of a complex chain of amino acids. It is secreted by your anterior pituitary gland. This hormone is responsible for many things including muscle growth. Growth hormone also contributes to collagen turnover, and higher levels of growth hormone to joint health, immune system function and the health of your skin. Growth hormone is stimulated during exercise by intense training and short rest intervals. This would include heavy training in the gym with limited time in-between sets. When performing cardiovascular exercise, interval training with sprint-level intensity followed by short recovery periods fulfills the same function. SEROTONIN: A chemical responsible for happiness, restful sleep, and a healthy appetite, serotonin levels will increase if you work out regularly. Serotonin works with endorphins to make working out a pleasurable activity. In addition, more serotonin means more energy and clearer thinking. CORTISOL: Cortisol is also secreted from the adrenal cortex (again, not really important) and has the ability to control maintain blood glucose during prolonged bouts of exercise. Cortisol does this by telling the body to start breaking down proteins and triglycerides. Cortisol is more or less THE stress hormone, though there are others. If you have exercised too much or you havent allowed your body proper time to rest, expect an increase in Cortisol. How Cortisol affects the body gets into explaining the HPA axis (not too hard to understand), and there are a number of differrent things that Cortisol affects, not all of those things are physical in nature, there is a big psychological component that is related to Cortisol.
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 09:58:30 +0000
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