back to indexControlling Your Dopamine For Motivation, Focus & Satisfaction | Huberman Lab Podcast #39
link |
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
link |
where we discuss science and science-based tools
link |
for everyday life.
link |
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology
link |
and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
link |
Today, we are going to talk all about dopamine
link |
and what drives you to do the things that you do.
link |
We're going to talk about motivation and desire and craving,
link |
but also how dopamine relates to satisfaction
link |
and our feelings of wellbeing.
link |
And of course, any discussion about dopamine
link |
has to include a discussion about the potential
link |
for dopamine-induced addiction.
link |
Indeed, dopamine lies at the heart of addiction
link |
to all things, but today we are mainly going to focus on
link |
how what we do and how we do it
link |
and how we conceptualize those things
link |
leads to changes in this amazing molecule
link |
in our brain and bodies that we call dopamine.
link |
I'm going to teach you what dopamine is and what it is not.
link |
There are a lot of myths about the molecule dopamine.
link |
We often hear about so-called dopamine hits.
link |
Today, we are going to dispel many common myths
link |
about dopamine, and we are going to talk about
link |
how dopamine actually works.
link |
We're going to discuss the biology of dopamine,
link |
the psychology, we will discuss some neural circuits,
link |
and a really exciting aspect of dopamine biology
link |
are so-called dopamine schedules.
link |
In other words, we are going to discuss
link |
how things like food, drugs, caffeine, pornography,
link |
even some plant-based compounds
link |
can change our baseline levels of dopamine,
link |
and in doing so, they change how much dopamine
link |
we are capable of experiencing
link |
from what could be very satisfying events
link |
or events that make us feel not so good
link |
because of things that we did or took prior.
link |
So I promise you it's going to be a vast discussion,
link |
but I will structure it for you,
link |
and you'll come away with a deep understanding
link |
of really what drives you.
link |
You will also come away with a lot of tools,
link |
how to leverage dopamine
link |
so that you can sustain energy drive and motivation
link |
for the things that are important to you
link |
over long periods of time.
link |
Before we dive into the meat of today's discussion,
link |
I'd like to share with you a fascinating result
link |
that really underscores what dopamine is capable of
link |
in our brains and bodies,
link |
and underscores the fact that just through behaviors,
link |
no drugs, nothing of that sort, just through behaviors,
link |
we can achieve terrifically high increases in dopamine
link |
that are very long and sustained in ways that serve us.
link |
This is a result that was published
link |
in the European Journal of Physiology.
link |
I'll go into it in more detail later,
link |
but essentially what it involved is having human subjects
link |
get into water of different temperatures.
link |
So it was warm water, moderately cool water,
link |
and cold, cold water.
link |
Had them stay in that water for up to an hour,
link |
and they measured, by way of blood draw,
link |
things like cortisol, norepinephrine, and dopamine.
link |
What was fascinating is that cold water exposure
link |
led to very rapid increases in norepinephrine and epinephrine
link |
which is also just called adrenaline.
link |
It also led to increases in dopamine,
link |
and these increases in dopamine were very significant.
link |
They kicked in around 10 or 15 minutes
link |
after submersion into the cold water,
link |
and I should mention the head wasn't below water,
link |
it was just up to the neck.
link |
And the dopamine release continued to rise and rise and rise
link |
and eventually reached 250% above baseline.
link |
Now, what was interesting is after subjects got out
link |
of this cold water, that dopamine increase was sustained.
link |
And I know nowadays many people are interested
link |
in using cold water therapy as a way to increase metabolism
link |
and fat loss, but also to improve sense of wellbeing
link |
improve cognition, improve clarity of mind.
link |
You know, there's something really special
link |
about this very alert but calm state of mind
link |
that seems to be the one that's optimal
link |
for pretty much everything except sleep,
link |
but for all aspects of work and for social engagement
link |
and for sport, that highly alert but calm state of mind
link |
really is the sweet spot that I believe most of us
link |
would like to achieve.
link |
And this cold water exposure done correctly
link |
really can help people achieve that state of mind
link |
through these increases in dopamine
link |
that lasts a very long time.
link |
So I will later detail the specifics of that study,
link |
what it entailed in terms of how long the variations
link |
that different subjects experienced,
link |
as well as how to limit the amount of stress hormone cortisol
link |
that's released as a consequence of the cold water.
link |
And we will also talk about compounds,
link |
supplements that people can take
link |
in order to increase their levels of dopamine
link |
should they choose.
link |
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast
link |
is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
link |
It is however, part of my desire and effort
link |
to bring zero cost to consumer information about science
link |
and science related tools to the general public.
link |
In keeping with that theme,
link |
I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
link |
Our first sponsor is Roca.
link |
Roca makes sunglasses and eyeglasses
link |
that are of the absolute highest quality.
link |
I've spent a lifetime working on the visual system
link |
and I can tell you that the visual system
link |
has to go through a lot of work
link |
in order to maintain clarity of what you see
link |
when there are shadows,
link |
when you go into different types of indoor lighting
link |
And a lot of glasses don't work well
link |
because you put them on and then you're in bright light
link |
and you can see fine, but then you move into a shadow
link |
and then you have to take them off and they don't adjust
link |
or they don't adjust quickly enough.
link |
With Roca, their eyeglasses and sunglasses are designed
link |
with the visual system biology in mind.
link |
So you always see things with perfect clarity.
link |
The glasses are also terrific
link |
because they're very lightweight
link |
and they won't slip off your face if you're exercising,
link |
if you're running or biking.
link |
In fact, they were designed for the purpose
link |
of being able to be worn while you're engaging
link |
in those sorts of activities or simply working at your desk.
link |
I happen to wear readers at night when I drive
link |
or when I work and I love their sunglasses
link |
because I can wear them anywhere.
link |
And also the aesthetics of their sunglasses
link |
and eyeglasses are terrific.
link |
Unlike a lot of other performance glasses
link |
that frankly make people look like cyborgs,
link |
the aesthetics on Roca's are really terrific.
link |
You could wear them anywhere you'd like to go.
link |
If you'd like to try Roca glasses,
link |
you can go to roca.com, that's R-O-K-A.com
link |
and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order.
link |
That's Roca, R-O-K-A.com,
link |
enter the code Huberman at checkout.
link |
Today's podcast is also brought to us by Inside Tracker.
link |
Inside Tracker is a personalized nutrition platform
link |
that analyzes data from your blood and DNA
link |
to help you better understand your body
link |
and help you reach your health goals.
link |
I'm a big believer in getting regular blood work done.
link |
And now with the advent of modern DNA tests,
link |
you can also analyze your DNA
link |
to see what you ought to be doing
link |
for your immediate and long-term health.
link |
We hear a lot these days about optimization,
link |
optimizing hormones, optimizing your metabolism,
link |
optimizing this, optimizing that.
link |
But unless you know the measurements of metabolic factors,
link |
hormones, and other things that are in your blood and DNA,
link |
you don't know what to optimize.
link |
With Inside Tracker, it makes all of that very easy.
link |
They can come to your house to take the blood and DNA test,
link |
or you can go to a nearby clinic.
link |
They send you the information
link |
and you take those results.
link |
And unlike a lot of laboratories
link |
doing blood work out there and DNA tests,
link |
they have a simple platform,
link |
a dashboard that walks you through your results
link |
and helps you identify what sorts of nutritional
link |
or behavioral or other types of practices
link |
you might want to incorporate into your life
link |
in order to positively impact
link |
your immediate and long-term health.
link |
It's a very easy system to use,
link |
and you will gain a ton of information
link |
simply by doing that test,
link |
whether or not you end up making changes
link |
to what you're doing or not.
link |
If you'd like to try Inside Tracker,
link |
you can go to insidetracker.com slash Huberman
link |
to get 25% off any of Inside Tracker's plans.
link |
Just use the code Huberman at checkout.
link |
Today's episode is also brought to us by Headspace.
link |
Headspace is a meditation app backed by 25 published studies
link |
and has over 600,000 five-star reviews.
link |
I've been meditating for a long time,
link |
but I confess sometimes I meditate
link |
and sometimes I am very inconsistent about my meditation.
link |
Ideally, I would meditate every day for 20 or 30 minutes,
link |
but what I've found over the years
link |
is that I'll start a meditation practice
link |
and then as life gets more stressful or busier,
link |
which is exactly when I need to meditate more,
link |
I tend to meditate less often.
link |
Switching over to Headspace as a meditation app
link |
really helped me stay consistent
link |
with my meditation practice.
link |
And that's because they have a huge range of meditations
link |
Some are short, some are longer.
link |
And in general, I try and get 20 minutes of meditation
link |
in every day, but some days it's just five minutes
link |
and they have some terrific, just five-minute meditations.
link |
The science says that even a five-minute meditation
link |
can be beneficial for different aspects
link |
of our brain and body.
link |
If you want to try Headspace,
link |
you can go to headspace.com slash special offer.
link |
And if you do that,
link |
you'll get one month as a free trial
link |
with Headspace's full library of meditations
link |
that you can use in any situation.
link |
This is the best deal offered by Headspace right now.
link |
So if you're interested,
link |
go to headspace.com slash special offer
link |
to get one free one-month trial with Headspace's
link |
full library of meditations.
link |
I'd like to announce that there's an event
link |
that some of you may find very useful.
link |
This is an event put on by Logitech
link |
that I will be speaking at.
link |
It's called Rethink Education, The Biology of Learning,
link |
Reimagining Learning Through Neuroscience.
link |
And at this event, I will be speaking,
link |
there will be other speakers as well.
link |
And I will be talking about neuroplasticity
link |
and its applications for teaching and for learning.
link |
I will describe what I call the plasticity super protocol
link |
that incorporates all of what we know about rapid learning,
link |
efficient learning, and the best ways to teach and learn.
link |
It's geared towards educators of all kinds.
link |
So please feel free to sign up.
link |
The event is September 30th, 2021 at 3 PM Eastern.
link |
You can find the registration link
link |
in the caption for this episode.
link |
So let's talk about dopamine.
link |
Most people have heard of dopamine
link |
and we hear all the time now about dopamine hits,
link |
but actually there's no such thing as a dopamine hit.
link |
And actually the way that your body uses dopamine
link |
is to have a baseline level of dopamine,
link |
meaning an amount of dopamine
link |
that's circulating in your brain and body all the time.
link |
And that turns out to be important
link |
for how you feel generally,
link |
whether or not you're in a good mood, motivated, et cetera.
link |
And you also can experience peaks
link |
in dopamine above baseline.
link |
This has a very specific name in the neurobiology literature,
link |
so-called tonic and phasic release of dopamine.
link |
And I'll explain what that means in a couple of minutes.
link |
But if you remember nothing else from this episode,
link |
please remember this, that when you experience something
link |
or you crave something really desirable,
link |
really exciting to you, very pleasurable,
link |
what happens afterwards is your baseline level
link |
of dopamine drops, okay?
link |
So these peaks in dopamine,
link |
they influence how much dopamine
link |
will generally be circulating afterward.
link |
And you might think, oh, a big peak in dopamine,
link |
after that, I'm going to feel even better
link |
because I just had this great event.
link |
Not the case, what actually happens
link |
is that your baseline level of dopamine drops.
link |
And I will explain the precise mechanism for that, okay?
link |
In the neuroscience literature,
link |
we refer to this as tonic and phasic release of dopamine.
link |
Tonic being the low level baseline
link |
that's always there circulating,
link |
released into your brain all the time.
link |
And then phasic, these peaks that ride above that baseline.
link |
And those two things interact.
link |
And this is really important.
link |
I'm going to teach you the underlying neurobiology,
link |
but even if you have no background in biology,
link |
I promise to make it all clear.
link |
I'll explain the terms and what they mean.
link |
And I'm excited to teach you about dopamine
link |
because dopamine has everything to do
link |
with how you feel right now as you're listening to this.
link |
It has everything to do with how you will feel
link |
has everything to do with your level of motivation
link |
and your level of desire
link |
and your willingness to push through effort.
link |
If ever you've interacted with somebody
link |
who just doesn't seem to have any drive they've given up,
link |
or if you've interacted with somebody
link |
who seems to have endless drive and energy,
link |
what you are looking at there in those two circumstances
link |
is without question a difference
link |
in the level of dopamine circulating in their system.
link |
There will be other factors too,
link |
but the level of dopamine is the primary determinant
link |
of how motivated we are, how excited we are,
link |
how outward facing we are,
link |
and how willing we are to lean into life and pursue things.
link |
Dopamine is what we call a neuromodulator.
link |
Neuromodulators are different than neurotransmitters.
link |
Neurotransmitters are involved in the dialogue
link |
between neurons, nerve cells,
link |
and neurotransmitters tend to mediate local communication.
link |
Just imagine two people talking to one another at a concert.
link |
That communication between them is analogous
link |
to the communication carried out by neurotransmitters,
link |
whereas neuromodulators influence the communication
link |
Imagine a bunch of people dancing
link |
where it's a coordinated dance
link |
involving 10 or 20 or hundreds of people.
link |
Neuromodulators are coordinating that dance.
link |
In the nervous system, what this means
link |
is that dopamine release changes the probability
link |
that certain neural circuits will be active
link |
and that other neural circuits will be inactive, okay?
link |
So it modulates a bunch of things all at once,
link |
and that's why it's so powerful
link |
at shifting not just our levels of energy,
link |
but also our mindset,
link |
also our feelings of whether or not we can
link |
or cannot accomplish something.
link |
So how does dopamine work and what does it do?
link |
Well, first of all, it is not just responsible for pleasure.
link |
It is responsible for motivation and drive primarily
link |
at the psychological level, also for craving.
link |
Those three things are sort of the same,
link |
motivation, drive, and craving.
link |
It also controls time perception,
link |
and we will get deep into how dopamine
link |
can modulate time perception and how important it is
link |
that everybody be able to access increases in dopamine
link |
at different timescales.
link |
This turns out to be important
link |
to not end up addicted to substances,
link |
but it also turns out to be very important
link |
to sustain effort and be a happy person
link |
over long periods of time,
link |
which I think most everybody wants.
link |
It certainly is adaptive in life to be able to do that.
link |
Dopamine is also vitally important for movement.
link |
I'll explain the neural circuits for dopamine and mindset
link |
and dopamine and movement in a moment,
link |
but in diseases like Parkinson's or Lewy's body's dementia,
link |
which is similar to Parkinson's in many ways,
link |
there's a depletion or death of dopamine neurons
link |
at a particular location in the brain,
link |
which leads to shaky movements, challenges in speaking,
link |
challenges in particular in initiating movement.
link |
And because dopamine is depleted elsewhere too,
link |
people with Parkinson's and Lewy's, excuse me,
link |
Lewy body dementia also experience drops in motivation
link |
and affect, meaning mood.
link |
They tend to get depressed and so on.
link |
When those people are properly treated,
link |
they can, not always,
link |
but they can recover some fluidity of movement,
link |
some ability to initiate movement.
link |
And almost without question,
link |
those people feel better psychologically,
link |
not just because they can move,
link |
but also because dopamine impacts mood and motivation.
link |
So what are the underlying neural circuits?
link |
For those of you that are not interested in biology
link |
and specific nomenclature,
link |
you can tune out now if you want,
link |
but it's actually pretty straightforward.
link |
You have two main neural circuits in the brain
link |
that dopamine uses in order to exert all its effects.
link |
The first one is a pathway that goes from this area
link |
in the what's called the ventral tegmentum.
link |
That's a fancy, but ventral just means bottom
link |
and tegmentum actually means floor.
link |
So it's at the bottom of the brain
link |
and it's the ventral part of the floor.
link |
So it's really low in the back of the brain,
link |
the ventral tegmentum, and it goes from
link |
the ventral tegmentum to what's called
link |
the ventral striatum and the prefrontal cortex.
link |
Now that's a lot of language,
link |
but basically what we call this
link |
is the mesocorticolimbic pathway.
link |
This is the pathway by which dopamine influences motivation,
link |
drive, and craving.
link |
It involves structures that some of you
link |
may have heard of before,
link |
things like nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex.
link |
This is the pathway that really gets disrupted
link |
in addictions where in particular drugs
link |
that influence the release of dopamine,
link |
like cocaine and methamphetamine,
link |
we'll talk about those drugs today,
link |
they tap into this pathway.
link |
But if you are pursuing a partner,
link |
a boyfriend or girlfriend,
link |
if you're pursuing a degree in school,
link |
if you're pursuing a finish line in a race,
link |
you are tapping into the so-called mesocorticolimbic pathway.
link |
This is the classic reward pathway in all mammals.
link |
The other pathway emerges from an area in the brain
link |
called the substantia nigra,
link |
so-called because the cells in that area are dark
link |
and the substantia nigra connects to an area of the brain
link |
called the dorsal striatum.
link |
This is not surprisingly called the nigrostriatal pathway.
link |
For those of you who have never done any neuroanatomy,
link |
I'm going to teach you a little trick right now.
link |
Everything in neuroanatomy,
link |
the first part of a word tells you where the neurons are.
link |
And then the second part tells you
link |
where they are connecting to.
link |
So when I say nigrostriatal pathway,
link |
it means that the neurons are in the substantia nigra
link |
and they connect to the striatum, nigrostriatal pathway.
link |
So while it's a lot of language, there is some logic there.
link |
Okay, so we've got these two pathways,
link |
one mainly for movement, right?
link |
This is the substantia nigra to dorsal striatum.
link |
And we've got this other pathway,
link |
the so-called mesocorticolimbic pathway
link |
that's for reward reinforcement and motivation.
link |
I want you to remember that there are two pathways.
link |
If you don't remember the two pathways in detail,
link |
But please remember that there are two pathways
link |
because that turns out to be important later.
link |
Now, the other thing to understand about dopamine
link |
is that the way that dopamine is released
link |
in the brain and body can differ,
link |
meaning it can be very local or it can be more broad.
link |
Now, most of you have probably heard of synapses.
link |
Synapses are the little spaces between neurons
link |
and basically neurons,
link |
nerve cells communicate with one another
link |
by making each other electrically active
link |
or by making each other less electrically active.
link |
So here's how this works.
link |
You can imagine one nerve cell and another nerve cell
link |
with a little gap between them, a little synapse.
link |
And the way that one nerve cell
link |
causes the next nerve cell to fire,
link |
what we call fire really means to become electrically active
link |
is that it vomits out these little packets,
link |
what we call vesicles.
link |
They're little bubbles filled with a chemical.
link |
When that chemical enters the synapse,
link |
some of it docks or parks on the other side
link |
in the other neuron.
link |
And by virtue of electrical changes
link |
in what we call the postsynaptic neuron,
link |
that chemical will make that neuron
link |
more electrically active or less electrically active.
link |
Dopamine can do that like any other neurotransmitter
link |
or neuromodulator.
link |
So it can have one neuron influence another neuron,
link |
but dopamine can also engage
link |
in what's called a volumetric release.
link |
Volumetric release is like a giant vomit
link |
that gets out to 50 or a hundred or even thousands of cells.
link |
So there's local release, what we call synaptic release,
link |
and then there's volumetric release.
link |
So volumetric release is like dumping all this dopamine
link |
out into the system.
link |
So dopamine is incredible because it can change the way
link |
that our neural circuits work at a local scale
link |
and at a very broad scale.
link |
And for those of you that are only interested in tools,
link |
like how do I get more dopamine?
link |
Let me tell you, this part is really important
link |
because if you were to take a drug or supplement
link |
that increases your level of dopamine,
link |
you are influencing both the local release of dopamine
link |
and volumetric release.
link |
This relates back to the baseline of dopamine
link |
and the big peak above baseline.
link |
And that turns out to be important.
link |
And I'll just allude to why it's important.
link |
Many drugs and indeed many supplements
link |
that increase dopamine will actually make it harder
link |
for you to sustain dopamine release
link |
over long periods of time and to achieve those peaks
link |
that most of us are craving when we are in pursuit of things.
link |
Because if you get both volumetric release,
link |
the dumping out of dopamine everywhere,
link |
and you're getting local release,
link |
what it means is that the difference
link |
between the peak and baseline is likely to be smaller.
link |
And this is very important, how satisfying or exciting
link |
or pleasureful a given experience is
link |
doesn't just depend on the height of that peak.
link |
It depends on the height of that peak
link |
relative to the baseline.
link |
So if you increase the baseline and you increase the peak,
link |
you're not going to achieve
link |
more and more pleasure from things.
link |
I'll talk about how to leverage this information
link |
in a little bit, but just increasing your dopamine
link |
yes, it will make you excited for all things.
link |
It will make you feel very motivated,
link |
but it will also make that motivation very short lived.
link |
So there's a better way to increase your dopamine.
link |
There's a better way to optimize
link |
this peak to baseline ratio.
link |
For now what we've talked about is two main neural circuits,
link |
one for movement and one for motivation
link |
and craving with dopamine.
link |
And we've talked about two main modes of communication
link |
between neurons with dopamine.
link |
One is this local synaptic release.
link |
One is more volumetric release.
link |
And in the back of your mind,
link |
you can relate this back to again,
link |
this baseline versus peaks above baseline.
link |
So that's a description of what we would call
link |
the spatial effects or the spatial aspects of dopamine.
link |
I said, this connects to that, that connects to this.
link |
You can get local or more broad volumetric release.
link |
What about the duration of release
link |
or the duration of action for dopamine?
link |
Well, dopamine is unique among chemicals in the brain
link |
because dopamine, unlike a lot of chemicals in the brain,
link |
works through what are called G protein coupled receptors.
link |
And for those of you that are about to pass out
link |
from the amount of detail, just hang in there with me.
link |
It's really not complicated.
link |
There are two ways that neurons can communicate
link |
or mainly two ways.
link |
There are a third and a fourth,
link |
but mostly neurons communicate by two modes.
link |
One are what we call fast electrical synapses.
link |
Ionotropic conduction, all right?
link |
You don't need to know what that means,
link |
but basically one neuron activates another neuron
link |
and little holes open up in that neuron and ions rush in.
link |
Sodium is the main ion, salt,
link |
by which one neuron influences the electrical activity
link |
of another neuron because sodium ions contain a charge.
link |
Okay, there are other things like chloride and potassium.
link |
If you're interested in looking this up, just look up.
link |
Ionic conductance is in the action potential,
link |
or I could do a post on it sometime
link |
and we could go into detail,
link |
but just understand that when neurons
link |
want to influence each other,
link |
they can do it by way of this fast ionotropic conduction.
link |
This is a really quick way
link |
for one neuron to influence the next.
link |
Dopamine doesn't communicate that way.
link |
Dopamine is slower.
link |
It works through what are called
link |
G protein coupled receptors.
link |
So what happens is dopamine is released
link |
in these little vesicles that I've mentioned before,
link |
get vomited out into the synapse.
link |
Some of that dopamine will bind
link |
to the so-called postsynaptic neuron.
link |
It'll bind to the next neuron.
link |
And then it sets off a cascade.
link |
It's kind of like a bucket brigade
link |
of one thing getting handed off to the next,
link |
to the next, to the next.
link |
It's G protein coupled receptors.
link |
And anytime you hear about these GPCRs
link |
or G protein coupled receptors,
link |
pay attention because they're really interesting.
link |
but they also can have multiple cascades of effects.
link |
They can impact even gene expression at some level.
link |
They can change what a cell actually becomes.
link |
They can change how well or how poorly
link |
that cell will respond to the same signal in the future.
link |
So dopamine works through the slower process,
link |
these G protein coupled receptors.
link |
And so its effects tend to take a while in order to occur.
link |
This aspect of dopamine transmission is important
link |
because it now underscores two things.
link |
One, there's two pathways for dopamine to communicate,
link |
one for movement, one for motivation and craving.
link |
There's two spatial scales at which dopamine can operate
link |
synaptically or volumetrically.
link |
And dopamine can have slow effects, really slow effects,
link |
or even very long lasting effects.
link |
And it even can control gene expression.
link |
It can actually change the way that cells behave.
link |
One thing that's not often discussed about dopamine,
link |
but is extremely important to know
link |
is that dopamine doesn't work on its own.
link |
Neurons that release dopamine co-release glutamate.
link |
Glutamate is a neurotransmitter,
link |
and it's a neurotransmitter that is excitatory,
link |
meaning it stimulates neurons to be electrically active.
link |
So now, even if you don't know any cell biology,
link |
you should start to gain a picture
link |
that dopamine is responsible for movement,
link |
motivation, and drive.
link |
It does that through two pathways,
link |
but also the dopamine stimulates action in general
link |
because it releases this excitatory neurotransmitter.
link |
It tends to make certain neurons that are nearby,
link |
or even that are far away because of volumetric release,
link |
it tends to make those more active.
link |
So dopamine is really stimulating.
link |
And indeed, we say that dopaminergic transmission
link |
or dopamine tends to stimulate sympathetic arousal.
link |
Sympathetic doesn't have anything to do with sympathy.
link |
It's just simply means that it tends
link |
to increase our levels of alertness.
link |
It tends to bring an animal or a human
link |
into a state of more alertness, readiness,
link |
and desire to pursue things outside the confines
link |
So if I were to just put a really simple message
link |
around dopamine, it would be,
link |
there's a molecule in your brain and body
link |
that when released tends to make you look outside yourself,
link |
pursue things outside yourself,
link |
and to crave things outside yourself.
link |
The pleasure that arrives from achieving things
link |
also involves dopamine,
link |
but is mainly the consequence of other molecules.
link |
But if ever you felt lethargic and like just lazy
link |
and you had no motivation or drive,
link |
that's a low dopamine state.
link |
If ever you felt really excited, motivated,
link |
even if you were a little scared to do something,
link |
maybe you did your first skydive
link |
or you're about to do your first skydive
link |
or you're about to do some public speaking
link |
and you really don't want to screw it up,
link |
you are in a high dopamine state.
link |
Dopamine is a universal currency in all mammals,
link |
but especially in humans for moving us toward goals
link |
and how much dopamine is in our system at any one time
link |
compared to how much dopamine was in our system
link |
a few minutes ago and how much we remember
link |
enjoying a particular experience of the past.
link |
That dictates your so-called quality of life
link |
and your desire to pursue things.
link |
This is really important.
link |
Dopamine is a currency
link |
and it's the way that you track pleasure.
link |
It's the way that you track success.
link |
It's the way that you track whether or not
link |
you are doing well or doing poorly.
link |
And that is subjective.
link |
But if your dopamine is too low,
link |
you will not feel motivated.
link |
If your dopamine is really high, you will feel motivated.
link |
And if your dopamine is somewhere in the middle,
link |
how you feel depends on whether or not
link |
you had higher dopamine a few minutes ago
link |
or lower dopamine.
link |
This is important.
link |
Your experience of life and your level of motivation
link |
and drive depends on how much dopamine you have
link |
relative to your recent experience.
link |
This is, again, something that's just not accounted for
link |
in the simple language of dopamine hits, okay?
link |
A simple way to envision dopamine hits
link |
is every time you do something you like,
link |
you eat a piece of chocolate, dopamine hit.
link |
You look at your Instagram, dopamine hit.
link |
You see someone you like, dopamine hit.
link |
All these things described as dopamine hits
link |
neglect the fact that if you scroll social media
link |
and you see something you really like, dopamine hit.
link |
Sure, there's an increase in dopamine.
link |
But then you get to something else and you go,
link |
hmm, not that interesting.
link |
However, had you arrived at that second thing first,
link |
you might think that it was really interesting.
link |
If you had arrived to that second Instagram post
link |
three days later or four days later,
link |
you might find it extremely interesting.
link |
Again, how much dopamine you experience from something
link |
depends on your baseline level of dopamine
link |
when you arrive there and your previous dopamine peaks, okay?
link |
That's super important to understand.
link |
And it's completely neglected
link |
by the general language of dopamine hits.
link |
This is why when you repeatedly engage in something
link |
that you enjoy, your threshold for enjoyment
link |
goes up and up and up.
link |
So I want to talk about that process
link |
and I want to explain how that process works
link |
because if you understand that process
link |
and you understand some of these schedules and kinetics
link |
as we call them around dopamine,
link |
you will be in a terrific position
link |
to use any dopamine enhancing tools that you decide to use.
link |
You'll be in an excellent position to modulate
link |
and control your own dopamine release
link |
for optimal motivation and drive.
link |
I realized that was a lot of information
link |
about the biology of dopamine,
link |
sort of like trying to make you drink
link |
from the fire hose of dopamine biology.
link |
However, I realized that some people probably want
link |
even more information about the biology
link |
of dopamine transmission.
link |
If you're interested in that,
link |
I'll post a link to a absolutely stellar review
link |
that was published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience
link |
called Spatial and Temporal Scales of Dopamine Transmission.
link |
It is quite detailed, but they have beautiful diagrams
link |
and can walk you through all the things
link |
that I just described and get into even more detail.
link |
We'll put a link to that in the caption on YouTube.
link |
Right now, I want to share with you two anecdotes,
link |
one from my own life and one from some fairly recent history
link |
that illustrate some of the core biology of dopamine
link |
and how profoundly it can shape our experience.
link |
The first one is a really tragic situation that occurred.
link |
This was in the 80s.
link |
There was a outbreak of what looked like
link |
Parkinsonian symptoms in a young population.
link |
So many of you heard of Parkinson's disease.
link |
Parkinson's disease is a disease
link |
in which people initially start to quake,
link |
can't generate smooth movements.
link |
They'll have issues with speech,
link |
sometimes cognition as well.
link |
There are examples like Michael J. Fox,
link |
which are kind of early onset Parkinson's.
link |
Typically, it hits people a little bit later in life.
link |
There's a genetic component,
link |
but there is this question
link |
and there's always been this question
link |
whether or not certain lifestyle factors
link |
can also create Parkinson's.
link |
And some years ago,
link |
there was a situation where a laboratory,
link |
street laboratories, illicit laboratories,
link |
were trying to make a drug called MPPP,
link |
which is an opioid-like compound.
link |
It's a bit like heroin and heroin addicts seeking heroin
link |
went out and bought what they thought was MPPP.
link |
Unfortunately, it was not MPPP.
link |
I mean, it would have been tragic if it was anyway,
link |
because they were drug addicts,
link |
but what they ended up taking turned out to be a lot worse.
link |
What they ended up taking was MPTP,
link |
and MPTP can arise in the synthesis of MPPP.
link |
So someone in a lab someplace,
link |
this was mainly in the Central Valley in California,
link |
but elsewhere as well,
link |
somebody created MPTP.
link |
And what ended up happening was a large number
link |
of young people who were opioid addicts
link |
became completely boxed in, paralyzed,
link |
couldn't speak, couldn't blink, couldn't do anything,
link |
couldn't function, couldn't move.
link |
So both aspects of dopamine transmission were disrupted.
link |
They had no motivation and drive.
link |
They couldn't generate any movement of any kind.
link |
They were literally locked in frozen.
link |
And sadly, this is irreversible.
link |
It's irreversible because what MPTP does
link |
is it kills the dopaminergic neurons
link |
of the substantia nigra, that nigrostriatal pathway
link |
that's involved in generating movement,
link |
and it kills the dopaminergic neurons
link |
of the so-called mesocorticolimbic pathway.
link |
I was in college when this whole MPTP thing happened,
link |
and I remember hearing this story.
link |
At the time, I had no understanding of what it is
link |
to have very high levels of dopamine or extremely depleted
link |
levels of dopamine.
link |
There was no reason why I should have that understanding.
link |
I mean, of course, I had experienced different pleasures
link |
of different kinds, and I've had lows in my life,
link |
but nothing to the extreme that I'm about to discuss.
link |
I got Giardia, and Giardia is a stomach bug
link |
that if any of you ever had it, it is terrible.
link |
It's terrible diarrhea.
link |
You end up very dehydrated very quickly.
link |
You drop a ton of weight, and it is extremely unpleasant.
link |
I ended up going to the emergency room,
link |
and in the emergency room,
link |
I begged them for something to stop up my guts,
link |
and they gave it to me.
link |
They put a saline line in to rehydrate me,
link |
and they injected something into the saline bag,
link |
and within minutes, I felt more sadness,
link |
more overwhelming sense of depression,
link |
basically lower than I'd ever felt in my entire life.
link |
It was absolutely profound.
link |
I was crying endlessly without knowing why I was crying.
link |
I was miserable, and I asked them, what did you inject?
link |
And they said, we injected Thorazine.
link |
Thorazine is an anti-psychotic drug.
link |
It's actually used to block dopamine receptors.
link |
It's what's given to people who have schizophrenia,
link |
often is given to people who have schizophrenia
link |
because schizophrenia involves, among other things,
link |
elevated levels of dopamine.
link |
The experience of it was miserable,
link |
unlike anything I'd ever experienced.
link |
And so I actually said to them, what did you give me?
link |
They said Thorazine, and I said,
link |
you have to give me L-DOPA.
link |
You have to give me something
link |
to get my dopamine levels back up again.
link |
They gave me an injection of L-DOPA into the bag,
link |
went straight into my bloodstream,
link |
and within minutes, I felt fine again.
link |
It was incredible, and it really opened up my mind
link |
and my experience to what it is
link |
to have absolutely plummeted levels of dopamine.
link |
There's nothing more miserable than that, I'll tell you.
link |
And these poor souls who had this MPTP experience,
link |
unfortunately, they couldn't recover those cells.
link |
People who have severe Parkinson's
link |
are struggling with this as well,
link |
because in Parkinson's and in Lewy body dementia,
link |
the dopaminergic neurons often die.
link |
It's not just a problem
link |
with those neurons releasing enough dopamine.
link |
Later, we're going to talk about some approaches
link |
to maintaining dopaminergic neuron health
link |
and things that we can all do for that.
link |
But I will tell you, these dopamine neurons
link |
that we all have are very precious
link |
for movement and mood and motivation.
link |
Having experienced what it is to have very,
link |
very low levels of dopamine, or in this case,
link |
to have my dopamine receptors blocked from Thorazine,
link |
was eye-opening, to say the least,
link |
and has given me tremendous sensitivity
link |
to the fact that dopamine is perhaps
link |
one of the most powerful molecules
link |
that any of us has inside of us,
link |
and the one that we ought to all think very carefully
link |
about how we leverage.
link |
Because while most experiences and most things that we do
link |
and take and eat and et cetera,
link |
won't create enormous highs and enormous lows in dopamine,
link |
even subtle fluctuations in dopamine
link |
really shape our perception of life
link |
and what we're capable of and how we feel.
link |
And so we want to guard those,
link |
and we want to understand them.
link |
So let's lean into that understanding about dopamine,
link |
and then let's talk about some tools that we can all use
link |
to leverage dopamine in order to keep that baseline
link |
in the appropriate healthy place,
link |
and still be able to access those peaks in dopamine,
link |
because those, after all,
link |
are some of what makes life rich and worth living.
link |
So let's talk about the baseline of dopamine
link |
that we all have and the peaks in dopamine
link |
that we all can achieve through different activities
link |
and things that we ingest.
link |
All of us have different baseline levels of dopamine.
link |
Some of this is sure to be genetic.
link |
Some people just simply ride at a level a little bit higher.
link |
They're a little bit more excited.
link |
They're a little bit more motivated,
link |
or maybe they're a lot more excited
link |
or a lot more motivated.
link |
Some people are a little mellower.
link |
Some people are a little less excitable.
link |
And some of that has to do with the fact
link |
that dopamine doesn't act alone.
link |
Dopamine has close cousins or friends in the nervous system,
link |
and I'll just name off a few of those close cousins
link |
Epinephrine, also called adrenaline,
link |
is the main chemical driver of energy.
link |
We can't do anything, anything at all,
link |
unless we have some level of epinephrine
link |
in our brain and body.
link |
It's released from the adrenal glands,
link |
which ride atop our kidneys.
link |
It's released from an area of the brainstem
link |
called locus coeruleus.
link |
And its release tends to wake up neural circuits
link |
in the brain and wake up various aspects
link |
of our body's physiology and give us a readiness.
link |
So it should come as no surprise
link |
that dopamine and epinephrine,
link |
AKA adrenaline, hang out together.
link |
In fact, epinephrine and adrenaline
link |
are actually manufactured from dopamine.
link |
There's a biochemical pathway involving dopamine,
link |
which is a beautiful pathway.
link |
If ever you want to look it up,
link |
you could just look up biochemistry of dopamine.
link |
But what you'll find is that L-DOPA
link |
is converted into dopamine.
link |
Dopamine is converted into noradrenaline,
link |
nor epinephrine, it's also called,
link |
and noradrenaline, norepinephrine
link |
is converted into adrenaline.
link |
So not only are dopamine and epinephrine,
link |
AKA adrenaline, close cousins,
link |
they are actually family members, okay?
link |
They're closely related.
link |
I'm not going to get too deep into epinephrine today.
link |
I'm not going to talk too much about those pathways,
link |
but anytime I'm talking about dopaminergic transmission
link |
or that you have a peak in dopamine,
link |
inevitably that means that you have a peak
link |
in release of epinephrine as well.
link |
What dopamine does is dopamine really colors
link |
the subjective experience of an activity
link |
to make it more pleasureful,
link |
to make it something that you want more of.
link |
Epinephrine is more about energy.
link |
Epinephrine alone can be fear, paralysis, trauma,
link |
not physical paralysis, but mental paralysis,
link |
frozen in fear or being traumatized or scared.
link |
But the addition of dopamine to that chemical cocktail,
link |
if dopamine was released in the brain,
link |
well then that epinephrine becomes one of excitement.
link |
Okay, I'm using a broad brush here,
link |
but essentially what you need to know
link |
is that dopamine and epinephrine, AKA adrenaline,
link |
are family members and they tend to work together
link |
like a little gang to make you seek out certain things.
link |
So what sorts of activities,
link |
what sorts of things increase dopamine
link |
and how much do they increase dopamine?
link |
Well, let's take a look at some typical things
link |
that people do out there or ingest out there
link |
that are known to increase dopamine.
link |
So let's recall that you have a baseline level of dopamine
link |
and that everybody does.
link |
And even within a family, you might have family members
link |
who are very excitable, happy and motivated
link |
and others who are less excitable, happy and motivated.
link |
But your level of dopamine has everything to do
link |
with those genetics, but also with what you've experienced
link |
in the previous days and the previous months and so on.
link |
When you do or ingest certain things,
link |
your levels of dopamine will rise above baseline,
link |
transiently and depending on what you do or ingest,
link |
it will rise either more or less
link |
and it will be very brief or it'll last a long time.
link |
So let's take a look at some of the typical things
link |
that people take and do and eat.
link |
Some are good for us, some are not good for us.
link |
And let's ask how much dopamine
link |
is increased above baseline.
link |
Now, of course, these are averages,
link |
but these are averages that have been measured
link |
in so-called micro dialysis studies in animals.
link |
So actually extracting from particular brain areas,
link |
how much dopamine is released or from measuring the serum,
link |
the circulating levels of dopamine in humans.
link |
Chocolate, they didn't look at milk versus dark chocolate,
link |
but chocolate will increase your baseline level
link |
of dopamine 1.5 times, okay?
link |
So it's a pretty substantial increase in dopamine.
link |
It's transient, it goes away after a few minutes
link |
or even a few seconds.
link |
I'll explain what determines the duration in a minute,
link |
but 1.5 times for chocolate.
link |
Sex, both the pursuit of sex and the act of sex
link |
increases dopamine two times.
link |
So it's a doubling above baseline.
link |
Now, of course, there's going to be variation there,
link |
but that's the average increase in baseline dopamine
link |
Later, I will talk about how the different aspects
link |
of the so-called arousal art,
link |
the different aspects of sex, believe it or not,
link |
have a differential impact on dopamine.
link |
But for now, as a general theme or activity,
link |
sex doubles the amount of dopamine circulating
link |
Nicotine, in particular,
link |
nicotine that is smoked like cigarettes and so forth
link |
increases dopamine two and a half times above baseline.
link |
So there's a peak that goes up above baseline
link |
two and a half times higher.
link |
It is very short-lived.
link |
Anyone who's ever been a chain smoker
link |
or observed a chain smoker understands
link |
that the increase in dopamine from nicotine
link |
is very short-lived.
link |
Cocaine will increase the level of dopamine
link |
in the bloodstream two and a half times above baseline.
link |
And amphetamine, another drug that increases dopamine,
link |
will increase the amount of dopamine in the bloodstream
link |
10 times above baseline,
link |
a tremendous increase in dopamine.
link |
Now, exercise will have a different impact
link |
on the levels of dopamine,
link |
depending on how much somebody
link |
subjectively enjoys that exercise.
link |
So if you're somebody who loves running,
link |
chances are it's going to increase your levels of dopamine
link |
two times above your baseline, not unlike sex.
link |
People who dislike exercise
link |
will achieve less dopamine increase
link |
or no increase in dopamine from exercise.
link |
And if you like other forms of exercise,
link |
like yoga or weightlifting or swimming or what have you,
link |
again, it's going to vary by your subjective experience
link |
of whether or not you enjoy that activity.
link |
This is important and it brings us back
link |
to something that we talked about earlier.
link |
Remember that mesocorticolimbic pathway?
link |
Well, the cortical part is important.
link |
The cortical part actually has a very specific part,
link |
which is your prefrontal cortex,
link |
the area of your forebrain
link |
that's involved in thinking and planning
link |
and involved in assigning a rational explanation
link |
to something and involved in assigning a subjective
link |
experience to something, all right?
link |
So for instance, the pen that I'm holding right now,
link |
it's one of these Pilot V5s.
link |
I love these Pilot V5s.
link |
They don't sponsor the podcast.
link |
I just happen to like them.
link |
I like the way that they write, how they feel.
link |
If I spent enough time thinking about or talking about it,
link |
I could probably get a dopamine increase
link |
just talking about this Pilot V5.
link |
And that's not because I have the propensity
link |
to release dopamine easily.
link |
It's that as we start to engage with something more and more
link |
and what we say about it and what we encourage ourselves
link |
to think about it has a profound impact
link |
on its rewarding or non-rewarding properties.
link |
Now it's not simply the case that you can lie to yourself
link |
and you can tell yourself, I love something.
link |
And when you don't really love it
link |
and it will increase dopamine.
link |
But what's been found over and over again
link |
is that if people journal about something
link |
or they practice some form of appreciation for something,
link |
or they think of some aspect of something that they enjoy,
link |
the amount of dopamine that that behavior will evoke
link |
So for people that hate exercise,
link |
you can think about some aspect of exercise
link |
that you really enjoy.
link |
However, I will caution you against saying to yourself,
link |
I hate exercise or I hate studying, or I hate this person,
link |
but I love the reward I give myself afterward.
link |
Later, we're going to talk about how rewards
link |
given afterward actually make the situation worse.
link |
They won't make you like exercise more or studying more.
link |
They actually will undermine the dopamine release
link |
that would otherwise occur for that activity.
link |
So certain things, chemicals have a universal effect.
link |
They make everybody's dopamine go up.
link |
So some people like chocolate,
link |
some people don't of course,
link |
but in general it causes this increase in dopamine.
link |
But sex, nicotine, cocaine, amphetamine,
link |
those things cause increases in dopamine
link |
in everybody that takes them.
link |
Things like exercise, studying, hard work,
link |
working through a challenge in a relationship
link |
or working through something hard of any kind,
link |
that is going to be subjective
link |
as to how much dopamine will be released.
link |
And we will return to that subjective component
link |
But now you have a sense of how much dopamine can be evoked
link |
by different activities and by different substances.
link |
One that you might be wondering about is caffeine.
link |
I'm certainly drinking my caffeine today
link |
and I do enjoy caffeine in limited quantities.
link |
I drink yerba mate and I drink coffee and I love it.
link |
Does it increase dopamine?
link |
Well, a little bit.
link |
Caffeine will increase dopamine to some extent,
link |
but it is pretty modest compared to the other things
link |
that I described, chocolate, sex, nicotine,
link |
cocaine, amphetamine, and so on.
link |
However, there's a really interesting paper published
link |
in 2015, this is Volkow et al,
link |
you can look it up, it's very easy to find,
link |
that showed that regular ingestion of caffeine,
link |
whether or not it's from coffee or otherwise,
link |
increases upregulation of certain dopamine receptors.
link |
So caffeine actually makes you able to experience
link |
more of dopamine's effects.
link |
Because as I mentioned before,
link |
dopamine is vomited out into the synapse
link |
or it's released volumetrically,
link |
but then it has to bind someplace
link |
and trigger those G protein coupled receptors.
link |
And caffeine increases the number,
link |
the density of those G protein coupled receptors.
link |
Now, sitting back and thinking about that,
link |
you might think, oh yeah, you know,
link |
sometimes I'll notice people, at least in the old days,
link |
that it used to be a cigarette and a cup of coffee,
link |
or when people drink alcohol, oftentimes they'll smoke.
link |
And it's well known that different compounds
link |
like alcohol and nicotine or caffeine and nicotine
link |
or certain behaviors and certain drugs
link |
can synergize to give bigger dopamine increases.
link |
And this is not terribly uncommon.
link |
There are a lot of people nowadays who, for instance,
link |
take pre-workout energy drinks.
link |
They'll drink, I won't name names,
link |
but they'll drink a canned energy drink
link |
or they'll drink a pre-workout
link |
and they'll try and get that big stimulation,
link |
that stimulant effect for the dopamine, the norepinephrine,
link |
that family of molecules that works together
link |
to make you motivated.
link |
And then they'll also exercise to try and get even more
link |
of a dopaminergic experience out of that workout.
link |
Sometimes it's also to perform better as well, of course.
link |
But as we'll talk about in a few minutes,
link |
that aspect or that approach, rather,
link |
of trying to just get your dopamine
link |
as high as you possibly can
link |
in order to get the most out of an experience
link |
turns out to not be the best approach.
link |
And what you'll find as we talk about dopamine schedules
link |
is that layering together multiple things,
link |
substances and activities that lead to big increases
link |
in dopamine actually can create pretty severe issues
link |
with motivation and energy right after those experiences
link |
and even a couple of days later.
link |
So I'm not saying that people shouldn't take
link |
the occasional pre-workout if that's your thing
link |
or drink a cup of coffee or two before working out.
link |
Now and again, some people really enjoy that.
link |
I certainly do that every once in a while.
link |
But if you do it too often,
link |
what you'll find is that your capacity to release dopamine
link |
and your level of motivation and drive and energy overall
link |
will take a serious hit.
link |
Now I've been alluding to this dopamine peaks
link |
versus dopamine baseline thing
link |
since the beginning of the episode,
link |
talked about tonic and phasic release and so forth.
link |
But now let's really drill into what this means
link |
and how to leverage it for our own purposes.
link |
In order to do that, let's take a step back and ask,
link |
why would we have a dopamine system like this?
link |
Why would we have a dopamine system at all?
link |
Well, we have to remember what our species
link |
primary interest is.
link |
Our species like all species has a main interest
link |
and that's to make more of itself.
link |
It's not just about sex and reproduction,
link |
it's about foraging for resources.
link |
Resources can be food, it can be water, it can be salt,
link |
can be shelter, can be social connection.
link |
Dopamine is the universal currency of foraging and seeking.
link |
We call sometimes talk about motivation and craving,
link |
but what we mean in the evolutionary adaptive context,
link |
what we mean is foraging and seeking,
link |
seeking water, seeking food, seeking mates,
link |
seeking things that make us feel good and avoiding things
link |
that don't make us feel good,
link |
but in particular seeking things
link |
that will provide sustenance and pleasure in the short term
link |
and will extend the species in the longterm.
link |
Once we understand that dopamine
link |
is a driver for us to seek things,
link |
it makes perfect sense as to why
link |
it would have a baseline level and it would have peaks
link |
and that the baseline and peaks would be related
link |
in some sort of direct way.
link |
Here's what I mean by that.
link |
Let's say that you were not alive now,
link |
but you were alive 10,000 years ago
link |
and you woke up and you looked and you realized
link |
you had minimal water and you had minimal food left.
link |
Maybe you have a child, maybe you have a partner,
link |
maybe you're in an entire village,
link |
but you realize that you need things, okay?
link |
You need to be able to generate the energy
link |
to go seek those things.
link |
And chances are there were dangers in seeking those things.
link |
Yes, it could be saber-toothed tigers
link |
and things of that sort, but there are other dangers too.
link |
There's the danger of a cut to your skin
link |
that could lead to infection.
link |
There's the danger of storms.
link |
There's the danger of cold.
link |
There's the danger of leaving your loved ones behind.
link |
So you go out and forage, right?
link |
You could be hunting, you could be gathering,
link |
or you could be doing both.
link |
The going out and foraging process was, we are certain,
link |
driven by dopamine.
link |
I mean, there's no fossil record of the brain,
link |
but these circuits have existed, we know,
link |
for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands
link |
of years, and they are present in every animal,
link |
not just mammals, but even in little worms like c. elegans,
link |
the same process is mediated by dopamine.
link |
So dopamine drives you to go out and look for things.
link |
And then let's say you find a couple of berries
link |
and these ones are rotten, these ones are good.
link |
Maybe you hunt an animal and kill it,
link |
or you find an animal that was recently killed
link |
and you decide to take the meat.
link |
You are going to achieve, or I should say,
link |
experience some sort of dopamine release.
link |
You found the reward, that's great,
link |
but then it needs to return to some lower level.
link |
Well, because if you just stayed there,
link |
you would never continue to forage for more.
link |
It doesn't just increase your baseline and then stay there.
link |
It goes back down.
link |
And what's very important to understand
link |
is that it doesn't just go back down
link |
to the level it was before.
link |
It goes down to a level below what it was
link |
before you went out seeking that thing.
link |
Now, this is counterintuitive.
link |
We often think, oh, okay, I'm going to pursue the win.
link |
All right, let's move this to modern day.
link |
I'm going to run this marathon.
link |
I'm going to train for this marathon.
link |
Then you run the marathon and you finish,
link |
you cross the finish line, you feel great.
link |
And you would think, okay, now I'm set
link |
for the entire year.
link |
I'm going to feel so much better.
link |
I'm going to feel this accomplishment in my body.
link |
It's going to be so great, but that's not what happens.
link |
You might feel some of those things,
link |
but your level of dopamine
link |
has actually dropped below baseline.
link |
Now, eventually it will ratchet back up,
link |
but two things are really important.
link |
First of all, the extent to which it drops below baseline
link |
is proportional to how high the peak was.
link |
So if you cross the finish line pretty happy,
link |
it won't drop that much below baseline afterward.
link |
If you cross the finish line ecstatic,
link |
well, a day or two later,
link |
you're going to feel quite a bit lower
link |
than you would otherwise.
link |
You might not be depressed
link |
because it depends on where that baseline was to begin with.
link |
But the so-called postpartum depression
link |
that people experience after giving birth
link |
or after some big win, a graduation,
link |
or any kind of celebration,
link |
that postpartum drop in mood and affect and motivation
link |
is the drop in baseline dopamine.
link |
This is very important to understand
link |
because this happens on very rapid timescales
link |
and it can last quite a long time.
link |
It also explains the behavior
link |
that most of us are familiar with,
link |
of engaging in something that we really enjoy,
link |
going to a restaurant that we absolutely love
link |
or engaging in some way with some person
link |
that we really, really enjoy.
link |
But if we continue to engage in that behavior
link |
over and over again, it kind of loses its edge.
link |
It starts to kind of feel less exciting to us.
link |
Some of us experience that drop in excitement
link |
more quickly and more severely than others,
link |
but everyone experiences that to some extent.
link |
And this has direct roots
link |
in these evolutionarily conserved circuits.
link |
Some of you may be hearing this and think,
link |
no, no, no, that's not how it works for me.
link |
I'm just riding higher and higher all the time.
link |
I love my kids, I love my job, I love school,
link |
I love wins, I don't want losses.
link |
We all feel good when we are achieving things,
link |
but oftentimes we are feeling good
link |
because we are layering in different aspects of life,
link |
consuming things and doing things that increase our dopamine.
link |
We're getting those peaks.
link |
But afterward, the drop in baseline occurs
link |
and it always takes a little while
link |
to get back to our stable baseline.
link |
We really all have a sort of dopamine set point.
link |
And if we continue to indulge in the same behaviors
link |
or even different behaviors that increase our dopamine
link |
in these big peaks over and over and over again,
link |
we won't experience the same level of joy
link |
from those behaviors or from anything at all.
link |
Now that has a name, it's called addiction,
link |
but even for people who aren't addicted,
link |
even for people who don't have an attachment
link |
to any specific substance or behavior,
link |
this drop in below baseline after any peak in dopamine
link |
is substantial and it governs whether or not
link |
we are going to feel motivated
link |
to continue to pursue other things.
link |
Fortunately, there's a way to work with this
link |
such that we can constantly stay motivated,
link |
but also keep that baseline of dopamine
link |
at an appropriate healthy level.
link |
A previous guest on the Huberman Lab podcast
link |
was Dr. Anna Lemke.
link |
She's head of the Addiction Dual Diagnosis Clinic
link |
at Stanford, has this amazing book,
link |
''Dopamine Nation, Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.''
link |
If you haven't read the book,
link |
I highly encourage you to check it out, it's fantastic.
link |
The other terrific book about dopamine
link |
is ''The Molecule of More,''
link |
which is similar in some regard,
link |
but isn't so much about addiction,
link |
it's more about other types of behaviors.
link |
Both books really focus on these dopamine schedules
link |
and the relationship between these peaks
link |
and baselines of dopamine.
link |
In Dr. Lemke's book,
link |
and when she was on the Huberman Lab podcast,
link |
another podcast, she's talked about
link |
this pleasure-pain balance,
link |
that when we seek something that we really like
link |
or we indulge in it, like eating a little piece of chocolate
link |
if we really like chocolate, there's some pleasure,
link |
but then there's a little bit of pain
link |
that exceeds the amount of pleasure and it's subtle,
link |
and we experience it as wanting more of that thing.
link |
Okay, so there's a pleasure-pain balance,
link |
and I'm telling you that the pleasure and the pain
link |
are governed by dopamine to some extent.
link |
Well, how could that be, right?
link |
I said before, when you engage in an activity
link |
or when you ingest something that increases dopamine,
link |
the dopamine levels go up to a substantial degree
link |
with all the things I listed off.
link |
Where's the pain coming from?
link |
Well, the pain is coming from the lack of dopamine
link |
that follows, and you now know
link |
what that lack of dopamine reflects.
link |
Well, earlier we were talking about
link |
how dopamine is released between neurons
link |
and I mentioned two ways, one is into the synapse
link |
where it can activate the postsynaptic neuron,
link |
and the other was what I called volumetric release
link |
where it is distributed more broadly,
link |
it's released out over a bunch of neurons.
link |
In both cases, it's released from these things
link |
we call synaptic vesicles, literally little bubbles,
link |
tiny, tiny little bubbles that contain dopamine,
link |
they get vomited out into the area or into the synapse.
link |
Well, those vesicles get depleted.
link |
For the synaptic physiologists out there,
link |
we call this the readily releasable pool of dopamine.
link |
We can only deploy dopamine that is ready to be deployed,
link |
that's packaged in those little vesicles and ready to go,
link |
it's like when you order a product
link |
and they say out of stock until two months from now,
link |
well, it's not ready to be released.
link |
Same thing with dopamine,
link |
there's a pool of dopamine that's synthesized
link |
and you can only release the dopamine
link |
that's been synthesized, it's the readily releasable pool.
link |
The pleasure pain balance doesn't only hinge
link |
on the readily releasable pool of dopamine,
link |
but a big part of the pleasure pain balance
link |
hinges on how much dopamine is there
link |
and how much is ready and capable
link |
of being released into the system.
link |
So now we've given some meat to this thing
link |
that we call the pleasure pain balance.
link |
And now it should make perfect sense
link |
why if you take something or do something
link |
that leads to huge increases in dopamine,
link |
afterward your baseline should drop
link |
because there isn't a lot of dopamine around
link |
to keep your baseline going.
link |
Fortunately, most people do not experience
link |
or pursue enormous increases in dopamine
link |
leading to these severe drops in baseline.
link |
Many people do, however, and that's what we call addiction.
link |
When somebody pursues a drug or an activity
link |
that leads to huge increases in dopamine,
link |
and now you understand that afterward
link |
the baseline of dopamine drops
link |
because of depletion of dopamine,
link |
the readily releasable pool,
link |
the dopamine is literally not around to be released
link |
and so people feel pretty lousy.
link |
And many people make the mistake of then going
link |
and pursuing the dopamine evoking,
link |
the dopamine releasing activity or substance.
link |
Again, thinking mistakenly
link |
that it's going to bring up their baseline.
link |
It's going to give them that peak again.
link |
Not only does it not give them a peak,
link |
their baseline gets lower and lower
link |
because they're depleting dopamine more and more and more.
link |
And we've seen this over and over again
link |
when people get addicted to something,
link |
then they're not achieving much pleasure at all.
link |
You can even see this with video games.
link |
People will play a video game, they love it.
link |
It's super exciting to them.
link |
And then they'll keep playing and playing and playing.
link |
And either one of two things happens, typically both.
link |
First of all, we say addiction is a progressive narrowing
link |
of the things that bring you pleasure.
link |
So oftentimes what will happen
link |
is the person only has excitement
link |
and can achieve dopamine release
link |
to the same extent doing that behavior
link |
and not other behaviors.
link |
And so they start losing interest in school,
link |
they start losing interest in relationships,
link |
they start losing interest in fitness and wellbeing
link |
and depletes their life.
link |
And eventually what typically happens
link |
is they will stop getting dopamine release
link |
from that activity as well.
link |
And then they drop into a pretty serious depression.
link |
And this can get very severe and people have committed
link |
suicide from these sorts of patterns of activity.
link |
But what about the more typical scenario?
link |
What about the scenario of somebody who is really good
link |
at working during the week,
link |
they exercise during the week, they drink on the weekends.
link |
Well, that person is only consuming alcohol
link |
maybe one or two nights a week,
link |
but oftentimes that same person will be spiking
link |
their dopamine with food during the middle of the week.
link |
Now we all have to eat and it's nice to eat foods
link |
I certainly do that.
link |
I love food in fact,
link |
but let's say they're eating foods
link |
that really evoke a lot of dopamine release
link |
in the middle of the week,
link |
they're drinking one or two days on the weekend.
link |
They are one of these work hard, play hard types.
link |
So they're swimming a couple miles in the ocean
link |
in the middle of the week as well.
link |
They're going out dancing once on the weekend.
link |
Sounds like a pretty balanced life as I describe it.
link |
Well, here's the problem.
link |
The problem is that dopamine is not just evoked
link |
by one of these activities.
link |
Dopamine is evoked by all of these activities.
link |
And dopamine is one currency of craving motivation
link |
and desire and pleasure.
link |
There's only one currency.
link |
So even though, if you look at the activities,
link |
you'd say, well, it's just on the weekends
link |
or this thing is only a couple of times a week.
link |
If you looked at dopamine simply as a function,
link |
as a chemical function of peaks and baseline,
link |
it might make sense why this person after several years
link |
of work hard, play hard would say,
link |
yeah, you know, I'm feeling kind of burnt out.
link |
I'm just not feeling like I have the same energy
link |
that I did a few years ago.
link |
And of course there are age-related reasons
link |
why people can experience drops in energy,
link |
but oftentimes what's happening
link |
is not some sort of depletion in cellular metabolism
link |
that's related to aging.
link |
What's happening is they're spiking their dopamine
link |
through so many different activities throughout the week
link |
that their baseline is progressively dropping.
link |
And in this case, it can be very subtle.
link |
It can be very, very subtle.
link |
And that's actually a very sinister function of dopamine,
link |
we could say, which is that it can often drop
link |
in imperceptible ways,
link |
but then once it reaches a threshold of low dopamine,
link |
we just feel like, hmm,
link |
we can't really get pleasure from anything anymore.
link |
What used to work doesn't work anymore.
link |
So it starts to look a lot like the more severe addictions
link |
or the more acute addictions to things like cocaine
link |
and amphetamine, which lead to these big increases,
link |
these big spikes in dopamine,
link |
and then these very severe drops in the baseline.
link |
Now, of course, we all should engage in activities
link |
I certainly do, everybody should.
link |
A huge part of life is pursuing activities
link |
and things that we enjoy.
link |
The key thing is to understand this relationship
link |
between the peaks and the baseline
link |
and to understand how they influence one another,
link |
because once you do that,
link |
you can start to make really good choices in the short run
link |
and in the long run
link |
to maintain your level of dopamine baseline,
link |
maybe even raise that level of dopamine baseline
link |
and still get those peaks
link |
and still achieve those feelings of elevated motivation,
link |
elevated desire and craving.
link |
Because again, those peaks
link |
and having a sufficiently healthy high level
link |
of dopamine baseline
link |
are what drove the evolution of our species
link |
and they're really what drive the evolution
link |
of anyone's life progression too.
link |
So they're a good thing.
link |
Dopamine is a good thing.
link |
Just very briefly, because it was also covered
link |
in the interview episode I did with Anna Lemke
link |
Some of you might be asking,
link |
what should I do if I experience a drop
link |
in my baseline level of dopamine
link |
because of engagement with some activity
link |
or some substance that led to big peaks?
link |
Just to put some color and example on this,
link |
a few episodes ago,
link |
I talked about a friend who I've known a long time.
link |
So actually the child of a friend
link |
who has basically become addicted to video games.
link |
He decided actually,
link |
after seeing that episode with Anna
link |
to do a 30 day complete fast from phone,
link |
from video games and from social media of all kinds.
link |
He's now at day 29.
link |
He's really accomplished this.
link |
Not incidentally, his levels of concentration,
link |
his overall mood are up.
link |
He's doing far, far better.
link |
What he did is hard.
link |
In particular, the first 14 days is really hard.
link |
But the way that you replenish the releasable pool
link |
of dopamine is to not engage
link |
in these dopaminergic seeking behaviors.
link |
Because remember, typically people arrive
link |
at a place where they want to stop engaging
link |
in these behaviors or ingesting substances
link |
when that dopamine is depleted,
link |
when they're not getting the same lift.
link |
In his case, he was feeling depressed.
link |
He thought he had ADHD.
link |
They were starting to treat it as ADHD.
link |
And certainly there are people out there who have ADHD,
link |
but what he found was that his levels
link |
of concentration are back.
link |
He does not need to be treated for ADHD.
link |
And actually the psychiatrist wondered
link |
if he did prior to this video game, social media fast.
link |
He's feeling good.
link |
He's exercising again, not making this up.
link |
This is really a very specific,
link |
but very relevant example
link |
of how the dopamine system can replenish itself.
link |
Of course, if there's a clinical need for ADHD treatment,
link |
by all means pursue that.
link |
But I think a lot of ADHD does go misdiagnosed
link |
because of this depletion in dopamine that occurs
link |
because of overindulgence and other activities
link |
in the drop in baseline.
link |
So for anyone that's experienced a real drop in baseline
link |
who has addictive tendencies,
link |
whether or not their behaviors or substances,
link |
that is always going to be the path forward,
link |
is going to be either cold turkey
link |
or through some sort of tapering to limit interactions
link |
with what would otherwise be
link |
the dopamine evoking behavior or substance.
link |
So let's talk about the optimal way
link |
to engage in activities or to consume things
link |
that evoke dopamine.
link |
And by no means am I encouraging people
link |
to take drugs of abuse.
link |
I would not do that.
link |
I am not doing that.
link |
But some of the things on these lists
link |
of dopamine evoking activities
link |
are things like chocolate, coffee,
link |
even if it's indirect,
link |
sex and reproduction provided it's healthy,
link |
consensual, context appropriate,
link |
age appropriate, species appropriate, of course,
link |
is central to our evolution and progression as a species.
link |
So certain things like cocaine, amphetamine,
link |
I will put in the classification of bad.
link |
I'm willing to do that.
link |
And other things are part of life, food, exercise.
link |
If that evokes your dopamine,
link |
how are we supposed to engage
link |
with these dopamine evoking activities in ways
link |
that are healthy and beneficial for us?
link |
How do we achieve these peaks,
link |
which are so central to our wellbeing
link |
and experience of life without dropping our baseline?
link |
And the key lies in intermittent release of dopamine.
link |
The real key is to not expect
link |
or chase high levels of dopamine release
link |
every time we engage in these activities.
link |
Intermittent reward schedules are the central schedule
link |
by which casinos keep you gambling,
link |
the central schedule by which elusive partners
link |
or potential partners keep you texting and pursuing
link |
on either side of the relationship.
link |
Intermittent schedules are the way
link |
that the internet and social media
link |
and all highly engaging activities
link |
keep you motivated and pursuing.
link |
And we can take this back
link |
to our evolutionary adaptive scenario
link |
where you are out there looking for water, looking for food,
link |
not every trail, not every pursuit,
link |
not every hunch about where the animals will be,
link |
where the food will be, where the berries will be,
link |
not every single one of those played out.
link |
There's something called dopamine reward prediction error.
link |
When we expect something to happen,
link |
we are highly motivated to pursue it.
link |
If it happens, great, we get the reward.
link |
The reward comes in various chemical forms,
link |
including dopamine,
link |
and we are more likely to engage in that behavior again.
link |
This is the basis of casino gambling.
link |
This is how they keep you going back
link |
again and again and again,
link |
even though on average, the house really does win.
link |
You can transplant that example
link |
to any number of different pleasureful activities.
link |
If you're not a gambler and that doesn't appeal to you,
link |
I have to imagine there's something that appeals to you,
link |
something that you do repeatedly because you enjoy it.
link |
And almost inevitably,
link |
it's because there's an intermittent schedule.
link |
There's a intermittent schedule by which dopamine
link |
sometimes arrives, sometimes a little bit,
link |
sometimes a lot, sometimes a medium amount, okay?
link |
That intermittent reinforcement schedule
link |
is actually the best schedule to export to other activities.
link |
How do you do that?
link |
Well, first of all,
link |
if you are engaged in activities,
link |
school, sport, relationship, et cetera,
link |
where you experience a win,
link |
you should be very careful about allowing yourself
link |
to experience huge peaks in dopamine,
link |
unless you're willing to suffer the crash that follows
link |
and waiting a period of time for it to come back up.
link |
What would this look like in the practical sense?
link |
Well, let's say you are somebody
link |
who really does enjoy exercise,
link |
or let's say you're somebody who kind of likes exercise,
link |
but forces yourself to do it,
link |
but you make it pleasureful
link |
by giving yourself your favorite cup of coffee first,
link |
or maybe taking a pre-workout drink,
link |
or taking an energy drink,
link |
or listening to your favorite music,
link |
and then you're in the gym and you're listening to your music
link |
that all sounds great, right?
link |
Well, it is great, except that by layering together
link |
all these things to try and achieve that dopamine release,
link |
and by getting a big peak in dopamine,
link |
you're actually increasing the number of conditions required
link |
to achieve pleasure from that activity again.
link |
And so there is a form of this
link |
where sometimes you do all the things that you love
link |
to get the optimal workout.
link |
You listen to your favorite music,
link |
you go at your favorite time of day,
link |
you have your pre-workout drink if that's your thing,
link |
you do all the things that give you that best experience
link |
of the workout for you.
link |
But there's also a version of this
link |
where sometimes you don't do
link |
the dopamine-enhancing activities.
link |
You don't ingest anything to increase your dopamine.
link |
You just do the exercise.
link |
You don't do the exercise and expect dopamine to arrive
link |
through some what we call exogenous source as well.
link |
You might think, well, that sounds lame.
link |
I want to continue to enjoy exercising.
link |
Ah, but that's exactly the point.
link |
If you want to maintain motivation
link |
for school, exercise, relationships,
link |
or pursuits of any duration in kind,
link |
the key thing is to make sure that the peak in dopamine,
link |
if it's very high, doesn't occur too often.
link |
And if something does occur very often
link |
that you vary how much dopamine you experience
link |
with each engagement in that activity.
link |
Now, some activities naturally have
link |
this intermittent property woven into them, right?
link |
We sometimes have classes that we like
link |
and other classes we don't like.
link |
We don't always get straight A's.
link |
Sometimes we don't get rewarded
link |
with the outcome that we would like.
link |
We don't always have the perfect relationship outcome,
link |
but understand that your ability to experience motivation
link |
and pleasure for what comes next is dictated
link |
by how much motivation and pleasure
link |
and dopamine you experienced prior.
link |
The reason I can't give a very specific protocol
link |
like delete dopamine or lower dopamine every third time
link |
is that that wouldn't be intermittent.
link |
The whole basis of intermittent reinforcement
link |
is that you don't really have a specific schedule
link |
of when dopamine is going to be high
link |
and when dopamine is going to be low
link |
and when dopamine is going to be medium.
link |
That's a predictable schedule,
link |
not a random intermittent schedule.
link |
So do like the casinos do, certainly works for them.
link |
And for activities that you would like to continue
link |
to engage in over time, whatever those happen to be,
link |
start paying attention to the amount of dopamine
link |
and excitement and pleasure that you achieve with those
link |
and start modulating that somewhat at random.
link |
That might be removing some of the dopamine
link |
releasing chemicals that you might take prior.
link |
Maybe you remove them every time,
link |
but then every once in a while, you introduce them.
link |
Maybe it involves sometimes doing things socially
link |
that you enjoy doing socially,
link |
sometimes doing the same thing, but alone.
link |
There are a lot of different ways to do this.
link |
There are a lot of different ways to approach this,
link |
but now knowing what you know about peaks
link |
and baselines in dopamine and understanding
link |
how important it is not just to achieve peaks,
link |
but to maintain that baseline at a healthy level,
link |
it should be straightforward for you to implement
link |
these intermittent schedules.
link |
For those of you that are begging for more specificity,
link |
we can give you a tool.
link |
One would be you can flip a coin before engaging
link |
in any of these types of activities and decide
link |
whether or not you are going to allow
link |
other dopamine supportive elements to go, for instance,
link |
into the gym with you.
link |
Are you going to listen to music or not?
link |
If you enjoy listening to music, well then flip a coin.
link |
And if it comes up heads, bring the music in.
link |
If it comes up tails, don't.
link |
Okay, sounds like you're undercutting your own progress,
link |
but actually you are serving your own progress,
link |
both short-term and long-term by doing that.
link |
Now, the smartphone is a very interesting tool
link |
for dopamine in light of all this.
link |
It's extremely common nowadays to see people texting
link |
and doing selfies and communicating in various ways,
link |
listening to podcasts, listening to music,
link |
doing all sorts of things while they engage
link |
in other activities or going to dinner
link |
and texting other people or making plans,
link |
sharing information, that's all wonderful.
link |
It gives depth and richness and color to life.
link |
But it isn't just about our distracted nature
link |
when we're engaging with the phone.
link |
It's also a way of layering in dopamine.
link |
And it's no surprise that levels of depression
link |
and lack of motivation are really on the increase.
link |
Everything that we've talked about until now
link |
sets up an explanation or interpretation
link |
of why interacting with digital technology
link |
can potentially lead to disruptions
link |
or lowering in baseline levels of dopamine.
link |
I can use a personal example for this.
link |
I happen to really enjoy working out.
link |
I've always really enjoyed it.
link |
But in recent years, I noticed that if I was bringing
link |
my phone to my workouts,
link |
then not only was I a little bit more distracted
link |
and not focusing on what I was doing
link |
as much as I could have or should have,
link |
but also I started to lose interest in what I was doing.
link |
It wasn't as pleasureful.
link |
I would feel like it just didn't have the same kind of oomph
link |
and I was beginning to question my motivation.
link |
As I started learning more about this relationship
link |
between the peaks and the baselines and dopamine,
link |
what I realized was that some time ago
link |
I probably experienced a incredible increase
link |
in the amount of dopamine during one of my workouts
link |
because I enjoy working out and I enjoy listening to music.
link |
I also enjoy listening to podcasts.
link |
I also enjoy communicating with people.
link |
Those are all wonderful pursuits,
link |
but I had layered in too many of them too many times.
link |
And then it essentially wasn't working for me anymore.
link |
Much in the same way a drug wouldn't work for somebody
link |
who takes it repeatedly
link |
because their baseline of dopamine is dropping.
link |
So at least for this calendar year,
link |
I've made a rule for myself,
link |
which is I don't allow my phone into my workouts at all.
link |
No music, at least not from the phone.
link |
It can be in the room.
link |
I might listen to a podcast in the room,
link |
but I don't listen to anything
link |
or engage in anything on my phone, no texting whatsoever.
link |
And most of the time I just don't even bring it with me
link |
for that period of time.
link |
It's only a short period of time.
link |
I'm not training that often.
link |
This is something that I think has been misinterpreted
link |
as people can't be alone now.
link |
People talk about, oh, you know,
link |
they can't walk across the street
link |
or they can't go anywhere, ride the bus,
link |
can't be on the plane without being in contact.
link |
They can't handle just their thoughts.
link |
I don't think that's really what's going on.
link |
I think what's happened is that we achieved
link |
the great dopamine increase
link |
that comes from this incredible thing,
link |
which I personally enjoy being able to communicate by phone,
link |
by text and exchange pictures and send links
link |
and these kinds of things, social media.
link |
But then what happens is it doesn't have
link |
that same fulfilling aspect to it.
link |
And it tends to remove the excitement and the pleasure
link |
of the very activities that we are engaged in.
link |
So I know this is a hard one for many people,
link |
but I do invite you to try removing multiple sources
link |
of dopamine release or what used to be multiple sources
link |
of dopamine release from activities
link |
that you want to continue to enjoy
link |
or that you want to enjoy more.
link |
And now you understand the biological mechanisms
link |
that would underlie a statement like that.
link |
It takes a little bit of working with.
link |
I know it can be challenging in the first week or so
link |
of not engaging with the phone during any kind of workout.
link |
That actually was really tough,
link |
but now I'm back to a place where I enjoy it that much more.
link |
I also feel as if I conquered something
link |
in terms of the circuitry related to dopamine.
link |
I now understand why something that I enjoyed so much
link |
had become less pleasureful for me.
link |
And there's a deep, deep satisfaction
link |
that comes from understanding, okay,
link |
there wasn't anything wrong with me or what I was doing
link |
or anything at all.
link |
It was just, there was something wrong
link |
with the approach I was taking,
link |
which was layering in all these sources of dopamine
link |
and dropping my baseline.
link |
For this very same reason,
link |
I caution people against using stimulants
link |
every time they study or every time they work out
link |
or every time that they do anything
link |
that they would like to continue to enjoy
link |
and be motivated at.
link |
There's one exception, which is caffeine,
link |
because I mentioned before, if you like caffeine,
link |
that actually could be a good thing for your dopamine system
link |
because it does upregulate these D2, D3 receptors.
link |
So it actually makes whatever dopamine
link |
is released by that activity more accessible
link |
or more functional within the biochemistry
link |
and the pathways of your brain and body.
link |
However, a number of energy drinks
link |
and in particular pre-workouts contain things
link |
that are precursors to dopamine and on their own,
link |
even if you didn't engage in the activity,
link |
would cause the release of dopamine to a substantial degree.
link |
They do cause the release of dopamine
link |
to a substantial degree.
link |
And over time, that will deplete your dopamine.
link |
So energy drinks, pre-workout drinks,
link |
drugs of various kinds that people take to study
link |
and pay attention.
link |
We talked about some of these for the ADHD episode,
link |
things like Adderall, Ritalin, armodafinil, modafinil.
link |
Taken repeatedly over time will reduce
link |
the level of satisfaction and joy that you get
link |
from the activities you engage in while under the influence
link |
of those compounds.
link |
I'm not trying to demonize those compounds
link |
for their clinical use.
link |
What I'm saying is taking stimulants
link |
and then engaging in activities that you would like
link |
to continue to feel pleasureful is undercutting the process.
link |
And inevitably, it might not happen tomorrow,
link |
might not happen in a month,
link |
but inevitably you will have challenges
link |
with motivation and drive related to those activities.
link |
Now, some people can keep it right in check.
link |
They can just do the one can of the energy drink
link |
or they only do their pre-workout
link |
before really hard days, for instance.
link |
More power to you.
link |
I actually do that sometimes, frankly.
link |
But people who are trying to get into that peak,
link |
super motivated, driven, driven state,
link |
really focused every time they engage in an activity,
link |
you are absolutely undercutting the process
link |
and you are undermining your ability
link |
to stay motivated and focused.
link |
So just as we talked about intermittent reward schedules
link |
a moment ago, intermittent spiking of dopamine,
link |
if you do it at all, is definitely the way to go.
link |
And chronically trying to spike your dopamine
link |
in order to enhance your motivation, focus, and drive
link |
will absolutely undermine your motivation, focus,
link |
and drive in the long run.
link |
Ingestion of caffeine is somewhat of an exception
link |
among the other examples of things I've mentioned
link |
to avoid before what would otherwise be
link |
dopamine-increasing activities.
link |
Because again, caffeine can increase the density
link |
and the efficacy of these dopamine receptors.
link |
Turns out that the source of caffeine could also matter.
link |
While coffee or tea or other forms of caffeine
link |
will have this effect of increasing dopamine receptors,
link |
yerba mate, something I've talked about before
link |
on this podcast, has some interesting properties.
link |
First of all, it contains caffeine.
link |
It's also high in antioxidants.
link |
It also contains something called GLP-1,
link |
which is favorable for management of blood sugar levels.
link |
Yerba mate, it turns out, has also been shown
link |
to be neuroprotective specifically for dopaminergic neurons.
link |
Now, I should mention this is just a couple of studies,
link |
so we don't want to conclude too much from these studies.
link |
More needs to be done.
link |
But they showed that in a model of damage
link |
to dopamine neurons, ingestion of yerba mate
link |
and some of the compounds within yerba mate
link |
can actually serve to preserve the survival
link |
of dopamine neurons in both the movement-related pathway
link |
and the motivation pathway.
link |
So perhaps you need that incentive
link |
in order to ingest yerba mate tea.
link |
Perhaps you don't need any incentive.
link |
In my case, I don't need any incentive.
link |
I already enjoy yerba mate as my principal source of caffeine
link |
although I do drink coffee as well.
link |
But if one were going to consume caffeine,
link |
you might consider consuming that caffeine
link |
in the form of yerba mate,
link |
both for sake of upregulating dopamine receptors
link |
and getting more of a dopamine increase.
link |
And of course, for the stimulant properties of caffeine,
link |
if that's what you're seeking.
link |
And in addition to that,
link |
because yerba mate does appear to have
link |
some sort of neuroprotective
link |
and in particular dopamine neuron protective properties.
link |
Now that doesn't mean that caffeine is always beneficial.
link |
And actually there's one instance related to dopamine
link |
where caffeine can be particularly dangerous.
link |
This relates to MDMA, so-called ecstasy.
link |
MDMA is under investigation in various clinical trials
link |
for its potential to treat trauma and depression.
link |
It's also of course, a drug that's used recreationally.
link |
It's still illegal, at least in the United States.
link |
So whether or not MDMA is neurotoxic
link |
has been very controversial.
link |
Early on, it was thought that it is neurotoxic,
link |
that it can destroy serotonergic neurons.
link |
There were other papers that came out
link |
which argued that's not the case.
link |
And that's in particular because one of the early papers
link |
published in Science Magazine
link |
claiming that MDMA was neurotoxic,
link |
that paper was retracted.
link |
It turns out that that study had mistakenly used
link |
methamphetamine instead,
link |
and methamphetamine is known to be neurotoxic.
link |
I think most of the data point to the idea
link |
that MDMA might not be neurotoxic, but in any case,
link |
caffeine has been shown to increase
link |
the toxicity of MDMA receptors.
link |
And you might say, well, how could that be?
link |
Well, now you understand why that could be.
link |
Caffeine increases the density and efficacy
link |
of these dopamine receptors, the D2 and D3 receptors.
link |
MDMA is a potent drug for increasing concentrations
link |
of dopamine as well as serotonin and other neuromodulators.
link |
And it appears that caffeine ingestion
link |
by upregulating these receptors
link |
can lead to more toxicity of MDMA.
link |
So caffeine can be a beneficial substance in one context
link |
and actually can be a detrimental
link |
if not dangerous substance in another context.
link |
Two substances that greatly increase dopamine,
link |
namely amphetamine and cocaine,
link |
can cause long-term problems with the dopaminergic pathways.
link |
And this is largely based on a study
link |
that was published some years ago, 2003,
link |
but still holds a lot of merit.
link |
This is a paper published in
link |
Proscenes in the National Academy of Sciences,
link |
a very high tier stringent journal.
link |
First author is Kolb, K-O-L-B.
link |
And the title of the paper pretty much tells the story.
link |
Amphetamine or cocaine limits the ability
link |
of later experience to promote structural plasticity
link |
in the neocortex and nucleus accumbens.
link |
Neocortex is the outer shell of the brain, more or less,
link |
and the nucleus accumbens is part
link |
of that mesolimbic dopamine pathway
link |
for motivation, drive, and reinforcement.
link |
Neuroplasticity, of course,
link |
is the brain's ability to change
link |
in response to experience.
link |
And neuroplasticity is the basis of learning
link |
and memory and essentially remodeling
link |
of our neural circuitry in positive ways of all kinds.
link |
And this study was really one of the first to show
link |
that ingesting amphetamine and cocaine
link |
because of the high peak in dopamine that it creates
link |
and the low dopamine state,
link |
the baseline drop that it creates afterwards,
link |
limits plasticity and learning subsequent
link |
to taking amphetamine and cocaine.
link |
It was, at least in this study,
link |
shown to be a long-lasting effect.
link |
I doubt it's a permanent effect,
link |
but this should serve as a serious cautionary note
link |
that amphetamine and cocaine not only can cause a drop
link |
in baseline dopamine,
link |
but can actually put the brain into a state
link |
in which it cannot learn and modify itself to get better,
link |
at least for some period of time.
link |
In a previous episode on ADHD,
link |
I talked about the widespread use of drugs
link |
like Adderall, Ritalin, modafinil, and armodafinil,
link |
all of which lead to very large increases in dopamine
link |
and for people with ADHD can really improve their symptoms.
link |
But of course, there's a lot of non-prescription,
link |
non-clinical use of those compounds as well.
link |
And it stands to reason that the use of those substances
link |
to increase dopamine could very well provide
link |
the same sort of blockade of neuroplasticity
link |
that cocaine and amphetamine do,
link |
because when you look at the amount of dopamine increase
link |
that's triggered by those compounds, it's really comparable.
link |
So again, a cautionary note against spiking one's dopamine
link |
too much on a regular basis,
link |
unless there's a valid clinical need for doing that.
link |
So we've been focusing a lot for the last few minutes
link |
on the kind of darker side of dopamine
link |
and how getting big peaks in dopamine can be detrimental.
link |
But I want to acknowledge the truth,
link |
which is that dopamine feels great.
link |
Being in pursuit and motivated and craving things
link |
feels wonderful, and I don't want to demonize dopamine.
link |
What I'm trying to do today is to illustrate
link |
how dopamine works in your brain so that you can continue
link |
to engage in dopamine evoking activities.
link |
And certainly there is a place for ingesting things
link |
that can increase dopamine provided that they are safe
link |
for us in the short and long-term.
link |
There are activities that we can do that will give us
link |
healthy sustained increases in dopamine, both the peaks
link |
when they happen and to maintain or even increase
link |
our baseline levels of dopamine.
link |
So how do we do that?
link |
What are some of these activities?
link |
Well, in recent years, there's been a trend
link |
toward more people doing so-called cold exposure.
link |
In part, this was popularized by Wim Hof,
link |
the so-called Iceman, getting into cold showers,
link |
taking ice baths, exposing oneself to cold water
link |
of various kinds can in fact increase our levels
link |
of dopamine, as well as the neuromodulator,
link |
This is not a new phenomenon.
link |
In the 1920s, a guy by the name of Vincent Priznitz
link |
was one of the first people to popularize
link |
and formalize cold water therapies.
link |
He was an advocate of cold water exposure
link |
in order to boost the immune system
link |
and increase feelings of wellbeing.
link |
And actually this practice dates back long before
link |
Vincent's popularized it.
link |
And Wim Hof is the more recent iteration of this.
link |
First of all, some of the safety parameters.
link |
Let's establish those first.
link |
Getting into very, very cold water, 30 degree Fahrenheit
link |
or even low 40 degree Fahrenheit can put somebody
link |
into a state of cold water shock.
link |
I mean, people can die doing that.
link |
So obviously you want to approach this with some caution,
link |
but for most people getting into 60 degree water
link |
or 50 degree water, or if you're acclimated
link |
and comfortable with it, you know,
link |
40 degree water or 45 degree water
link |
can have tremendously beneficial results
link |
on your neuromodulator systems, including dopamine.
link |
What temperature of water you can tolerate will depend
link |
on how cold water adapted you are and how familiar you are
link |
with the experience of getting into cold water.
link |
And when I say comfortable with, I should mention,
link |
there is never a case in which getting into cold water
link |
does not evoke a release of epinephrine.
link |
So the quickening of the breath, the widening of the eyes,
link |
the feeling as if you can't catch your breath
link |
and even some physical pain at the level of the skin,
link |
that happens almost every time or every time
link |
that you get into cold water,
link |
even if you're cold water adapted.
link |
What almost everybody knows and understands is that
link |
that wall, as I like to refer to it, is coming.
link |
That's always the first experience
link |
of getting into cold water.
link |
There's no real way around that.
link |
Now, the study that I mentioned earlier,
link |
human physiological responses to immersion
link |
into water of different temperatures,
link |
really interesting study that was done
link |
and published in the University of, excuse me,
link |
the European Journal of Applied Physiology.
link |
I can provide a link to that study in the show caption.
link |
It's a really interesting study.
link |
They looked at people getting exposed to water
link |
that was warm, moderately cold or very cold.
link |
It was 32 degrees Celsius, 20 degrees Celsius
link |
or 14 degrees Celsius.
link |
You can just put those online and do the conversion
link |
or you can do the conversion to Fahrenheit if you like.
link |
But in any case, what they looked at were the concentrations
link |
of things like epinephrine and dopamine and so on.
link |
And what they found was really interesting.
link |
First of all, upon getting into cold water,
link |
the changes in adrenaline and noradrenaline,
link |
epinephrine and norepinephrine were immediate and fast
link |
and these were huge increases.
link |
So that's the getting into the cold water
link |
that everybody experiences,
link |
these huge increases in adrenaline.
link |
But then what was interesting is they observed
link |
that dopamine levels started to rise somewhat slowly
link |
and then continue to rise and reach levels
link |
as high as 2.5 times above baseline.
link |
That's a remarkably high increase.
link |
Remember, if we go back to our examples of chocolate, sex,
link |
a doubling above baseline, nicotine,
link |
2.5 times above baseline, cocaine,
link |
the increase in dopamine from a cold water exposure
link |
of this kind was comparable to what one sees from cocaine,
link |
except in this case, it wasn't a rise and crash.
link |
It was actually a sustained rise in dopamine
link |
that took a very long time,
link |
up to three hours to come back down to baseline,
link |
which is really remarkable.
link |
And I think this explains some of the positive mental
link |
and physical effects that people report subjectively
link |
after doing cold water exposure.
link |
One question that many of you are probably asking is
link |
just how cold should the water be?
link |
Well, you could mimic what was done in this study
link |
and do 14 degrees Celsius,
link |
but for some people that won't be cold enough
link |
or some people that will be too cold,
link |
they did look at the release of stress hormones
link |
like cortisol in addition to the release
link |
of things like epinephrine and adrenaline.
link |
And it's interesting that they noted that in all cases,
link |
but especially at that coldest temperature,
link |
there was an increase in cortisol,
link |
but that it was transient that eventually people's cortisol,
link |
the stress hormone subsided a bit.
link |
There are basically two different approaches
link |
to remaining in the cold when it's uncomfortable.
link |
One is to try and relax yourself,
link |
to try and practice slow breathing,
link |
to try and dilate your gaze.
link |
I've talked about this before in previous podcasts,
link |
to go into panoramic vision,
link |
to essentially try and calm yourself
link |
so that it's not as stressful in the cold.
link |
Other people, however,
link |
take the approach of trying to ramp up their level
link |
of internal autonomic arousal,
link |
meaning to get really energized
link |
and kind of lean into the friction of the cold
link |
and they find that easier.
link |
Other people distract themselves.
link |
They recite the alphabet or they do something,
link |
anything to try and distract themselves
link |
from the discomfort.
link |
To be totally honest,
link |
it does not matter for sake of dopamine release
link |
because the dopamine release is triggered
link |
and then continues even after you get out of the cold water.
link |
Now, in this study, it was long exposure to cold water.
link |
That's a long period of time.
link |
And I do warn you against getting into cold water
link |
that's so cold that it will make your temperature drop
link |
and make you hyperthermic for an hour.
link |
That actually could be dangerous for a lot of people.
link |
You might have a hard time reheating
link |
and hypothermia is not a good thing.
link |
They had people monitoring subjects in these studies
link |
and paying attention to their core body temperature.
link |
They were able to reheat them afterwards.
link |
It's well-established now that getting into cold water,
link |
whether or not it's a shower, an ice bath,
link |
circulating cold water, a stream, et cetera,
link |
that can evoke the norepinephrine release immediately
link |
and the long arc of that dopamine release.
link |
Why would that be good?
link |
Up until now, I've basically said
link |
getting increases in dopamine
link |
are detrimental to your baseline.
link |
Well, this does appear to raise the baseline of dopamine
link |
for substantial periods of time.
link |
And most people report feeling a heightened level
link |
of calm and focus after getting out of cold water.
link |
So cold water exposure turns out to be
link |
a very potent stimulus for shifting the entire milieu,
link |
the entire environment of our brain and body
link |
and allowing many people to feel much, much better
link |
for a substantial period of time
link |
after getting out of the ice bath
link |
or cold water of any kind than they did before.
link |
Now you might ask how often to do this.
link |
Some people do this every day.
link |
It can be very stimulating.
link |
So typically doing it early in the day,
link |
it's going to be better.
link |
I don't necessarily recommend doing it right before sleep,
link |
but some people do it in the afternoon.
link |
And some people will indeed do that seven days a week,
link |
other people, three days a week,
link |
other people every once in a while.
link |
What I can say is once you become cold water adapted,
link |
once it no longer has the same impact of novelty
link |
and feeling a bit like a,
link |
I don't want to say a shock to your system
link |
because you don't want to go into cold water shock,
link |
but once it is comfortable for you,
link |
then it will no longer evoke this release.
link |
There really does seem to be something in the pathway
link |
from cold water exposure through the norepinephrine pathway
link |
and into the mesolimic brainstem
link |
that causes this release in dopamine.
link |
But nonetheless, it's a basically zero cost.
link |
I mean, you need access to water of some sort,
link |
cold water, shower, et cetera,
link |
but basically zero cost way of triggering
link |
a long lasting increase in dopamine
link |
without ingesting anything, no pharmacology whatsoever.
link |
Please again, approach it with safety and caution in mind,
link |
but it is a very potent stimulus.
link |
Again, 250% of a rise in baseline,
link |
two and a half times rise in baseline rivals that of cocaine,
link |
which is really remarkable.
link |
Now I'd like to talk about the positive aspects of rewards
link |
and the negative aspects of rewards for our behavior.
link |
And from that, I will suggest a protocol
link |
by which you can achieve a better relationship
link |
to your activities and to your dopamine system.
link |
In fact, it will help tune up your dopamine system
link |
for discipline, hard work, and motivation.
link |
Hard work is hard.
link |
Generally, most people don't like working hard.
link |
but most people work hard in order to achieve some end goal.
link |
End goals are terrific and rewards are terrific,
link |
whether or not they are monetary, social, or any kind.
link |
However, because of the way that dopamine
link |
relates to our perception of time,
link |
working hard at something
link |
for sake of a reward that comes afterward
link |
can make the hard work much more challenging
link |
and make us much less likely to lean into hard work
link |
Let me give you a couple examples
link |
by way of data and experiments.
link |
There's a classic experiment done actually at Stanford
link |
many years ago in which children in nursery school
link |
and kindergarten drew pictures.
link |
And they drew pictures because they liked to draw.
link |
The researchers took kids that liked to draw
link |
and they started giving them a reward for drawing.
link |
The reward generally was a gold star or some thing
link |
that a young child would find rewarding.
link |
Then they stopped giving them the gold star.
link |
And what they found is the children had
link |
a much lower tendency to draw on their own, no reward.
link |
Now, remember this was an activity
link |
that prior to receiving a reward,
link |
the children intrinsically enjoyed and selected to do.
link |
No one was telling them to draw.
link |
What this relates to is so-called intrinsic
link |
versus extrinsic reinforcement.
link |
When we receive rewards,
link |
even if we give ourselves rewards for something,
link |
we tend to associate less pleasure
link |
with the actual activity itself that evoked the reward.
link |
Now that might seem counterintuitive,
link |
but that's just the way
link |
that these dopaminergic circuits work.
link |
And now understanding these peaks and baselines
link |
and dopamine, which I won't review again,
link |
this should make sense.
link |
If you get a peak in dopamine from a reward,
link |
it's going to lower your baseline.
link |
And the cognitive interpretation is that you didn't really
link |
do the activity because you enjoyed the activity.
link |
You did it for the reward.
link |
Now, this doesn't mean all rewards of all kinds are bad,
link |
but it's also important to understand
link |
that dopamine controls our perception of time.
link |
When and how much dopamine we experience is the way
link |
that we carve up what we call our experience of time.
link |
When we engage in an activity,
link |
let's say school or hard work of any kind or exercise,
link |
because of the reward we are going to give ourselves
link |
or receive at the end, the trophy, the Sunday, the meal,
link |
whatever it happens to be,
link |
we actually are extending the time bin
link |
over which we are analyzing or perceiving that experience.
link |
And because the reward comes at the end,
link |
we start to dissociate the neural circuits
link |
for dopamine and reward that would have normally been active
link |
during the activity.
link |
And because it all arrives at the end over time,
link |
we have the experience of less and less pleasure
link |
from that particular activity while we're doing it.
link |
Now, this is the antithesis of growth mindset.
link |
My colleague at Stanford, Carol Dweck, as many of you know,
link |
has come up with this incredible theory and principle,
link |
and it actually goes beyond theory and principle
link |
called growth mindset,
link |
which is this striving to be better,
link |
to be in this mindset of I'm not there yet,
link |
but striving itself is the end goal.
link |
And that of course delivers you to tremendous performance
link |
has been observed over and over and over again,
link |
that people that have growth mindset,
link |
kids that have growth mindset end up performing very well
link |
because they're focused on the effort itself.
link |
And all of us can cultivate growth mindset.
link |
The neural mechanism of cultivating growth mindset
link |
involves learning to access the rewards
link |
from effort and doing, and that's hard to do
link |
because you have to engage this prefrontal component
link |
of the mesolimbic circuit.
link |
You have to tell yourself, okay, this effort is great.
link |
This effort is pleasureful,
link |
even though you might actually be in a state of physical
link |
pain from the exercise, or I can recall this from college,
link |
just feeling like I wanted to get up from my desk,
link |
but forcing myself to study,
link |
forcing myself and forcing myself.
link |
What you find over time is that you can start to associate
link |
a dopamine release.
link |
You can evoke dopamine release from the friction
link |
and the challenge that you happen to be in.
link |
You completely eliminate the ability to generate
link |
those circuits and the rewarding process
link |
of being able to reward friction while in effort,
link |
if you are focused only on the goal that comes at the end,
link |
because of the way that dopamine marks time.
link |
So if you say, oh, I'm going to do this very hard thing
link |
and I'm going to push and push and push and push
link |
for that end goal that comes later,
link |
not only do you enjoy the process of what you're doing less,
link |
you actually make it more painful
link |
while you're engaging in it.
link |
You make yourself less efficient at it
link |
because if you were able to access dopamine while in effort,
link |
dopamine has all these incredible properties of increasing
link |
the amount of energy in our body and in our mind,
link |
our ability to focus by way of dopamine's conversion
link |
into epinephrine, but also you are undermining your ability
link |
to lean back into that activity the next time.
link |
The next time you need twice as much coffee
link |
and three times as much loud music
link |
and four times as much energy drink
link |
and the social connection just to get out the door
link |
in order to do the run or to study.
link |
So what's more beneficial, in fact,
link |
can serve as a tremendous amplifier
link |
on all endeavors that you engage in,
link |
especially hard endeavors is to A,
link |
not start layering in other sources of dopamine
link |
in order to get to the starting line,
link |
not layering in other sources of dopamine
link |
in order to be able to continue,
link |
but rather to subjectively start to attach the feeling
link |
of friction and effort to an internally generated
link |
reward system and this is not meant to be vague.
link |
This is a system that exists in your mind
link |
that exists in the minds of humans
link |
for hundreds of thousands of years
link |
by which you're not just pursuing the things
link |
that are innately pleasureful, food, sex, warmth,
link |
water when you're thirsty,
link |
but the beauty of this mesolimbic reward pathway
link |
that I talked about earlier
link |
is that it includes the forebrain.
link |
So you can tell yourself the effort part is the good part.
link |
I know it's painful.
link |
I know this doesn't feel good, but I'm focused on this.
link |
I'm going to start to access the reward.
link |
You will find the rewards,
link |
meaning the dopamine release inside of effort.
link |
If you repeat this over and over again,
link |
and what's beautiful about it is that it starts
link |
to become reflexive for all types of effort.
link |
When we focus only on the trophy, only on the grade,
link |
only on the win as the reward,
link |
you undermine that entire process.
link |
So how do you do this?
link |
You do this in those moments of the most intense friction,
link |
you tell yourself this is very painful
link |
and because it's painful,
link |
it will evoke an increase in dopamine release later,
link |
meaning it will increase my baseline in dopamine.
link |
But you also have to tell yourself that in that moment,
link |
you are doing it by choice
link |
and you're doing it because you love it.
link |
And I know that sounds like lying to yourself.
link |
And in some ways it is lying to yourself,
link |
but it's lying to yourself in the context of a truth,
link |
which is that you want it to feel better.
link |
You want it to feel even pleasureful.
link |
Now, this is very far and away different
link |
from thinking about the reward that comes at the end,
link |
the hot fudge Sunday after you cross the finish line,
link |
and you can replace hot fudge Sunday
link |
with whatever reward happens to be appealing to you.
link |
We revere people who are capable
link |
of doing what I'm describing.
link |
David Goggins comes to mind as a really good example.
link |
Many of you are probably familiar with David Goggins,
link |
who essentially has made a post-military career
link |
out of explaining and sharing his process
link |
of turning the effort into the reward.
link |
There are many other examples of this too, of course.
link |
Throughout evolutionary history,
link |
there's no question that we revered people
link |
who were willing to go out and forage and hunt and gather
link |
and caretake in ways that other members of our species
link |
probably found exhausting and probably would have preferred
link |
to just put their feet up or soak them in a cool stream
link |
rather than continue to forage.
link |
The ability to access this pleasure from effort
link |
aspect of our dopaminergic circuitry is without question
link |
the most powerful aspect of dopamine
link |
and our biology of dopamine.
link |
And the beautiful thing is it's accessible to all of us,
link |
but just to highlight the things that can interfere with
link |
and prevent you from getting dopamine release
link |
from effort itself.
link |
Don't spike dopamine prior to engaging in effort
link |
and don't spike dopamine after engaging in effort.
link |
Learn to spike your dopamine from effort itself.
link |
One straightforward example of learning to attach dopamine
link |
to effort and strain as opposed to a process or a reward
link |
that naturally evokes dopamine release
link |
is so-called intermittent fasting.
link |
I know this is very popular nowadays.
link |
Some people like to do intermittent fasting,
link |
some people don't.
link |
Some people have a 12 hour feeding window every 24 hours.
link |
Some people do long fasts of two to three days even.
link |
I personally don't monitor a feeding window
link |
with a lot of precision.
link |
I tend to skip one meal a day, either breakfast or lunch,
link |
and then I eat the other two meals of the day,
link |
depending on which meal I skip.
link |
So it's either breakfast, lunch,
link |
and maybe a little something in the evening,
link |
or I'll skip breakfast and do lunch and dinner and so on.
link |
Many people are now eating this way in part
link |
because many people find it easier to not eat at all
link |
than to eat a smaller portion of some food.
link |
And that has everything to do
link |
with the dopamine reward evoking properties of food.
link |
When we ingest food or when we are about to ingest food,
link |
our dopamine levels go up.
link |
And typically when we ingest food,
link |
if it evokes some dopamine release,
link |
then we tend to want even more food.
link |
Remember dopamine's main role
link |
is one of motivation and seeking.
link |
And what dopamine always wants more of is more dopamine,
link |
more activity or thing that evokes more dopamine release.
link |
Well, let's just look at fasting
link |
from the perspective of dopamine schedules
link |
and dopamine release and peaks and baselines.
link |
Typically when we eat, we get dopamine release,
link |
especially when we eat after being very hungry.
link |
If you've ever gone camping or you're very, very hungry,
link |
the food tastes that much better.
link |
And that's actually because of the way
link |
that deprivation states increase
link |
the way that dopaminergic circuits work.
link |
Our perception of dopamine is heightened
link |
when the receptors for dopamine
link |
have not seen much dopamine lately.
link |
They haven't bound much dopamine.
link |
So when you fast, fast, fast, fast, fast,
link |
and then you finally eat, it evokes more dopamine release.
link |
So this is the big reward that comes at the end.
link |
Even bigger because you deprived yourself.
link |
This is true for all rewarding behaviors
link |
and activities by the way.
link |
The longer you restrict yourself from that activity,
link |
the greater the dopamine experience
link |
when the dopamine is finally released
link |
because of an upregulation of the receptors for dopamine.
link |
But I just spent five minutes or more
link |
telling you that you should avoid too much reward at the end
link |
and you should actually focus on the dopamine
link |
that you can consciously evoke
link |
from the deprivation strain and effort.
link |
And in fact, this is what happens for many people
link |
that start doing fasting and take a liking to it.
link |
Many people say that their state of mind
link |
when they fast is clear,
link |
that they actually start to enjoy the period of fasting.
link |
In fact, some people start pushing out their eating window
link |
or skipping entire days of eating more and more
link |
in order to get deeper into that state of mind
link |
where surely it's not just dopamine,
link |
but dopamine is released.
link |
They will track their clock.
link |
Oh, I've been fasting 12 hours, 16 hours, et cetera.
link |
They are starting to attach dopamine release
link |
or create dopamine release from the deprivation,
link |
not from the food reward itself.
link |
And this, I think, makes it an interesting practice
link |
and one that certainly has been practiced for centuries
link |
in different cultures and different religions
link |
of deliberately restricting food,
link |
not just to increase the rewarding properties of food itself
link |
but also to increase the rewarding properties
link |
And I should emphasize that a lot of the subjective aspects
link |
of the knowledge of the benefits of fasting
link |
serve as reinforcing dopamine amplifying aspects to fasting.
link |
Meaning if somebody does intermittent fasting
link |
and they are deep into their fast
link |
and they're telling themselves,
link |
oh, my blood lipid profiles are probably improving
link |
and my glucose management is probably improving,
link |
my insulin sensitivity is going up
link |
and I'm going to live longer,
link |
all these things that have some basis from animal studies
link |
and some basis or not from human studies,
link |
it's all kind of still in emerging literature,
link |
but it does seem to be pointing in that direction
link |
that fasting can encourage things like autophagy,
link |
the engulfment of dead cells and things of that sort.
link |
Well, as people tell themselves these things,
link |
they are enhancing the rewarding properties
link |
of the behavior of fasting.
link |
And so this is a salient example
link |
of where knowledge of knowledge can actually help us
link |
change these deep primitive circuits related to dopamine.
link |
And this illustrates how the forebrain,
link |
which carries knowledge and carries interpretation
link |
and rational thought,
link |
can be used to shape the very circuits
link |
that are involved in generating reward
link |
for what would otherwise just be kind of
link |
primitive behaviors, hardwired behaviors.
link |
And that's the beauty of these dopamine circuits.
link |
That's the beauty of dopamine.
link |
It's not just attached to the more primitive behaviors
link |
of food, sex, heat, et cetera.
link |
It's also attached to the things that we decide
link |
are good for us and are important for us.
link |
So telling yourself that exercise or fasting
link |
or studying or listening better
link |
or any kind of behavior is good for you
link |
will actually reinforce the extent to which
link |
it is good for you at a chemical level.
link |
And a somewhat eerie example of what I just mentioned
link |
was a study that was published last year
link |
in the journal Neuron, Cell Press Journal,
link |
excellent journal, that showed that hearing something
link |
that reinforces one's prior beliefs
link |
actually can evoke dopamine release.
link |
So the dopamine pathway is so vulnerable
link |
to subjective interpretation
link |
that it actually makes it such that when we see something
link |
or hear something that validates a belief
link |
that we already have,
link |
that itself can increase dopamine release.
link |
Along the lines of how dopamine and dopamine schedules
link |
and our perception of things can shape the way
link |
that we experience things as pleasureful or not,
link |
there are beautiful studies mainly looking at sugar appetite
link |
and our sense of pleasure from sweet things,
link |
but also for savory foods, et cetera.
link |
And essentially the results that come out of this
link |
are the following.
link |
If you ingest something that you like,
link |
it tastes good to you,
link |
but then you ingest something that's even sweeter
link |
or even more savory,
link |
and then you go back to the food that you ate previously,
link |
well, you don't like it as much.
link |
And that might seem like a duh, obviously,
link |
but that shift in perception can be blocked
link |
by blocking the shift in dopamine.
link |
And so this really speaks to these peaks and valleys
link |
in dopamine that I mentioned before
link |
and how your experience of anything
link |
is going to depend on your prior experience
link |
of other things that evoke dopamine.
link |
Big dopamine release makes it more challenging
link |
to experience more big dopamine release.
link |
So dopamine is one of those things
link |
that you don't want too high or too low for too long.
link |
It's all about staying in that dynamic range,
link |
and that's going to be different for everybody.
link |
So for the very savory foods that are now everywhere,
link |
those highly savory foods are,
link |
I think they call them highly palatable foods,
link |
are making more bland foods,
link |
whole foods, meaning foods that aren't processed,
link |
it's making those taste less good, at least for a while.
link |
And all it takes is a short period of time,
link |
even just days, two days or so,
link |
of not consuming any highly palatable foods.
link |
And suddenly, broccoli with just a little bit of seasoning
link |
tastes delicious to you, all right?
link |
So again, this just speaks to the fact
link |
that dopamine is this universal currency.
link |
It establishes value based on not just
link |
what you're experiencing in the moment,
link |
but what you experienced in the days and minutes before.
link |
Now that you understand how your previous level of dopamine
link |
relates to your current level of dopamine
link |
and how your current level of dopamine
link |
will influence your future level of dopamine,
link |
it should become obvious why things like pornography,
link |
not just the accessibility of pornography,
link |
but the intensity of pornography can negatively shape
link |
real world romantic and sexual interactions.
link |
This is a serious concern.
link |
The discussion is happening now.
link |
The underlying neurobiological mechanisms
link |
you now understand, and this isn't to pass judgment
link |
on whether or not people like or don't like pornography.
link |
That's an ethical discussion,
link |
and it's a moral discussion that has to be decided
link |
for each individual by virtue of age, et cetera.
link |
But again, any activity that evokes a lot of dopamine release
link |
will make it harder to achieve the same level
link |
and certainly the greater level of dopamine
link |
through a subsequent interaction.
link |
So yes, indeed, many people are addicted to pornography
link |
and yes, indeed, many people who regularly indulge
link |
in pornography experience challenges
link |
in real world romantic interactions.
link |
You now understand the mechanisms behind what I'm telling you.
link |
Now, there are circumstances in which increasing levels
link |
of dopamine is desirable and advantageous
link |
and clinically helpful.
link |
Good example of this would be the drug Wellbutrin,
link |
also called buprenorphine,
link |
which increases dopamine and norepinephrine.
link |
Wellbutrin and buprenorphine was developed
link |
as an alternative treatment for depression
link |
because some people who take the so-called SSRI,
link |
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors,
link |
which as the name suggests, increase serotonin,
link |
suffer from serotonin-related side effects,
link |
things like decreased appetite, decreased libido,
link |
or sometimes increased appetite,
link |
or other side effects that they don't want.
link |
And while butrin seems to avoid the sexual side effects,
link |
it can blunt appetite and these sorts of things
link |
because of the increase in norepinephrine and dopamine,
link |
increases levels of motivation and craving,
link |
but also can create a state of elevated alertness
link |
that can sometimes get in the way of healthy eating
link |
and things of that sort.
link |
So one has to work with their clinician,
link |
as a psychiatrist, it is a prescription drug,
link |
in order to find the dosage of Wellbutrin
link |
that's correct for them.
link |
In addition, things like Wellbutrin and buprenorphine
link |
can increase anxiety because of the way
link |
that dopamine and norepinephrine are stimulating
link |
and tend to place people into heightened levels
link |
Nonetheless, many people have gained terrific relief
link |
from depression from Wellbutrin, buprenorphine,
link |
and many of those same people had serious trouble
link |
with some of the SSRIs.
link |
So it does seem to be a very useful drug
link |
in certain contexts, both for depression
link |
and for the treatment of smoking,
link |
for people desiring to quit smoking.
link |
And of course, there are a lot of people out there
link |
who are seeking to increase their baseline levels
link |
of dopamine without taking
link |
any prescription pharmaceutical compounds.
link |
And nowadays there exist a lot of supplements to do that.
link |
The two most common ones that are directly
link |
within the dopamine pathway are mucuna prurines,
link |
which is actually a velvety bean whose contents are L-DOPA.
link |
Believe it or not, the content of this bean
link |
is the precursor to dopamine.
link |
So mucuna prurines is sold over the counter,
link |
at least in the United States,
link |
and it literally is the precursor to dopamine.
link |
Meaning if you take it, you will experience
link |
very large increases in dopamine.
link |
Those increases are transient and very, very intense.
link |
And in fact, if you look at the constellation of effects
link |
of mucuna prurines, what you find is that
link |
they're pretty striking and they look a lot like,
link |
if not identical to, L-DOPA.
link |
The most obvious of those is in the context
link |
of Parkinson's disease.
link |
There are at least five studies that have shown
link |
that mucuna prurines can reduce the symptoms
link |
of Parkinson's disease, much in the same way
link |
that L-DOPA can reduce the symptoms of Parkinson's disease.
link |
And that shouldn't come as any surprise,
link |
given what I just told you,
link |
that mucuna prurines is essentially L-DOPA.
link |
It also can reduce a particular hormone called prolactin.
link |
Dopamine and prolactin tend to be
link |
in somewhat push-pull fashion.
link |
When dopamine is up, prolactin is down and vice versa.
link |
Prolactin is involved in milk let down in women.
link |
It's involved in setting the refractory period
link |
for sex after ejaculation in males.
link |
The reason mating can occur and then not occur
link |
after ejaculation is because of an increase in prolactin.
link |
Mucuna prurines is often used to blunt prolactin.
link |
And there are actually a couple of studies showing
link |
that it can indeed do that.
link |
Mucuna prurines has a number of other effects
link |
that lie in the sort of sex and reproduction pathway
link |
that are worth noting.
link |
Sperm concentration, sperm quality
link |
is actually greatly increased by mucuna prurines.
link |
These are kind of curious effects
link |
until you understand a little bit more
link |
about the biology of dopamine,
link |
which I'll mention in a moment.
link |
But there are several studies, four in fact,
link |
that describe how mucuna prurines can increase sperm count,
link |
sperm quality and sperm motility.
link |
So for those of you seeking to conceive children,
link |
mucuna prurines might be an interesting choice
link |
if you're interested in exploring non-prescription compounds.
link |
However, I should mention
link |
that anytime you consume a substance
link |
that increases dopamine by mimicking dopamine
link |
or acting as a direct precursor to dopamine,
link |
there's almost inevitably a crash
link |
or a reduction in the baseline in dopamine
link |
that we referred to previously.
link |
So many people who take mucuna prurines
link |
feel really elevated, really motivated, really alert,
link |
all the sorts of things that one would expect
link |
from a dopaminergic drug, which mucuna prurines is,
link |
and then they feel a low or a reduction in drive
link |
and excitement and enthusiasm after the drug wears off,
link |
just like they would with any other
link |
dopamine-increasing compound.
link |
For that reason, many people have turned
link |
to the use of L-tyrosine.
link |
L-tyrosine is an amino acid precursor to L-DOPA,
link |
so it lies further up the dopamine synthesis pathway.
link |
And nowadays, it's very common
link |
because L-tyrosine is sold over the counter
link |
in the United States,
link |
that people will take L-tyrosine as a way
link |
to get more energized, alert, and focused.
link |
Indeed, there are data
link |
that L-tyrosine will accomplish that.
link |
L-tyrosine is typically taken in capsule form
link |
or powder form, anywhere from 500 to 750
link |
to 1,000 milligrams.
link |
It is a potent stimulus for increasing dopamine,
link |
and the timescale for increasing dopamine
link |
is about 30 to 45 minutes after ingestion,
link |
dopamine levels start to peak.
link |
The classic study that really nailed down the fact
link |
that tyrosine has this effect
link |
was published way back in 1983,
link |
Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism,
link |
that directly compared L-tyrosine supplementation
link |
with tryptophan ingestion on plasma dopamine and serotonin,
link |
tryptophan being a precursor to serotonin.
link |
And indeed, what they found
link |
is that ingestion of L-tyrosine can increase
link |
the amount of dopamine circulating in the blood
link |
and in the brain too, of course.
link |
The tyrosine ingestion induced dopamine increases
link |
within 45 minutes, and they were short lasting.
link |
After about 30 minutes, the effect had dissipated,
link |
meaning the levels of dopamine had dropped down to baseline.
link |
And even though they didn't look at levels
link |
of baseline dopamine past that time point,
link |
the expectation based on everything we know
link |
about dopamine biology is that it would then drop
link |
below baseline due to the depletion
link |
of the readily reservable pool of dopamine vesicles
link |
that we talked about way back
link |
at the beginning of this episode.
link |
The nice thing about this study
link |
is it does show specificity of effect
link |
because ingestion of tryptophan did not increase dopamine,
link |
instead it increased serotonin.
link |
So there's really specificity of these pathways
link |
that rule out any placebo type effects.
link |
I'm not suggesting that anybody, everybody
link |
increase their dopamine levels
link |
by way of tyrosine and macuna purines.
link |
For those of you that are seeking
link |
to increase your dopamine levels without prescription drugs,
link |
those are the most direct route to that.
link |
Of course, if you have a pre-existing
link |
dopaminergic condition, so schizophrenia
link |
or psychosis of any kind, bipolar, anxiety,
link |
things like macuna purines and L-tyrosine
link |
will not be good for you.
link |
And if you don't, you should just understand
link |
and expect that it's going to lead
link |
to an increase in dopamine.
link |
You'll certainly feel an elevated state.
link |
For some of you that might be agitating,
link |
for some of you that might be really pleasurable,
link |
and then you will feel a crash afterwards.
link |
How deep is that crash will really depend on your biology
link |
and where your dopamine baseline began.
link |
So I personally am not a fan of using things
link |
like macuna purines at all for myself,
link |
for the reasons I mentioned earlier,
link |
just too intense and too much of a crash.
link |
I do use L-tyrosine from time to time
link |
for enhancing focus and motivation,
link |
but I want to emphasize from time to time.
link |
So I might use it once a week, occasionally twice a week,
link |
but I've never been one to take L-tyrosine regularly
link |
in order to focus or train or do any kind of mental work.
link |
I just don't want to rely on any exogenous substance
link |
in order to get my dopamine circuits activated.
link |
And I don't want to experience the drop in dopamine
link |
that inevitably occurs some period of time afterwards.
link |
I should also mention things that can reduce your levels
link |
of baseline dopamine.
link |
One that is rarely discussed is melatonin.
link |
I have talked before on this podcast about melatonin,
link |
why I am not a fan of using melatonin
link |
in order to enhance sleep.
link |
It can help one get to sleep, but not stay asleep.
link |
Dr. Matt Walker, sleep expert
link |
from University of California, Berkeley.
link |
I think I don't want to put words in his mouth,
link |
but in our discussion about melatonin on this podcast,
link |
when Matt was a guest and in his book and on other podcasts,
link |
Matt has generally stated that the use of melatonin
link |
except for treatment of jet lag is generally not a good idea
link |
I think that melatonin is not often thought about
link |
as impacting the dopamine pathway,
link |
but there's at least one study published in 2001.
link |
First author is Nishiyama, just as it sounds,
link |
it's spelled just as it sounds,
link |
acute effects of melatonin administration
link |
on cardiovascular autonomic regulation in healthy men.
link |
So the study wasn't specifically about dopamine,
link |
but they looked at norepinephrine and dopamine levels
link |
and they found a statistically significant decrease
link |
in dopamine 60 minutes after melatonin administration.
link |
I've talked before about how viewing bright lights
link |
between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.
link |
has been shown in studies by Dr. Samir Hattar,
link |
David Berson, excellent circadian scientists
link |
to reduce levels of dopamine for several days
link |
after that light exposure.
link |
So dim the lights at night.
link |
If you can avoid exogenous melatonin,
link |
meaning if you don't have to take melatonin
link |
and you can find a better alternative,
link |
that would be a good idea
link |
if you want to maintain healthy levels of dopamine.
link |
Now, there is one compound that you are all familiar with
link |
and you've probably actually taken without realizing it
link |
that increases dopamine
link |
and that's something called PEA for phenylethylamine,
link |
technically beta phenylethylamine.
link |
And PEA is found in various foods.
link |
Chocolate just happens to be one enriched in PEA
link |
and can increase synaptic levels of dopamine.
link |
I personally take PEA from time to time
link |
as a focus and work aid
link |
in order to do intense bouts of work.
link |
Again, I don't do that too often.
link |
This might be once a week or once every two weeks.
link |
I might use it for training, but typically I don't.
link |
It's usually for mental work.
link |
And I will take 500 milligrams of PEA
link |
and I'll take 300 milligrams of alpha GPC.
link |
That's something that I personally do.
link |
That's what's right for me.
link |
It's within my margins of safety for my health.
link |
Again, you have to check with your doctor
link |
and decide what's right for you.
link |
It leads to a sharp but very transient increase in dopamine
link |
that lasts about 30 to 45 minutes.
link |
And at least in my system, I found to be much more regulated
link |
and kind of even than something like L-tyrosine
link |
and certainly much more regulated and even
link |
and lower dopamine release than something
link |
like mucuna prurines.
link |
One of the lesser talked about compounds that's out there
link |
but that's gaining popularity for increasing dopamine
link |
and as a so-called nootropic
link |
is something called Hooperzine A.
link |
Hooperzine A is a compound sold over the counter,
link |
at least in the United States,
link |
that can increase acetylcholine transmission,
link |
a different neuromodulator entirely.
link |
But what's interesting is that Hooperzine A somehow
link |
by way of interactions between the cholinergic system
link |
and the dopaminergic system leads to increases in dopamine
link |
in the medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus.
link |
Hippocampus, of course, being an area of the brain
link |
associated with learning and memory
link |
and prefrontal cortex being associated
link |
with the mesolimbic pathway decision-making focus, et cetera.
link |
And so I think the reason why we're seeing an increase
link |
in popularity of companies, including Hooperzine A
link |
and nootropic compounds is both
link |
for the cholinergic stimulating properties
link |
but also for stimulating dopamine release.
link |
I personally have never tried Hooperzine A.
link |
You can go to examine.com or put Hooperzine A into PubMed
link |
if you'd like to search around
link |
and see some of the science behind it.
link |
Again, I'm not recommending anyone take these things.
link |
In fact, I recommend against anyone just diving in
link |
and starting to consume things without gaining knowledge
link |
about how they function and whether or not
link |
they're right for you.
link |
But nonetheless, I think in the years to come,
link |
we are going to see a lot more of L-tyrosine,
link |
PEA, phenylethylamine, and Hooperzine
link |
as a way of tapping into the dopaminergic
link |
and cholinergic circuits,
link |
certainly along with things like alpha-GPC
link |
as non-prescription, short-lived,
link |
somewhat milder alternatives to things
link |
that really spike dopamine,
link |
things like Adderall, Ritalin,
link |
modafinil, R-modafinil, and similar.
link |
And I can't help but share with you one more result.
link |
It's not related to pharmacology.
link |
It's related to behaviors and social interactions.
link |
And that's the very interesting,
link |
and I would say important finding
link |
that was made a few years ago by my colleague, Rob Malenka,
link |
who's in our Department of Psychiatry at Stanford,
link |
showing that oxytocin and social connection
link |
is actually directly stimulating the dopamine pathway.
link |
I think for many years, all of us, including me,
link |
would hear and thought that oxytocin
link |
was in the serotonergic pathway,
link |
that it was about pair bonding,
link |
and it was about some of these neuromodulators
link |
that were more associated with things related
link |
to feeling good with what we have in the present moment.
link |
That's typically what we think of
link |
when we think of the opioid system
link |
or the serotonergic system.
link |
The dopamine system is really about seeking and reward.
link |
But in a paper published in 2017 in the journal Science,
link |
excellent journal, the paper's titled
link |
Gating of Social Reward by Oxytocin in the Ventral Tegmental Area.
link |
You now know what the ventral tegmental area,
link |
it's that area of the mesolimbic pathway.
link |
What this paper essentially showed is that oxytocin,
link |
social connection and pair bonding itself
link |
triggers dopamine release.
link |
And as everyone read this result,
link |
we all realized, ah, this makes total sense
link |
that for the evolution of our species,
link |
indeed for any species where social connections
link |
are important, it's also important
link |
to go seek social connections.
link |
And so while it's fun to think about pharmacology
link |
and underlying neural circuitry and cold water baths
link |
and all these different things related to dopamine schedules
link |
and reward mechanisms and attaching reward to effort
link |
and all the various things that we've talked about today
link |
in terms of science and tools and protocols,
link |
I'd be remiss if I didn't include
link |
description of this result and just emphasize
link |
that social connections, close social connections
link |
in particular that evoke oxytocin release.
link |
So those are romantic type, those are parent-child type,
link |
those are friendship related,
link |
and those can even be just friends at a distance related.
link |
It doesn't actually require skin contact
link |
to get oxytocin release,
link |
but oxytocin release is central
link |
to stimulating the dopamine pathways.
link |
So the take-home message there is quite simple.
link |
Engage in, pursue quality, healthy social interactions.
link |
I know I've covered a lot of material today.
link |
I've really tried hard to focus on things
link |
that lie directly within the dopamine pathway
link |
and circuitries, as well as things
link |
that directly stimulate those pathways and circuitries.
link |
What I haven't talked about are all the things
link |
that indirectly serve the dopamine pathways.
link |
And out there on the internet
link |
and indeed in the scientific literature,
link |
you will find, for instance,
link |
that things like maca root can increase dopamine,
link |
things like the gut microbiome can influence dopamine.
link |
And indeed they can,
link |
but they do that through indirect mechanisms
link |
by creating an environment, a milieu,
link |
in which dopamine and dopamine circuits can flourish.
link |
Maca is a good example of that.
link |
It will reduce cortisol
link |
and through some indirect pathways related to cortisol
link |
can increase dopamine,
link |
but it's not a direct increase in dopamine.
link |
And so as a consequence, it's rather subtle
link |
compared to the various compounds and behaviors
link |
that I talked about today.
link |
Indeed, cold water exposure leads to huge increases
link |
in dopamine, as we talked about before,
link |
and very sustained ones at that.
link |
I realize in giving you a lot of information
link |
about science and mechanism,
link |
all the way from psychological and biological
link |
to circuitry and synaptic transmission,
link |
volumetric transmission and so forth,
link |
that it might seem overwhelming.
link |
The most important things to understand
link |
are that these dopamine pathways
link |
really are under your control.
link |
And the locus of control resides in the fact
link |
that your previous levels of dopamine
link |
are influencing your levels of dopamine right now,
link |
and your current levels of dopamine
link |
and where you take them next
link |
will influence your dopamine levels
link |
in the next days and weeks to come.
link |
So I hope both with the mechanisms that you now have in hand
link |
plus some of the tools to tap into the dopaminergic system,
link |
both behavioral, pharmacologic,
link |
prescription and non-prescription, et cetera,
link |
that you'll feel that you have more control
link |
over your dopamine system
link |
and certainly that you have a better understanding
link |
of your dopamine system
link |
so that you can modulate and adjust your levels of dopamine
link |
in the ways that serve you best.
link |
If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast,
link |
please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
link |
That's a terrific way to support us.
link |
In addition, please leave us a comment
link |
or a suggestion for a guest you'd like us to interview
link |
or a topic you'd like us to cover.
link |
In addition, please subscribe to us on Apple and Spotify.
link |
And on Apple, you have the opportunity
link |
to leave us up to a five-star review
link |
and to leave us a comment there as well.
link |
Please also check out the sponsors mentioned
link |
at the beginning of today's podcast.
link |
That's a terrific way to support us.
link |
In addition, if you'd like to support the Huberman Lab
link |
and research at Stanford on stress,
link |
stress mitigation and human performance,
link |
you can do that by going to hubermanlab.stanford.edu
link |
slash giving, and there you can make
link |
a tax-deductible donation to the research in my laboratory.
link |
In addition, we have a Patreon.
link |
It's patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman,
link |
and there you can support the podcast
link |
at any level that you like.
link |
Today and on previous podcast episodes,
link |
we talked a bit about supplements.
link |
Supplements certainly aren't necessary,
link |
but many people find them beneficial
link |
for things like adjusting their levels of dopamine
link |
or for other purposes.
link |
If you're going to use supplements,
link |
it's very important that the supplements you use
link |
be of very high quality and that the quantity of ingredients
link |
that are on the label match what's actually in those bottles.
link |
For that reason, we've partnered with Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E,
link |
because Thorne has the highest levels of stringency
link |
with respect to quality and how much of each supplement
link |
they put in the products that they sell.
link |
If you'd like to see the supplements that I take,
link |
you can go to Thorne, thorne.com slash the letter U
link |
slash Huberman, and there you can see what I take.
link |
You can get 20% off any of those supplements,
link |
and if you navigate into the Thorne site
link |
through that portal, then you can get 20% off
link |
any of the supplements that Thorne makes.
link |
If you're not already following us
link |
on Instagram at Huberman Lab, please do so.
link |
There, I teach neuroscience tools and information.
link |
Oftentimes, it's tools and information
link |
that I don't cover on the podcast.
link |
We're also on Twitter, also at Huberman Lab.
link |
And last, but certainly not least,
link |
thank you for your interest in science.
link |
I'll see you next time.