Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

Product Information

While the reward pathways ( Figure 1) are distinct in their anatomical organization, all three become active when anticipating or experiencing rewarding events. In particular, they reinforce the association between a particular stimulus or sequence of behaviors and the feel-good reward that follows. Every time a response to a stimulus results in a reward, these associations become stronger through a process called long-term potentiation. This process strengthens frequently used connections between brain cells called neurons by increasing the intensity at which they respond to particular stimuli. Lieberman is highly entertaining, mixing the hard science with entertaining elements to make it more vivid, transporting it directly into the long term memory, except of course one is too stoned on dopamine and the data transmission affected by too much of whatever emotion. Don´t read angry, nervous, or horny, that´s not healthy for your wisdom! The purpose of that time away, says Lembke, is to reset our brain’s pathways and gain perspective on how our dependency affects us. The goal is generally not to banish it forever, but to figure out how to enjoy it in moderation – that most elusive of things. Some will realise they cannot enjoy it without going too far but usually “self-binding” techniques should help with finding a balance. You might try putting barriers between you and the vice, like removing all screens from your bedroom, putting your phone on airplane mode, or committing to only using the thing at certain times, like at weekends. These will be more manageable after your initial fast. It’s “easier to go from abstinence to moderation, than from excessive consumption to moderation,” says Lembke. Welcome to The Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. This is a very interesting book on how just one chemical – Dopamine influences so much of our behaviour. The undue influence Dopamine exerts is amazing considering the fraction the Dopamine circuit occupies in our brains. This is a well written book and very informative as well.

However, a number of energy drinks and, in particular, preworkouts, contain things that are precursors to dopamine, and on their own, even if you didn't engage in the activity, would cause the release of dopamine to a substantial degree. They do cause the release of dopamine to a substantial degree, and over time that will deplete your dopamine. So energy drinks, preworkout drinks, drugs of various kinds that people take to study and pay attention. We talked about some of these for the ADHD episode, things like Adderall, Ritalin, armodafinil, modafinil, taken repeatedly over time will reduce the level of satisfaction and joy that you get from the activities you engage in while under the influence of those compoI now understand why something that I enjoyed so much had become less pleasureful for me, and there's a deep, deep satisfaction that comes from understanding, okay, there wasn't anything wrong with me or what I was doing, or anything at all. It was just there was something wrong with the approach I was taking, which was layering in all these sources of dopamine and dropping my baseline. For this very same reason, I caution people against using stimulants every time they study, or every time they work out, or every time that they do anything that they would like to continue to enjoy and be motivated at. There's one exception which is caffeine, because I mentioned before, if you like caffeine, that actually could be a good thing for your dopamine system because it does upregulate these D2, D3 receptors, so it actually makes whatever dopamine is released by that activity more accessible or more functional within the biochemistry in the pathways of your brain and body. Well, let me start by saying I was a firm believer in the concept of Free Will. That we are in many if not most cases, able to make decisions that will most benefit us or will bring about our ruin, whichever argument wins out in our hearts, minds, and souls. Dopamine is a chemical produced by our brains that plays a starring role in motivating behavior. It gets released when we take a bite of delicious food, when we have sex, after we exercise, and, importantly, when we have successful social interactions. In an evolutionary context, it rewards us for beneficial behaviors and motivates us to repeat them.

One thing that's not often discussed about dopamine, but is extremely important to know, is that dopamine doesn't work on its own. Neurons that release dopamine corelease glutamate. Glutamate is a neurotransmitter, and it's a neurotransmitter that is excitatory, meaning it stimulates neurons to be electrically active. So now even if you don't know any cell biology, you should start to gain a picture that dopamine is responsible for movement, motivation and drive. It does that through two pathways, but also the dopamine stimulates action in general because it releases this excitatory neurotransmitter, it tends to make certain neurons that are nearby, or even that are far away — because of volumetric release — it tends to make those more active. So dopamine is really stimulating, and indeed we say that dopaminergic transmission, or dopamine, tends to stimulate sympathetic arousal. Sympathetic doesn't have anything to do with sympathy. It just simply means that it tends to increase our levels of alertness. It tends to bring an animal or a human into a state of more alertness, readiness and desire to pursue things outside the confines of its skin. Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more--more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander. 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. Now, of course these are averages, but these are averages that have been measured in so-called microdialysis studies in animals, so actually extracting from particular brain areas how much dopamine is released, or from measuring the serum, the circulating levels of dopamine in humans.You don't do the exercise and expect dopamine to arrive through some, what we call, exogenous source as well. You might think, "Well, that sounds lame. I want to continue to enjoy exercising." Ah, but that's exactly the point. If you want to maintain motivation for school, exercise, relationships, or pursuits of any duration and kind, the key thing is to make sure that the peak in dopamine, if it's very high, doesn't occur too often, and if something does occur very often, that you vary how much dopamine you experience with each engagement in that activity. If the most successful entrepreneurs manage to find the time, I can, too. Sometimes, that means being a little thrifty: like reading in short bursts throughout the day — on the way to work or waiting in line at the coffee shop. Or, instead of zoning out with Netflix before bed, try squeezing in a few chapters. We all desire a break from our routines and those parts of life that upset us. What if, instead of trying to escape these things, we learn to turn toward them, to reach a peaceful harmony with ourselves and the people we share our lives with? Lembke has written a book that radically changes the way we think about mental illness, pleasure, pain, reward, and stress. Turn toward it. You’ll be happy you did.” I'm just not feeling like I have the same energy that I did a few years ago. And of course, there are age-related reasons why people can experience drops in energy, but oftentimes what's happening is not some sort of depletion in cellular metabolism that's related to aging, what's happening is they're spiking their dopamine through so many different activities throughout the week that their baseline is progressively dropping. And in this case, it can be very subtle, it can be very, very subtle, and that's actually a very sinister function of dopamine, we could say, which is that it can often drop in imperceptible ways, but then once it reaches a threshold of low dopamine, we just feel like, hmm, we can't really get pleasure from anything anymore. What used to work doesn't work anymore. So it starts to look a lot like the more severe addictions, or the more acute addictions, to things like cocaine and amphetamine, which lead to these big increases, these big spikes in dopamine and then these very severe drops in the 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. Later I will talk about how the different aspects of the so-called arousal arc, the different aspects of sex, believe it or not, have a differential impact on dopamine. But for now, as a general theme or activity, sex doubles the amount of dopamine circulating in your blood.Her stories have the power to transform your life' Lori Gottlieb, bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Many of these ideas are familiar: we’ve all heard about digital detoxes and mindfulness practices, but unlike many spiritual gurus, Lembke is straight-shooting. She is not promising sunshine and rainbows. Yes, it’s natural and healthy to pursue enjoyment, but our consumer culture has created an expectation “that life is supposed to be so fun!” she says. “And really, it’s not. Life is a slog and I think if we could admit that and take comfort in knowing we’re not alone in the day-to-day struggle, paradoxically, we would be happier.” We’re losing our capacity to delay gratification, solve problems

Understanding why we do the dangerous and unhealthy stuff is the roadmap to creating the best possible life. There's the danger of a cut to your skin that could lead to infection. There's the danger of storms, there's the danger of cold. There's the danger of leaving your loved ones behind. So you go out and forage, right? You could be hunting, you could be gathering, or you could be doing both. The going out and foraging process was, we are certain, driven by dopamine. I mean there's no fossil record of the brain, but these circuits have existed, we know, for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and they are present in every animal, not just mammals, but even in little worms like C. elegans. The same process, it's mediated by dopamine. So dopamine drives you to go out and look for things, and then let's say you find a couple berries. These ones are rotten, these ones are good. Maybe you hunt an animal and kill it, or you find an animal that was recently killed and you decide to take the meat; you are going to achieve or I should say experience some sort of dopamine release.Why is it so hard for these authors to really trust that someone is actually interested in their topic and realize that they don't have to constantly lure the reader into stupidity? Yes. I am looking at you too, David Eagleman. E un sentiment al anticipării că viața e pe cale să devină mai bună. Circuitele ei nu procesează experiențe din lumea reală, ci numai posibilități viitoare imaginare. Hm, cum ar fi să-mi iau o înghețată după ce termin de scris aici. Some of the best (engaging + entertaining + educational + enlightening) science writing I have experienced in quite some time. Dopamine is the universal currency of foraging and seeking, right? We sometimes talk about motivation and craving, but what we mean in the evolutionary adaptive context, what we mean is foraging and seeking, seeking water, seeking food, seeking mates, seeking things that make us feel good and avoiding things that don't make us feel good, but in particular, seeking things that will provide sustenance and pleasure in the short term and will extend the species in the long term.