Dopamine is a type of neuromodulator and hormone that is released into our system as a reward system, our brain loves this hormone and it plays a huge role in many important body functions, including movement, memory, pleasure and motivation. This hormone has a big role in what drives you to do what you do! In this blog, I’ll talk about our motivation, moods and cravings. Firstly, what is dopamine and how does it have such a big impact on our everyday life?
Our body has a baseline level of dopamine, which means that we have a percentage of dopamine that is circulating around our body and brain all the time. This is important to how we feel generally, e.g. if we are in a good mood and how motivated and driven we are. We also experience peaks in dopamine, these peaks are the feeling when we experience something that is really exciting to us (excitement is different for everyone). Once this peak of dopamine is realised we feel a boost of energy or excitement. Once we have experienced our peak, our dopamine levels drop below the baseline (what goes up must come down). This is our body’s reaction as it always needs to rebalance.
We get different amounts of dopamine boosts from different things, for example, if we love eating chocolate we will have a boost of dopamine which can be 1.5 times above baseline, but it is short-lived, making us go back for more and more to get that ‘feel good’ factor back (we have all been there!) If we love a certain type of exercise we will feel the same buzz after it, e.g. walking, running or finishing a set of weights in the gym. We will feel that extra boost of energy, this is a bigger boost and lasts much longer. If you don’t enjoy the exercise you are doing or have done, it doesn’t mean exercise is not for you, it just means you haven’t found the right type of exercise for you yet!
Dopamine is getting used against us
Sadly, companies and industries know about dopamine and use our hormones against us to keep us buying more. We fall for it every time when we go shopping with all the good intentions of only buying the things on our list and then getting home with a pack of biscuits, crisps (chips) or that bar of chocolate you intend to save for the weekend! Dopamine isn’t only released when we eat one of these high-sugar treats, it’s released with the cravings (excitement) of eating it! It’s built into us from our childhood. “You can have this TREAT when you finish our dinner”. You are then looking forward to the ‘treat’ and release dopamine before you even eat it. When you put a packet of biscuits in the cupboard for the weekend and it feels like someone is constantly reminding you about them, until that moment you find yourself on your fourth biscuit craving more and more!
Remember what goes up must come down after such a high from the sugar intake, we will have a crash of dopamine meaning our mood will drop, this has an impact on lots of different areas of your body including increased stress (realising cortisol).
Sugar is hidden in foods we don’t necessarily think of such as breakfast cereals, certain types of bread, and processed or pre-packed foods. This has a big hit on our dopamine, cortisol and other hormones making us crave more food.
Dopamine isn’t a never-ending supply
‘Burnt out’ is a phrase that has been used but what does this actually mean? As I’ve mentioned above, dopamine has a big job to keep us motivated, happy and driven to succeed, but on top of that, it also deals with cravings. An old saying that I used to get told was ‘Don’t burn the candle at both ends!’ I understand the idea of this but didn’t really understand the impact of it, if you look at the average person’s week, we work hard, play hard but don’t rest hard!! Dopamine gets used all the time, everything from exercising, eating, and being creative at work, on top of this it also has to deal with our weekends, e.g. going out for drinks and socialising. At some point, we will hit a threshold of low dopamine which will make us feel like we don’t get pleasure from anything anymore!!
Sometimes you need to take a break to give the endocrine system (hormones) a chance to catch up.
Tasks to help get the best effects from your dopamine output:
– Look at the Ingredients of your food where it says carbohydrates, underneath it will say sugar – you want as big of a gap between these two numbers as possible e.g 14 grams of carbohydrates, 13 grams of sugar = a lot of sugar. If you have something high in sugar sitting in your cupboard, next time you go to the supermarket swap it out for something with a bigger gap. (The grams of sugar are already included in the total carbohydrate count – this is why we need to find the gap)
– Before eating that sugary treat, ask yourself do you really want to chase the sugar/dopamine rollercoaster? – wait for 15 minutes and you will probably be surprised about how you feel after you have waited.
– Try darker chocolate – it has a lot less sugar in it so you won’t get as much of a kick from it, therefore you won’t crave it.
– Make sure you take time for yourself – having ‘me’ time .