Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine. Today. We are going to talk all about dopamine and what drives you to do the things that you do. We're going to talk about
motivation and
desire and
craving. But also how dopamine relates
to satisfaction and our feelings of well-being.
Being
and of course, any discussion about dopamine has to include a discussion about the
potential for
dopamine induced
addiction indeed. Dopamine lies at the heart of addiction to all things. But
today we are mainly going to focus on how what
we do and how we do it and how we conceptualize those things
leads to changes in this.
Amazing molecule in our brain and bodies that we call dopamine. I'm going to teach you what dopamine is.
Is and what it is, not. There are a lot of myths about the molecule dopamine. We often hear about. So called dopamine hits. Today. We are going to dispel many common myths about dopamine
and we are going to talk about how dopamine actually
works. We're going to discuss the
biology of dopamine the psychology. We will discuss
some neural circuits
and a really exciting aspect of dopamine. Biology are so
called, dopamine schedules. In other words. We are going to discuss how things like food drugs. Caffeine pornography,
even some plant.
Compounds can change our Baseline levels of dopamine and in doing so they change how much
dopamine we are capable of experiencing from what could be very satisfying events or events that make us feel not so good because of things that we did or took prior. So I promise you it's going to be a vast discussion, but I will structure it for you and
you'll come away with a deep understanding
of really what drives you. You also Come Away with a lot
of tools, how to
Leverage
In so that you can sustain energy drive and motivation for the things that are important to you over long periods of time.
Before we dive into the meat of today's discussion. I'd like to share with you a fascinating result that really underscores. What
dopamine is capable of in our brains and bodies and
underscores. The fact that just through behaviors, no drugs. Nothing of that sort. Just through behaviors. We can achieve
terrifically, High increases in dopamine that are very long and sustained.
In ways that serve us,
this is a result that was published in the European Journal of
physiology. I'll go into it in more detail later. But essentially what it involved is
having human subjects get
into water of different temperatures. So it was
warm water.
Moderately, cool water and cold. Cold water, had them stay in that water for up to an hour and they measured by way of blood draw. Things like cortisol norepinephrine and dopamine.
What was fascinating? Is
that cold water exposure led to very rapid increases in norepinephrine and epinephrine, which is also just called adrenaline. It also led to increases in dopamine. And these increases in dopamine were very significant.
The kicked in around 10 or 15
minutes after submersion, into the cold water. And I should mention the head wasn't below. Water is just up to the
neck and the dopamine release continued to
Rise and rise and rise and
eventually reach, 250
percent above Baseline. Now, what was interesting is after subjects got out of this cold water that dopamine increase was sustained and I know nowadays. Many people are interested in using cold water therapy as a way to increase metabolism and fat loss,
but also to improve sense of well-being, improve
cognition improved Clarity of mind. There's something really
special about this very alert, but
calm state.
Of mind that seems to be the one that's optimal for pretty much everything except sleep, but for all aspects of work and for social engagement, and for sport, that highly alert but calm, State of Mind, really is The Sweet Spot that I believe most of us would like to achieve and this cold water exposure, done correctly,
really can help people achieve that State of
Mind through these increases in dopamine that last a very long time. So I will later detail the specifics of that study.
Entailed
in terms of how long the variations that different subjects experienced as well as
how to limit the amount of stress hormone
cortisol, that's released as a consequence of the cold water and we will also talk about compound supplements that people can take in order to increase their levels of dopamine. Should they choose
before we begin. I'd like to emphasize that this podcast
is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related.
The tools to the general public
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So let's
Talk about dopamine. Most people have heard of dopamine and we hear all the time now about dopamine hits. But actually, there's no such thing as a dopamine hit. And actually, the way that your
body uses dopamine is to have a baseline level of dopamine,
meaning an amount of dopamine that circulating in your brain and body all
the time. And that turns out to be important for how you feel, generally, whether or not you're in a good mood, motivated, Etc.
And you also can experience.
Speaks in dopamine above
Baseline. Now. This has a very specific name in the neurobiology literature so
called tonic and phasic
release of dopamine and I'll explain what that means in a couple of minutes. But if you
remember nothing else from this episode, please remember this, that when you experience something, or you crave,
something really desirable, really exciting to you very pleasurable.
What happens? Afterwards is your Baseline? Level of dopamine drops? Okay, so, these Peaks and dopamine, they influence, how much dopamine will generally be circulating afterward? And you might think, oh, a big peak and dopamine after that. I'm going to feel even better because I just had this great
event, not the case. What actually happens is that your Baseline level of dopamine drops and I will explain the precise mechanism for that.
Okay, in the Neuroscience literature,
we refer to this as
Hanukkah and phasic release of dopamine, tonic being the low-level Baseline, that's
always there. Circulating released into your brain all the time.
And then phasic, these Peaks
that ride above that Baseline and those two things interact. And this is really important. I'm going to teach
you the underlying neurobiology. But even if you have no background in biology, I promise to make it all clear. I'll explain the terms and what they mean, and I'm excited to teach you about dopamine because
mean has everything to
do with how you feel. Right. Now as you're listening to this, it has everything to do with. How you will feel an hour from now has everything to do with your level of motivation, and your level of desire, and your
willingness to push through
effort. If
ever, you've interacted with somebody who just doesn't seem to have any Drive, they've given up, or if you've interacted with somebody who seems to have
endless drive and energy, what you are looking at there in those two circumstances is
without question a different.
In the level of dopamine circulating in their system, there will be other factors to,
but the level of dopamine is the primary determinant of how motivated we are, how excited we
are, how outward-facing we are and how willing we are to lean into life. And pursue things
dopamine is what we call a neuromodulator. Neuromodulators are different than neurotransmitters neurotransmitters
are involved in the dialogue between neurons nerve cells and
neurotransmitters. Tend to mediate
Eight, local communication, just imagine two people talking to one another at a concert that communication between them is analogous to the communication
carried out by neurotransmitters. Whereas neuromodulators influence the communication of many neurons, imagine a bunch of people dancing where it's a coordinated dance involving 10 or 20, or
hundreds of people
neuromodulators are coordinating that danced in the nervous system. What this means is that
dopamine release changes the probability that certain neural circuits will be
If and that other neural circuits will be inactive. Okay, so it, modulates a bunch of things all at once,
and that's why it's so powerful. It shifting, not just, our levels of energy but also our mindset. Also, our feelings of whether or not we can or cannot accomplish something.
So, how does dopamine work? And what does it do? Well, first of all, it is not just
responsible for pleasure. It is responsible for motivation and drive primarily at the psychological level. Also.
Or craving those three things are sort of the same motivation driving craving. It also controls
time perception and we will get deep into how dopamine can
modulate time perception. And how
important it is that everybody be able to access
increases in dopamine at different time, scales. This turns out to be important to not end up
addicted to substances, but it also turns out to be very important to sustain effort and be a happy
person over long periods of time, which I think most everybody wants it, sir.
Is adaptive in life to be able to do that.
Dopamine is also vitally important for movement. I'll explain the neural
circuits for dopamine and mindset, and dopamine in
movement, in a moment. But in diseases, like Parkinson's or Louis bodies dementia,
which is similar to Parkinson's. In many ways. There is a depletion or death of dopamine neurons at a particular
location in the brain, which leads to shaky movements challenges in speaking challenge.
Has in
particular, in initiating
movement. And because dopamine is depleted elsewhere to people with Parkinson's and Louise bought and loot scuse. Me, Lewy Body,
dementia. Also experience drops in motivation and effect, meaning mood, they tend to get depressed. And so on, when those people are properly treated,
they can not always but they can recover
some fluidity of movement, some ability to initiate movement
and almost without question those people.
Feel better psychologically, not just because they can move. But also because dopamine impacts mood and
motivation. So what are the underlying neural circuits? For those of you that are not interested in biology and specific nomenclature. You can tune out now if you want, but it's actually pretty straightforward. You have two
main neural circuits in the brain that dopamine uses in order to exert all its effects.
The first one is a pathway that goes from this area
in the
What's called the ventral tegmental? That's a fancy but ventral just means
bottom, and tegmentum.
Actually means floor. So, it's at the bottom of the brain and it's the ventral part of the floor. So it's really
low, in the back of the brain, the ventral tegmental, and it goes from the ventral tegmental to What's called the ventral striatum and the prefrontal cortex. Now, that's a lot of language. But basically, what we call this is the Miso cortical. Limbic pathway. This is the pathway by which dopamine influences.
Ian Drive
and craving
it involves structures. That some of you may have heard of before things like nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex. This is the pathway that really gets disrupted
in addictions. We're in particular drugs, that
influence the release of dopamine,
like, cocaine and methamphetamine. Will talk about those drugs. Today. They tap into this pathway. But if you are pursuing a partner, a boyfriend, or girlfriend, if you're pursuing a degree in school, if you're pursuing a Finish Line in a race, you are
Tapping into the so called me. So cortical, limbic pathway. This is the
classic reward pathway
in all mammals. The other pathway emerges from an area in the brain, called the substantia nigra, so called. Because the
cells in that area are dark and the substantia nigra connects to an area of the brain called the dorsal. Striatum. This is not surprisingly called the Nigro, striatal pathway. For those of you who have never done any neuroanatomy. I'm going to teach you.
It'll trick right now.
Everything in neuroanatomy. The first part of a word tells you where the
neurons are. And then the second part tells you where they are connecting to. So when I say Nigro, striatal pathway
means that the neurons are in substantia nigra and they
connect to the striatum nigrostriatal pathway. So while it's a lot of language, there is some logic there.
Okay, so we got these two, Pathways one mainly for movement, right? This is the substantia nigra to Dorsal striatum, and we've got this other path.
Way the so-called neocortical limbic pathway, that's
for reward reinforcement, and motivation.
I want you to remember that there are two Pathways. If you don't remember, the two Pathways in detail, that's fine. But please
remember that there are two Pathways because that turns out to be important later. Now. The other thing to understand about dopamine
is that the way that dopamine is released in the brain and body can differ. Meaning it can be very local or it can be more
broad
now.
Now, most of you have probably heard
of synapses,
synapses are the little spaces
between neurons and basically neurons nerve cells communicate with one another, by making
each other electrically active or by making
each other less like electrically active. So here's how this works. You can imagine one nerve cell and another nerve cell with a little gap between them, a little synapse and the way that one nerve cell causes the next nerve cell to fire. What we call fire really means to become electrically active, is that it vomits out these little
It's what we call vesicles. There are little bubbles filled with a
chemical. When that chemical enters the synapse. It some of it
docks or parks on the other side in the other neuron and by
virtue of electrical changes in the what we call the postsynaptic neuron that chemical will make
that neuron more electrically, active or less electrically. Active
dopamine can do that like
any other neurotransmitter or neuromodulator so it can
have one neuron influence another.
Iran, Iran, but dopamine can also engage in what's called a volumetric release. Volumetric release is
like a giant vomit that gets out to fifty or a hundred or even thousands of cells. So there's local release, what we call synaptic release and then there's volumetric release. So, volumetric release. It's like dumping all this dopamine out into the system. So dopamine
is incredible because it can change the way that our neural circuits work
at a local scale and a very broad scale.
For those of you that are only interested in tools.
Like, how do I get more
dopamine? Let me tell you. This part is really important because if you were to take a drug or supplement that increases your level of dopamine, you are influencing both the local release of dopamine and volumetric release this relates back to the Baseline of dopamine and the big peak above Baseline, and that turns out to be important. And
I'll just allude to why it's
important many drugs and indeed.
Read many supplements that increase dopamine will actually make it harder for you to sustain dopamine release over long periods of time and to achieve those Peaks that most of us
are craving when we are in pursuit of things. Why? Because if you get both volumetric release, The Dumping out of dopamine everywhere and you're getting
local release. What it means is that the difference between the
peak and Baseline is likely to be smaller and this is very
important.
How satisfying or exciting or pleasureful? A given experience is, doesn't just depend on the height of that Peak. It depends on the height of that Peak
relative to the Baseline.
So if you increase the Baseline and you increase the peak, you're not going to
achieve more and more pleasure from things.
I'll talk about how to leverage this information in a little bit, but just increasing your dopamine. Yes, it will make you excited
for all things.
Things that will make you feel very motivated, but it will also make that motivation, very short-lived.
So, there's a better way to increase your dopamine. There's a better way to optimize this peak to Baseline ratio for. Now. What we've talked about is two main neural circuits, one for movement, and one for motivation and craving with dopamine. And we've talked about two main modes of communication between neurons with dopamine one, is this local synaptic release
One is more volumetric release and in the back of your mind. You can relate this back to again this Baseline versus Peaks above Baseline.
So that's a description of what we would call the spatial effects or the spatial
aspects of dopamine. I said this connects to that that connects to this you can get local or more broad
volumetric release. What about
the duration of release or the duration of action for dopamine?
Well dopamine is unique among chemicals in the brain.
Because dopamine unlike a lot of chemicals in the brain works through what are called, G
protein-coupled receptors. And for those of you that are about to
pass out from the amount of
detail. Just hang in there with me. It's really not complicated.
There are two ways that neurons can communicate
or mainly two ways. There are third and fourth
but mostly neurons communicate by two modes. One are what we call fast, electrical. Synapses ionotropic conduction. All right, you don't need to know what that means but basically
One neuron activates another neuron and little holes open up in that neuron and ions rush in sodium, is the main ion salt by which one neuron
influences the electrical activity of another neuron, because sodium ions contain a charge. Okay, there are other things like chloride and potassium. If you're interested in looking this up, just look up ionic conductances in the action potential, or I could do a post on it some time, and we
could go into detail, but just understand that when neurons want to influence each.
Other they can do
it by way of this fast ionotropic conduction. This is a really
quick way for one
neuron to influence. The next
dopamine doesn't communicate that way dopamine is slower. It works through what are called, G protein-coupled receptors. So what happens is dopamine is released in these little vesicles that I've mentioned before,
get vomited out into the
synapse. Some of that dopamine will bind to the
so-called postsynaptic neuron. It will bind to the next neuron
and then it sets off a Cascade.
It's kind of like a Bucket Brigade
of one thing getting handed off to the next to the next to the next. It's G protein-coupled receptors. And anytime you hear about these gpcrs, or g-protein, couple receptors,
pay attention, because they're really interesting. They're slow. But they also can have multiple Cascades of effects. They can impact even gene expression. At some level.
I can change what a cell actually becomes they can change how
well or how poorly that cell will respond to the same signal in the
Future. So dopamine Works through the
slower process, these G protein-coupled receptors. And so it's
effects tend to take a while
in order to
occur.
This aspect of dopamine transmission is important because it now underscores, two things. One. There's two Pathways for dopamine to communicate. One for movement, one for motivation. And craving there's two spatial scales at which dopamine can operate synaptically or volumetrically. And dopamine can have slow effects,
really slow effects, or even very long-lasting effect and it even can control gene expression can actually change the way that cells behave.
That's not often discussed about dopamine, but is extremely important to
know is that
dopamine doesn't work on its own neurons. That release dopamine Co release glutamate glutamate is a neurotransmitter and it's a neurotransmitter
that is excitatory. Meaning it stimulates neurons to be electrically active.
So now even if you don't know any cell biology, should start to gain a picture that dopamine is responsible for movement motivation and
drive.
I've it does that
through two Pathways but also the dopamine stimulates action in general because it releases this
excitatory neurotransmitter tends to make certain neurons that are nearby or even that are far away because the volumetric release it tends to make those more active.
So dopamine is released stimulating. And indeed, we say that dopaminergic transmission or dopamine tends to stimulate sympathetic arousal. Sympathetic doesn't have anything to do with sympathy. It's
Simply means that it tends to increase our levels of alertness. It tends to bring an animal or a human into a state of more
alertness Readiness and desire to
pursue things outside the confines of its skin. So if I were to just put a really simple
message around dopamine, it would be
there's a molecule in your brain and body that when released tends to make you
look outside yourself, pursue things outside yourself and to Crave.
Save things outside yourself,
the pleasure that arrives from achieving things, also involves dopamine, but is mainly the
consequence of other molecules, but if ever you felt lethargic and like, just lazy and you had no motivation or drive, that's a low dopamine state.
If ever, you felt really excited. Motivated, even if you're a little scared to do something.
Maybe you did your first Skydive or you're about to do your first Skydive, or you're about to do some public speaking. And you really don't want to screw it up. You are in a high.
Dopamine State
dopamine is a universal currency in, all mammals, but especially in humans for
moving us toward
goals and how much dopamine is in our system at any one time compared to how much dopamine was in our system a few minutes ago and how much we remember enjoying a particular experience of the past that dictates your
so-called quality of life and your desire to pursue
things. This is
Really important dopamine is a currency and it's the way that you track pleasure. It's the way that you track success is the way that you
track whether or not you are doing well or doing poorly. And that is
subjective. But if your dopamine is too low, you will not feel motivated. If your dopamine is really high, you will feel motivated. And if your dopamine is somewhere in the middle, how you feel depends on whether or not, you had higher dopamine, a few minutes ago or lower.
This is important, your experience of
life and your level of motivation and drive depends on
how much dopamine you have relative to your recent experience. This is again, something that's just not accounted for in the simple language of dopamine hits. Okay. A simple way to Envision dopamine hits as every time you do something.
You like you to piece of chocolate dopamine hit you look at your Instagram dopamine hit. You see someone you like dopamine hit.
You know, all these things described as dopamine, hits neglect. The fact that if you scroll social media and you see something you really like dopamine, hit, sure. There's an increase in dopamine, but then you get to something else and, you know,
not that interesting. However, had you arrived at that second thing. First, you might think that it was really interesting.
If you had arrived to that second Instagram post, three days later or four days later, you might find it extremely interesting. Again. How
much dopamine you experience from something? Depends on your Baseline level of dopamine when
you arrive there and your previous dopamine
Peaks? Okay, that's super important to understand and it's completely neglected by the general language of dopamine hits.
This is why when you repeatedly engage in something that you enjoy your threshold,
Enjoyment goes up and up and up.
So I want to talk about that process and I want to explain how that process works. Because if you understand that process and you understand some of these schedules and kinetics as we call them around dopamine, you will be in a terrific position to use any dopamine. Enhancing tools that you decide to use. You'll be in an excellent position to modulate and control your own dopamine
release for optimal motivation and drive. I realized that was a lot of information about the biology of dopamine. Sort of, like, trying to make you drink.
For a month, the firehose of dopamine biology. However, I realize that
some people probably want even
more information about the biology of dopamine, transmission. If you're interested in
that, I'll post a link to a absolutely Stellar review, that was published in nature reviews, Neuroscience called spatial and temporal scales of dopamine transmission. It is quite detailed but they have beautiful diagrams and can walk you through
all the things that I just described and get into even more detail will put a link to that in the caption on YouTube,
right?
I want to share with you two anecdotes one from my own life and one from some fairly recent history that illustrate some of the core biology of dopamine
and how profoundly it can shape our
experience. The first one is a really
tragic situation that occurred.
This was in the 80s.
There was a outbreak of what looked like parkinsonian symptoms in a young population, so
many of you heard a Parkinson's disease, Parkinson's disease, is a disease in which people initially start to Quake. Can't generate smooth movement, still have issues with speech, sometimes cognition, as well. There are examples like Michael J fox which are early onset, Parkinson's, typically it hits people a little bit later in life. There's a genetic component,
but there is this question, and there's always been this question whether or
not certain lifestyle factors. Can also create
And since
and some years ago, there was a situation where
laboratory Street, Laboratories illicit
Laboratories. We're trying to make a drug called M PPP, which is an opioid,
like compound. It's a bit like heroin and heroin addicts. Seeking heroin went out and bought what they thought was MPP.
Unfortunately.
It was not MPP.
I mean, it would have been tragic if it was anyway, because they were drug
addicts, but what they ended up taking
turned out to be a lot worse. What they ended up taking was mptp
and mptp can arise in the synthesis of MPP. So, someone in a lab
someplace, this was mainly in the Central Valley in California, but elsewhere
as well. Somebody created mptp, and what ended up happening
was a
Number of young people who were opioid addicts,
became
completely boxed in paralyzed
couldn't speak. I couldn't blink, couldn't do anything, couldn't function couldn't move. So, both
aspects of dopamine transmission were disrupted. They had no motivation and drive. They couldn't generate any movement of any kind. They were literally locked in Frozen and sadly, this is irreversible. It's a reversible because
what mptp does is
it kills the dopaminergic
neurons of the substantia nigra that nigrostriatal pathway that's involved in generating
movement and it kills
the dopaminergic neurons of the so-called me. So cortical, limbic pathway. I was in college when this whole mptp thing happened and I remember hearing this story at the time. I had no understanding of what it is to have very high levels of dopamine or extremely depleted levels of dopamine. There was no reason why I should have that understanding. I mean, of course I did.
Parents different pleasures of different kinds.
And I've had lows in my life, but nothing to the extreme that I'm about to discuss.
I got Giardia and Giardia is a stomach bug that if any of you ever
had it is terrible. It's terrible diarrhea. You end up very dehydrated, very quickly you drop a ton of weight and it is extremely
unpleasant. I ended up going to the emergency room.
And in the emergency room, I
begged them for something to stop up my guts and they gave it to me. They put a saline line in to rehydrate me and they injected something in to the saline
bag. And within minutes. I felt more sadness, more overwhelming sense of depression,
basically. Lower than I'd ever felt in my entire life.
It was
absolutely profound. Like, I was
crying and
Sleep, without knowing why I was crying. I was miserable and I asked them. What did you inject? And they said we injected Thorazine, Thorazine is an anti-psychotic drug. It's actually used to block dopamine receptors. It's what's given to people who have schizophrenia often is given to people who have schizophrenia. Because schizophrenia
involves among other things, elevated levels of dopamine.
It was horrible. The
experience of it was
miserable. Unlike anything.
Thing I'd ever experienced.
And so I actually said to
them. What did you get me? They said, Thorazine, and I said, you have to give me l-dopa. You have to give me something to get my dopamine levels back up again, and
they did, they gave me an injection of l-dopa into the bag, went straight to my bloodstream and within minutes. I felt fine again. It was
incredible and it really opened up my mind and my experience to what it is to have. Absolutely plummeted levels of dopamine. There's
Nothing more miserable than that. I'll tell you. And these
poor souls, who had this mptp
experience. Unfortunately, they couldn't recover those cells. People who have severe, Parkinson's are
struggling with this as well because in
Parkinson's and in Lewy Body dementia, the dopaminergic neurons often died. It's not just a problem with those neurons releasing enough
dopamine. Later. We're going to talk about some approaches to maintaining
dopaminergic neuron health and things that we can all do for
that. But I will tell you these dopamine
neurons that we all have our very presence.
Precious for movement and mood and motivation, having experienced what it is to have very, very low levels of dopamine or two in this case to have my dopamine receptors blocked from Thorazine,
was eye-opening to say, the least, and has given me tremendous sensitivity to the fact that dopamine is
perhaps one of the most powerful molecules that any of us has inside of us. And the one that we ought to all think very carefully about how we leverage because
While most experiences and most things that we do and take, and eat and Cetera, won't create enormous heís, an enormous lows, and dopamine, even subtle fluctuations and dopamine, really shape our perception of life and what we're capable of and how we feel. And so we want to guard those and we want to understand them.
So let's lean into that understanding about dopamine. And then let's talk about some tools that we can all use
to leverage dopamine in order to keep that Baseline in the appropriate
healthy place and still be able to access.
Access those peaks in dopamine because
those after all are some of what makes life rich and worth living.
So let's talk about the Baseline of dopamine that we all have
and the peaks in dopamine that we all can achieve through different activities and things that we
ingest. All of us have different Baseline levels of dopamine. Some of this is sure to be genetic. Some people just simply
ride at a
level, a little bit higher. They're a little
It more excited. They're a
little bit more motivated, or maybe they're a lot more excited or a lot more motivated.
Some people are a little mellower. Some people are a little less excitable
and some of that has to do with the fact that dopamine doesn't act alone, dopamine has close
cousins or friends in the nervous system. And I'll just name off a few of those close cousins and Friends
epinephrine, also called adrenaline is the main chemical
driver of energy. We can't do anything,
anything at all, unless we have some level of
epinephrine in our brain and
Howdy, it's released from the adrenal glands, which ride atop our kidneys. It's released from an area of the brain stem called Locus coeruleus
and its release tends to wake up. Neural circuits in the brain, and wake
up various aspects of our body's physiology and give us a
Readiness. So it should come as no surprise. That dopamine and epinephrine AKA adrenaline hang out together. In fact, epinephrine and adrenaline are actually manufactured from dopamine.
There's a biochemical pathway involving dopamine which is a beautiful
pathway. If ever you want to look it up. You can just look up biochemistry of dopamine.
But what you'll find is that l-dopa is converted into dopamine.
Dopamine is converted to to noradrenaline norepinephrine.
It's also called and noradrenaline norepinephrine is converted into adrenaline. So not only are dopamine and epinephrine again.
General enclose cousins, they are actually family members. Okay, they're closely
related. I'm not going to get too deep into epinephrine today. I'm not going to talk too much about those Pathways. But anytime I'm talking
about dopaminergic, transmission or that you have a peak in dopamine, inevitably that means that you have a peek and release of epinephrine as well.
What dopamine does is dopamine really colors the subjective experience of an activity to
make it more pleasureful, to make it something that you want more of.
Of
epinephrine is more about energy epinephrine alone can be
fear, paralysis, trauma, not physical paralysis, but mental paralysis, you know, Frozen in fear or being traumatized or scared.
But, the addition of dopamine
to that chemical cocktail if dopamine is released in the
brain. Well, then that epinephrine becomes one
of excitement. Okay. I'm
using a broad brush here. But essentially what you need to know, is that dopamine
and epinephrine?
In a K-8 adrenaline, our family members and they tend to work together like a little gang to make you seek out certain things.
So what sorts of activities, what sorts of things increase dopamine
and how much do they increase? Dopamine?
Well, let's take a look at some typical things that people do out there
or ingest out there
that are known to increase dopamine. So let's recall that you have a baseline level of dopamine and that everybody does
And even within a family, you might have family members who are very excitable happy and motivated and
others who are less excitable happy and motivated. But your level of dopamine has everything to do with those genetics. But also
with what you've experienced in, the previous day's and the previous month's. And so on,
when you do or ingest certain things, your levels of dopamine will rise above Baseline transiently.
And depending on what you do or ingest, it will rise either more or less and it will be very brief oral last a long
time. So let's take a look at some of the typical things that people take and do and eat some are good for us. Some are not good for us.
And let's ask how much dopamine is increased above
Baseline. Now, of course, these are averages, but these are averages that have been measured in so-called microdialysis studies in animals. So actually, extracting from particular brain areas how much dopamine is released or for measuring the
serum the the circulating levels
of dopamine in humans?
Chocolate.
They didn't look at milk versus dark
chocolate, but chocolate will increase your Baseline level of dopamine 1.5 times. Grab. So, it's a pretty substantial increase in dopamine. It's transient. It goes away. After a few minutes or even a few seconds. I'll explain what determines the duration in a minute, but 1.5 times for chocolate.
Sex, both the pursuit of Sex and the act of sex increases dopamine.
Two times. So it's a doubling above Baseline.
Now, of course, there's going to be variation there. But that's the average increase in Baseline dopamine caused by sex,
later. I will talk about how the
different aspects of the so-called arousal art. The different aspects of sex, believe it or not, have a differential impact on dopamine, but
for now as a general theme or activity sex doubles.
The amount of dopamine circulating in your blood.
Nicotine in particular nicotine that is smoked
like cigarettes and so forth
increases dopamine, two and a half times above Baseline. So there's a peak that goes up above Baseline, two and a half times higher.
It is very short-lived. Anyone who's ever been a chain smoker or observed a chain smoker understands that the increase in dopamine from nicotine is very short.
Loved cocaine will increase the level of dopamine in the bloodstream two-and-a-half times above Baseline. An amphetamine, another drug that increases. Dopamine will increase the amount of dopamine in the bloodstream.
10 times above Baseline, a tremendous increase in dopamine
exercise. Now, exercise will have a different impact on the levels of dopamine depending on how much somebody.
Actively enjoys that exercise. So if you're somebody who loves running chances are it's going to increase your levels of dopamine to times above your
Baseline, not unlike sex
people who dislike exercise will achieve less dopamine
increase or no increase in dopamine from exercise. And if you like other forms of exercise, like yoga or weight, lifting or swimming, or what have you again, it's going to vary by your subjective.
Brands of whether or not you enjoy that activity. This is
important and it brings us back to something that we talked about earlier. Remember that me so cortical limbic pathway. Well, the cortical part
is important. The cortical part actually has a very specific part, which is your prefrontal cortex,
the area of your for brain. That's involved in thinking and planning and involved in assigning a rational explanation to something and involved in.
Earning a
subjective experience to something. Alright. So for instance the pain that I'm holding right now is when these pilot v5s, I love these pilot v5s. They don't sponsor the pockets. I just happen to like them. I like the way that they write how they feel.
If I spent enough time thinking about her talking about it. I could probably get a dopamine
increase just talking about this pilot V5 and
that's not because I have the propensity to release dopamine easily. It's that as we start to engage with
something more and more and what we say about it, and what
we encourage our self to think about it.
Has a profound impact on
it's rewarding or non rewarding properties.
Now, it's not simply the case that you
can lie to yourself and you can tell yourself. I love something. And when you don't really love it and it will increase dopamine, but
what's been found over and over
again is that if people Journal about something where they practice
some form of appreciation for something or they think of some aspect of something that they enjoy, the amount of dopamine that that
behavior will evoke tends to go up.
So for people that
Hate exercise. You can think about some aspect of exercise that you really enjoy. However, I will caution you against saying to yourself. I
hate exercise where I hate studying or I hate this person, but I love the reward. I give myself afterward later. We're going to talk about how rewards given act afterward. Actually make the situation worse. They won't make you like exercise more or studying more. They actually will undermine the dopamine release that would otherwise
For that activity. So
certain things chemicals have a universal effect. They make everybody's dopamine
go up. So
some people like chocolate, some people don't of course, but in general, it make has
causes this increase in dopamine,
but sex. Nicotine cocaine amphetamine those things cause
increases in dopamine in everybody that takes them
things like exercise.
Studying hard work working through a challenge in a relationship or working through something hard of any.
And that is going to be subjective as to how much dopamine will be released and we will return to that subjective component in a little
bit. But now you have a sense of
how much dopamine can be evoked by different activities and by different
substances one that you might be wondering about is caffeine.
I'm certainly drinking my caffeine today, and I do enjoy caffeine and limited quantities. I drink yerba mate and I drink coffee and I love it.
Does it increase dopamine? Well, a little bit caffeine will increase dopamine to some extent, but it is pretty
modest compared to the other things that I described chocolate sex, nicotine cocaine amphetamine. And so on.
However, there's a really interesting paper published in 2015. This is Volk out at
all. You can look it up. It's very easy to find
that showed that regular ingestion of caffeine
whether or not some coffee or
otherwise increases up regulation.
Of certain dopamine receptors. So caffeine actually makes you able to experience more of dopamine's
effects because as I mentioned before, dopamine is vomited out into the synapse or its release volumetrically, but then it has to bind some place and Trigger those g-protein coupled receptors and caffeine
increases the number the
density of those G protein-coupled receptors. Now sitting back and thinking about that, you might
think. Oh, yeah, you know, sometimes
I'll notice people at least in the old days. They used to be a cigarette and a cup of
coffee or when people
drink alcohol, often times. They'll smoke and it's well known that different
compounds like alcohol and nicotine or caffeine and nicotine or certain behaviors and certain drugs can synergize to give bigger dopamine increases
and this is not terribly uncommon. There are a lot of people nowadays
who, for instance, take pre-workout energy, drinks, they'll drink. I won't name names, but they'll drink a can.
And energy drink or they'll drink a pre-workout and they'll try and get that
big stimulation that stimulant effect for the
dopamine, the norepinephrine that family of molecules that works together to make you motivated. And then they'll also exercise to try and get even more of a dopaminergic experience out of that work
out. Sometimes it's also to perform better as well, of course, but as we'll talk about, in a few minutes
that aspect or that approach rather of trying to just get your dopamine as high as you possibly can, in order to get the
Most out of the experience turns out to not be the best approach. And what you'll
find as we talk about dopamine schedules, is that
layering together multiple things substances in activities that lead to Big increases in dopamine. Actually can create pretty severe
issues with motivation and energy right after those experiences and even a couple days later. So, I'm not saying that people shouldn't take the occasional pre-workout, if that's your thing, or drink a cup of coffee or two before working.
In out now. And again, some people really enjoy that. I certainly do that every once in a while. But if you do it,
too often, what you'll find
is that your capacity
to release dopamine
and your level of motivation and drive and energy overall will take a serious hit.
Now. I've been alluding to this dopamine Peaks versus dopamine Baseline things since the beginning of the
episode talked about tonic and phasic release and so forth,
but now, let's really drill
into what this means and how to leverage it for our own
purposes.
In order to do that, let's take a step back and ask. Why would we
have a dopamine system like this? Why would we have a dopamine system at all? Well, we have to remember
what our species primary interest is our species. Like all
species, has a main interest and that's to make more of itself. It's not just about sex and reproduction. It's about forging for resources, resources, can be food. It can be water, can be salt. Can be
shelter, can be social.
Ian dopamine is the universal currency of foraging and seeking.
Right? We call sometimes talk about motivation and craving but what we
mean in The evolutionary, adaptive
context, what we mean as foraging and seeking seeking water,
seeking food seeking mates, seeking things that make us feel good and avoiding things that don't make us feel good. But in particular seeking things that will provide sustenance and pleasure in the short term
and will extend the species in the long term.
Once we understand that dopamine is a driver for us to seek things. It makes perfect sense as to why it would have a baseline level and it would have Peaks
and that the Baseline and Peaks would be related in some sort of direct way. Here's what I mean by
that. Let's say that you were not
alive now, but you were alive 10,000 years ago and you woke up and you looked and you realize you
had minimal water
and you had minimal food left. Maybe have a child.
Maybe have a partner. Maybe you're in an entire Village, but
you realize that you need some, you need things. Okay?
You need to be able to generate the
energy to go seek those things and chances are, there were dangers in seeking those things. Yes. It could be saber, tooth tigers and things of that
sort, but there are other dangers to.
There's the danger of a cut to your skin that could lead to infection. There's the danger of storms. There's danger of cold. There's the danger of leaving your loved ones behind
so you go out and
forage, right? You could be hunting, you could be gathering, or you could be doing both.
The going out and foraging
process was we are certain driven by dopamine mean? There's no fossil record of the brain, but the circuits have existed. We know for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years and they are present in every animal, not just mammals. But even in little worms like, C, elegans the same process, it's mediated by dopamine.
So, dopamine drives you to go out and look for things. And then let's say you
find a couple berries. All these ones are rotten. These ones are good.
Maybe you.
Hunt, an animal and kill it or
you find an animal that was recently killed and you decide to take the
meat you are going to achieve
or I should say
experienced some sort of
dopamine release. You found the reward, that's great, but then it needs to
return to some lower level. Why? Well, because if you just stayed
there, you would never continue to forage for
more.
It doesn't just increase your Baseline. And then stay, there, it goes back down. And what's very important to understand is that? It doesn't just go back down to the level. It was
before it goes down to a level below. What it was before. You went out seeking that thing. Now
this is counter-intuitive. We often think, okay. I'm going to pursue the win. All right, let's let's move this to modern-day. I'm going to,
I'm going to run this Marathon. I'm going to train
for this Marathon. Then you run the marathon and you finished, you cross the finish line.
You feel great and you would think, okay, now I'm set for the entire year. I'm gonna feel so much better. I'm going to feel this accomplishment in my body. It's going to be so great. That's not what
happens. You might feel some of those things but your level of
dopamine has actually dropped below Baseline.
Now eventually it will ratchet back up but two things are really important. First of all that extent to which it drops below. Baseline is proportional to how high the peak was. So if you cross the finish line, pretty
happy, it won't.
Drop that much below, Baseline afterward. If you cross the finish line X
static. Well, a day or two later. You're going to feel quite a bit lower than you would otherwise, you might not be depressed because it depends on where that
Baseline was to begin with,
but the so-called postpartum depression that people experience after giving birth.
Or after some big win a graduation
or any kind of Celebration that postpartum drop
in mood and affect and motivation is the drop in Baseline. Dopamine. This is
very important to understand because this happens on very rapid time scales, and it can last quite a long time. It also explains.
The behavior that most of us are familiar with of engaging in something that we really enjoy going to a restaurant that we absolutely love or engaging in some way with
some person that we really, really enjoy.
But if we continue to
engage in that behavior over and over again,
it kind of loses its Edge, it starts to kind of feel less exciting to us. Some of us experience that drop and excitement more
quickly and more severely than others,
but
Experiences that to some
extent and this has direct routes in these, evolutionarily conserved circuits.
Some of you may be hearing this and think no, no. No, that's
not how it works. For me. I'm just riding higher and higher all the time. I love my kids. I love my job. I love school. I love
wins. I don't want losses. I agree.
We all feel good when we are achieving things, but oftentimes we are feeling good because we are layering in different aspects of Life, consuming things, and doing
things that increase our dopamine. We're getting those
Peaks, but
afterward the drop in Baseline
occurs, and it always takes a little while to get back to
our stable Baseline. We really all have a sort of dopamine set point
and if we continue to indulge in the same behaviors or
Different behaviors, that increase our dopamine in these big
Peaks over and over and over again.
We won't experience the same level of Joy from those behaviors
or from anything at all. Now, that has a name, it's called addiction,
but even for people who aren't addicted, even for people don't have
an attachment to any specific substance, or behavior this drop in below Baseline after any
Peak and dopamine is substantial and it governs, whether or not, we are going to feel motivated to continue to
Pursue other things. Fortunately, there's a way to work with this such that we can constantly stay motivated. But also
keep that Baseline of dopamine and an appropriate healthy level.
A previous guest on the human Lab podcast, was dr. Anna Lemke?
She's head of the addiction. Dual diagnosis clinic at Stanford has this amazing book. Dopamine Nation, finding balance in the age of indulgence. If you haven't read the book, I highly encourage you to check it out. It's fantastic. The other terrific book about dopamine is the molecule of
Or which is similar in some regard, but isn't so much about addiction. It's more about other types of
behaviors. Both books, really focus on these
dopamine schedules, and the relationship between these Peaks and bass lines of dopamine
in doctor lemke's book. And when she was on the
huberman Lab podcast and other podcast, she's talked about this,
pleasure pain, balance that when we seek something that
we really like, or we indulge in it, like, eating a little piece of chocolate. If we really like chocolate, there's some
pleasure, but then there's a
Little bit of pain that exceeds the amount of pleasure and it's subtle. And we experience it as wanting more of that
thing. Okay, so there's a
pleasure pain balance and I'm telling you that the pleasure and the pain are governed by dopamine to some extent. Well, how could that be? Right? I've said before, when you engage in an activity or when you
ingest something that increases dopamine, the dopamine levels, go up, you know, to substantial degree with all the things I
listed off.
Where's the pain coming from,
where the pain is coming, from
the lack of dopamine that follows.
And you now know what that lack of dopamine reflects.
How do you know? Well,
earlier we were talking about how dopamine is released
between neurons and I mentioned two ways. One is into the synapse where it can activate the postsynaptic neuron, and the other was what I called, volumetric release, where it is distributed more, broadly. It's released out over.
Oh, a bunch of
neurons in both cases. It's released from these things. We call synaptic vesicles literally little bubbles. Tiny, tiny little bubbles that contain dopamine.
They get vomited out into the area or into the
synapse. Well, those vesicles get depleted.
For the synaptic physiologists
out there. We call this the readily
releasable pool of dopamine. We can only deploy dopamine. That is
ready to be deployed. That's packaged in those little vesicles and ready to go. It's like, when you order a product and they say, out of stock,
until two months from now. Well, it's not ready to be released. Same thing with dopamine. There's a pool of dopamine that synthesized and you can only release the dopamine that's been synthesized as the
Idly, releasable pool. The pleasure pain. Balance doesn't only
hinge on the readily releasable pool of dopamine. But a big part of the pleasure pain, balance hinges on how much dopamine is there and how much is ready and capable of being released into the system.
So now we've given some
meat to this thing that we call the pleasure pain, balance and now it should make perfect sense. Why if you
take
Something or do something that leads to huge increases in dopamine.
Afterward, your Baseline should drop, because there isn't a lot of dopamine around to keep your base line going.
Fortunately, most people do
not experience or pursue enormous increases in dopamine. Leading to these severe drops and Baseline.
Many people do however and that's what we call
addiction. When somebody pursues a drug or an
activity that leads to huge
increases in dopamine. And now, you understand that,
afterward, the Baseline of dopamine drops because of depletion of dopamine the readily
releasable pool. The
dopamine is literally not around to be released. And so people feel pretty lousy
and many people make the mistake of then going
and pursuing the dopamine evoking the dopamine releasing activity or substance again,
Thinking mistakenly that it's going to bring up their Baseline. It's going to give them that Peak again.
Not only does it not give them a peek, their Baseline gets lower and lower because they're depleting dopamine more and more and more. And we've seen this over and over again. When people get addicted to something, then they're not achieving much pleasure at all.
Even see this with video games, people will play a video game. They love it. It's super exciting to them and then they'll keep playing and playing and playing and either one of two things happens. Typically, both. First of all,
I always say addiction is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. So often times what will happen is the person
only has excitement and can achieve dopamine release
to the same extent doing that behavior and not other behaviors. And so,
They start losing interest in school. They start losing interest in relationships. They start losing interest in Fitness and well-being and depletes their life. And eventually. What typically happens
is they will stop getting dopamine release from that activity as
well. And then they drop into a pretty serious depression and this can get very severe and people have committed suicide from these sorts of patterns of activity.
But what about the more typical scenario? What about this scenario?
Of somebody who is really good at working during the
week. They exercise during the week. They drink on the weekends. Well, that person is only consuming alcohol, maybe one or two nights a week, but
oftentimes that same person will be spiking their dopamine with food during the middle of the week. Now, we
all have to eat and it's nice to eat foods that we enjoy. I certainly do that. I love food in fact, but
let's say they're eating foods that really evoke a lot of dough.
I mean release in the middle of the week. They're drinking one or two days on the weekend.
They are one of these work hard play hard type. So they're swimming. A couple
miles in the ocean in the middle of the week as well.
They're going out
dancing. Once on the weekend, sounds like a pretty pretty
Balanced Life as I describe
it. Well, here's the problem. The problem is, that dopamine is not just a vote by one of these activities. Dopamine is evoked by all of
these activities
and dopamine.
In is one currency of
craving motivation and desire and pleasure.
There's only one currency. So even though if you look at the activities, you'd say, well, it's just on the
weekends or this thing is only a couple times a week.
If you looked at dopamine, simply as a function, as a chemical function of Peaks and Baseline, it might make sense why this person after several years of work hard play
hard would say, yeah, you know, I'm feeling kind of burnt out. I'm just not feeling like I have the same.
You that I did a few years ago. And of course, there are age related reasons why people can experience drops in energy,
but oftentimes what's happening is not some sort of depletion
and cellular metabolism that's related to aging. What's
happening is they're spiking their dopamine through so many different activities throughout the week
that their Baseline is progressively dropping.
And in this case, it can be very subtle. It can be very, very subtle and that's actually a very Sinister function of
Dopamine
we could say, which is that it can often drop in
imperceptible ways. But then, at once, it reaches a threshold of low dopamine, we just feel like we can't really get pleasure from anything
anymore. What used to work doesn't work anymore. So it starts to look a lot like the more severe addictions or the more acute addictions to things like cocaine and amphetamine which leads to these big increases. These big spikes and dopamine and then these very severe drops in the Baseline. Now, of
course, we
all
Should engage in activities that we enjoy. I certainly do. Everybody should a huge part of life is pursuing activities and things that we enjoy. The key thing is to understand this relationship between the peaks in the Baseline and to understand how they influence one another.
Because once you do that, you can start to make really good choices in the short run and in the long run to maintain
your level of dopamine Baseline, maybe even raise that level of dopamine, Baseline,
and still get those Peaks and still achieve.
Leave those feelings of elevated motivation.
Elevated desire and craving
because again those Peaks and having us a sufficiently healthy high, level of dopamine, Baseline are what drove the evolution of our species and they're really what drives the evolution of anyone's
life progression to. So they're a good thing. Dopamine is a good thing just very briefly because it was also covered in the interview episode. I did with on a Lemke
about addiction. Some of you might be asking what should I do? If
I
It's a drop in my Baseline level of dopamine because of Engagement with some activity or some substance that led to Big Peaks just to put some color. And example on this few episodes ago. I talked about a friend who I've known a long time. So actually, the child of a friend who
has basically become addicted to video games. He
decided actually after seeing that episode with Anna to do a 30-day
complete
fast from phone from video games.
And from social media of all kinds.
He's now at day 29. His really accomplish this,
not incidentally, his levels of concentration, his overall mood or up. He's doing far far better. What he did is hard in particular. The first 14 days is really
hard. But the way that you replenish, the releasable pool of dopamine is to not engage in these
dopaminergic seeking behaviors. Because remember, typically people arrive at a place where they want to stop engaging in these behaviors or ingesting substances, when
Dopamine is depleted, when they're not getting the same lift. In his case. He was feeling depressed. He thought he had ADHD. They were starting to treat it as as ADHD. And certainly, there are people out there who have ADHD, but what he found was that his levels of concentration or back. He does not need to be treated for ADHD and actually the psychiatrist wondered if he did prior to this video game social media
fast, he's feeling good. He's exercising again. I'm not making this up. This is really a very specific but
a very relevant example
of how the dopamine system can replenish itself. Of course if there's a clinical need for ADHD treatment by all means pursue that. But I think a lot of ADHD does go misdiagnosed because of this depletion and dopamine that occurs because of overindulgence in other activities in the drop in Baseline.
So for anyone that's
experienced a real drop in Baseline who has addictive Tendencies whether or not their behaviors are substances. That is always going to be the
Forward is going to be either cold turkey or through some sort of tapering to limit interactions with the what would otherwise be the dopamine invoking Behavior or
substance. So let's talk about the optimal way to engage in activities
or to consume things that evoke dopamine and by no means am. I encouraging people to take drugs of abuse? I would not do that. I am not doing that, but some of the things on these lists of dopamine neck, evoking activities are
things like chocolate coffee, even if it's indirect sex and reproduction, provided its healthy consensual context, appropriate age, appropriate. Species-appropriate, of course, is Central to our Evolution and progression as
a species. So, certain things like cocaine
amphetamine. I will put in the classification of bad. I'm willing to do
that and other things are part of life food,
exercise. If that evokes, your dopamine, how are we supposed to
engage with these dopamine of okay?
Activities in ways that are healthy and beneficial for us. How do we achieve these Peaks,
which are so essential to our well-being and experience of life without dropping our
Baseline and the key lies in intermittent release of dopamine. The
real key is to not expect or chase high levels of dopamine
release every time we engage in these activities.
Intermittent reward schedules are the Central schedule by which casinos keep you gambling, the Central schedule by, which elusive Partners or potential Partners. Keep you texting in
pursuing, on either side of the relationship.
Intermittent schedules are the way that the internet and social media and all highly engaging activities. Keep you
motivated and pursuing.
And we can take this back to our evolutionary adaptive
scenario where you are out there looking for water, looking for food.
Not every Trail, not every Pursuit, not every hunch about where the animals will be, where the food will be, where the berries will be. Not every single one of those played out.
There's something called dopamine reward prediction error. When we expect something to happen. We are highly motivated to pursue it.
If it happens great, we
get the reward, the reward comes in various chemical forms, including dopamine, and we are more likely to engage in that behavior. Again. This is the
basis of
casino gambling. This is how they keep you going back again. And again, and again, even though on average the house really does win,
you can transplant that example to any number of different
pleasure full activities. If you're not a gambler and that
doesn't appeal to you. I have to imagine there's
something that appeals to you something that you do repeatedly because you enjoy it.
And almost inevitably. It's because there's an intermittent
schedule.
There's a intermittent schedule by, which dopamine sometimes arrives. Sometimes a little bit, sometimes a lot, sometimes, a medium amount. Okay, that intermittent reinforcement schedule is actually the best schedule to export to other
activities. How do you do that? Well, first of all, if you are engaged, in activities, School, sport relationship, Etc. Where you experience a win, you should be very
careful about allowing yourself to
Experienced, huge,
Peaks, and dopamine, unless you're willing to suffer. The
crash that follows and waiting a period of time for it to come back up.
What would this look like in the practical sense? Well, let's say, you are somebody who really does enjoy exercise. Or let's say you're somebody who kind of likes exercise but forces yourself to do it, but you make it
pleasure full by giving yourself your favorite cup of coffee first, or maybe taking a pre-workout drink or taking an energy drink or listening to your favorite music and then you're in the gym and you're
Listen to your music that all
sounds great. Right? Well, it is great except that by layering together, all these things to try and Achieve that dopamine release and by getting a big peak in dopamine, you're actually increasing the number of conditions required to achieve pleasure from that
activity again,
and so, there is a form of
this, where sometimes you do, all the things that you love to get the optimal workout. You listen to your favorite music. You got your favorite time of day. You have your pre-workout drink, if that's your thing. You do, all the things that give you that
Best experience of the workout for
you.
But there's also a version of this where sometimes you don't do the dopamine enhancing
activities. You don't ingest anything to increase your dopamine.
You just do the exercise. You don't
do the exercise and expect dopamine to arrive through some what we call exogenously Source as well.
And I think, well, that sounds lame I want to continue to enjoy
exercising, but that's exactly the
point if you want to maintain
motivation for school exercise.
And chips or Pursuits of any duration and
kind. The key
thing is to make sure that the peak in dopamine if it's very high, doesn't occur too often. And if something does occur very often that you very, how much dopamine you
experience with each engagement in that activity.
Now some activities naturally have this intermittent property
woven into them, right?
We sometimes have classes that we like in other classes. We don't
like we don't always get
Straight A's sometimes we don't get rewarded with the outcome that we would like. We don't always have the perfect relationship outcome,
but understand that your ability to experience motivation and pleasure for what comes next is
dictated by how much motivation and pleasure and dopamine, you experienced prior.
The reason I can't give a very
specific protocol like delete dopamine or lower dopamine every third time is that that wouldn't be
intermittent the whole basis of intermittent reinforcement.
Is that you don't really have a specific schedule of
when dopamine is going to be high and when dopamine is going to be low and when dopamine is going to be medium. That's a predictable schedule, not a random intermittent schedule.
So do like the casinos do certainly works for them and for activities that you would like to
continue to engage in overtime, whatever those happen to be
start paying attention to the amount of
dopamine and excitement and pleasure that you achieve, with those and start modulating that.
Someone at random that might be
removing some of the dopamine releasing chemicals that you might take
prior. Maybe you remove them every time but then every once in awhile, you introduce them.
Maybe it involves sometimes doing things socially that you enjoy doing socially sometimes doing the same thing but alone, there are a lot of different ways to do this. There are a lot of different ways to approach this but now knowing what, you
know about Peaks and baselines and dopamine and
Standing how important it is
not just to achieve Peaks but to maintain that Baseline at a healthy level, it should be straightforward for you to implement these intermittent schedules.
For those of you that are begging for more specificity. We can give you a tool. One would be you can flip a coin before
engaging in any of these types of activities and decide whether or not you are going to
allow other dopamine supportive elements
to go. For instance, into the gym with you. Are you going to listen to music?
Or not. If you enjoy listening to music, well, then flip a coin and if it comes up heads, bring the music in if it comes up Tails, don't okay. Sounds like you're undercutting your own progress, but actually you are serving your own progress, both short-term and long-term by doing that.
Now, the smartphone is a very interesting tool
for dopamine in light of all this. It's extremely common nowadays to see people texting and doing selfies and
communicating in various ways listening to podcast listening.
Music doing all sorts of things while they engage in other activities, or going to dinner and texting. Other people were making
plans sharing information. That's all
wonderful. It gives depth and richness and color to life, but
it isn't just about are
distracted nature. When we're engaging with the phone.
It's also a way of layering in dopamine and it's no surprise that levels of
depression and lack of motivation are really on the
increase.
Everything that we've talked about until
now sets up an explanation or interpretation of why interacting with
digital technology can potentially
lead to disruptions or lowering in Baseline levels of
dopamine. I can use a personal example for this.
I happen to really, enjoy working out. I've always really enjoyed it. But
in recent years, I noticed that if I was bringing my phone to my workouts, then Not only was I
Little bit more distracted and not focusing on what I was doing as much as I could have, or should have.
But also I started to lose
interest in. What I was doing. It wasn't as pleasureful. I would feel like it just didn't have the same kind of oomph and I was beginning to question my motivation.
As I started learning more
about this relationship between the Peaks and the baselines and dopamine. What I realized was
that some time ago. I probably experienced a
incredible increase in the amount of dopamine during one of my workouts because
I enjoy working out and I enjoy listening to music. I also enjoy listening to podcasts. I also enjoy communicating with people. Those are all wonderful Pursuits, but I had layered into many of
them too many times and then it essentially wasn't working for me anymore. Much in the same way a
drug wouldn't work for somebody who takes it repeatedly because their Baseline of dopamine is dropping. So at least for this calendar year, I've made a rule
for myself, which is I don't allow
my phone into my work out at all.
No.
Eric at least not from the phone. It can be in the
room.
I might listen to a podcast in the room, but I don't listen to anything or engaging anything on my phone. No texting whatsoever. And most of the time I just don't even bring it with me for that period of time. It's only a short period of time. I'm not training that often.
This is something that I think has been misinterpreted as people can't be alone. Now,
people talk about, oh, you know, they can't walk across the street or they can't go anywhere ride. The
bus can't be on the plane without
being in contact. They can't handle, just their thoughts. I don't think that's really what's going on. I think what's happened is that
we achieved the great dopamine. Increase that comes from
this incredible thing, which I personally enjoy
being able to communicate
by phone by
In exchange pictures and send links in these kinds of things social media,
but then what happens is, it doesn't have that same fulfilling aspect to it. And it tends to remove the excitement and the
pleasure of the very activities that we are engaged in.
So, I know this is a hard one for
many people, but I do invite you to
try removing
multiple sources of dopamine release, or what used to be multiple sources of dopamine release from activities that you want to continue to enjoy or that you
Want to enjoy more. And now you understand the biological mechanisms that would underlie a statement like that.
It takes a little bit of working with. I know it can be challenging
in the first week or so of not engaging with the phone during any kind of
workout. That actually was really tough. But now I'm back to a
place where I enjoy it, that much more. I also feel as, if I conquered something, in terms of the circuitry related to dopamine. I Now understand why something that I enjoyed so much had become less pleasurable for me.
There's a deep deep satisfaction that comes from understanding. Okay, there wasn't anything wrong with me or the what I was doing or
anything at all. It was just there was something wrong with the approach. I was
taking which was layering in all these sources of dopamine and dropping my Baseline
for this. Very same reason. I caution people against using stimulants, every time they study
or every time they workout or every time that they do, anything that they would like to continue to enjoy and be motivated.
Debated at
there's one exception which is caffeine because as I mentioned before
if you like caffeine that actually could be a good thing for your dopamine system because it does up regulate these D2 D3 receptor. So it actually makes whatever dopamine
is released by that activity more
accessible or more functional within the biochemistry in the pathways of your brain and body.
However, a number of energy drinks. And in particular pre-workouts contain things that are precursors to
Dopamine and on their own. Even if you didn't engage in the activity would cause the
release of dopamine to a substantial degree. They do. Cause the release of dopamine to a substantial
degree and over time, that will deplete your dopamine. So energy drinks, pre-workout drinks, drugs of various
kinds that people take to study and pay attention. We talked about some of these for the ADHD episode things like Adderall Ritalin armodafinil
modafinil taken repeatedly, over.
Our time will reduce the level of
satisfaction and joy that you get from the activities you engage in while under the influence of those compounds.
I'm not trying to demonize those compounds for their clinical use. What I'm saying is taking stimulants and then engaging in activities that you would like to continue to fuel pleasureful is
undercutting the process and inevitably
might not happen. Tomorrow might not happen in a month, but inevitably,
you will have challenges with motivation and drive related to those.
Tivities. Now, some people can keep it right in check. They can just do the
one can of the energy drink, or they only do their pre workout before really hard days, for
instance, more power to you.
I actually do that sometimes,
frankly, but people who are trying to get into that Peak, super motivated driven driven State, really focused every time they engage in an activity.
You're absolutely undercutting the process and you are undermining your ability to stay motivated and focused. So
Just as we talked about intermittent, reward schedules, a moment ago.
Intermittent spiking of dopamine. If you do it at all,
is definitely the way to go. And chronically trying to spike your dopamine. In order to enhance your motivation, focus and drive will absolutely undermine your motivation focus and drive in the long
run. Ingestion of caffeine is somewhat of an exception
among the other examples of things I've mentioned to avoid before. What would otherwise be dopamine. Increasing activities because
again,
Can increase the density
and the efficacy of these dopamine
receptors?
Turns out that the source of caffeine could also matter, while coffee
or tea, or other forms of caffeine will have this effect of increasing dopamine receptors yerba mate. Something I've talked about before on this podcast has some interesting properties. First of all, it contains caffeine. It's also high in antioxidants. It also contains something called glp-1, which is favorable for management of blood sugar
levels.
Yerba, mate, it turns out has also been shown to be neuroprotective
specifically for dopaminergic neurons. Now, I should mention this is just a couple of studies. So we don't want to conclude too much from these studies. More needs to be done. But they showed that
in a model of damage
to dopamine neurons
ingestion of yerba, mate, and some of the compounds
within your mate can actually serve to preserve the survival of dopamine neurons in both the movement-related pathway and the motivation.
With way. So perhaps you need that incentive in order to ingest yerba. Mate tea, perhaps, you don't need any incentive in my case. I don't need any incentive. I already enjoy your bramante as my principal source of caffeine. Although I do drink coffee as well. But if one were going to consume caffeine, you might consider consuming that caffeine in the form of yerba, mate. Both for sake, of up, regulating dopamine receptors and getting more of a dopamine increase. And of course, for the stimulant properties.
Of caffeine, if that's what you're
seeking. And in addition to that,
because your bramante does appear to have some sort of neuroprotective and in particular dopamine neuron protective properties.
Now, that doesn't mean the caffeine is always beneficial and actually there's one instance related to
dopamine where caffeine can be particularly dangerous,
this relates to MDMA. So called ecstasy, MDMA is under
investigation in various clinical trials for its potential to treat trauma and
And it's also of course a drug that's used recreationally. It's still illegal at least in the United States.
Whether or not MDMA is neurotoxic has been very controversial early
on. It was thought that it is neurotoxic, that it can destroy serotonergic neurons.
There were other papers that came out which
argued, that's not the case. And that's in particular because one of the early papers published in Science magazine claiming that MDMA was
neurotoxic
that paper was retracted. It turns out that that study had mistakenly used methamphetamine instead and me.
Feta mean is known to be neurotoxic.
I think most of the data point to the idea that MDMA might not be neurotoxic. But in any
case, caffeine has been shown to increase the
toxicity of MDMA receptors. And you might say, well, how could that be? Well? Now you understand why that could be
caffeine increases the density, and efficacy of these
dopamine receptors, the D2, and D3 receptors, MDMA is a potent drug for increasing concentrations of dopamine, as well as serotonin and other.
Laters. And it appears that
caffeine ingestion by
up regulating these receptors
can lead to more
toxicity of MDMA. So
caffeine can be a beneficial substance in one context. In
actually can be a detrimental if not dangerous substance and another context to
substances that greatly increase. Dopamine namely amphetamine and cocaine can cause long-term
problems with the dopaminergic pathways.
And
This is largely based on a study that was published some years ago 2003 but still holds a lot of Merit. This is a paper published in proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A very
high tier stringent Journal. First author is cold, kol, be and the
title of the paper. Pretty much tells the story amphetamine or cocaine limits the ability of later experience to promote structural
plasticity in the neocortex and nucleus accumbens. Neocortex is the outer shell of the brain.
More or less and the nucleus accumbens
is part of that mesolimbic dopamine pathway for motivation drive and
reinforcement.
Neuroplasticity. Of course is the brain's ability to change in response to experience in neuroplasticity is the basis of
learning and memory
and essentially remodeling of our neural circuitry in
positive ways of all kinds and this study was really one of the first to show that ingesting amphetamine and cocaine because of the
High peak in dopamine that it creates and the low, dopamine State the Baseline, drop that it creates afterwards limits, plasticity and learning subsequent to taking amphetamines and cocaine. It was at
least in this study shown to be a long-lasting effect. I doubt it's a permanent effect. But this should serve as a
serious cautionary, note
that amphetamine and
cocaine, not only can cause a drop in Baseline dopamine but can actually put the brain into a state in which it cannot learn.
Burn and modify itself to get better at least for some period of time
in a previous episode
on ADHD. I talked about the widespread use of drugs like Adderall Ritalin modafinil and armodafinil all of which lead to very large increases in dopamine. And for people with ADHD can really improve their symptoms. But of course, there's a lot of non-prescription non clinical use of those compounds as well.
And it stands to reason that the use of those substances to increase dopamine could
Be well,
provide the same sort of blockade of neuroplasticity, that cocaine and amphetamine do because when you look at the amount of dopamine increase, that's triggered by those compounds. It's really comparable. So again a cautionary, note against spiking ones, dopamine too much on a regular basis, unless there is a valid clinical need for doing that. So
we've been focusing a lot for the last few minutes on
the kind of darker side of dopamine and how getting big Peaks and dopamine can be
Detrimental but I want to acknowledge the truth,
which is that dopamine feels great being in pursued and motivated and craving things feels
wonderful. And I don't want to demonize dopamine. What I'm trying to do today
is to illustrate how dopamine works in your brain so
that you can continue to engage in, dopamine evoking activities. And certainly, there is a place for ingesting things that can
increase. Dopamine provided that they are safe for us
in the short and long.
Term, there are activities that we can do that will give us healthy sustained increases in dopamine, both the Peaks when they happen and to maintain or even
increase our Baseline levels of dopamine. So,
how do we do that? What are some of these activities? Well, in recent years, there's been a trend toward more people doing, so called cold
exposure in part. This was popularized by Wim
Hof, the so-called Iceman getting into
Cold showers taking ice baths exposing oneself
to cold water, or various kinds. Can in fact increase our levels of dopamine as well as the neuromodulator neuro art, but
nephron, this is not a new phenomenon in the 1920s, a guy by the name of Vincent prison. It was one of the first people to popularize and formalize cold water
therapies. He was an advocate of cold water exposure in order
to boost the immune system. And in
These feelings of well-being and actually this practice dates back long
before Vincent's popularized. It and Wim Hof, is the more recent iteration of this.
First of all, some of the safety parameters. Let's, let's establish those
first getting into very, very cold water, you know, 30 degree, Fahrenheit, or even low, 40-degree
Fahrenheit, can put somebody into a state
of cold water shock. I mean, people can die doing that. So obviously, you want to approach this with some
caution, but for most people getting into 60 degree
water,
Or 50-degree water or if you're acclimated and comfortable with it, you know, 40 degree water, or 45 degree, water can have tremendously beneficial results on your neuromodulator systems, including
dopamine, what temperature of water, you
can tolerate will depend on how cold water adapted you are and how familiar you are with the experience of getting into cold water.
And when I say comfortable with, I should mention, there is never a case in which getting into cold water.
Does not
evoke a
release of epinephrine. So the quickening of the breath, the widening of the eyes. The, the the feeling is, if you can't catch your breath and even some physical pain at the level of the skin, that happens
almost every time where every time that you get into cold water, even if you're cold water adapted, what almost everybody knows. And understands is that that wall as I like to refer to, it is coming. That's always the first experience of getting into cold water. There's no
real way around that. Now, this study
That I mentioned earlier, human physiological responses to immersion into
water of different temperatures, really
interesting study that was done and published in the University of excuse me, that European Journal of Applied physiology. I can provide a link to that
study in the, in the show caption.
It's a really interesting study. They looked at people getting exposed to water. That was warm, moderately, cold, or very cold. It was 32 degrees Celsius, 20 degrees Celsius or 14 degrees Celsius.
You can just put those online and do the conversion.
Asian or you can do the conversion to Fahrenheit if you
like, but in any case what they looked at were the concentrations of things like epinephrine and dopamine
and so on and what they found
was really interesting. First of all upon getting into cold water, the changes in Adrenaline and
noradrenaline epinephrine and norepinephrine were
immediate and fast, and these were huge increases. So that's the getting into the
Cold water that everybody experiences these huge increases in Adrenaline,
but then, what was interesting is they observed that dopamine levels started to rise somewhat slowly and then continue to rise and reach levels as high as 2.5 times above
Baseline.
That's a remarkably High increase. Remember if we go back to our examples of chocolate sex, a doubling above Baseline nicotine two-and-a-half times above Baseline cocaine.
The increase in dopamine from cold-water exposure of, this kind was comparable to what one sees from cocaine except. Except in this case. It wasn't a rise and crash. It was actually a sustained
rise in dopamine. That took a very long time, up to three hours to come back down to Baseline,
which is really remarkable. And I think this explains some of the positive mental and physical effects
that people report.
Actively after doing cold water. Exposure, one question that many of you are probably asking is just how cold should the water be. Well, you could mimic what was done in this study and do 14 degrees Celsius, but
for some people that won't be cold enough for some people that will be too cold. They did. Look at the release of stress hormones like cortisol,
in addition to the release of things like epinephrine, adrenaline.
And it's interesting that they noted that in all cases, but especially at that
coldest temperature, there was an increase in cortisol,
but that it was transient that
Ali people's cortisol. The stress hormone subsided, a bit. There are basically two different approaches to remaining
in the cold. When it's uncomfortable, one is to try and relax yourself to try and practice slow breathing to try and dilate your gaze. I've talked about this before. In previous podcast, you going to panoramic Vision to essentially, try and calm yourself. So that it's not as stressful in the
cold other people. However, take the approach of trying to
ramp up their level of internal.
Namik arousal, meaning to get really energized and kind of lean into the friction of the cold and they find that easier other people distract themselves. They recite the alphabet or they do something anything to try and distract themselves from the discomfort to be, totally honest. It does not matter for sake of dopamine release because
the dopamine release is triggered and then continues, even after you get
out of the cold water.
Now, in this study, it was long. Exposure to
cold water was
An hour, that's a long period of time and I
do warn you against getting into cold water. That's so cold. That it
will make your temperature drop and make you hyperthermic for an hour. That actually could be dangerous for. A lot of people you might have a hard time. Reheating and hypothermia is not a good thing. They
had people monitoring subjects in these studies and paying
attention to their core body temperature. They were able to reheat them
afterwards. It's well established now that getting into cold
water, whether or not to shower and I
Circulating cold water. A stream Etc.
That can evoke the norepinephrine release immediately and the long Arc of that dopamine release. Why would that be
good up until now? I've basically said getting increases in, dopamine
are detrimental to your
Baseline. Well, this does appear to raise the Baseline of
dopamine for substantial periods of time. And most people
report feeling a heightened level of calm and
focus after getting out of cold
water. So cold water exposure turns out to be a very potent stimulus for shifting.
Entire milieu, the entire environment of our brain and body. And
allowing many people to feel much, much better for a substantial period of time
after getting out of the ice bath or cold water of any kind, then they did before. Now, you might ask how
often to do this. Some people do this every day. It can be very stimulating. So typically doing it early in the day.
It's going to be better. I don't necessarily recommend doing it right before
sleep, but some people do it in the afternoon and some
People will indeed do that seven days a week. Other people, three days a week other
people, every once in a while, what I
can say is once you become cold water adapted. Once it no longer has the same impact
of novelty and feeling a bit like a, I don't want to shock to your system because you don't want to go into cold water shock, but once it
is comfortable for you, then it will no longer evoke this release. There really does seem to be something in the pathway
from cold water, exposure through the norepinephrine, pathway and into the Miz.
Make brain stem. That causes this release and dopamine,
but nonetheless, it's a
basically zero cost. I mean, you need access to water of some sort cold water, shower etcetera, but
basically, zero cost way of triggering a
long-lasting increase in dopamine without ingesting anything. No pharmacology whatsoever, please again, approached it with
safety and caution in mind, but it is a very potent stimulus. Again, 250 percent
rise in Baseline two-and-a-half times rise in Baseline Rivals that of cocaine, which is really remarkable.
Cable. Now, I'd like to talk about the positive aspects of rewards for our Behavior
and the negative aspects of rewards for our behavior. And from
that I will suggest a protocol
by which you can
achieve a better relationship to your
activities and to your dopamine system. In fact, it will help tune up your dopamine system for discipline hard work and motivation. Hard work is hard
generally. Most people don't like working
hard.
People do but most
people work hard in order to achieve some end goal.
Angles are terrific and rewards are terrific whether or not they are monetary
social or any kind.
However, because of the way that dopamine relates to our perception of time working hard at something
for sake of a reward that comes afterward
can make the hard work, much more challenging and make us much less
likely to lean into hard work in the future. Let me give you a couple examples by way of data and experiments. There's a classic experiment done actually at Stanford many years ago in which
Children in Nursery School and kindergarten
Drew pictures, and they drew pictures because they like to
draw.
The researchers took kids that
liked to draw and they started giving them a reward for drawing. The reward. Generally was a gold star or some thing that a young child would find rewarding,
then they stop giving them the gold star and what they found is, the children
had a much lower tendency to draw on their
own. No reward. Now remember this was an activity that prior to receiving a reward, the children.
Really enjoyed and selected to do. No one was telling them to draw what this relates to his so called
intrinsic versus extrinsic reinforcement
when we receive rewards, even if we give ourselves
rewards for something,
we tend to associate less pleasure with the
actual activity itself that evoked. The reward.
Now that might seem counterintuitive, but that's
just way the way that these dopaminergic circuits
work and now understanding these Peaks and baselines and dopamine, which I won't review,
Again, this should make sense. If you get a peak in dopamine from a reward, it's going to lower your Baseline and the cognitive
interpretation is that you didn't really do the activity because you enjoy the activity, you did it for the reward. Now.
This doesn't mean all rewards of all kinds are bad, but it's also important to understand that dopamine
controls our perception of time when and how much dopamine we experience is the way that we
Of up, what we call our experience of time,
when we engage in an activity. Let's say
school or hard work of any kind or exercise because of the reward, we are going to give ourselves a receive at the end, the trophy, the Sunday, the meal, whatever happens to
be, we actually are extending the time
bin over, which we are analyzing or perceiving that experience.
And because the reward comes,
Comes at the end, we start to dissociate. The neural circuits for dopamine and reward that would have normally been active during the activity and because it all arrives at the end over
time. We have the experience of less and less pleasure from that particular activity while we're doing it.
Now. This is the
antithesis of growth mindset. My colleague at Stanford Carol, dweck, as many of you know, it's come up with this incredible.
Theory and principle and actually goes beyond theory in principle. Called growth mindset, which is this striving to be better to be in this mindset of. I'm not there yet, but striving itself is
the end goal and that of
course delivers you to tremendous performance has been observed over and over and over again, that people that have growth mindset, kids that have growth mindset and up performing very well because they're focused on the effort itself and all of us can cultivate growth mindset,
the neural mechanism
of cultivating.
Growth mindset,
involves learning to access
the rewards from effort and doing, and that's hard to do.
Because you have to engage this,
prefrontal component of the mesolimbic circuit. You have to tell
yourself. Okay.
This effort is great. This effort is pleasureful, even though you might actually be in a state of physical pain from the exercise or I can recall this from college just feeling like I want to get up from my desk. But forcing myself to study forcing myself in forcing myself. What you find over time is that you can start to
Associate dopamine release. You can evoke dopamine release
from the friction and the challenge that you happen to be in,
you completely eliminate the ability to generate
those circuits and rewarding process of being able to reward friction. While in effort if you are focused only on the goal that comes at the end
because of the way that
dopamine marks
time. So if you say oh I'm going to do this very hard thing and I'm going to push and push and push and push.
For that end goal, that comes later. Not only do you enjoy the
process of what you're doing, less. You actually make it more painful while you're engaging in it. You make yourself less efficient at it, because if you were able to access dopamine, while in effort dopamine has all these incredible properties of increasing the amount of energy in our body. And in our mind, our ability to focus by way of dopamine's conversion into epinephrine,
but also, you are undermining your ability to lean back into
That activity the next time. The next time you
need twice as much coffee and three
times as much loud
music and four times as much energy drink and the social connection just to get out the door in order to do the run or to study.
So what's more
beneficial in fact, it can serve as a tremendous amplifier on all Endeavors that you engage in, especially hard Endeavors
is to a not start, layering
in other sources of dopamine, in order to get to the starting line.
Wine. Not layering in other sources of dopamine, in order to be able to continue.
But rather to subjectively start to attach the feeling of
friction and effort
to an internally generated reward
system. And this is
not meant to be vague. This is a system that exists in your mind that it exists in the minds of humans for hundreds of thousands of years by which you're not just pursuing the
things that are innately pleasureful food, sex, warmth,
Water when you're thirsty, but the
beauty of this Miss Olympic reward
pathway that I talked about earlier is that it includes the forebrain so you can tell yourself.
The effort part is the good part. I know it's painful. I know this doesn't feel good. But I'm focused on this. I'm going to start to access the reward. You will find the rewards
meaning the dopamine release
inside of effort. If you repeat this over and over again, and what's beautiful about it is that it starts to become reflexive for all types of effort
when we focus only on the trophy, only on the grade only on the
win as the reward you undermine that entire process. So, how do you do this?
You do this
in those moments of the most intense friction, you tell yourself. This is very painful and because it's painful,
it will evoke an increase in dopamine release later. Meaning, it will increase my Baseline in dopamine,
but you also have to tell yourself that in that moment you are doing it by choice and you're doing it because
you love it. And I know that sounds like lying to yourself and in some ways it is
Lying to yourself, but
it's line to yourself in the context of a truth, which is that you want it to feel
better. You want it to feel even pleasureful. Now, this is
very far in a way different from thinking about the reward that
comes at the end. The hot fudge sundae for after you cross the finish line and you can replace hot, fudge sundae with whatever reward happens to be appealing to you. We Revere people who are capable of doing what I'm describing. David, Goggins comes to mind.
It is a really good example. Many of you are probably familiar with David Goggins, former Navy SEAL who
essentially has made a post
military career career
out of
explaining and sharing his process of turning the effort into the reward. There are many other examples of this too. Of course.
Throughout evolutionary history. There's no
question that we revered people who were willing to go out and forage and hunt and gather and care take in ways that other members of our species probably found exhausting and probably would have preferred to just put their feet up or soak them in a cool stream rather than continue to forage
the ability to access this
pleasure from effort aspect of our dopaminergic. Circuitry
is without question the
most
Most powerful aspect of dopamine in our biology of dopamine. And the beautiful thing is, it's accessible to all of
us, but just to highlight the things that can interfere with and prevent
you from getting dopamine. Release from effort itself.
Don't Spike
dopamine prior to engaging in effort and don't Spike dopamine. After engaging in effort, learn to spike, your dopamine from effort itself. One straightforward example of learning.
To attach dopamine to effort and strain as opposed to a process or a reward that naturally evokes. Dopamine release is so called intermittent fasting. I know this is very popular nowadays.
Some people like to do intermittent fasting,
some people, don't. Some people have a
12 hour feeding window, every 24 hours. Some people do long fasts of
two to three days. Even
I personally don't monitor a
feeding window with a lot of precision. I tend to skip one meal a day, either breakfast or lunch.
And then I ate the other two meals of the day, depending on which you only skip. So it's either breakfast lunch and maybe a little something in the evening or I'll skip breakfast and do lunch and dinner, and so
on, many people
are now eating this way
in part because many people find it easier to
not eat at all.
Then to
eat a smaller portion of some food
and that has everything to do with the
dopamine reward, evoking properties
of food when we ingest food
or when we are about to ingest food.
Our dopamine levels, go up and typically when we ingest food, if it evokes some dopamine release than we tend to want. Even more food. Remember, dopamine's,
main role is one of motivation and seeking and what dopamine always wants. More of is more dopamine more activity or thing that evokes more dopamine release. Well,
let's just look at fasting from the perspective of dopamine. Schedules and dopamine release and Peaks and baselines typically when
Eat. We get dopamine release,
especially when we eat
after being very hungry. If you've ever gone camping, or you're very, very hungry, the food taste, that much better. And that's
actually because of the way that deprivation States increase the way that dopaminergic circuits
work.
Our perception of dopamine
is heightened. When The receptors for dopamine, have not seen much dopamine lately. They haven't bound much dopamine. So when you fast fast, fast, fast fast,
Fast and then you finally eat
it. Evokes more dopamine release. So this is the big reward that comes at the end even bigger because you deprived yourself. This is true for all rewarding behaviors and activities. By the way, the longer you restrict yourself from that activity, the greater the dopamine experience when the dopamine is finally released because of an upregulation of The receptors for dopamine.
But I just spent five minutes or more
telling you that you should avoid too much reward at the end and you should actually
focus on the
dopamine that you can
consciously evoke from the deprivation strain and effort. And in fact, this is
what happens for many people that
start doing fasting and take a liking to
it. Many people say that their state of mind when they fast is
clearer that they actually start to enjoy the period of fasting. In fact, some people start pushing out.
They're eating window or
skipping entire days of eating
more and more in order to get deeper into that
State of Mind. Where
surely, it's not just dopamine but dopamine is released. They will track their clock. Oh, I've been fasting, 12 hours, 16 hours Etc. They are starting to attach dopamine release or create dopamine release from the deprivation, not from the food, reward
itself. And this I think it makes it an interesting practice in one that certainly has been
practiced by for centuries in.
And cultures and different religions of deliberately restricting food. Not just to increase the rewarding properties of food itself, but also
to increase the rewarding
properties of deprivation.
And I should emphasize that a lot of the subjective
aspects of the knowledge of the benefits of fasting.
Serve as reinforcing, dopamine
amplifying aspects to fasting. Meaning,
if somebody does intermittent fasting, and they are deep into they're
fast. And they're telling themselves. Oh my blood lipid.
Files are probably improving in my glucose management is probably improving. My insulin sensitivity is going up and I'm going to live longer all these things
that have some basis from animal studies and some basis or not from
Human studies. It's all kind of it's still an emerging literature,
but it does seem to be pointing in that direction that fasting can
encourage things like autophagy. The engulfment of dead cells and things of that sort.
Well, as people tell themselves these things,
they are enhancing the rewarding part.
Properties of the behavior of fasting.
And so this is a Salient example of where knowledge of
knowledge can actually
help us change these deep primitive circuits, related to dopamine and this
illustrates how the forebrain which carries knowledge and Carries interpretation and rational
thought can be used to shape the very circuits that are involved in generating reward for what would otherwise just be kind of
primitive behaviors. Hard-wired behaviors. And that's the beauty of these do.
I mean circuits. And that's the beauty of dopamine. It's not just attached
to the more primitive behaviors
of food, sex heat, Etc.
It's also attached to the things that we
decide are good for us in our important for us. So, telling yourself that exercise or fasting, or studying or listening better or any
kind of behavior is good for, you will actually reinforce the extent to which it is good for you at
a chemical level and a somewhat Eerie example of what I just mentioned.
Second was a study that was published last
year in the journal, neuron cell Press Journal. Excellent Journal, that showed that.
Hearing something that reinforces one's prior beliefs
actually can evoke dopamine release.
So, the dopamine pathway is so
vulnerable to subjective interpretation. That, it actually makes it such that when we see something or hear something that validates a belief that we already have that itself can increase dopamine release
along the lines of how dopamine and dopamine
schedules and our perception of things can shape the way that we experience things as pleasure.
Or not. They're beautiful studies.
Mainly looking at Sugar
appetite and our sense of pleasure from sweet things, but also for Savory Foods, Etc.
And essentially, the results that come out of this are the
following. If you ingest something that you like, it tastes
good to you, but then you ingest something that's even sweeter or even more Savory and then you go back to the food that you ate previously. Well, you don't like it
as much and that might seem like a DOT obviously.
But
that shift in perception can
be blocked by blocking the shift in dopamine.
And so this really speaks to these Peaks and valleys and dopamine that I mentioned
before and how your
experience of anything is going to depend
on your prior experience of other things that evoke dopamine big
dopamine release makes it more challenging to
experience more big, dopamine release.
So, dopamine is one of those things that you don't want too high or too low for too long. It's all.
Out staying in that dynamic range and that's going to be different for everybody. So, for the
very Savory Foods that are now everywhere those highly Savory Foods or I
think they call them, highly
palatable foods are making more bland Foods Whole Foods,
meaning foods that are not
processed. It's making those taste less
good at least for a while and all it takes is a short period of time, even just days 2 days or so of not consuming any highly palatable Foods.
And suddenly
broccoli with just a little bit of seasoning taste
delicious to you. Alright.
So again, this just speaks to the fact that dopamine is this universal currency. It establishes value based on not just
what you're experiencing in the moment, but what you experienced in the days and minutes
before, now that you understand how
your previous level of dopamine relates to your current level of dopamine and how your current level of dopamine will influence your future level of dopamine.
It should become obvious why things like pornography,
not just the accessibility of pornography, but the intensity of
pornography can negatively
shape real-world romantic and sexual interactions. This is a serious concern. That discussion is happening.
Now, the underlying neurobiological mechanisms You Now understand and this isn't to pass judgment on whether or
not people like or don't like pornography. That's an ethical discussion. It's a moral discussion that has to be decided for
Each individual by virtue of age, Etc.
But again, any activity that evokes, a lot of dopamine release will make it harder to achieve the same level
and certainly the greater level of dopamine through a subsequent interaction. So, yes, indeed, many people are addicted to pornography.
And yes, indeed, many people who regularly indulge in
pornography experience challenges in real-world.
Interactions You Now understand the mechanisms behind what I'm telling you.
Now there are circumstances in which increasing levels of dopamine is desirable
and advantageous and clinically helpful, good example. This would be the drug Wellbutrin also called
blueprint which increases dopamine and
norepinephrine. Wellbutrin program
was developed as an alternative treatment for depression because some people who take the so called, ssris selective
serotonin reuptake Inhibitors, which as the name suggests increase
serotonin,
From serotonin related side
effects, things like
decreased appetite decreased libido, or sometimes increased
appetite, or other side effects that they don't want,
and Wellbutrin seems to avoid the sexual side effects. It can blunt at appetite and these sorts of things, because of
the increase in norepinephrine and
dopamine increases levels of motivation and craving, but also can create a state of elevated.
ER, tennis that can sometimes, get in the way of
healthy eating and things of that sort. So one has to work with their clinician as psychiatrist. It is a prescription drug in order to find the dosage of Wellbutrin. That's correct for
them. In addition things like Wellbutrin proprietor own can increase anxiety because of the way that
dopamine and norepinephrine are stimulating intend to place people into heightened levels of alertness. Nonetheless many
people have gained terrific relief from
depression, from Wellbutrin, were prior own
and many of those same people.
People had serious trouble
with some of the ssris so does seem to be a very useful drug in certain contexts both for depression. And for the treatment of smoking for people Desiring to quit smoking.
And of course, there are a lot of people out there who are
seeking to increase their
Baseline levels of dopamine
without taking any prescription. Pharmaceutical compounds,
and nowadays there exists. A lot of supplements to do that. The two, most common ones that are directly
within the dopamine pathway are mucuna purines.
Which is actually a velvety Bean,
whose contents are l-dopa, believe it or not. The content of this being
is the precursor to dopamine. So,
mucuna pruriens is sold over the counter at least in the United States and it literally
is the precursor to dopamine.
Meaning, if you take it, you will experience very large
increases in dopamine. Those increases are
transient and very, very intense. And in fact, if you
look at the constellation of effects of,
Appearance what you find is that they're pretty striking and they
look a lot like if not identical to l-dopa.
The most obvious of those
is in the context of Parkinson's disease. There are at least five studies that have shown that mucuna pruriens can reduce the symptoms of Parkinson's
disease much in the same way that
l-dopa can reduce the symptoms of Parkinson's disease and that shouldn't come as any surprise given. What I just told you that mechana brains is essentially l-dopa.
It also can reduce.
A particular hormone called prolactin dopamine and prolactin tend to be in somewhat push-pull fashion. When dopamine is up prolactin is down and
vice versa prolactin is involved in milk, letdown in women. It's involved in setting the refractory period for sex after ejaculation in males. The reason made in can occur and then not occur after ejaculation, is because of an increase in prolactin. Mucuna pruriens is often used to front blunt prolactin and they're actually
a couple of studies showing that it can indeed do.
Mucuna pruriens has a number of other effects that lie in the sort of sex and reproduction
pathway that are worth noting
sperm concentration sperm. Quality is actually greatly
increased by mucuna, pruriens. These are kind of curious effects until you understand a little bit more about the biology of dopamine, which I'll mention in a moment,
but there are several studies
for, in fact, that
describe how mucuna pruriens can increase sperm count, sperm quality.
Tea and sperm motility. So, for those of you seeking to conceive children, mucuna pruriens might be an interesting choice.
If you're interested in exploring, non-prescription compounds.
However, I should mention that anytime you consume a substance that increases dopamine by mimicking dopamine or acting as a direct precursor to dopamine. There's almost inevitably
a crash or a reduction in the Baseline and dopamine that we referred to previously.
So many people who take mucuna pruriens feel really elevated. Really motivated really alert, all the
sorts of things that one would expect from a dopaminergic drug, which mucuna pruriens
is, and then they feel a low or a
reduction in drive and excitement and enthusiasm after the drug wears off, just like they would with any other dopamine increasing compound for that reason.
Many people have turned to the use of
l-tyrosine l-tyrosine.
Dean is an amino
acid precursor to l-dopa. So it lies further up
the dopamine synthesis pathway and nowadays. It's very common
because I'll tyrosine has sold over the counter in the United
States that people will take l-tyrosine as a way to
get more, energized alert and
focused and indeed there are data that l-tyrosine will accomplish that l-tyrosine is typically taken in capsule form or powder. Form
anywhere from 500 to 750 to a thousand milligrams.
It is a potent stimulus for increasing dopamine and the time scale for increasing dopamine is
about 30 to 45 minutes after ingestion, dopamine levels, start to Peak the
classic study that really nailed down. The
fact that tyrosine has this
effect was published way back in 1983 Journal clinical endocrinology and Metabolism. That directly compared l-tyrosine supplementation with
tryptophan ingestion on plasma dopamine, and and serotonin.
Tryptophan being a precursor to serotonin.
And indeed, what they found is that ingestion of l-tyrosine can increase
the amount of dopamine circulating in the blood. And in the brain to, of course,
the tyrosine ingestion induced dopamine increases within 45 minutes and they
were short lasting after. About 30 minutes. The effect had dissipated meaning. The levels of dopamine had dropped down to baseline And
even though they didn't look at levels of Baseline, dopamine
past.
That time point, the expectation based on everything, we know about dopamine biology, is that it would then drop below
Baseline. Due to the
depletion of the readily reservable pool of dopamine. Vesicles that we talked about way back at the beginning of this episode.
The nice thing about this study is it does show specificity of effect because ingestion of tryptophan did not increase dopamine instead it increased serotonin. So there's
really specificity of these Pathways that rule out any Placebo type
effects.
I'm not suggesting that anybody. Everybody increase their
dopamine levels by way of tyrosine and Mercury mucuna pruriens.
For those of you that are seeking to increase your
dopamine levels without prescription drugs. Those are the
most direct route to that. Of course, if you have a
pre-existing dopaminergic condition, so schizophrenia psychosis of any kind, bipolar anxiety, things like, mucuna pruriens, and l-tyrosine will not be good for you. And if you don't
You should just
understand and expect that it's going to lead to an increase. In dopamine. You'll certainly feel an elevated state for some of you that might be
agitating for some of you that might be really pleasureful and then you will feel a crash afterwards. How deep is that crash? Will really depend on your biology and where your dopamine Baseline began.
So I personally am not a fan of using
things like mucuna pruriens at all for myself. For the reason. I mentioned earlier just too intense and too.
Of a crash. I do use l-tyrosine from time to time for enhancing focus and motivation, but I want to emphasize from time to time. So I might use it once a
week, occasionally twice a
week, but I've never been one to take l-tyrosine regularly in order to focus or train or do any kind of mental work. I just don't want to rely on any exogenous substance. In order to get my dopamine circuits
activated and I don't want to experience the
drop in dopamine that inevitably occurs some
Of time afterwards.
I should also mention things that can
reduce your levels of Baseline. Dopamine one that is rarely
discussed is melatonin. I have talked before on this podcast about
melatonin why I am not a fan of using melatonin in order to
enhance sleep. It can help one get to sleep. But not stay
asleep. Dr. Matt Walker sleep expert from University of California Berkeley. I think I don't want to
put words in his mouth but in our
discussion about melatonin
On this podcast. When Matt was a guest in his book and other podcast, Matt
has generally stated that the use of
melatonin except for treatment of jet lag is generally not a good idea and I agree.
I think that melatonin is not often thought about as impacting the dopamine pathway, but there's at least one study published in 2001. First author is nishiyama just as it sounds it is it spelled just as it sounds acute effects of melatonin ministration on.
Vascular autonomic regulation and healthy men. So the study wasn't specifically about dopamine but they looked at norepinephrine and dopamine levels. And they found a significant statistically significant decrease
in dopamine 60 minutes after melatonin Administration. I've talked before about how viewing Bright
Lights between the hours of 10 p.m. And 4 a.m. Has been shown in
Studies by dr. Sam, our heart our David Burson, excellent circadian.
Scientists to reduce levels of dopamine for
several days.
After that light exposure, so, dim the lights at night. If
you can avoid, exogenous melatonin meaning. If you don't have to take melatonin and you can find a better alternative.
That would be a good idea. If you want to maintain healthy levels of dopamine.
Now, there is one compound that you are all familiar with and you've probably actually taken without realizing it that increases dopamine and that's something called Peña
for phenol Ethel. I mean, technically beta phenolphtalein I mean and
PA is found in various Foods. Chocolate just happens to be one in enriched in Peña and can increase synaptic levels of dopamine.
I personally take PE a from time to time
as a focus and work Aid in order to do intense bouts of work. Again, I don't do that too often. This might be once a week or once every two
weeks. I might use it for training,
but typically I don't it's usually for mental work and I will take 500 milligrams of Peña and I'll take
300 milligrams of alpha GPC. That's something that I personally do. That's what's right for me. It's within my margins of safety for my health. Again. You have to check with your doctor and decide what's right for you.
It leads to a sharp but very transient increase in dopamine
that lasts about 30 to 45
minutes and at least in my system. I found to be
much more regulated and kind of
even than something like
l-tyrosine and certainly much more regulated and even and lower dopamine.
Release than something, like mucuna, pruriens. One of the Lesser talked about compounds that's out there, but that's
gaining popularity for
increasing dopamine. And as a so-called nootropic is something called
huperzine A huperzine a is a compound sold over the counter at least in the United States that can increase,
acetylcholine transmission, a different neuromodulator entirely,
but what's interesting is that huperzine a somehow by way of interactions between the cholinergic system and
Open Energy System leads to increases in dopamine in the medial, prefrontal
cortex. And hippocampus. Hippocampus. Of course, being an area of the brain associated with learning and memory, and prefrontal cortex being associated with the me's Olympic pathway decision-making, Focus, Etc. And so I think the reason why we're
seeing an increase in popularity of companies, including huperzine a and
nootropic compounds is both for the cholinergic stimulating properties, but also for stimulating dopamine release. I personally have never tried Hooper.
She named you can go to
examine.com or put huperzine a into
PubMed if you'd like
to search around and see some of the science behind it. Again. I'm not recommending anyone, take these things. In fact, I recommend against anyone just diving in and starting to consume things without gaining knowledge, about how they
function, and whether or not, they're right for you. But nonetheless, I think in the years to come, we are going to see a lot more of l-tyrosine PE a funeral. A flaming and huperzine as a way of
tapping into the dopaminergic and cholinergic circuits. Certainly along with
Is like Alpha GPC as non-prescription short-lived, somewhat milder
alternatives to things that really Spike,
dopamine, things like Adderall Ritalin, modafinil are modafinil and similar
and I can't help but share with you. One more result. It's not related to
pharmacology. It's related to behaviors and social interactions.
And that's the very interesting and I would say, important finding
that was made a few years ago by my colleague. Rob. Milenka. Is there a department of Psychiatry
at
bird showing that oxytocin and social connection is actually directly stimulating. The dopamine pathway. I think for many years, all of us including me would here and thought that oxytocin was in the serotonergic pathway that it was about pair bonding. And it was about some of these neuromodulators that were more associated with things related to feeling good with what we have in the present moment. That's typically what we think of when we think of the opioid system or the search and
System. The dopamine system is really about
seeking and reward,
but in a paper published in 2017 in the journal science, excellent, Journal papers, titled gating of social reward by oxytocin tosin. Scuse me in the ventral tegmental area.
You now know what the ventral tegmental area. It's that area of the mesolimbic pathway what
this paper essentially showed is that oxytocin social connection and pair-bonding itself triggers dopamine release.
And as everyone read this
Result, we
all realized this makes total sense that
for the evolution of our species indeed for any species where social connections are important. It's also important to go seek social connections. And so while it's fun to think about pharmacology and underlying neural circuitry and cold water
baths and all these different things related to dopamine schedules and reward
mechanisms and attaching reward to effort and all the various things that we've talked about today in terms of science and tools and protocols.
I'd be remiss if I didn't include description of this result and just emphasize that social connections, close social Connections in particular that evoke
oxytocin release. So those are romantic type. Those are
parent-child type those our friendship related and those can even be just friends at a distance related. Right? It
doesn't actually require skin
contact to get
oxytocin release.
But oxytocin release is Central to stimulating the dopamine Pathways, so
The take-home message. There is quite simple engage in
pursue quality healthy social
interactions. I know I've covered a lot of material today. I've really tried hard to focus on things that lie directly within the dopamine pathway and
circuitry's as well as things that directly stimulate those Pathways. And circuitry's.
What I haven't talked about
are all the things that indirectly serve, the dopamine Pathways
and out there on the internet and indeed in the scientific
literature.
We'll find for instance that things like maca root can increase. Dopamine things like the gut microbiome can influence
dopamine and indeed they can. But they do that through indirect mechanisms by creating a environment a milieu in which dopamine and dopamine
circuits can flourish. Maca is a good example of that. It
will reduce cortisol and through some indirect Pathways related to cortisol can increase dopamine, but it's not a direct
increase in dopamine. And so as a consequence, it's rather subtle compared to the various.
Compounds and behaviors that I talked about today, indeed, cold water, exposure leads to in huge increases in dopamine as we talked about before and very sustained ones at that.
I realize in giving you a lot of information about science and mechanism, all the way from psychological biological to
circuitry and synaptic transmission, volumetric
transmission, and so forth that it might seem overwhelming. The most important thing is to understand or that these dopamine
Pathways really are under your control
and the
Locus of control resides in the fact that
your previous levels of dopamine are influencing your levels of dopamine right
now and your current levels of dopamine and where you take them, next will influence your dopamine levels in the next days and weeks to come. So, I hope both with the mechanisms that you now have in hand plus some of the tools to tap into the dopaminergic system, both behavioral,
pharmacologic prescription and non-prescription,
Etc, that you'll feel that you have more control over your dopamine system and certainly that you have a better understanding of your dopamine.
Item. So, that you can modulate and adjust your levels of dopamine
in the ways that serve you best,
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Level that you like
today and on previous podcast episodes. We talked a bit about supplements supplements certainly aren't necessary. But many people find them beneficial for things like adjusting their levels of dopamine
or for other
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