elle woods was kind of wrong + right

Author

Ellen Oshinsky
October 13, 2025

I can quote a lot from Legally Blonde. 

The Bend and Snap, it works every time! 

But “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot your husbands.” is a personal favorite, as it just reminds me that exercise is good for our mental health. 

The funny thing is after overhearing a conversation about how biking is great for reducing anxiety, I was searching around for some evidence and actually the APA in compiling the research on how exercise impacts your mental health shares it’s not conclusive that your body floods with endorphins during exercise. 

So far, there's little evidence for the popular theory that exercise causes a rush of endorphins. Rather, one line of research points to the less familiar neuromodulator norepinephrine, which may help the brain deal with stress more efficiently. Research in animals since the late 1980s has found that exercise increases brain concentrations of norepinephrine in brain regions involved in the body's stress response.

Norepinephrine is particularly interesting to researchers because 50% of the brain's supply is produced in the locus coeruleus, a brain area that connects most of the brain regions involved in emotional and stress responses. The chemical is thought to play a major role in modulating the action of other, more prevalent neurotransmitters that play a direct role in the stress response.

And the APA article shared, “Research shows that while exercise initially spikes the stress response in the body, people experience lower levels of stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine after bouts of physical activity.”

So perhaps my Elle Woods quote isn’t true about exercise giving you endorphins, but the research still stands that exercise, like biking, helps to reduce your stress!

Go hit the trail today if you need a stress buster!

Wheels up, 

Ellen

PS: Today is Indigenous People’s Day. You can use the website Native Land to learn more about the Indigenous lands you are living, biking and traveling to in order to pay respect to Indigenous People past, present and future.