Flog Till You Drop? Maybe Don't Exercise So Hard
We've all heard it. And most believe it. No pain no gain. But a new study has found, as Gretchen Reynolds reports, that " while it is possible to push through fatigue to reach new levels of physical performance, it is not necessarily wise." She writes that scientists have long been puzzled about just how muscles know that they’re about to run out of steam "and need to convey that message to the brain, which has the job of actually telling the body that now would be a good time to drop off the pace and seek out a bench." Earlier research established that contracting muscles release a number of substances, including lactate, certain acids and adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, a chemical involved in the creation of energy. The levels of each of those substances were shown to rise substantially when muscles were working hard, Reynolds notes. Reynolds goes into much more detail than I will here, but the bottom line is that " the feeling of fatigue in ou...