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Neuroscientist: "DELETE Your Social Media NOW" - Here's Why!
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Gambling problem, call 1 800 gambler. - Let's talk about dopamine. Most people have heard of dopamine and we hear all the time now about dopamine hits. But actually, there's no such thing as a dopamine hit. And actually, the way that your body uses dopamine is to have a baseline level of dopamine, meaning an amount of dopamine that's circulating in your brain and body all the time. And that turns out to be important for how you feel generally, whether or not you're in a good mood, motivated, et cetera. And you also can experience peaks in dopamine above baseline. A simple way to envision dopamine hits is every time you do something you like, you eat a piece of chocolate, dopamine hit. You look at your Instagram, dopamine hit. You see someone you like, dopamine hit. All these things described as dopamine hits neglect the fact that if you scroll social media and you see something you really like, dopamine hit. Sure, there's an increase in dopamine. But then you get to something else and you know, not that interesting. However, had you arrived at that second thing first, you might think that it was really interesting. If you had arrived to that second Instagram post three days later or four days later, you might find it extremely interesting. Again, how much dopamine you experience from something depends on your baseline level of dopamine when you arrive there and your previous dopamine peaks. Okay, that's super important to understand and it's completely neglected by the general language of dopamine hits. This is why when you repeatedly engage in something that you enjoy, your threshold for enjoyment goes up and up and up. So I wanna talk about that process and I want to explain how that process works because if you understand that process and you understand some of these schedules and kinetics as we call them around dopamine, you will be in a terrific position to use any dopamine enhancing tools that you decide to use. You'll be in an excellent position to modulate and control your own dopamine release for optimal motivation and drive. So what sorts of activities, what sorts of things increase dopamine and how much do they increase dopamine? Well, let's take a look at some typical things that people do out there or ingest out there that are known to increase dopamine. So let's recall that you have a baseline level of dopamine and that everybody does. Your level of dopamine has everything to do with those genetics but also with what you've experienced in the previous days and the previous months and so on. When you do or ingest certain things, your levels of dopamine will rise above baseline transiently and depending on what you do or ingest, it will rise either more or less and it will be very brief or it'll last a long time. So let's take a look at some of the typical things that people take and do and eat. Some are good for us, some are not good for us and let's ask how much dopamine is increased above baseline. Chocolate. They didn't look at milk versus dark chocolate but chocolate will increase your baseline level of dopamine 1.5 times. Okay, so it's a pretty substantial increase in dopamine. It's transient, it goes away after a few minutes or even a few seconds. I'll explain what determines the duration in a minute but 1.5 times for chocolate. Sex. Both the pursuit of sex and the act of sex increases dopamine two times. So it's a doubling above baseline. Now of course there's going to be variation there but that's the average increase in baseline dopamine caused by sex. Nicotine, in particular nicotine that is smoked like cigarettes and so forth increases dopamine two and a half times above baseline. So there's a peak that goes up above baseline two and a half times higher. It is very short-lived. Anyone who's ever been a chain smoker or observed a chain smoker understands that the increase in dopamine from nicotine is very short-lived. Cocaine will increase the level of dopamine in the bloodstream two and a half times above baseline. And amphetamine, another drug that increases dopamine will increase the amount of dopamine in the bloodstream 10 times above baseline. A tremendous increase in dopamine. Exercise. Now exercise will have a different impact on the levels of dopamine depending on how much somebody subjectively enjoys that exercise. So if you're somebody who loves running, chances are it's going to increase your levels of dopamine two times above your baseline, not unlike sex. People who dislike exercise will achieve less dopamine increase or no increase in dopamine from exercise. And if you like other forms of exercise like yoga or weightlifting or swimming or what have you, again, it's going to vary by your subjective experience of whether or not you enjoy that activity, right? So for instance, the pen that I'm holding right now is one of these Pilot V5s. I love these Pilot V5s. They don't sponsor the pockets. I just happen to like them. I like the way that they write, how they feel. If I spent enough time thinking about or talking about it, I could probably get a dopamine increase just talking about this Pilot V5. And that's not because I have the propensity to release dopamine easily. It's that as we start to engage with something more and more and what we say about it and what we encourage ourselves to think about it has a profound impact on its rewarding or non-rewarding properties. Now, it's not simply the case that you can lie to yourself and you can tell yourself, I love something and when you don't really love it and it will increase dopamine. But what's been found over and over again is that if people journal about something or they practice some form of appreciation for something or they think of some aspect of something that they enjoy, the amount of dopamine that that behavior will evoke tends to go up. So for people that hate exercise, you can think about some aspect of exercise that you really enjoy. However, I will caution you against saying to yourself, I hate exercise or I hate studying or I hate this person, but I love the reward I give myself afterward. Rewards given afterward actually make the situation worse. They won't make you like exercise more or studying more. They actually will undermine the dopamine release that would otherwise occur for that activity. There are activities that we can do that will give us healthy sustained increases in dopamine, both the peaks when they happen and to maintain or even increase our baseline levels of dopamine. So how do we do that? In recent years, there's been a trend toward more people doing so-called cold exposure. In part, this was popularized by Wim Hof, the so-called Iceman, getting into cold showers, taking ice baths, exposing oneself to cold water of various kinds, can in fact increase our levels of dopamine as well as the neuromodulator, neuronephrine. What temperature of water you can tolerate will depend on how cold water adapted you are and how familiar you are with the experience of getting into cold water. Please remember this, that when you experience something or you crave something, really desirable, really exciting to you, very pleasurable, what happens afterwards is your baseline level of dopamine drops, okay? So these peaks in dopamine, they influence how much dopamine will generally be circulating afterward. And you might think, oh, a big peak in dopamine, after that, I'm gonna feel even better because I just had this great event, not the case. What actually happens is that your baseline level of dopamine drops. Dopamine doesn't act alone. Dopamine has close cousins or friends in the nervous system, and I'll just name off a few of those close cousins and friends. Epinephrine, also called adrenaline, is the main chemical driver of energy. We can't do anything, anything at all, unless we have some level of epinephrine in our brain and body. So it should come as no surprise that dopamine and epinephrine, aka adrenaline, hang out together. In fact, epinephrine and adrenaline are actually manufactured from dopamine. What dopamine does is dopamine really colors the subjective experience of an activity to make it more pleasurable, to make it something that you want more of. Epinephrine is more about energy. If your dopamine is too low, you will not feel motivated. If your dopamine is really high, you will feel motivated. And if your dopamine is somewhere in the middle, how you feel depends on whether or not you had higher dopamine a few minutes ago, or lower dopamine. This is important. Your experience of life and your level of motivation and drive depends on how much dopamine you have relative to your recent experience. There will be other factors too, but the level of dopamine is the primary determinant of how motivated we are, how excited we are, how outward facing we are, and how willing we are to lean into life and pursue things. An official message from Medicare. A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. You may be able to save too. With Medicare's Extra Help Program, my premium is zero, and my out-of-pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year, or married couples who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. 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