What Is Dopamine Addiction and How Can We Overcome It?

Dopamine is a substance that provides communication between nerve cells and is called a neurotransmitter. This substance takes charge in the most key points of our body and soul. It is dopamine that activates dopamine receptors in the brain and provides pleasure.

Dopamine is the hormone that makes you feel good and gives you pleasure. It activates the reward center of the brain. When you eat a delicious meal, win a game, listen to your favorite music, or engage in activities that give you pleasure, such as walking in nature, your dopamine hormone begins to be released.

When you consume or do something that makes you happy, dopamine begins to be released, and as a result, you are stimulated to repeat this action over and over.

1. What Is The Relationship Between Dopamine And Addiction?

Dopamine directly affects our mood. We feel better and more pleasant in its presence. But when we are punished, dopamine disappears. In other words, dopamine operates the reward-punishment mechanism.

When the person does a pleasurable activity or succeeds in a job, the hormone dopamine comes into play and the person begins to feel good and enjoy himself. The problem is that cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, processed carbohydrates, and sugar stimulate this natural system in a much better and easier way than natural causes. As a result, we become addicted to these things and feel dopamine deprived without them.

2. Why Do We Get Addicted To Things That Produce Dopamine?

It doesn't matter whether you're addicted to drugs, video games, people, or sex. One of the reasons for all of them is dopamine addiction.

While the naturally produced dopamine in our body is at a sufficient level, when a large amount of dopamine is taken from outside in a short time, the brain reduces its production because it thinks that dopamine will be supplied from outside in return. Protecting itself, the brain reduces the number of receptors. In other words, it reduces the number of receptors in the areas that dopamine stimulates in the brain.

When dopamine, which has become addictive to the outside, does not have good feelings in the brain, the person feels much more unhappy, depressed, nervous, and tense.

After a while, people who use addictive substances have to take drugs just to feel normal, let alone be happier.

3. How Can We Rebalance Our Dopamine Levels?

1. Exercise

One of the biggest benefits of exercise is that it helps you release feel-good hormones like dopamine. Since we gain this not in an easy way, but in a certain order, by working and struggling, we take a step towards a much healthier life for us.

2. Keeping A Regular Sleep Schedule

Sleep patterns play a major role in dopamine release. Dopamine level, which is high in the first hours of the day, gradually decreases towards the night hours. Therefore, after a sleepless day, dopamine levels will drop considerably. Because the sleepless night will disrupt the body's natural rhythm. A regular and quality sleep pattern will keep the body's dopamine level in balance.

3. Avoid Saturated Fat

Too much saturated fats negatively affect dopamine signaling in the brain and increase inflammation in the body. Animal fat, butter, whole milk, palm oil and coconut oil also contain saturated fat. We should try to consume such foods as little as possible.

 

4. Listen To Music

Listening to music, which is a method that increases the secretion of dopamine in the brain, is the most enjoyable option that will increase the dopamine level in the body. Studies on the subject show that; Listening to music increases the brain's dopamine secretion by 9%.