Beyond Dopamine
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دکتر ترانه موذنی
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Dopamine is a vital neurochemical (a neurotransmitter in the brain and a hormone in the blood) in our bodies. It significantly affects attention levels, body movements, and mood regulation. Increased dopamine in specific areas of the brain, known as reward centers, creates feelings of euphoria (reward), pleasure, excitement, enthusiasm, and improved mood. Simply put, dopamine is one of the most important hormones responsible for good feelings in our bodies. That’s why dopaminergic drugs are widely abused.
There are many natural ways to increase the level of this beloved hormone in the body, some of which I will mention.
Do you feel like you need more joy in your life?
How can you rewire your brain to increase levels of serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins?
“Habits of a Happy Brain” shows how to train your brain to stimulate the release of happiness chemicals in the body. Studying how happiness hormones work helps you better understand the role of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin, and dopamine. You can create new pathways by changing the electrical flow in your brain that facilitate the secretion of these neurotransmitters.
What is happiness?
Psychology considers happiness an emotion that may increase or decrease under the influence of various factors. Philosophers distinguish the concept of happiness from joy and bliss. In any case, happiness can be considered a state of positive emotion, pleasure, and energy. When this mental state is combined with satisfaction with life in a sustainable path, it can be called happiness. Although happiness is a broader concept in which many factors are involved.
When you feel good, your brain is secreting dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, or endorphins. You want to repeat these wonderful feelings because your brain is designed to seek it, but you are not always successful in this search, and this is not unnatural. Until survival needs such as food, security, and social support are met, our brain does not secrete happiness chemicals. Thus, after the release of chemicals and just before your brain returns to a state of balance and thus prepare for the next survival opportunity, you experience a brief surge in their quantities. This is why your feelings sometimes fluctuate. This is the functional system of nature. Many people have habits that are not good for survival.
What if our brain considers behaviors that lead to survival as a reward?
When the period of the presence of happiness chemicals in the brain is over, you feel that there is a problem, so you quickly look for a reliable way to feel good again. Anything that has worked before creates a neural pathway in your brain. We all have such habits: from eating snacks to exercising; whether these habits are spending money or saving, having a party or being alone, arguing or being intimate, but none of these habits can always keep us happy. Because our brain does not function on such a basis. Each of the periods of the presence of happiness chemicals in the brain is rapidly destroyed in the body’s metabolism, and thus you will have to make more effort to keep these substances present.
Therefore, you may do a habit that leads to happiness so much that it eventually shows your unhappiness. How great it would be if you could activate happiness chemicals in a new way. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could feel good by doing something that is really good for the body? You are capable of doing this, provided that you know the structure of your brain. In this way, you will understand what activates the nature of happiness chemicals and how your brain replaces old habits with new ones.
How Do Chemicals Make Us Happy?
The feeling we call happiness is caused by the presence of four specific brain chemicals: dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin, and serotonin. These happiness chemicals are created when the brain sees something that is good for survival and then disappear to be ready to be activated again when something good crosses your path. Each of the happiness chemicals triggers a different feeling. Dopamine creates the pleasure of getting things that meet your needs, a feeling like: “I found it, I got it….”
Endorphins cause a kind of amnesia that pushes pain to the sidelines and is often called contentment. Oxytocin creates the feeling of being safe with others, which is now called intimacy. Serotonin creates a sense of pride from being respected. You may say that I do not define happiness in this way. The reason is that neurochemicals do their job without the need for words. But you can easily see how powerful these stimuli are in others. Research also shows these impulses in animals. You, too, until you recognize the chemistry of the mammal within you, may consider your inner verbal voice as the whole process of thought processing.
The Four Happiness Chemicals
- Dopamine: The pleasure of finding what you are looking for
- Endorphin: A kind of amnesia that relieves pain
- Oxytocin: The comfort of social connection
- Serotonin: The security of feeling socially important
How Do Happiness Chemicals Work?
Happiness chemicals are controlled by small structures in the brain that are common to all mammals: the hippocampus, amygdala, pituitary gland, hypothalamus, and other areas that are collectively called the limbic system are very effective in processing the amount of happiness.
7 Ways to Increase Dopamine
- Exercise: Physical activities, especially aerobic exercise, in addition to raising the level of dopamine, cause the release of endorphin hormone in the body and improve mood. Depending on the ability, a few minutes of aerobic exercise and regular sports activity can work like a miracle and also protect you from the risk of developing Parkinson’s.
- Get Enough Sleep: In the early morning, naturally, more dopamine is secreted in the body, and as time passes, the amount of dopamine decreases. Lack of sleep by disrupting this pattern reduces the availability of dopamine receptors in the brain, which leads to lethargy, decreased concentration, and lack of cognitive coordination. If you want to have a better and more lively experience during the day, be sure to include 8 hours of sleep at night in your schedule.
- Listen to Fine Music: Value your ears. Do not forget auditory nutrition. Listen to happy music with a balanced frequency. What faster and easier way is there to experience a sense of joy and vitality.
- Use Sunlight: Lack of light can lead to a decrease in the activity of neurotransmitters. Research shows that people who are more exposed to sunlight receive more dopamine in the pleasure and reward part of their brain. This is not unrelated to the incidence of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which is more prevalent due to lack of light in the fall and winter seasons.
- Minimize the Consumption of Saturated Fats: Saturated fats such as animal fats, high-fat dairy products, coconut oil, and palm oil, if consumed in large quantities, can disrupt dopamine receptors in the brain.
- Consume More Protein: Proteins are made up of smaller components called amino acids. There are 23 different types of amino acids, many of which the body can produce, but some of them are only received through nutrition. One of these amino acids, called tyrosine, plays an important role in the production of dopamine. Eating foods rich in protein not only increases your resistance to stress but also gives you a better feeling and a stronger spirit. This substance is naturally found in protein-containing foods such as red meat, turkey, eggs, soy, etc.
- Use Food Supplements: If your body is deficient in essential minerals and vitamins, it will have difficulty producing dopamine. Do not forget to consume a reasonable amount of vitamin D, magnesium, omega-3, etc.
Which are the Happiness Hormones?
Dopamine, serotonin, endorphin, and oxytocin are the four main hormones responsible for providing happiness in our bodies. In fact, they are neurotransmitters in the brain that are commonly called happiness hormones.
How Can You Consciously Increase the Amount of Happiness Hormones, Including Dopamine, in Your Body Without Using Antidepressants?
Dopamine is one of the happiness hormones that provides the necessary motivation to perform daily activities so that you can strive for your desires and needs, and when you reach your goal, you experience a deep sense of satisfaction and happiness.
A deficiency of dopamine in the brains of individuals causes their motivation to decrease and they constantly face procrastination and delaying tasks. In fact, people who have low levels of dopamine in their bodies are always looking for a shortcut to achieve their goals and desires and are satisfied with less than their abilities.
But people who secrete more happiness hormones in their bodies welcome challenges and try harder to achieve more rewards.
One way to continuously secrete dopamine is to turn your big goal into smaller goals. In this way, instead of ordering the secretion of dopamine only after achieving big goals, your brain considers it a victory after completing each small part of your goal and orders the secretion of dopamine.
But this solution only works if you have a small celebration for yourself each time after small successes. For example, get a gift for yourself. Usually, after reaching the main goal, a lot of dopamine is secreted and then this amount decreases sharply. For this purpose, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that before reaching the current goal, consider another goal for yourself so that in this way the secretion of dopamine in your body never stops.
Serotonin
Serotonin is secreted in the blood when you feel that you are an important and influential person. Cultural priorities and group work cause the secretion of serotonin. Feelings of loneliness and depression occur when the level of serotonin in the body decreases. For this reason, most antidepressants focus on increasing the amount of serotonin.
How to Increase Serotonin in the Body Without Medication?
- Try to have your midday coffee outdoors.
- Walk for 20 minutes daily in the fresh air.
- Ultraviolet rays of the sun increase the production of vitamin D and the secretion of serotonin.
It is difficult for the human brain to distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. Therefore, if you think about past achievements and successes, the brain begins to relive them and the secretion of dopamine and serotonin increases. For this reason, gratitude and thanksgiving for all the things that cause happiness increase dopamine and serotonin in the body.
Oxytocin
Oxytocin is another happiness hormone that creates intimacy, trust, and strengthens romantic and friendly relationships.
Oxytocin is secreted during the experience of orgasm in men and women. Oxytocin is also known as the cuddle hormone or the love hormone. This neurotransmitter is secreted during cuddling, hugging, and caressing. One of the easiest ways to increase oxytocin secretion is to hug each other instead of shaking hands. Researchers believe that hugging 8 people during the day keeps the level of oxytocin in the blood high.
The amount of oxytocin in the blood increases when receiving a gift or giving a gift.
Endorphin
Endorphin is secreted in response to severe pain and tension and reduces anxiety. The runner’s high or the new energy that is created in you after exercise is probably due to the increased secretion of endorphin.
Endorphin works like morphine, in other words, it has a calming effect.
Exercise and laughter are among the ways to increase endorphin secretion. Expecting laughter, for example, participating in a comedy program or watching a funny movie, although it may not cause laughter, increases the level of endorphin secretion. Studies have shown that dark chocolate and foods containing hot spices can cause the secretion of endorphin in the body. The scent of vanilla and lavender also increases the secretion of this happiness hormone in your body.