The Dopamine Myth

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Your biological age almost certainly doesn’t match your chronological age, and can be measured in various ways, including:

  • Blood tests

  • Hormone tests

  • Mobility tests (see today’s video for an example of this!)

• Dopamine is involved in addictions, but can (and should!) be so much more, for good

• Dopamine is an essential neurotransmitter and without it, you would die, horribly.

• Some serious mental illnesses have to do with dopamine imbalances—too much or too little is very bad for us. Under normal circumstances, our brains regulate our dopamine levels to keep us within safe parameters.

  • To go outside of those parameters requires a serious mental illness, or chemical intervention.

• Dopamine is responsible for pleasure yes, but also has a critical role in…

  • Motivation

  • Learning and memory

  • Motor functions

  • Language faculties

  • Linear task processing (i.e. plannning)

• It is possible to gently, healthily, boost dopamine levels to enjoy the benefits without deleterious effects (scroll down for suggestions on how to do this)

• In other news, cranberry products really can prevent UTIs for women, after all

• People who survive cancer may have an increased heart disease risk

• Effective habit-building can help you to become the kind of person who genuinely gets a little better each day, and reaps the benefits over time.

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Sitting-Rising Test - Are You Aging Too Fast?

Whatever your age, it’s unlikely that your biological age and chronological age match. Many factors influence how quickly we age in various ways, and while we count our age by how many times we looped the sun, our body counts it in biological milestones.

There are lots of different ways to measure biological age; for example with blood tests, hormone tests, and bone density, but what Lucas here has to share is about mobility.

You can test it, and the good news is, you can also improve it:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Key moments:

• 00:33 Sit-to-Rise Test

• 02:26 Take the Test

• 03:55 Improve Your Score

• 04:36 Stool Sit

• 06:59 Broomstick Sit

• 08:54 Daily Routine

If you’d like a PDF of the exercises, click here

🧠 MAIN FEATURE

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!

🌎 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• A myth no more: cranberry products can prevent urinary tract infections for women

• Causes of hair loss in women—medical reasons and more

• Cognitive decline may be triggered by astrocyte dysfunction

• People who survive cancer may have increased heart disease risk

• Could sleeping pills slow or stop Alzheimer's?

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Atomic Habits: the life-changing million-copy #1 bestseller - by James Clear

James Clear's Atomic Habits has become "the" go-to book about the power of habit-forming. And, there's no shortage of competition out there, so that's quite a statement. What makes this book stand out?

A lot of books start by assuming you want to build habits. That can seem a fair assumption; after all, we picked up the book! But an introductory chapter really hammers home the idea in a way that makes it a lot more motivational:

• Habits are the compound interest of productivity

• This means that progress is not linear, but exponential

• Habits can also be stacked, and thus become synergistic

• The more positive habits you add incrementally, the easier they become because each thing is making your life easier/better

For example:

• It's easier to save money if you're in good health

• It's easier to sleep better if you do not have financial worries

• It's easier to build your relationship with your loved ones if you're not tired

…and so on.

For many people this presents a Catch-22 problem! Clear instead presents it as an opportunity... Start wherever you like, but just start small, with some two-minute thing, and build from there.

A lot of the book is given over to:

• how to form effective habits (using his "Four Laws")

• how to build them into your life

• how to handle mishaps

• how to make sure your habits are working for you

• how to see habits as part of your identity, and not just a goal to be checked off

The last one is perhaps key—goals cease to be motivating once accomplished. Habits, on the other hand, keep spiralling upwards (if you guide them appropriately).

There's lots more we could say, but it's a one-minute book review, so we'll just close by saying:

This book can help you to become the kind of person who genuinely gets a little better each day, and reaps the benefits over time.

Get your copy of Atomic Habits from Amazon today!

May each day find you at your best so far,

The 10almonds Team