Electroencephalogram activity, catecholamines, and lymphocyte subpopulations after resistance exercise and during regeneration.

We examined the effect in ten male sports students of 30-min resistance exercise followed by either 45-min regeneration with massage treatment on a massage bench or supine rest serving as control, on plasma catecholamine concentration, number and distribution of circulating white blood cells and central activity. Resistance exercise increased free plasma adrenaline (A) and noradrenaline (NA), whereas sulphoconjugated catecholamine concentration remained unchanged as determined by high performance liquid chromatography. Exercise induced leucocytosis and lymphocytosis measured by flow cytometry was predominantly manifested by an increase in the number of lymphocytes, monocytes, CD3+ cells, CD8+ cells and CD3- CD16/56+ cells. Computer-aided electroencephalography (EEG) revealed significant increases in absolute EEG band power. The increase was highest in alpha 2 with 51.6 (SD 40.2)% (P < 0.01), followed by beta 1 with 33.3 (SD 21.0)% (P < 0.01), alpha 1 with 31.9 (SD 25.2)% (P < 0.01), beta 2 with 30.8 (SD 26.7)% (P < 0.01), delta with 26.1 (SD 28.7)% (P < 0.05), and theta with 19.8 (SD 16.5)% (P < 0.01). All hormone and immunological variables returned to pre-exercise values 45 min after exercise with no differences between massage and control treatments. However, during regeneration differences in absolute EEG-band power were observed between massage and control treatments. In central (Cz, C3, C4) and fronto-lateral (F3, F4) electrode positions absolute beta 1 spectral power density was significantly lower during massage treatment than during control (Wilcoxon test: P < 0.01). Overall, these data demonstrated that an influence of massage treatment on deactivation characteristics could be observed in EEG measurements but not in plasma catecholamine concentration or blood lymphocytes, indicating that computer-aided topographical EEG may be a useful technique for studying activation and regeneration characteristics.