Dopamine is a VITAL substance produced by your brain that makes you feel optimistic, ecstatic, excited, and just happy to be alive.
It’s no wonder that people look for ways to produce as much of this substance as possible and to keep these levels up (sadly most people use drugs or other bad things to do this, but there are natural ways to increase dopamine!).
Just imagine if your sense of pleasure and motivation for life could increase with a few easy changes to your lifestyle. There are a few ways that you can achieve this and we’ve come up with a step by step tutorial to help you out. Look how happy this woman looks! That could be you:
What is dopamine?
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter with means that it helps your brain communicate with your body’s nervous system. Its main role is being responsible for the pleasure-reward response which helps you stay motivated and go after things that help you survive and feel good in life.
The rewards in this analogy could be a number of different things. It could be a great meal, getting a promotion, scoring that hot date you had your eye on, or getting that much awaited A+ on your chemistry test. When any of these things happen, your brain immediately releases high levels of dopamine and you, in turn, begin to feel a rush of happiness and satisfaction.
Basically, you feel great pleasure. We then begin to associate the steps we took and the hard work that we put in with the positive feelings that came afterward. That’s what the purpose of dopamine is – to motivate you to greater heights and increased survival capabilities in life.
What happens with low levels of dopamine?
If you have low levels of dopamine, you’ll have trouble with finding the energy and motivation to go after these things in life. You might even avoid them altogether! This means that you’ll have too much fear and self-doubt to go after that promotion, or you’ll feel too anxious to make an emotional connection with someone else.
This can make you feel depressed, lethargic, pessimistic, and can decrease your sex drive. Basically, it makes the experience of pleasure just out of reach. In an interesting study, rats who had extremely low levels of dopamine actually stopped eating.
How does dopamine production stop or decrease? Well, some diseases, like Parkinson’s or influenza, for example, can really mess up its production. Aside from this, your lifestyle has a great influence on how much dopamine you naturally produce.
Being stressed, overweight, getting little sleep, having nutritional deficiencies, or emotional problems are some of the main causes. Symptoms of low dopamine levels are pretty easy to spot. They include irritability, feelings of hopelessness, lack of motivation, anger, poor concentration, unhealthy food and alcohol cravings, and anxiety.
How to increase dopamine production and feel better
With a little bit of work, anyone can increase their dopamine production naturally, back to healthy levels. Here are several things you can do to start producing more Dopamine (naturally) and feel better. Try even just a couple of these for a week or so and you’ll start feeling a lot better.
1. Focus on your diet
What you eat can have an incredible effect not only on your physical body, but on your mental state as well. You need to pay attention to getting nutrients and vitamins that help boost natural brain processes, like Omega 3’s, vitamin B6, zinc, and magnesium, to name few.
When I went Vegan it was a turning point for my motivatino levels, and it really made a differnece. Great sources of these are naturally occurring fats, which can be found in nuts, fish, dark and leafy green veggies, and berries. When cooking, try to go for natural oils – some great options can be made from olives, pumpkin seeds, linen seeds, or coconut.
2. Control stress levels
If you have a high-stress job or lifestyle, chances are that your dopamine levels are definitely below average. Stress depletes the body of feel-good chemicals, not just dopamine, but also serotonin and oxytocin. Try to figure out if there is anything in your life that causes too much stress and that you could potentially cut out.
Perhaps seeing your mother in law three times a week is a bit too much. Learn to have your own boundaries and do what feels best for you. Alternatively, if you can’t change too much of your life situation, try relaxation techniques like mediation, yoga, or talk therapy. Remember laughter is also a sure-fire way to combat stress.
3. Exercise, exercise, exercise
Exercise naturally produces dopamine, so just being active physically itself will automatically increase your levels. Not to mention, exercise is key to overall physical health which means that you’ll heave less things to stress about. Once you start working out about 30 minutes each day, you’ll see how great if feels and quickly up your dopamine levels faster than you could ever imagine.
4. Create some goals
Having goals will push you to become more motivated, even if you’re not exactly feeling that way to begin with. If you keep pushing, and even rewarding yourself every now and then along the way, you’ll quickly get yourself in the habit of striving for new goals and achievements, thus activating the dopamine production system.
5. Maintain a healthy sleep cycle
This is a pretty obvious one. If you don’t get enough sleep, your whole body suffers. You lack energy, your emotions go haywire, and your motivation can suffer an immense blow. Sleep helps us regenerate and feel healthy, happy, and ready to take on another day. When we deprive ourselves of this, it’s no wonder that dopamine levels take a plunge. Try going to bed and waking up at the same times each day, and you’ll quickly see how the rest restores energy and motivation back into your life.
6. Get the right supplements
If you’re doing all of the above, but feel like you still need more help, you can always try tossing in some supplements or nootropics into your diet. These will help support your dopamine system and, when taken correctly, can be a great addition to healthy lifestyle changes. Examples of dopamine-increasing supplements include curcumin, ginko balboa, l-tyrosine, and rhodiola.