The Dopamine Myth
The Dopamine Myth: Don’t believe the misconception that dopamine is the cause of addictions. It plays a role in pleasure, motivation, learning, and more. Find healthier ways to boost dopamine levels.
The Dopamine Myth
There’s a popular misconception that, since dopamine is heavily involved in addictions, it’s the cause.
We see this most often in the context of non-chemical addictions, such as:
- gambling
- videogames
- social media
And yes, those things will promote dopamine production, and yes, that will feel good. But dopamine isn’t the problem.
Myth: The Dopamine Detox
There’s a trend we’ve mentioned before (it got a video segment a few Fridays back) about the idea of a “dopamine detox“, and how unscientific the idea is.
For a start…
- You cannot detox from dopamine, because dopamine is not a toxin
- You cannot abstain from dopamine, because your brain regulates your dopamine levels to keep them correct*
- If you could abstain from dopamine (and did), you would die, horribly.
*unless you have a serious mental illness, for example:
- forms of schizophrenia and/or psychosis that involve too much dopamine, or
- forms of depression and/or neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s (and several kinds of dementia) in which you have too little dopamine
- bipolar disorder in which dopamine levels can swing too far each way
See also: Dopamine fasting: misunderstanding science spawns a maladaptive fad
Myth: Dopamine is all about pleasure
Dopamine is a pleasure-giving neurotransmitter, but it serves more purposes than that! It also plays a central role in many neurological processes, including:
- Motivation
- Learning and memory
- Motor functions
- Language faculties
- Linear task processing
Note for example how someone taking dopaminergic drugs (prescription or otherwise; could be anything from modafinil to cocaine) is not blissed out… They’re probably in a good mood, sure, but they’re focused, organized, quick-thinking, and so forth! This is not an ad for cocaine; cocaine is very bad for the health. But you see the features? So, what if we could have a little more dopamine… healthily?
Dopamine—à la carte
Let’s look at the examples we gave earlier of non-chemical addictions that are dopaminergic in nature:
- gambling
- videogames
- social media
They’re not actually that rewarding, are they?
- Gamblers lose more than they win
- Gamers cease to care about a game once they have won
- Social media more often results in “doomscrolling”
This is because what prompts the most dopamine is actually the anticipation of reward… not the thing itself, whose reward-pleasure is very fleeting. Nobody looks back at an hour of doomscrolling and thinks “well, that was fun; I’m glad I did that”.
See the science: Liking, Wanting and the Incentive-Sensitization Theory of Addiction
But what if we anticipated a reward from things that are not deleterious to health and productivity? Things that are neutral, or even good for us?
Examples of this include:
- Sex! (remember though, it’s not a race to the finish-line)
- Good, nourishing food (bonus: some foods boost dopamine production nutritionally)
- Exercise/sport (also prompts release of endorphins, win/win!)
- Gamified learning apps (e.g. Duolingo)
- Gamified health/productivity apps (anything with bells and whistles and things that go “ding” and measure streaks etc)
Want to know more?
That’s all we have time for today, but you might want to check out:
10 Best Ways to Increase Dopamine Levels Naturally ← Science-based and well-sourced article!
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Stop Cancer 20 Years Ago
Dr. Jenn Simmons shares vital tips on preventing cancer and inflammation, advocating for lifestyle changes and proactive health management at any age.
Get Abreast And Keep Abreast
This is Dr. Jenn Simmons. Her specialization is integrative oncology, as she—then a breast cancer surgeon—got breast cancer, decided the system wasn’t nearly as good from the patients’ side of things as from the doctors’ side, and took to educate herself, and now others, on how things can be better.
What does she want us to know?
Start now
If you have breast cancer, the best time to start adjusting your lifestyle might be 20 years ago, but the second-best time is now. We realize our readers with breast cancer (or a history thereof) probably have indeed started already—all strength to you.
What this means for those of us without breast cancer (or a history therof) is: start now
Even if you don’t have a genetic risk factor, even if there’s no history of it in your family, there’s just no reason not to start now.
Start what, you ask? Taking away its roots. And how?
Inflammation as the root of cancer
To oversimplify: cancer occurs because an accidentally immortal cell replicates and replicates and replicates and takes any nearby resources to keep on going. While science doesn’t know all the details of how this happens, it is a factor of genetic mutation (itself a normal process, without which evolution would be impossible), something which in turn is accelerated by damage to the DNA. The damage to the DNA? That occurs (often as not) as a result of cellular oxidation. Cellular oxidation is far from the only genotoxic thing out there, and a lot of non-food “this thing causes cancer” warnings are usually about other kinds of genotoxicity. But cellular oxidation is a big one, and it’s one that we can fight vigorously with our lifestyle.
Because cellular oxidation and inflammation go hand-in-hand, reducing one tends to reduce the other. That’s why so often you’ll see in our Research Review Monday features, a line that goes something like:
“and now for those things that usually come together: antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and anti-aging”
So, fight inflammation now, and have a reduced risk of a lot of other woes later.
See: How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation
Don’t settle for “normal”
People are told, correctly but not always helpfully, such things as:
- It’s normal to have less energy at your age
- It’s normal to have a weaker immune system at your age
- It’s normal to be at a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, etc
…and many more. And these things are true! But that doesn’t mean we have to settle for them.
We can be all the way over on the healthy end of the distribution curve. We can do that!
(so can everyone else, given sufficient opportunity and resources, because health is not a zero-sum game)
If we’re going to get a cancer diagnosis, then our 60s are the decade where we’re most likely to get it. Earlier than that and the risk is extant but lower; later than that and technically the risk increases, but we probably got it already in our 60s.
So, if we be younger than 60, then now’s a good time to prepare to hit the ground running when we get there. And if we missed that chance, then again, the second-best time is now:
See: Focusing On Health In Our Sixties
Fast to live
Of course, anything can happen to anyone at any age (alas), but this is about the benefits of living a fasting lifestyle—that is to say, not just fasting for a 4-week health kick or something, but making it one’s “new normal” and just continuing it for life.
This doesn’t mean “never eat”, of course, but it does mean “practice intermittent fasting, if you can”—something that Dr. Simmons strongly advocates.
See: Intermittent Fasting: We Sort The Science From The Hype
While this calls back to the previous “fight inflammation”, it deserves its own mention here as a very specific way of fighting it.
It’s never too late
All of the advices that go before a cancer diagnosis, continue to stand afterwards too. There is no point of “well, I already have cancer, so what’s the harm in…?”
The harm in it after a diagnosis will be the same as the harm before. When it comes to lifestyle, preventing a cancer and preventing it from spreading are very much the same thing, which is also the same as shrinking it. Basically, if it’s anticancer, it’s anticancer, no matter whether it’s before, during, or after.
Dr. Simmons has seen too many patients get a diagnosis, and place their lives squarely in the hands of doctors, when doctors can only do so much.
Instead, Dr. Simmons recommends taking charge of your health as best you are able, today and onwards, no matter what. And that means two things:
- Knowing stuff
- Doing stuff
So it becomes our responsibility (and our lifeline) to educate ourselves, and take action accordingly.
Want to know more?
We recently reviewed her book, and heartily recommend it:
The Smart Woman’s Guide to Breast Cancer – by Dr. Jenn Simmons
Enjoy!