Estrogen Receptors: The Mood-Boosters of Aerobic Exercise

Published on December 9, 2022

Just like how a good cup of coffee can lift your spirits, estrogen receptors in our body play a vital role in the antidepressant effects of aerobic exercise. In a recent study, scientists examined whether aerobic exercise affects our mood through estrogen signaling. They conducted experiments on rats and found that as their ovarian hormone levels decreased, depressive symptoms became more pronounced. However, when the rats were treated with estrogen or engaged in aerobic exercise, their performance significantly improved in various behavioral tests that measured anxiety, depression, and cognition. The uplifting effects of aerobic exercise on mood were comparable to estrogen replacement therapy. Interestingly, blocking the estrogen receptors with an antagonist drastically reduced the antidepressant effects of exercise. This suggests that estrogen receptors are key players in mediating the positive impact of aerobic exercise on mental well-being. The study also hints at a possible link between chronic stress and a vulnerable ovarian hormonal environment leading to depression. To dive deeper into the fascinating findings, check out the full research article!

PurposeThis study aimed to examine whether aerobic exercise exerts mood-modulating effects through an estrogen signaling mechanism.MethodThe experiment was divided into two parts. The first part is to compare the three modeling methods to obtain the most obvious method of depression-like phenotype for further study in the second part. The first part of ovariectomized rats (age, 13 weeks) was tested when rats were 14 or 22 weeks old or in the sixth week after 3 weeks of chronic restraint stress. The second part was to treat the animals with the most obvious depression-like phenotype in different ways, placebo treatment or estradiol (E2) replacement therapy was administered, aerobic training, or estrogen receptor antagonist treatment. The cognitive (Barnes maze and 3-chamber social tests), anxiety-like (open-field and elevated plus maze tests) and depression-like (sucrose preference and forced swim tests) behaviors of rats in both parts were analyzed to study the effects of estrogen depletion and aerobic exercise.ResultsRats did not develop depressive symptoms immediately after ovariectomy, however, the symptoms became more pronounced with a gradual decrease in ovarian hormone levels. Compared with the placebo or control groups, the exercise and E2 groups showed improved performance in all behavioral test tasks, and the antidepressant effects of aerobic exercise were comparable to those of estrogen. Moreover, the estrogen receptor antagonist has markedly inhibited the antidepressant effects of aerobic exercise.ConclusionEstrogen receptors may mediate the antidepressant effects of aerobic exercise. In addition, an increasingly fragile ovarian hormonal environment may underlies chronic restraint stress-induced depression.

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