Diet Rehab, pgs 101-117 "Feeling Blue = Dopamine Deficiency"

Chapter 5: Feeling Blue: Ravenous for Dopamine

When you're feeling anxious and fearful, you're hungry for serotonin.  When you're sad, lonely or listless, you're ravenous for dopamine.  Dopamine is the brain chemical associated with thrills and challenges.  It comes mostly from the anticipation.  When our dopamine levels are healthy, life seems fun and interesting, and we are frequently tingling with excitement.  When our dopamine levels are low, we tend to feel listless and blue, trapped in a boring, dead-end life.  Lack of dopamine can also make us feel unmotivated.  It becomes harder to focus on long-term goals, to defer gratification, and to muster endurance.  Low dopamine levels can send us rushing for quick-fix foods and behaviors.  High-fat foods cue our brains to release unsustainable amounts of dopamine, giving us a chemical rush of excitement and pleasure, and setting us up for an addiction to food.

There are many reasons we might end up dopamine deficient.  Life circumstances might have been constricting or boring, lack of sleep, and stress can cause a dopamine deficiency.  You might have inherited a tendency to lower dopamine levels or developed them through a childhood marked by high-stress and high-risk situations, such as when children grow up in an environment of rage or abuse.  Any type of dopamine deficiency leaves us feeling low and listless.

If our dopamine levels are too low, we don't get the kick we seek from the high-fat food we turn to, and we continue craving fat until our dopamine levels finally rise.  If you are trying to overcome a craving for dopamine, be compassionate with yourself, because it may feel as though your entire body is conspiring to pull you back into the addiction.  Dopamine is the reward for any type of pleasure and it's hard to not want more and more of it.

A key dopamine stimulator is caffeine, which gives us a quick high followed by an uncomfortable crash.  Caffeine does suppress your appetite during the buzz, but you might feel hungrier than ever when you crash.  Lack of sleep lowers both your dopamine and your serotonin levels, and caffeine can interfere with your ability to get a restful sleep.

Dopamine booster foods are crucial for giving you the lift that you may now be getting from caffeine, nicotine, or high-fat foods.  You can also harness the power of your mind to replace pitfall thoughts, which generate discouragement, fatigue, and lack of motivation, with booster thoughts, which generate excitement, energy and determination.

Transform your mantra by adding booster activities is one of the most powerful thought- and mood-transforming tools you can have.