The DOPAMINE Myth

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Let’s talk about dopamine. Dopamine has many functions. It’s involved in body movement, sleep cycles, gastrointestinal motility, food intake, learning, kidney function, and blood pressure. Dopamine is associated with behaviors and certain emotions. However, people on the lower end of the emotional scale aren't going to just have low dopamine but also other neurotransmitters and hormones. Dopamine is increased with pleasure, but it’s also increased with stress and pain. Conditions related to low dopamine include: • Parkinson’s • Schizophrenia • ADD or ADHD • Depression Medications used to treat the above conditions can deplete other neurotransmitters and have potential side effects. Dopamine isn’t a single molecule that works on its own to create an effect. It’s a system that creates many different effects. Trying to increase dopamine without looking at the bigger picture isn’t going to work. Here are some action steps you can take if you have low dopamine: 1. Get rid of artificial stimulus 2. Balance dopamine and other neurotransmitters 3. Consume a little more animal protein and fat 4. Support your gut microbiome 5. Get plenty of vitamin C (leafy greens or sauerkraut) 6. Get plenty of copper (shellfish or seafood) Tips to help balance dopamine and other neurotransmitters naturally: • Exercise consistently • Get outside • Get plenty of sun or vitamin D3 • Involve yourself in music or the arts • Do things you like • Get connected with other people • Get plenty of tyrosine (consume high-quality animal protein)

Transcript

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0:00.0	trying to figure out how to state this. There's one thing that we know for sure about dopamine.
0:07.6	No one really understands the complexity of dopamine. If you do a deep dive on dopamine,
0:14.0	your head is going to literally spin because there are so many theories just when they say they
0:20.4	have it figured out. Well, no, that doesn't work. They'll say it's a motivation molecule or the thing
0:26.0	that gives you pleasure or the thing that's involved with reward. No, it's not. It's associated
0:32.8	with these behaviors, but it's not the thing that gives you these sensations. You give yourself
0:40.7	these sensations. Dopamine has many, many, many different functions. In one part of the brain,
0:48.5	it works this way. In another part of the brain, it works completely differently. Dopamine is involved
0:55.0	with motion movement, like body movement. That's why I like in Parkinson's disease,
1:00.4	the person will always have low dopamine and they're very rigid. They can't move freely. Dopamine
1:06.3	is associated with behaviors in certain emotions, but anyone who is on the lower emotional scale
1:14.6	is going to have low dopamine and have low other neurotransmitters as well as low hormones.
1:21.8	Their entire biochemistry is going to be on the low side. Dopamine is also involved in the
1:26.7	sleep cycles. It's involved in the gastrointestinal motility, the movement of things through your
1:32.2	GI system, food intake, learning, kidney function, blood pressure, and yes, it does get increased
1:40.2	with pleasure, but it also gets increased with stress and pain. So when someone is using a drug
1:47.8	to help balance this one molecule, boy, does that come with a package, which I'm going to talk
1:53.7	about? There's been a recent like upsurge of people doing dopamine detox. We're trying to detoxify
2:00.8	this toxic dopamine hormone. The problem is not dopamine, okay? Yes, we need to balance it out. If
2:06.6	it's low, it's the synthetic sensations or the experiences or the stimulus that we're doing that
2:13.9	we need to get rid of, whether it's scrolling with social media 24 hours a day on TikTok,
2:20.2	gambling, nicotine, drugs, and then you also have like caffeine and pornography. All these things
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