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Dopamine is an important molecule and is responsible for making us feel desire and motivation. Understanding how to optimize it is important because in order to make positive changes in our lives we need to have willpower and energy. It is useless to obtain personal development tools, such as improving our appearance if we do not have the will to execute and carry them out. Here we will see that and much more.
In Greek mythology, demigods were people descended from the union of a god and a mortal. These men, although mortal, possessed extraordinary qualities.
Achilles, Perseus and Heracles
These were perhaps the most famous Greek demigods. But this figure also exists in Mexica mythology, in India, Japan or Mesopotamia. In many cases they represented the union between the symbolic elements of heaven and earth.
Here we will see how dopamine enhances physical, cognitive and spiritual qualities and how optimal levels of dopamine will make you part of a select elite able to thrive easily in the complex environment of the 21st century.
Isaac Newton, Aristóteles, Nikola Tesla, Elon Musk, Albert Einstein.
All these characters share a hyperdopaminic behavior: levels of intelligence, creativity and motivation far above the rest of the mortals.
Dopamine is an essential part of what makes us human, we have much higher levels of dopamine than other species close to us, such as divine animals, religious people or people with spiritual beliefs usually have higher levels of dopamine.
Here we will see how dopamine can help you achieve: Higher levels of motivation, sleep less hours, greater sexual performance, greater planning ability, long-term thinking, greater determination towards your goals, greater ability to take risks, greater ambition, more creativity, greater cognitive ability, and an internal locus of control where you feel that your destiny is in your hands and you are not a victim of circumstances.
Higher levels of dopamine can literally change your personality and affect your hormone levels as there is a constant feedback between dopamine and testosterone. Dopamine increases testosterone and stimulates growth hormone (HGH) which will cause you to renew tissues faster giving you a more youthful appearance.
High levels of dopamine even make it possible to lose weight faster.
What do we define as a dopaminic personality?
People with high levels of dopamine share a trait called openness to experience.
These are only 25% of the world's population. This type of people pay less attention to their immediate reality and are more interested in big ideas. They are curious, creative people with great imagination.
To the other 75% of the population, people with these traits may seem strange or dreamy, while people with great openness to experience may perceive others as very closed-minded.
In fact, people with low levels of dopamine tend to be uncreative and unable to see the broader perspective of situations, cannot establish relationships between events or concepts and can only think superficially.
In fact, it is said that 50% of the population has no internal mental discourse.
High dopamine levels imply that you are somehow experiencing very mild hallucinations throughout the day.
It does not mean that you literally see things that do not exist, but that your brain produces abstract thoughts out of thin air, disconnected from your senses. Dopamine is nature's way of creating a controlled madness, of taking us out of the earthly world of mere appearances. So much so that dopamine literally makes you look at the sky.
Even in mice, those with high levels of dopamine tend to extend their necks and gaze upward (paper).
It is no coincidence that written language and mathematics emerged just over 80,000 years ago. Religions have also evolved from the notion that the gods were materially among us to more abstract conceptions of divinity, divinities that lodge not in this world but in another, perhaps beyond the clouds and stars.
Brain evolution seems to remain active, especially in that area of the brain where dopamine has one of its greatest effects: The left prefrontal cortex. In charge of executive functions. The use of tools accentuated this specialization even more.
Humans possess unique enzymes related to dopamine synthesis and metabolism. Certain conditions favored humans to develop increasingly higher levels of dopamine.
- An increased consumption of foods of animal origin: when our diet came to consist mainly of the fruits of the hunt. Meat has a high proportion of the amino acids required for dopamine synthesis (phenylalanine and tyrosine).
- Increased exposure to sunlight coupled with hair loss: Sunlight stimulates dopamine production, as the body requires dopamine to build melanin, the compound that protects the skin from some of the sun's radiation. That exposure involves not only the skin, but also, and very importantly, the eye. When we left the jungle and dense vegetation we were exposed to a much higher amount of light. The loss of hair accentuated this exposure.
- Brain specialization in the left prefrontal cortex: The area in charge of abstract thinking and planning for the future. The use of tools and the coordination of large groups for hunting contributed greatly to this.
Although many animals use and understand symbols, humans are the only ones capable of handling abstractions and ideas independently of the sensory context.
Only 1% of our neurons are involved in dopamine function, but that 1% is what makes us essentially human. In fact even if you were missing parts of your brain you would not experience as sharp a decline in cognitive function as if you stopped producing dopamine.
There are 5 different receptors for dopamine, each one associated with different effects.
The d1 receptor, for example, is related to the growth of new neurons. The d1 and d2 receptors are involved in motivation and behavioral reinforcement. The d5 receptor, on the other hand, is more associated with emotion and memory.
In total there are at least a dozen dopamine pathways in your brain, the important thing is that they connect the most modern part of our brain with older modules.
The lateral prefrontal dopaminergic system uses dopamine to generate abstract thoughts and thoughts without emotion.
The ventro-medial dopaminergic system exemplifies the more impulsive and more emotional functions of exploration, creativity and imagination.
The nigrostriatal dopamine pathway specializes in the control of movement and motivation.
The body synthesizes dopamine from the amino acids tyrosine and essentially phenylalanine which are found in greater proportion in meat.
Dopamine works in an antinergic manner with adrenaline and serotonin. The higher the levels of serotonin and adrenaline the lower the levels of dopamine.
And now let's look at how to increase your dopamine levels, apart from ensuring sufficient intake of animal protein and exposing yourself to as much sunlight as possible.
Be aware that there is a limit beyond which too much dopamine can produce side effects, making you unempathetic and overly aggressive. Even higher levels of dopamine can produce hallucinations and religious experiences, delusions of grandeur and magical thinking, making you believe that you are in control of external events.
Other symptoms would be compulsive or repetitive movements, hyperactivity or developing tics. This excess of dopamine may be associated with conditions such as autism, attention deficit disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia.
At the other extreme, dopamine deficiency is linked to conditions such as Parkinson's disease.
These are the 7 strategies to increase your dopamine levels.
- Forget the 10,000 step rule: Aim for at least 15,000 steps a day. Remember that motor function is intimately linked to dopamine. Try to move as much as you can during the day. It's in our design. Every little change counts, for example try to stand up more instead of sitting down.
- Fast strategically: Depriving your body of energy and nutrients can take a toll on you, but selectively fasting will cause you to experience higher levels of dopamine. Experiment with different fasting formats.
- Avoid stress: This is a battle on many fronts but the priorities are to protect your sleep and find a moment in the day, however brief, to disconnect and meditate.
- Eat more salt: Specifically sea salt or pink salt. It is a great adrenaline suppressant so it will also increase your dopamine.
- Certain supplements can increase dopamine production: directly consuming L-Dopa in the form of mucuna pruriens is the simplest way. Another more complete option consists of ingesting phenylalanine, pyrodixine and vitamin C on an empty stomach.
- Avoid instant gratification: sweets, junk food, social networks and video games are the biggest thieves of your dopamine, not to mention drugs.
- Perhaps the most potent strategy to increase your dopamine levels: Seminal retention, many of the benefits mentioned above are common among members of the noFap community, but now we know the scientific backing for them. Seminal retention will also increase your testosterone levels and improve your dopamine production in other ways.
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