Leverage Dopamine to Overcome Procrastination & Optimize Effort

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.260 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.880 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.120 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.160 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.040 | Today, we are discussing dopamine.

00:00:17.440 | Dopamine is a topic that I've covered before on this podcast,

00:00:20.360 | and many people have heard of dopamine.

00:00:22.800 | Most people know that dopamine is involved in pleasure

00:00:25.720 | to some extent or another.

00:00:27.080 | And nowadays, people are starting to appreciate

00:00:29.340 | that dopamine is also intimately involved

00:00:32.120 | with motivation, drive, and pursuit.

00:00:35.560 | Well, today, you're going to learn that indeed,

00:00:37.360 | dopamine is responsible for all of those things,

00:00:40.180 | but you are also going to learn that dopamine is critical

00:00:43.280 | for overcoming procrastination,

00:00:45.720 | for ensuring ongoing motivation,

00:00:48.360 | and indeed, for ensuring confidence.

00:00:50.760 | In fact, we are going to talk about the relationship

00:00:52.800 | between dopamine and motivation and confidence

00:00:55.880 | at the level of neurobiological circuitry,

00:00:58.280 | and we are going to cover tools that will allow you

00:01:00.340 | to leverage your dopamine in order

00:01:02.340 | to have a maximum motivation to overcome sticking points,

00:01:05.560 | which include things like procrastination,

00:01:08.240 | but also by understanding the neural circuits

00:01:10.940 | in the brain and body that release and use dopamine,

00:01:14.000 | but more importantly,

00:01:14.900 | by understanding what are called dopamine dynamics,

00:01:17.800 | that is what gives rise to big peaks in dopamine

00:01:21.300 | or troughs in dopamine,

00:01:23.060 | or what's referred to as our baseline level of dopamine,

00:01:25.900 | which turns out to be our baseline levels of motivation

00:01:28.900 | and feelings of wellbeing.

00:01:30.320 | By understanding how those things relate to one another,

00:01:33.100 | I assure you that by the end of today's episode,

00:01:35.900 | you will be in a far better position

00:01:37.900 | to understand why you become amotivated,

00:01:41.000 | why you procrastinate,

00:01:42.420 | how to ensure motivation on an ongoing basis,

00:01:45.100 | and even how to leverage effort

00:01:47.340 | and the desire to become motivated

00:01:49.620 | as a way to do just that, to become more motivated.

00:01:52.500 | Today's discussion is not about psychology,

00:01:54.900 | although I will center around practical everyday examples

00:01:57.780 | and offer many, many tools

00:01:59.280 | that you can implement if you choose.

00:02:01.300 | Today's discussion is really about pulling apart

00:02:03.660 | these things that we call motivation, reward,

00:02:06.000 | pleasure, procrastination,

00:02:08.000 | and understanding them in terms of their dopamine dynamics.

00:02:11.600 | So whether you've heard me or others

00:02:12.900 | talk about dopamine before,

00:02:14.660 | or whether or not today is your first exposure

00:02:16.640 | to the topic of dopamine,

00:02:18.280 | today's episode is really designed to give you

00:02:20.080 | the biological and practical knowledge

00:02:22.380 | so that you can leverage your dopamine circuitry

00:02:24.700 | and your dopamine levels,

00:02:25.720 | as well as tools to adjust dopamine circuitry and levels

00:02:28.880 | in order to optimize mental health,

00:02:30.820 | physical health, and performance.

00:02:32.860 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:35.460 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:38.140 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:40.160 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:02:42.620 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:02:45.000 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:46.060 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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00:06:28.080 | Okay, let's talk about dopamine.

00:06:29.700 | What is dopamine?

00:06:30.540 | Dopamine is what's called a neuromodulator,

00:06:33.380 | which simply refers to the fact that it's a chemical

00:06:36.080 | that modulates or changes the electrical activity

00:06:39.800 | of other cells.

00:06:41.080 | And the cells I'm referring to are neurons.

00:06:43.720 | Neurons are just nerve cells.

00:06:45.600 | So you have a brain and a spinal cord,

00:06:48.000 | and the neurons in your brain and spinal cord

00:06:49.980 | connect to one another,

00:06:50.880 | and they connect to different areas of the body,

00:06:54.040 | including basically every organ of your body.

00:06:56.440 | And every organ of your body communicates back

00:06:59.280 | to your brain and spinal cord

00:07:00.960 | through direct or indirect pathways.

00:07:03.400 | For instance, you have neurons in your gut

00:07:05.680 | that sense what sorts of nutrients you've eaten or drink,

00:07:09.120 | and then send neural signals, electrical signals,

00:07:12.200 | up to the brain.

00:07:13.400 | And indeed, that whole process happens

00:07:15.040 | to be modulated by dopamine.

00:07:17.420 | Dopamine as a neuromodulator has the basic property

00:07:20.140 | of either ramping up, increasing,

00:07:22.480 | or decreasing the activity of other neurons.

00:07:24.900 | And that's done by adjusting things

00:07:26.340 | like electrical potentials and things of that sort

00:07:28.340 | that we really won't go into this episode,

00:07:30.980 | but that I promise to get into in detail

00:07:32.800 | in a future episode if you're interested

00:07:34.320 | in the biochemistry and biophysics of neurons

00:07:36.800 | and things of that sort.

00:07:38.320 | So we have this neuromodulator, dopamine,

00:07:40.640 | and we know that that neuromodulator can increase

00:07:42.840 | or decrease the activity of other neurons.

00:07:45.580 | So then we have to ask ourselves,

00:07:47.060 | where is dopamine released in the brain and body,

00:07:49.840 | and what specific types of neurons is it impacting?

00:07:53.420 | In other words, what specific types of functions

00:07:55.600 | does dopamine have?

00:07:56.700 | So there are basically five circuits within the brain

00:07:59.260 | that use dopamine as the primary neuromodulator,

00:08:02.340 | and those five circuits engage different

00:08:05.480 | but related functions.

00:08:07.160 | So I'm going to go through them one by one

00:08:09.080 | relatively quickly, giving you a little bit of nomenclature

00:08:12.200 | and some sense of what each of those circuits looks like

00:08:15.280 | and what it does.

00:08:16.680 | The first circuit is the so-called nigrostriatal pathway.

00:08:19.520 | So in the back of the brain,

00:08:20.600 | there's an area called substantia nigra,

00:08:23.940 | so named because the neurons, they're actually very dark,

00:08:26.960 | they actually contain pigment.

00:08:28.240 | You'd be able to see this if I were to slice up a brain,

00:08:30.120 | you'd see two dark regions in the back.

00:08:31.760 | That's substantia nigra.

00:08:32.820 | Substantia nigra contains neurons

00:08:34.960 | that are chock-a-block full of dopamine,

00:08:36.700 | but they release that dopamine

00:08:38.000 | in a brain structure called the striatum.

00:08:39.900 | The striatum is involved in movement,

00:08:42.280 | both the initiation of movements

00:08:44.100 | and the suppression of movements,

00:08:45.740 | in so-called GO, action, and NO-GO,

00:08:48.540 | suppress action pathways, a topic for a future podcast.

00:08:52.640 | The second brain circuit that uses

00:08:54.860 | and leverages dopamine to a great extent

00:08:56.860 | is the so-called mesolimbic pathway.

00:08:58.980 | Now, you'll also in a moment hear

00:09:00.420 | about the mesocortical pathway.

00:09:02.500 | So today I'm going to talk about these

00:09:04.340 | somewhat interchangeably at times,

00:09:06.100 | but where it's important for me

00:09:07.600 | to differentiate between them, I will do that.

00:09:10.120 | Both of these pathways initiate from a set of neurons

00:09:13.160 | in the so-called ventral tegmental area, or VTA.

00:09:16.600 | I will use that acronym, VTA.

00:09:18.640 | The VTA functions in close partnership

00:09:22.060 | with a different brain structure

00:09:23.240 | called the nucleus accumbens, or NA.

00:09:25.720 | I don't think I'll call it NA today.

00:09:27.040 | I'll talk about VTA, ventral tegmental area,

00:09:29.520 | and I'll talk about nucleus accumbens.

00:09:31.420 | For sake of today's discussion,

00:09:32.680 | you can lump those together if you want.

00:09:35.180 | Neurons in those areas project a bunch of different places,

00:09:38.780 | but in the mesolimbic pathway,

00:09:40.440 | those neurons are projecting to areas of the brain

00:09:42.320 | like the hypothalamus,

00:09:43.400 | which sits right above the roof of your mouth

00:09:45.020 | and is responsible for a lot of basic functions,

00:09:48.040 | things like maintaining your body temperature,

00:09:50.380 | for libido and the pursuit of sex,

00:09:53.980 | for hunger, for the generation of signals

00:09:57.900 | to the pituitary gland that caused the release of hormones

00:10:02.220 | and other things into the bloodstream.

00:10:04.460 | So the connections,

00:10:05.320 | which I sometimes refer to as projections,

00:10:07.820 | from the neurons in the VTA and nucleus accumbens

00:10:10.900 | to the hypothalamus are basically using dopamine

00:10:13.560 | to modulate the output of a lot of different things

00:10:15.720 | that happen in this hypothalamus

00:10:18.280 | that controls a lot of,

00:10:19.920 | we could call them primitive functions,

00:10:21.680 | but they're really basic functions for survival.

00:10:24.280 | Now, the other pathway out of the VTA and nucleus accumbens

00:10:27.760 | is to the cortex.

00:10:28.780 | That's why it's called mesocortical pathway.

00:10:31.040 | So this is a very different pathway

00:10:33.120 | out of the VTA and nucleus accumbens

00:10:34.800 | than the one I just described a moment ago.

00:10:36.600 | The pathway I'm talking about now,

00:10:37.880 | the mesocortical pathway,

00:10:39.500 | projects to the prefrontal cortex,

00:10:41.240 | which is a structure that many of you have perhaps heard of,

00:10:43.840 | but even if you haven't, it's important to know

00:10:45.560 | this is an area that resides right behind your forehead

00:10:49.520 | and that in humans compared to other species

00:10:52.200 | is greatly expanded in terms of its size

00:10:54.760 | and complexity of function.

00:10:55.980 | So it's involved in everything

00:10:57.120 | from planning and executing of action

00:10:59.760 | to making good or bad decisions, depending on context.

00:11:02.960 | In fact, one of the primary functions of prefrontal cortex

00:11:05.680 | is to really understand context,

00:11:07.360 | whether or not, for instance, you are alone in your room

00:11:09.560 | where certain behaviors are appropriate,

00:11:11.880 | whether or not you are at work

00:11:13.560 | where other behaviors are appropriate,

00:11:15.820 | understanding what the context is

00:11:18.280 | and therefore what sorts of actions

00:11:20.620 | need to be generated and suppressed.

00:11:23.200 | In fact, a guest on the Huberman Lab podcast,

00:11:25.500 | and this is a guest whose episode hasn't aired yet,

00:11:28.000 | described this beautifully, he's a neurosurgeon,

00:11:30.400 | and he said, "The way to think about the prefrontal cortex

00:11:33.680 | is it's basically an area of the brain that says shh,

00:11:36.960 | or no, not now, to other brain regions

00:11:40.460 | in order to suppress action."

00:11:41.680 | And we know this because people that have damage

00:11:43.240 | to the prefrontal cortex

00:11:45.120 | often can't suppress their impulses.

00:11:48.280 | So the pathway from VTA and nucleus accumbens

00:11:51.680 | to the prefrontal cortex is absolutely critical

00:11:53.960 | for today's discussion

00:11:54.880 | because we are largely going to be discussing

00:11:57.080 | motivation, drive, pursuit, procrastination,

00:12:00.880 | and all sorts of things that have to do with

00:12:03.060 | our feelings about context,

00:12:05.440 | whether or not we want to do something or not,

00:12:06.840 | whether or not we feel we should or we shouldn't,

00:12:08.840 | whether or not we feel we failed the last time

00:12:10.880 | or there's a high probability of success the next time.

00:12:13.120 | Prefrontal cortex does many, many things,

00:12:15.480 | but when thinking about dopamine's role

00:12:17.880 | in the prefrontal cortex,

00:12:18.980 | that is when thinking about this mesocortical pathway,

00:12:22.160 | we really want to think about how dopamine is activating

00:12:25.440 | or changing our propensity to do certain things

00:12:28.640 | and get us into action

00:12:29.920 | or prevent us from doing certain things and prevent action.

00:12:32.960 | So basically you can think about the mesocortical pathway

00:12:35.760 | as a circuit that really governs all of the major choices

00:12:38.680 | that you're going to make in life

00:12:39.920 | about what to do and what not to do toward your goals

00:12:42.760 | and away from the things that you want to avoid.

00:12:45.240 | Now, the fourth dopamine pathway in the brain

00:12:47.720 | is the so-called tuberoinfundibular pathway.

00:12:50.840 | And this is not one we're going to focus on too much today.

00:12:53.680 | This is a pathway that relates to connections

00:12:55.520 | between the brain and your pituitary gland.

00:12:57.620 | Your pituitary gland being that gland that's,

00:13:00.560 | as I mentioned a moment ago,

00:13:01.480 | is also receiving input from the hypothalamus

00:13:03.600 | and is releasing a bunch of hormones into your bloodstream.

00:13:06.420 | Things like luteinizing hormone,

00:13:07.680 | follicle stimulating hormone,

00:13:09.740 | things like melanocortin hormone.

00:13:12.280 | These are hormones that are impacting everything

00:13:13.960 | from the function of the ovary in females

00:13:15.880 | to the function of the testes in males.

00:13:18.200 | It's governing things like cortisol release under stress,

00:13:21.880 | thyroid hormone, meaning it's regulating

00:13:24.240 | thyroid hormone release, and on and on.

00:13:26.940 | Dopamine has a very powerful impact

00:13:29.380 | on the output of the pituitary.

00:13:32.320 | So again, that's probably a topic for a future episode,

00:13:34.680 | but it's important in reviewing the different brain circuits

00:13:37.540 | that use dopamine as a neuromodulator

00:13:39.620 | that I mentioned that one.

00:13:40.920 | Then there's a fifth one.

00:13:42.640 | And this fifth one is not often discussed.

00:13:44.740 | And again, won't be the main topic of today's discussion,

00:13:47.520 | but for thoroughness and for clarity,

00:13:49.760 | it's important that we mention it.

00:13:51.480 | This is the circuit within your retina.

00:13:53.680 | That is the pie crust-like lining of neural tissue

00:13:57.300 | on the back of your eye.

00:13:58.200 | Because remember, your eye is actually part of your brain

00:14:00.880 | that got extruded from your brain during development.

00:14:03.020 | You know, those two eyes that you see in the mirror

00:14:05.360 | and that you see in other people

00:14:07.120 | are actually two pieces of central nervous system.

00:14:10.200 | And within the retina,

00:14:11.500 | which is the neural portion of the eye,

00:14:14.280 | within the neural retina,

00:14:16.260 | dopamine is responsible for adapting

00:14:19.460 | to different light conditions

00:14:20.640 | so that you can see clearly both in the evening

00:14:23.120 | and when it gets darker, you can still see a bit.

00:14:25.400 | And in the morning, when it's very bright,

00:14:27.320 | you don't really have to make adjustments

00:14:29.400 | to your visual system in order to see clearly.

00:14:31.280 | Your visual system does it for you.

00:14:32.820 | And one of the ways that it does that

00:14:34.400 | is through the neuromodulator dopamine.

00:14:36.920 | So today we are not going to discuss

00:14:38.840 | the retinal dopamine pathways

00:14:40.260 | or the tuber infundibular dopamine pathways.

00:14:42.480 | And we won't really talk so much

00:14:44.200 | about the nigrostriatal pathway.

00:14:45.580 | I'll say one more thing about it

00:14:46.720 | and then I'll leave it alone.

00:14:48.460 | We are going to talk about the mesocortical pathway

00:14:50.960 | and we might touch on the mesolimbic pathway

00:14:53.200 | a little bit as well.

00:14:54.100 | So today we're mostly going to talk

00:14:55.660 | about mesocortical circuitry and function

00:14:58.620 | and dopamine within the mesocortical circuit.

00:15:01.460 | And the reason that we're doing that

00:15:03.420 | is that today's discussion is really about motivation,

00:15:05.900 | procrastination, goal setting, and pursuit.

00:15:08.280 | It's very important to understand

00:15:10.940 | that neither dopamine nor the mesocortical circuit

00:15:14.560 | cares about any specific goal or pursuit.

00:15:17.940 | This is a circuit that uses dopamine

00:15:20.740 | in order to pursue anything.

00:15:23.540 | Now, of course, some people have a greater propensity

00:15:26.220 | to pursue things like work or goals in athletics

00:15:30.120 | or relationships or a combination of those.

00:15:32.580 | Other people, unfortunately, have a greater propensity

00:15:34.920 | to pursue things like drugs of abuse.

00:15:37.060 | What are drugs of abuse?

00:15:37.980 | Drugs of abuse tend to be drugs

00:15:40.300 | that increase levels of dopamine

00:15:41.900 | to the extent that other types of pursuits in life

00:15:45.380 | that are adaptive for us, like work, relationship, school,

00:15:48.020 | et cetera, become irrelevant.

00:15:49.740 | In fact, the definition of addiction that I use

00:15:53.260 | and that I believe really matches the neurobiology very well

00:15:56.940 | is that addiction is a progressive narrowing

00:15:59.620 | of the things that bring us pleasure.

00:16:01.320 | Healthy functioning of the mesocortical pathway, however,

00:16:04.480 | allows us to toggle or switch back and forth

00:16:07.480 | between different types of pursuits

00:16:09.900 | of all the sorts that I've mentioned earlier.

00:16:12.100 | So if we can understand how that mesocortical pathway works

00:16:15.500 | just a little bit, in particular,

00:16:17.500 | when dopamine is released and when it's not released,

00:16:20.580 | what dopamine does when it's released

00:16:22.840 | to our sense of motivation and drive,

00:16:25.420 | and if we can understand a little bit

00:16:27.040 | about how our recent dopamine history,

00:16:29.980 | that is, whether or not there is dopamine

00:16:32.220 | in our system already,

00:16:34.660 | dictates whether or not we are going to feel motivated

00:16:36.920 | in the next five, 10, 15 minutes, hours, days, and weeks.

00:16:40.980 | That is all very easy to understand.

00:16:42.700 | I promise I'll explain it to you in a simple way,

00:16:45.340 | but I want you to get a circuit into your mind.

00:16:47.380 | I want you to envision that there are these neurons,

00:16:49.100 | little nerve cells in the VTA and nucleus accumbens.

00:16:52.380 | Those neurons make dopamine.

00:16:54.020 | They send their projections that we call axons,

00:16:56.300 | which are like little wires,

00:16:57.240 | and they can release dopamine into the prefrontal cortex.

00:17:00.420 | And now you already know,

00:17:02.460 | because you learned it a few minutes ago,

00:17:03.820 | that the prefrontal cortex then can ensure

00:17:06.340 | that certain behaviors take place

00:17:07.940 | and other behaviors do not take place,

00:17:10.140 | that shh or quieting that we talked about earlier.

00:17:14.020 | With that in mind,

00:17:15.260 | let's now take a look at how dopamine is released,

00:17:18.860 | and let's keep two things in mind.

00:17:21.100 | There are peaks in dopamine.

00:17:23.240 | That is, dopamine is released into the frontal cortex,

00:17:25.560 | where it has these effects

00:17:26.640 | of activating or suppressing action.

00:17:29.460 | And we can think of those as peaks in dopamine.

00:17:32.340 | So if I call it a spike,

00:17:34.900 | that means an increase and then a decrease.

00:17:37.080 | If I call it a peak, it's an increase and then a decrease.

00:17:40.300 | There can also be troughs in dopamine.

00:17:42.960 | What do I mean by that?

00:17:43.920 | Well, we have peaks in dopamine,

00:17:46.240 | and that peak in dopamine can rise up

00:17:49.320 | and then go back to what we call baseline,

00:17:52.280 | or there can be a trough.

00:17:54.380 | It can go below baseline.

00:17:56.180 | So the two key things to understand about dopamine

00:17:59.160 | is that we have dopamine peaks

00:18:01.000 | that are triggered by certain behaviors,

00:18:03.380 | certain compounds, drugs, or substances, food, et cetera,

00:18:07.900 | and that we have a dopamine baseline.

00:18:10.560 | Our dopamine baseline is our reservoir of dopamine.

00:18:14.240 | It's how full or empty our dopamine pool is.

00:18:18.100 | And that dopamine pool is the pool of dopamine that we use

00:18:21.360 | in order to create those dopamine peaks.

00:18:23.700 | And when those peaks come down,

00:18:25.400 | sometimes they go back to baseline,

00:18:26.860 | and sometimes they go to lower than baseline,

00:18:29.540 | which we call the trough.

00:18:32.100 | If any of this seems confusing,

00:18:33.580 | I want you just to imagine a wave pool.

00:18:36.240 | This is an analogy that was given to me

00:18:38.300 | by one of our podcast guests,

00:18:39.800 | which is Dr. Kyle Gillette, who's an obesity specialist

00:18:42.800 | and works on a number of things

00:18:44.260 | related to endocrine hormone function,

00:18:45.880 | including testosterone, estrogen in both men and women.

00:18:48.920 | Want to check out his episodes on hormone health.

00:18:51.720 | They're fascinating and actionable,

00:18:53.600 | and he's a tremendous wealth of knowledge.

00:18:55.060 | And he has this analogy for how dopamine works

00:18:58.400 | in our brain and body.

00:19:00.060 | And that analogy is this notion of a wave pool.

00:19:02.500 | If you've ever seen a wave pool,

00:19:03.580 | it's basically a concrete pool,

00:19:06.660 | and there are waves within it, okay, duh.

00:19:09.980 | Those waves can be of different heights,

00:19:12.460 | so they can be little ripples,

00:19:14.220 | and we can think of those as little mini peaks,

00:19:16.300 | or they can be big waves.

00:19:17.860 | They can be really big crashing waves.

00:19:20.240 | If the height of those waves

00:19:23.840 | and the frequency of those waves is very, very large,

00:19:28.420 | some of that water,

00:19:29.940 | which here I'm using as an analogy to dopamine,

00:19:32.740 | can slosh out of the wave pool and the baseline drops.

00:19:36.740 | However, if those peaks are small enough

00:19:40.100 | or they are seldom enough,

00:19:42.360 | well then the baseline, that is the water level in that pool,

00:19:45.660 | stays more or less constant.

00:19:47.900 | I think this is an excellent analogy

00:19:49.640 | for how dopamine works in the mesocortical pathway

00:19:52.480 | as it relates to motivation and pursuit

00:19:54.560 | and all those sorts of things,

00:19:56.020 | because we really need to think about

00:19:57.480 | how the peaks and the baseline relate to one another.

00:20:00.700 | And this is very important.

00:20:02.260 | The peaks and the baseline are not independent

00:20:04.440 | of one another, they relate to one another.

00:20:06.720 | So now you have in your mind a wave pool,

00:20:08.740 | and just understand that if you get a great big huge wave,

00:20:12.000 | maybe one of them, it will crash out,

00:20:13.840 | and some of that water will splash out,

00:20:16.000 | the baseline will go down a little bit.

00:20:17.400 | But if you get big peak after big peak after big peak,

00:20:20.200 | pretty soon you're going to empty that pool.

00:20:21.720 | Whereas if you have smaller waves

00:20:23.360 | or less frequent big waves,

00:20:25.100 | well then the baseline will stay relatively constant.

00:20:28.720 | So let's think about dopamine peaks and baselines.

00:20:32.220 | And let's remember that for every peak, there's a trough.

00:20:36.080 | What do I mean by that?

00:20:36.920 | Well, when you have a wave,

00:20:38.920 | you also have the bottom of the wave.

00:20:41.060 | When you have a mountain,

00:20:42.640 | you have the bottom of the mountain.

00:20:45.160 | When we think about dopamine peaks and dopamine baselines,

00:20:49.180 | we have to include that trough because that trough,

00:20:52.900 | that is the level of dopamine below baseline,

00:20:57.680 | really dictates whether or not you are going to feel

00:21:00.400 | motivated to pursue something or not.

00:21:02.800 | So I'm going to give you a visual in your mind.

00:21:04.520 | The visual in your mind is an increase in dopamine

00:21:07.960 | that's triggered by your desire for something.

00:21:11.400 | And really it could be your desire for anything.

00:21:13.380 | If you're hungry and you're thinking about,

00:21:15.280 | I really want a sandwich, I really want to think,

00:21:18.200 | what sandwich would I want right now?

00:21:19.440 | A really nice roast beef sandwich on sourdough

00:21:22.000 | with a slice of Swiss tomatoes, slice of pickle.

00:21:24.760 | Here I'm describing the sandwich that I would want.

00:21:26.800 | So if you're hungry and you're thinking about that,

00:21:29.500 | dopamine starts rising.

00:21:31.840 | This is crucially important to understand.

00:21:33.980 | Dopamine is not just released when we get the reward,

00:21:37.520 | when we get the thing that we're pursuing.

00:21:39.040 | Dopamine is released in anticipation of what we want.

00:21:43.640 | That increase in dopamine is by no happenstance, no mistake,

00:21:51.020 | relates also to our propensity and desire to move.

00:21:54.640 | Remember earlier I told you there's a separate circuit

00:21:56.600 | of dopamine that triggers movement

00:21:59.380 | and that when it's depleted is causing things

00:22:02.520 | like deficits and movement related to Parkinson's

00:22:04.860 | or other movement disorders?

00:22:06.340 | Well, that's not pure coincidence.

00:22:08.860 | That's because desire and the need to move

00:22:11.660 | in order to pursue and reach goals

00:22:13.940 | are one in the same process.

00:22:16.620 | So if I desire a sandwich or I desire a cup of coffee

00:22:20.340 | or I desire some water when I'm thirsty,

00:22:22.400 | there's an increase in dopamine

00:22:24.020 | that we could call a little mini peak in dopamine.

00:22:27.140 | But then here's the key thing.

00:22:28.860 | Very soon after I realize my desire for something,

00:22:32.760 | that peak that was caused by the desire

00:22:36.980 | comes down and drops below baseline,

00:22:40.120 | below the level of dopamine that it was prior

00:22:43.320 | to even thinking about the sandwich or the coffee

00:22:45.340 | or the glass of water.

00:22:46.540 | And it's that drop below baseline

00:22:50.020 | that triggers my desire to go out and find that sandwich,

00:22:54.140 | that coffee, that water, or that blank.

00:22:57.180 | Insert whatever it is that you happen to desire,

00:22:59.340 | action or substance of any kind or person, et cetera.

00:23:03.580 | So that drop below baseline is fundamental

00:23:06.700 | to the whole process.

00:23:07.620 | And that drop below baseline was triggered

00:23:10.140 | by the preceding peak.

00:23:11.800 | So let's say that I desire a sandwich,

00:23:13.580 | there's an increase in dopamine.

00:23:15.140 | Then very quickly it comes down below baseline

00:23:17.940 | just a little bit.

00:23:19.020 | Now I'm in pursuit of the sandwich.

00:23:20.220 | I'm looking for where I can get that sandwich.

00:23:22.300 | I can order it perhaps to be delivered.

00:23:24.220 | I can go out and find it.

00:23:25.460 | Now is the stage in which I have to think about

00:23:29.100 | what are the different stimuli,

00:23:31.340 | that is the things in my environment that signal

00:23:33.340 | whether or not I'm likely to get that sandwich or not.

00:23:36.260 | And so, for instance, if I were to go to my phone

00:23:38.340 | and order food on a nap or walk down the street

00:23:40.940 | and see the sign for a deli,

00:23:43.380 | that's a cue that I'm likely to relieve that drop

00:23:48.780 | in dopamine and get not just back to baseline,

00:23:51.420 | but then I'll get a peak in dopamine.

00:23:53.180 | And indeed that's what happens.

00:23:54.420 | If I find that deli, I go into the deli,

00:23:57.780 | they're open, they're making the sandwich that I want,

00:23:59.700 | they make my sandwich and great, I get that sandwich.

00:24:02.340 | And that sandwich will have some degree

00:24:03.960 | of inherent reward to it.

00:24:06.460 | Some degree of my liking it or not liking it.

00:24:09.740 | So let's say I like it.

00:24:10.740 | It's not the best sandwich I've ever had,

00:24:12.160 | but all I'm doing is comparing my desire for that sandwich

00:24:15.860 | to the sandwich that I actually got and ate.

00:24:18.440 | And chances are it's going to relieve that craving,

00:24:21.940 | meaning it will take that dopamine

00:24:23.940 | that had fallen below baseline, up, up, back to baseline.

00:24:27.100 | And if I like the sandwich,

00:24:28.540 | it's going to indeed increase that dopamine,

00:24:31.400 | again, to another peak.

00:24:32.840 | Now, if I love the sandwich,

00:24:35.500 | like it's the most delicious thing

00:24:36.820 | that I've ever tasted in my entire life,

00:24:38.680 | well then I'll get a big peak in dopamine

00:24:41.680 | when I consume that reward.

00:24:43.900 | However, chances are the sandwich is more or less

00:24:46.500 | as I expect it to be, which is pretty good.

00:24:48.620 | I'll eat it and I'm fine.

00:24:50.100 | What do I mean by fine?

00:24:51.300 | Well, there's a concept called reward prediction error.

00:24:53.760 | Reward prediction error says that the dopamine

00:24:57.420 | that it has experienced, that is,

00:24:59.280 | that's released from the VTA and nucleus accumbens,

00:25:02.000 | is going to be of a certain value.

00:25:05.320 | And that value is going to be compared

00:25:07.480 | to the desire and expectation

00:25:09.220 | of what I thought I was going to get.

00:25:11.280 | So if you take what you actually got

00:25:13.000 | minus what you expected, that's reward prediction error.

00:25:16.320 | So if the sandwich is basically what I expected to get, fine.

00:25:19.520 | Dopamine comes down basically to a baseline level

00:25:22.520 | that's pretty standard for me

00:25:23.600 | and is basically the baseline level I had

00:25:25.400 | before I ever thought about the sandwich at all.

00:25:28.200 | If the sandwich completely surprises me

00:25:30.320 | and is completely amazing, just an amazing sandwich,

00:25:33.640 | well then the level of dopamine that I experienced

00:25:36.400 | when I consumed that sandwich is going to be even greater

00:25:39.520 | and it's going to be that minus what I expected.

00:25:43.060 | So there it's a bigger reward prediction error

00:25:45.840 | in the direction of higher peak by consuming the sandwich.

00:25:50.480 | And then of course, there's the other possibility,

00:25:52.320 | which is the deli's closed

00:25:54.720 | or the sandwich they make me is lousy or doesn't taste good

00:25:57.960 | or something happened in the consuming of that sandwich

00:26:01.160 | that just makes it a bad experience.

00:26:03.240 | In which case, if we take that reward experienced

00:26:05.960 | minus reward predicted from the initial craving,

00:26:10.880 | well then it's going to be less than what I expected

00:26:13.440 | and therefore the baseline drops below

00:26:16.260 | where it was prior to even desiring the sandwich.

00:26:20.000 | Okay, so all of this might seem a little bit complicated

00:26:22.040 | but it's all very simple.

00:26:23.500 | Desire for things increases dopamine,

00:26:26.080 | but then our level of dopamine drops below baseline

00:26:29.080 | and it's that drop below baseline

00:26:31.140 | that triggers the motivation

00:26:32.840 | to bring that dopamine level back up

00:26:35.540 | by going and pursuing the thing

00:26:37.520 | that you wanted in the first place.

00:26:40.220 | Now, of course, as this is happening,

00:26:42.200 | you're not conscious of your dopamine levels,

00:26:44.200 | you experience this as context dependent craving and pursuit

00:26:48.520 | because remember the prefrontal cortex

00:26:49.880 | is involved in context setting and craving and pursuit

00:26:53.560 | because it relates to action and movement,

00:26:55.960 | which is one of the general features of the dopamine system.

00:26:59.560 | So you can start to see

00:27:00.400 | how this is a beautifully designed system

00:27:02.680 | and you can also see how it's a perfect system

00:27:05.480 | for desire and pursuit of anything, not just sandwiches

00:27:10.040 | as I'm giving you in this somewhat trivial

00:27:11.960 | but everyday and therefore applicable example.

00:27:14.680 | So just by understanding reward prediction error

00:27:17.920 | and especially by understanding

00:27:19.660 | that a craving triggers a peak in dopamine

00:27:22.400 | that makes you motivated

00:27:23.780 | but then drops your level of dopamine below baseline

00:27:26.480 | which makes you even more motivated,

00:27:29.040 | you are already halfway through the conceptual aspect

00:27:32.160 | of today's podcast because if you can understand that,

00:27:34.920 | you will understand why, for instance,

00:27:37.360 | when you initially want something

00:27:39.020 | or you think you want something,

00:27:40.960 | it puts you into motion but then pretty quickly,

00:27:45.240 | you're starting to feel the pain of not having that

00:27:48.800 | and that is also contributing

00:27:50.580 | to your desire to pursue that thing.

00:27:52.520 | This is a subtle effect but if you watch for it,

00:27:55.100 | you'll start to see it or experience it within yourself.

00:27:58.360 | Your craving for things is not just about

00:28:00.440 | craving for those things per se,

00:28:02.600 | it's also a desire to relieve the pain

00:28:05.600 | of not having those things.

00:28:07.400 | And if you can internalize that

00:28:09.520 | and start to develop an awareness around it,

00:28:11.640 | you will be in an amazing position

00:28:13.640 | to leverage all sorts of aspects of the dopamine system

00:28:16.840 | in order to increase your motivation

00:28:18.440 | especially when things get really hard

00:28:20.600 | or when you have the propensity to procrastinate

00:28:23.120 | which is something that we'll get into

00:28:24.320 | a little bit later in the podcast.

00:28:26.200 | I'd like to take a quick break

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00:28:44.840 | and the reason I still take Athletic Greens

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00:29:40.580 | Now I'd like to talk about the dynamics of dopamine release

00:29:43.200 | with a little bit more detail.

00:29:45.400 | And this is something I've never covered

00:29:47.160 | on any social media post or on any podcast,

00:29:50.400 | either this one or as a guest on other podcasts,

00:29:53.300 | because on the face of it,

00:29:55.200 | it might seem a little too detailed,

00:29:56.680 | like why is he telling me all this?

00:29:57.860 | Isn't it just enough to know that there are peaks and troughs

00:30:00.160 | and baselines in dopamine?

00:30:02.080 | Well, it turns out that if you can understand

00:30:04.880 | what that peak and trough are really about,

00:30:08.080 | in other words, what's really happening

00:30:09.760 | when we zoom in on that peak and trough,

00:30:12.000 | you'll be in an amazing position to overcome procrastination

00:30:16.280 | and essentially pursue any goals in an ongoing basis.

00:30:19.980 | So I'm very excited to share this information with you

00:30:21.960 | because I do think that it has tremendous actionable power.

00:30:25.460 | What I'm about to describe relates

00:30:27.920 | to a number of different findings that have been made,

00:30:30.000 | mostly over the last five to 10 years,

00:30:32.460 | although to be quite direct,

00:30:33.880 | mostly within the last five years.

00:30:35.560 | And it has to do with the fact that the peak and trough

00:30:38.720 | and baseline that I talked about a moment ago

00:30:40.520 | that are associated with craving,

00:30:42.680 | they look like a peak followed by a trough,

00:30:44.880 | followed by a return to baseline,

00:30:46.300 | and maybe another peak if you get the reward

00:30:48.300 | or a drop below baseline if you don't

00:30:50.120 | or you don't like what you got.

00:30:52.320 | But if we were to zoom in on that peak and the reward,

00:30:55.960 | in other words, really zoom in on the whole process

00:30:58.320 | and start thinking about the circuitry,

00:31:00.880 | that is the neurons and VTA and nucleus accumbens

00:31:03.280 | and how it relates to the frontal cortex

00:31:05.400 | in a bit more detail,

00:31:07.040 | what we discover is nothing short of amazing.

00:31:10.560 | What we discover is that whenever we're pursuing something,

00:31:14.500 | we are always looking for cues

00:31:16.440 | as to whether or not we are on the right path

00:31:19.640 | to achieve that thing.

00:31:20.920 | And we are also setting a mindset

00:31:23.260 | or a context within our brains

00:31:26.360 | as to whether or not we are confident or pessimistic

00:31:29.120 | as to whether or not we're going to achieve that thing.

00:31:30.760 | Now, this is vitally important for anyone out there

00:31:33.340 | who finds it hard to get motivated and stay motivated.

00:31:35.840 | It's also vitally important for anyone

00:31:37.720 | who's psychologically minded in any way.

00:31:39.860 | You don't have to be a psychologist,

00:31:41.160 | but psychologically minded in any way

00:31:43.200 | and wonders why is it that some people are just so motivated

00:31:46.760 | and other people have such trouble with motivation?

00:31:49.520 | Why is it that some people require perfect conditions

00:31:51.900 | in order to achieve things

00:31:53.900 | and other people just seem to manage

00:31:57.300 | to pursue things no matter what?

00:31:58.720 | It also relates to the fact that some of us

00:32:01.360 | are very good at achieving our goals in one context

00:32:03.880 | and not so much in another.

00:32:05.540 | So here's what you need to understand.

00:32:08.240 | I'll stay with the example of the roast beef sandwich

00:32:10.580 | just because we already have that in mind,

00:32:12.300 | but you can replace roast beef sandwich

00:32:14.320 | with essentially any goal.

00:32:15.820 | The cue that we're going to likely get what we want.

00:32:23.000 | So for instance, the sign that there's a deli on the corner

00:32:26.680 | or that I opened my phone and that there's an app

00:32:29.800 | that represents a restaurant

00:32:32.040 | that sells the particular sandwich that I like.

00:32:34.160 | That cue, as I mentioned before, increases dopamine.

00:32:36.560 | You see that and you're like, oh, okay.

00:32:38.040 | And subconsciously, there's already a signal

00:32:40.300 | that's initiated by that dopamine

00:32:42.000 | that I'm on the right path.

00:32:43.620 | Then as I mentioned, dopamine drops below baseline.

00:32:48.320 | That's further contributing to my desire

00:32:52.000 | to go pursue that sandwich,

00:32:53.960 | either with my thumbs on my phone through the app

00:32:56.160 | or with my feet and walking to the deli,

00:32:57.940 | standing in line and so forth.

00:32:59.440 | Then as I mentioned before,

00:33:02.400 | there is a peak in dopamine of varying height,

00:33:06.720 | depending on how satisfying I find the reward to be

00:33:09.840 | when I actually get that sandwich, get that goal.

00:33:14.660 | Now keep in mind, there is some time delay between the cue,

00:33:18.460 | the app, the deli, et cetera, and when I get my sandwich.

00:33:24.880 | That gap is going to be different for different things.

00:33:27.200 | So in pursuing a four-year degree,

00:33:29.280 | it's going to be four years if the diploma is your goal.

00:33:31.440 | If it's an exam you're studying for,

00:33:33.460 | it might be a week long.

00:33:34.780 | And there will be many other signals

00:33:37.780 | in between that initial cue that,

00:33:41.160 | hey, the reward likely lies down this path,

00:33:44.320 | in this textbook, on this dating app, or at that deli.

00:33:49.280 | There are many other cues.

00:33:51.360 | Those cues come in subconsciously

00:33:53.220 | and involve everything from how long the line is at the deli

00:33:56.440 | to whether or not you're seeing the types of people

00:33:59.560 | on a dating app that you'd like to see,

00:34:01.080 | whether or not they're responding to you,

00:34:02.760 | whether or not someone's texting you back or not.

00:34:05.160 | All of those cues are integrated

00:34:08.340 | and adjusting your baseline level of dopamine all the time

00:34:12.040 | as you go to pursue that goal.

00:34:14.500 | So what the dopamine system does

00:34:16.420 | is it doesn't just compare the height of the peak

00:34:18.500 | at the beginning, right?

00:34:19.900 | I desire that to the reward that you got.

00:34:21.920 | We talked about reward prediction error.

00:34:23.220 | That's the kind of first grade version

00:34:26.880 | of reward prediction error.

00:34:28.400 | It's also taking into account

00:34:30.000 | all the things that happen in between.

00:34:32.460 | And all of that is serving as a cue

00:34:35.240 | for the eventual reward.

00:34:36.580 | And all of that is funneling

00:34:37.880 | into what we call reward prediction error.

00:34:39.940 | In other words, the dopamine system is very good

00:34:43.880 | at subconsciously parsing what are the things that happen

00:34:47.580 | between wanting and getting.

00:34:50.120 | And that's part of the learning that dopamine achieves.

00:34:52.680 | And indeed there are specialized circuits

00:34:54.520 | from the VTA and nucleus accumbens

00:34:56.780 | that are involved in just the learning

00:35:00.400 | of how we achieve or don't achieve

00:35:02.960 | specific types of rewards that we desire.

00:35:05.520 | So this is called reward contingent learning

00:35:07.800 | because it's learning the contingencies

00:35:09.540 | of what led up to a reward

00:35:11.580 | or what didn't lead up to a reward.

00:35:13.620 | At the same time, end in parallel,

00:35:17.420 | there's an ongoing release of dopamine

00:35:19.920 | in the background.

00:35:20.800 | And that ongoing release of dopamine

00:35:22.800 | that has nothing to do with learning

00:35:24.760 | is really just sort of a propeller

00:35:26.640 | that's driving us in the direction

00:35:28.620 | of whatever it is that we're trying to pursue.

00:35:31.080 | So I realize for some of you,

00:35:32.560 | this might seem like unnecessary

00:35:33.980 | or perhaps even an overwhelming amount of detail,

00:35:37.000 | but it's actually quite simple.

00:35:39.160 | Your brain is trying to figure out

00:35:41.520 | what happened prior to getting or not getting a reward.

00:35:44.880 | And it's comparing what you wanted

00:35:46.240 | compared to what you got.

00:35:49.240 | At the same time, the dopamine system

00:35:51.600 | initiates a motivation signal

00:35:53.640 | that takes you through that entire round of pursuit.

00:35:57.440 | And those three things,

00:35:59.720 | there's the stimulus, the desire, the I want that.

00:36:02.820 | That's the first thing that leads to that peak.

00:36:05.280 | The peak drops a little bit below baseline

00:36:07.240 | and it triggers motivation.

00:36:08.640 | The motivation is the second thing.

00:36:10.800 | The motivation is dopamine release also,

00:36:13.720 | but from a separate set of neurons within this circuit

00:36:16.480 | driving you forward.

00:36:18.320 | And the entire time that it's driving you forward,

00:36:21.120 | it's paying attention to what's there along the way,

00:36:23.720 | even if you don't realize it consciously.

00:36:25.760 | And then there's the reward itself

00:36:27.320 | or the lack of reward itself.

00:36:28.600 | So those three components, the learning contingency,

00:36:32.360 | which has to do with the stimulus and the reward

00:36:35.560 | and everything that happens in between

00:36:37.440 | and the propeller nature of dopamine,

00:36:40.380 | as I'm referring to it,

00:36:41.640 | those all combine into a total learning

00:36:45.060 | so that after you get the sandwich

00:36:47.320 | or after you finish the exam,

00:36:48.720 | or after you go out on a date,

00:36:50.060 | or after you do anything that you desire to do,

00:36:53.360 | that system that originates in the VTA

00:36:56.080 | and nucleus accumbens and goes up to your cortex,

00:36:58.840 | it learned.

00:37:00.300 | It learned many things.

00:37:01.680 | It learned the contingency between stimulus

00:37:04.240 | and desire, motivation,

00:37:06.240 | and whether or not you succeeded or not.

00:37:08.000 | It's basically a scoreboard for how you did

00:37:11.480 | given what just happened.

00:37:13.760 | So actually it's all very simple.

00:37:15.600 | In fact, if you can understand

00:37:17.640 | even just half of what I just said,

00:37:19.940 | you are now in a far better position

00:37:22.040 | to understand everything from addiction

00:37:24.200 | to motivation to procrastination.

00:37:26.720 | And it will make sense of all the tools

00:37:28.740 | that I'm going to talk about next,

00:37:30.280 | which will allow you to overcome procrastination points,

00:37:33.520 | to overcome deficits and motivation,

00:37:35.600 | and indeed to reset your motivation in an ongoing way

00:37:39.000 | so that you can reach your goals.

00:37:40.600 | Okay, so let's take everything that I just told you

00:37:42.960 | and set it aside.

00:37:44.360 | It's still important, but let's just set it aside.

00:37:46.080 | You don't have to think about any of those details

00:37:47.720 | or names or anything.

00:37:49.760 | Let's just think about addiction

00:37:51.640 | because in biology and in psychology, frankly,

00:37:55.900 | it really often pays to think about the extremes first

00:37:59.300 | and then work our way towards more typical circumstances.

00:38:02.200 | And with that said,

00:38:03.220 | addiction unfortunately is very common nowadays.

00:38:05.680 | I just heard a statistic, in fact,

00:38:07.180 | that there is an 80% increase

00:38:11.800 | in alcohol use disorder among women in the last 30 years.

00:38:15.480 | I talked a little bit about this in the episode

00:38:17.820 | that I did about alcohol and health.

00:38:20.140 | Again, I want to be very clear.

00:38:21.040 | I'm not somebody that is completely against alcohol

00:38:23.640 | for adults, provided they're not alcoholics.

00:38:26.320 | Turns out two drinks a week, probably fine health-wise.

00:38:29.640 | Zero would be better.

00:38:31.240 | If we're honest, zero is better than any alcohol.

00:38:34.440 | But two drinks a week is probably fine.

00:38:36.300 | Past two drinks, you start running into problems.

00:38:38.700 | And yet many, many people out there, male and female alike,

00:38:42.200 | suffer from alcohol use disorder, also called alcoholism.

00:38:47.900 | The same is also true for things like methamphetamine

00:38:51.040 | or cocaine or other types of substance addictions.

00:38:55.140 | And the same is also true for a lot of behavioral

00:38:58.420 | or what are sometimes called process addictions,

00:39:00.620 | things like sex addiction or video game addiction

00:39:03.460 | or any type of behavior that frankly

00:39:07.240 | is leveraging the dopamine system,

00:39:09.920 | but that engages this progressive narrowing

00:39:12.900 | of the things that bring someone pleasure

00:39:14.880 | such that nothing else is really salient.

00:39:17.340 | Nothing else is really pulling them in

00:39:19.620 | in the way that they're video games

00:39:21.580 | or sex or pornography or alcohol,

00:39:25.500 | pick your substance or behavior that you see out there

00:39:29.460 | or hopefully not, but that you might suffer

00:39:31.900 | from an addiction too.

00:39:33.360 | So what's happening in addiction?

00:39:35.440 | Well, addiction involves dopamine among other things often,

00:39:39.660 | the opioid system, et cetera.

00:39:41.500 | But if we were to think about what's the stimulus

00:39:44.540 | in an addiction and what's the peak in dopamine,

00:39:48.580 | and then what happens after that peak,

00:39:51.540 | it all becomes very clear as to why addiction happens

00:39:55.040 | and why it's so pernicious.

00:39:57.380 | So for instance, let's take cocaine.

00:39:59.260 | Cocaine causes dramatic increases in dopamine

00:40:02.940 | very, very fast.

00:40:04.460 | So if somebody craves cocaine, what are they craving?

00:40:08.500 | They're craving that dopamine peak.

00:40:10.020 | They're craving the increased level of alertness.

00:40:13.400 | They're craving a number of things associated

00:40:16.160 | with the feeling of being under the influence of the drug.

00:40:19.780 | But the stimulus for it simply becomes that line of cocaine

00:40:23.800 | or in the case of crack,

00:40:24.900 | that crack rock that they're going to smoke,

00:40:27.680 | and God forbid they're mainlining it,

00:40:29.340 | they're shooting into a vein.

00:40:31.200 | What happens is they snort, smoke, or inject cocaine,

00:40:36.200 | and dopamine levels almost immediately go up, up, up, up,

00:40:40.340 | up, up to a very high peak, okay?

00:40:42.460 | So the time gap between the stimulus and the dopamine

00:40:46.320 | is very, very short.

00:40:48.360 | So short, in fact,

00:40:49.940 | that there's really no other contingencies in between

00:40:53.280 | that the mesocortical system has to learn.

00:40:56.720 | In fact, what does the system, quote unquote, learn?

00:40:59.860 | It learns cocaine equals massive amounts of dopamine

00:41:04.840 | equals feeling euphoric and energetic, et cetera.

00:41:08.100 | And in doing that, it reinforces the whole circuit

00:41:12.600 | so that that short, we can even say hyper short contingency,

00:41:17.600 | is really what the system wants.

00:41:20.300 | So much so that longer contingencies of, say,

00:41:24.520 | putting in the hard work of, you know,

00:41:27.340 | generating a fitness program or a professional program

00:41:30.140 | for yourself or a education program,

00:41:32.820 | which takes not just many days, but many weeks and years,

00:41:36.380 | well, none of that is going to lead to peaks in dopamine

00:41:38.940 | that are as high as the peak in dopamine

00:41:41.400 | associated with cocaine.

00:41:43.100 | So that tells us something critical.

00:41:45.460 | It is both the duration between desire and effect.

00:41:50.460 | And when I say effect, I mean the rewarding properties

00:41:53.020 | of dopamine that are experienced.

00:41:54.680 | That's important, so very short gaps teach the system

00:41:58.260 | to expect and want short gaps.

00:42:01.640 | Makes it very hard to pursue things that take longer.

00:42:05.020 | So when we say it's the short, or in this case,

00:42:08.180 | hyper short distance or time between the stimulus

00:42:12.440 | and the dopamine, what we're really talking about,

00:42:14.560 | if we were to plot this out on a board

00:42:16.920 | or on a piece of paper,

00:42:17.960 | is the steepness of the rise of that peak.

00:42:20.600 | It's very, very steep.

00:42:22.040 | The peak in dopamine is coming up very fast

00:42:24.800 | after the desire.

00:42:25.940 | And in addition to that, and this is very important,

00:42:31.160 | the higher the peak in dopamine

00:42:33.020 | and the faster the rise to that peak,

00:42:36.180 | the further below baseline the dopamine drops

00:42:39.640 | after the drug wears off.

00:42:41.960 | Okay, so in the case of cocaine,

00:42:43.260 | it's a very fast and very large rise in dopamine

00:42:46.840 | followed by a steep drop and very deep trough

00:42:52.160 | in dopamine below baseline.

00:42:53.900 | You say, okay, so there's pleasure,

00:42:56.560 | then there's lack of pleasure.

00:42:58.340 | Ah, but it's worse than that.

00:43:00.780 | Because it's not just lack of pleasure.

00:43:03.140 | If you recall what we talked about a little bit earlier,

00:43:05.480 | that drop below baseline triggers the desire

00:43:09.740 | and the pursuit for what?

00:43:11.660 | For more.

00:43:13.140 | And so this sets in motion a vicious loop

00:43:15.380 | where people start pursuing peaks in dopamine

00:43:18.060 | that can come very fast without much effort.

00:43:20.880 | And that's one of the ways

00:43:22.460 | in which addiction starts to take hold.

00:43:24.520 | There's a simple way to think about this

00:43:27.540 | and to remember if you want to avoid this whole thing.

00:43:30.360 | I mean, the first one is obvious.

00:43:31.840 | Don't do cocaine, don't try it, don't use it.

00:43:33.760 | Certainly don't get addicted to it.

00:43:36.020 | Those are all sort of one in the same, frankly.

00:43:37.440 | I don't know many people that,

00:43:39.600 | despite opinions to the contrary,

00:43:42.160 | that use cocaine recreationally,

00:43:44.340 | that don't at some point run into either a financial,

00:43:46.880 | psychological, physical, or some other problem.

00:43:50.600 | The other thing that's absolutely critical to keep in mind,

00:43:52.960 | and this was discussed in my colleague,

00:43:55.020 | Dr. Anna Lemke's book, "Dopamine Nation,"

00:43:57.680 | and on this podcast, excellent book, by the way,

00:43:59.720 | I highly recommend it.

00:44:00.680 | If you haven't read it already,

00:44:01.800 | it's a fascinating exploration into dopamine

00:44:04.980 | as it relates to addiction,

00:44:06.160 | not just drug addiction, but other types of addiction.

00:44:08.880 | Again, the name of that book is "Dopamine Nation."

00:44:10.560 | We'll provide a link to it in the show note captions.

00:44:13.160 | The other thing that happens

00:44:15.580 | after those big, fast increases in dopamine

00:44:19.240 | caused by things like cocaine is afterwards,

00:44:23.140 | when it quickly drops below baseline,

00:44:25.260 | it takes a much longer time

00:44:28.360 | to get back to the original baseline

00:44:31.080 | than it did prior to using the drug.

00:44:33.800 | And worse still is that the peaks in dopamine

00:44:38.040 | that are created from more consumption of cocaine

00:44:41.880 | leads to progressively lower peaks

00:44:44.760 | and deeper troughs below baseline.

00:44:48.540 | So the whole system is shifting away from pleasure

00:44:50.920 | and more to pain and the desire for pursuit of the drug.

00:44:55.020 | This is a terrible situation,

00:44:58.500 | and it's a terrible situation

00:45:00.280 | that's not just unique to cocaine.

00:45:01.800 | In fact, if we were to look at the averages,

00:45:04.480 | and again, these are averages,

00:45:05.980 | of the height of the peaks in dopamine

00:45:08.460 | that are created by different substances

00:45:10.120 | and the rates at which those peaks take place,

00:45:12.700 | 'cause remember, the time to peak is just as important

00:45:15.960 | as how high that peak goes,

00:45:18.300 | we see some pretty interesting numbers.

00:45:20.200 | So for instance, and again,

00:45:21.380 | these are averages based on neuroimaging

00:45:23.460 | combined with what are called PET scans,

00:45:26.420 | positron emission tomography, combined with blood draws

00:45:29.120 | and a number of other data

00:45:30.660 | from both animal and human studies.

00:45:32.940 | What you find is that at baseline,

00:45:35.300 | just kind of on a background of no drug taking of any kind,

00:45:39.820 | the neurons in the ventral tegmental nucleus accumbens area

00:45:43.560 | are firing at a rate of about three to four per second,

00:45:46.640 | releasing dopamine, so that's your baseline

00:45:48.680 | of dopamine release, your forebrain is always seeing

00:45:50.760 | a little bit of dopamine from that system.

00:45:54.000 | If you were then to anticipate food

00:45:56.440 | and you're relatively hungry, that would double, okay?

00:45:59.920 | So this probably happened when you decide to eat lunch today

00:46:02.120 | if you were hungry prior to eating lunch.

00:46:04.480 | It doubles in the anticipation of the food,

00:46:06.480 | and then depending on how much you enjoyed that food,

00:46:09.500 | it might triple or quadruple, it might be lower

00:46:12.800 | than it was during the anticipations we talked about before.

00:46:16.660 | So there's an approximate doubling under conditions

00:46:19.720 | of desiring and consuming food.

00:46:23.520 | Let's take nicotine as the next example.

00:46:26.920 | For people that use nicotine, either smoking, vaping,

00:46:31.860 | snuffing, or dipping, all routes of nicotine administration

00:46:36.860 | that I covered in our episode about nicotine,

00:46:39.480 | there's about a 150% increase

00:46:43.720 | in the rate of dopamine neuron firing.

00:46:46.640 | Cocaine is going to increase the rate of dopamine output

00:46:50.400 | into the prefrontal cortex by about 1,000%, okay?

00:46:54.520 | So what you're really talking about here

00:46:56.340 | is a 10-fold increase in the amount of dopamine

00:47:00.660 | that's released into the prefrontal cortex

00:47:02.160 | as measured by the rates of firing of these dopamine neurons.

00:47:05.440 | Methamphetamine is going to be anywhere from 1,000%,

00:47:09.680 | anywhere up to 10,000%.

00:47:11.440 | It really varies depending on the potency of the drug

00:47:13.920 | and a few other factors.

00:47:15.580 | And here's where perhaps it gets a little more interesting.

00:47:17.720 | Some of you are probably wondering about caffeine

00:47:20.460 | or about sex or about video games.

00:47:22.960 | Now, there are the numbers vary tremendously,

00:47:25.440 | and it's really important to understand

00:47:27.240 | that across the board, not just for caffeine, sex,

00:47:30.800 | video games, but also for nicotine, alcohol,

00:47:35.700 | and other substances and what we call motivated behaviors,

00:47:40.120 | some of which are part of a healthy life,

00:47:41.680 | like eating and reproduction,

00:47:43.600 | provided it's age-appropriate, context-appropriate,

00:47:47.560 | species-appropriate, consensual,

00:47:49.240 | well, then we consider it adaptive.

00:47:52.260 | If it's not, well, then consider it maladaptive.

00:47:55.060 | Some people will sit down to play a video game.

00:47:59.100 | They really like video games.

00:48:00.620 | And as they're sitting down,

00:48:02.360 | they will experience a five-fold increase

00:48:05.400 | in the rate of dopamine output from their nucleus accumbens.

00:48:08.300 | For other people, it's going to be a 10-fold increase.

00:48:10.200 | For other people like me

00:48:11.600 | who don't like video games very much,

00:48:13.000 | I don't have anything against them, I don't dislike them,

00:48:15.060 | but it doesn't do much for me,

00:48:17.260 | it might not cause any increase whatsoever.

00:48:19.100 | It might even cause a decrease in dopamine.

00:48:21.420 | So there's a lot of individual variability.

00:48:23.480 | For sex, it turns out to be a range.

00:48:25.620 | So the typical range that's cited in the literature

00:48:28.580 | is anywhere from a four to five-fold increase

00:48:31.120 | in the rate of dopamine neuron firing.

00:48:33.900 | However, there are certain individuals

00:48:35.580 | for which that number is doubled.

00:48:37.460 | Caffeine is a little bit of a special circumstance

00:48:39.500 | because caffeine has the property

00:48:42.040 | of not just causing the release of dopamine,

00:48:43.980 | but increasing the amount of dopamine receptors over time.

00:48:47.340 | And there aren't a lot of excellent measurements

00:48:49.840 | of the amount of dopamine released

00:48:51.900 | as a function of caffeine intake

00:48:53.920 | in different populations of humans.

00:48:55.940 | It's mostly animal studies.

00:48:57.500 | But what we think based on the gestalt,

00:48:59.980 | based on the overall picture of the literature,

00:49:02.340 | is that it's an approximate doubling

00:49:04.500 | of the dopamine signaling that's coming out

00:49:07.340 | of the VTA nucleus accumbens to prefrontal cortex

00:49:10.840 | when we anticipate and when we drink our coffee.

00:49:14.800 | Again, I really want to be clear

00:49:16.460 | that for all of these things,

00:49:18.580 | these are relative levels and they are distribution.

00:49:21.280 | So if we were to plot them out on paper,

00:49:23.540 | you would see that these are not bar graphs.

00:49:25.460 | These are overlapping curves to some extent.

00:49:27.560 | So some people are going to achieve more dopamine release

00:49:30.820 | or less dopamine release from one behavior or substance.

00:49:33.680 | However, it's very clear that cocaine, methamphetamine,

00:49:38.060 | even heroin for that matter,

00:49:39.660 | are way out on the right-hand side of the curve,

00:49:42.660 | causing enormous increases in dopamine very quickly.

00:49:46.200 | And the other things that we described have, again,

00:49:48.760 | a distribution that is more leftward shifted

00:49:52.160 | on this imaginary plot that I'm creating.

00:49:54.880 | It's a lot of individual variability.

00:49:57.060 | However, it's fascinating that dopamine

00:49:59.900 | is the single molecule that's causing the craving

00:50:03.620 | and pursuit and experience

00:50:06.120 | of all of these substances and behaviors.

00:50:08.740 | And the learning of all of that craving, pursuit,

00:50:12.380 | and actual experience is what predicts whether or not

00:50:14.900 | we will re-engage, reuse that substance or not,

00:50:19.140 | re-engage in a behavior or not,

00:50:20.940 | and how frequently we will do that.

00:50:22.940 | So that's addiction.

00:50:24.260 | But if you understand how the height of those peaks

00:50:27.060 | in dopamine and the rate to reach those peaks

00:50:30.300 | and the troughs that result and how long the troughs take

00:50:33.000 | to get back to baseline,

00:50:33.900 | if you understand or a little or all of that,

00:50:36.660 | you're really in a terrific position to understand

00:50:38.620 | how to leverage the dopamine system

00:50:40.480 | for the pursuit of healthy goals and behaviors.

00:50:43.660 | I should mention one thing about recovery from addiction,

00:50:46.220 | which is that the reset of all that dopamine circuitry

00:50:48.840 | from unhealthy to healthy often involves,

00:50:51.560 | depending on the addiction, 30 days of complete abstinence.

00:50:55.160 | That 30 days of complete abstinence inevitably involves

00:50:58.620 | a lot of pain and discomfort and craving,

00:51:00.540 | anxiety, insomnia, et cetera, that relates to the big trough

00:51:04.360 | in dopamine that inevitably occurs.

00:51:07.040 | Now, of course, there are some addictions,

00:51:08.640 | such as severe alcohol addiction,

00:51:10.760 | and in some cases, opiate addiction,

00:51:13.300 | that immediate and sustained abstinence

00:51:16.480 | cannot be used as the tool.

00:51:18.320 | Somebody really needs to work with an addiction specialist,

00:51:20.620 | and sometimes there needs to be a tapering off

00:51:22.520 | of the substance.

00:51:23.360 | For other addictions, it can be quote unquote cold turkey.

00:51:26.400 | And then of course, there are other addictions,

00:51:28.740 | particular food and sex,

00:51:30.600 | but sometimes even things like video games,

00:51:32.800 | for which the desired outcome is not necessarily

00:51:35.880 | to eliminate the behavior completely,

00:51:38.100 | but to set some constraints around the behavior

00:51:40.360 | so that it's not occurring to the exclusion

00:51:43.100 | of other pleasureful things in life

00:51:45.240 | and adaptive things in life.

00:51:46.560 | And for that, there is the requirement

00:51:49.380 | for what are called binding behaviors.

00:51:51.040 | We'll get back to binding behaviors later.

00:51:52.820 | A binding behaviors are behaviors

00:51:54.960 | in which people bind their behavior

00:51:58.120 | around a particular substance use

00:52:01.280 | or around a particular behavioral addiction,

00:52:04.980 | like sex, video games, et cetera,

00:52:07.140 | in space and/or time.

00:52:08.940 | In space meaning they might only engage

00:52:11.060 | in those particular behaviors in certain places

00:52:14.340 | and certain times when it's context appropriate.

00:52:16.760 | There are numerous examples of binding behaviors

00:52:18.800 | in space and time.

00:52:19.980 | It all has to do with clamping or directing

00:52:23.680 | when the engagement with the dopamine releasing behavior

00:52:27.140 | is going to occur.

00:52:28.440 | So what's happening when people decide to go cold turkey

00:52:30.960 | or they use these binding behaviors?

00:52:33.140 | Well, what's happening is that people are engaging

00:52:35.860 | the specific circuitry within the prefrontal cortex

00:52:39.480 | that, as I mentioned at the beginning of the episode,

00:52:41.340 | are important for context setting.

00:52:43.460 | So in the cases of binding behaviors,

00:52:45.640 | the prefrontal cortex is essentially getting trained up

00:52:48.680 | to understand that, okay, certain things like food

00:52:51.020 | or perhaps sex or perhaps video games,

00:52:54.920 | they're okay if they are done or consumed

00:52:58.640 | in appropriate amounts or in particular contexts.

00:53:02.940 | That requires the context setting goal-directed behavior

00:53:06.700 | that the prefrontal cortex is responsible.

00:53:08.600 | Okay, so for the last 10 or 15 minutes,

00:53:10.240 | we've been talking a lot about addiction,

00:53:12.040 | and actually this is not an episode about addiction.

00:53:15.120 | However, if you understand a little bit

00:53:16.880 | about the dopamine dynamics in an addiction,

00:53:19.480 | you can leverage that knowledge

00:53:21.200 | towards healthy adaptive goal pursuit

00:53:23.760 | and achieving your goals.

00:53:25.700 | So let's think about that in the context

00:53:28.560 | of what generates dopamine peaks,

00:53:30.960 | what generates desire to pursue goals,

00:53:34.400 | what causes our readout of whether or not

00:53:37.200 | we achieved a goal or not.

00:53:39.280 | In other words, what allows us to learn

00:53:42.060 | how to pursue goals of different kinds,

00:53:44.160 | not just get good at achieving one kind of goal,

00:53:46.440 | but really understand and get really, really good

00:53:49.200 | at setting goals and pursuing goals of different kinds

00:53:52.760 | that are adaptive in different areas of life,

00:53:55.200 | because we all are going to have to pursue goals

00:53:57.000 | in school, work, relationships, fitness, mental health,

00:54:01.820 | and on and on in order to be our best selves, that's clear.

00:54:05.980 | Well, all of that is possible using the same basic set

00:54:09.480 | of dopamine circuits and the same basic dynamics of dopamine.

00:54:14.060 | So for instance, if we are going to feel motivated at all,

00:54:17.740 | that is, if we are going to wake up in the morning

00:54:20.160 | or have any period of time during our day

00:54:21.920 | in which we feel like we are capable of pursuing goals,

00:54:25.740 | we are going to have to have a healthy level

00:54:28.360 | of baseline dopamine.

00:54:30.200 | In other words, we are going to have to have enough dopamine

00:54:32.700 | in the wave pool, enough water in the wave pool, that is,

00:54:36.960 | before we can generate any waves or peaks in dopamine,

00:54:39.960 | let alone troughs and the rest.

00:54:42.000 | So how do we achieve a healthy baseline level of dopamine?

00:54:45.400 | Well, there we can really look

00:54:47.360 | to some foundational practices,

00:54:49.120 | practices that perhaps you've heard about

00:54:50.880 | on this podcast before,

00:54:52.240 | and that to some of you might seem a little mundane,

00:54:54.500 | although some of them are a bit more sophisticated,

00:54:56.560 | maybe even esoteric.

00:54:58.120 | The good news is that we can all control these things,

00:55:00.560 | and they don't require purchasing anything,

00:55:03.160 | but they do require some degree of regular upkeep and effort.

00:55:06.920 | Those things include what I call the very basics.

00:55:11.500 | Now, the very basics put in the context

00:55:14.080 | of today's discussion are the things

00:55:15.520 | that put water in the wave pool.

00:55:18.240 | Those are going to be getting sufficient amounts

00:55:20.880 | of quality sleep each night,

00:55:22.380 | something that we've done several episodes on

00:55:24.300 | and have online toolkits for.

00:55:25.960 | So you can see the Master Your Sleep episode,

00:55:27.640 | the Perfect Your Sleep episode,

00:55:28.920 | the Light and Health episode.

00:55:30.520 | If you want to skip all that

00:55:31.440 | and just get right to the tools, we have a sleep toolkit,

00:55:34.800 | or it's actually called the Toolkit for Sleep,

00:55:36.240 | that you can access at hubermanlab.com.

00:55:38.080 | Completely zero cost.

00:55:39.560 | You just go there and download that toolkit.

00:55:41.720 | Getting sufficient sleep each night

00:55:44.000 | literally restores your dopamine reserves.

00:55:47.320 | It allows dopamine to be present

00:55:49.120 | and for you to have a level of baseline dopamine

00:55:51.740 | that will allow you to even consider your goals

00:55:54.120 | in any kind of meaningful or reasonable way.

00:55:57.120 | Second, there are practices that are supported

00:56:00.240 | by the scientific literature

00:56:01.520 | to increase your baseline level of dopamine

00:56:04.180 | that are independent of sleep, but are similar to sleep,

00:56:07.080 | and I like to refer to these as a non-sleep deep rest.

00:56:09.960 | This is not meditation.

00:56:11.900 | There's actually very little evidence

00:56:13.880 | that meditation of the traditional kind

00:56:16.080 | of sitting eyes closed, focusing on your third eye center,

00:56:19.840 | which is this area behind your forehead,

00:56:21.640 | there is very little evidence

00:56:23.160 | that that increases levels of dopamine.

00:56:25.440 | There is a place for meditation

00:56:26.720 | in the context of today's discussion, but I'll repeat.

00:56:30.520 | Meditation itself is a focusing exercise.

00:56:33.300 | It is not known to increase dopamine.

00:56:35.200 | However, non-sleep deep rest, so-called NSDR,

00:56:38.340 | very similar, although different

00:56:39.680 | to what's sometimes called yoga nidra,

00:56:41.600 | which is where you lie there, you do a sort of body scan,

00:56:44.280 | some long exhale breathing, NSDR is very similar.

00:56:47.560 | You can find a link to a zero-cost NSDR on YouTube.

00:56:52.340 | It's a 10-minute long one.

00:56:53.360 | There are also 20 and 30-minute ones out there,

00:56:55.880 | also on YouTube, but I'll provide a link

00:56:57.240 | to the 10-minute one.

00:56:58.280 | Those have been shown to increase the amount of dopamine

00:57:02.740 | in your dopamine reserves by up to 65%,

00:57:06.760 | which is a remarkable number.

00:57:08.160 | So quality sleep, non-sleep deep rest, aka yoga nidra,

00:57:12.000 | very powerful ways to keep your baseline level of dopamine

00:57:15.840 | at a sufficient level.

00:57:17.360 | In addition to that, nutrition no doubt plays a role

00:57:20.880 | in your baseline level of dopamine,

00:57:22.360 | because tyrosine, the amino acid,

00:57:24.600 | is the rate-limiting enzyme for the synthesis of dopamine.

00:57:28.280 | Tyrosine is present in varying levels in different foods.

00:57:31.920 | You can look those up online.

00:57:33.200 | You can just simply put in a search

00:57:35.060 | for tyrosine levels in different foods,

00:57:37.840 | everything from particular cheeses,

00:57:39.840 | like Parmesan cheese has high levels of tyrosine,

00:57:43.000 | certain meats, certain nuts, certain vegetables.

00:57:45.400 | Without getting into details and specifics,

00:57:47.000 | you can find those there, but you need proper nutrition

00:57:49.380 | and therefore nutrients, in particular tyrosine,

00:57:53.040 | in order to have sufficient levels of baseline dopamine.

00:57:57.120 | The third thing on the list, and again,

00:57:58.420 | these are things that we come back to almost every episode,

00:58:00.440 | but I don't think they can be repeated enough,

00:58:01.940 | because these are really things

00:58:03.040 | that we need to focus on every 24 hours.

00:58:05.820 | You might be able to skip a day here or there

00:58:07.340 | if you get sick or you're traveling,

00:58:09.160 | or you have some major life event,

00:58:10.520 | but really every 24 hours, we need to re-up our sleep.

00:58:14.560 | We need to re-up our nutrients.

00:58:17.180 | Even if you're fasting, you're re-upping your nutrients

00:58:19.040 | from stored sources within your body.

00:58:21.760 | The third thing is sunlight,

00:58:23.520 | morning sunlight in particular.

00:58:24.840 | I've done extensive episodes about this.

00:58:27.360 | Check out the episode on lighting your health

00:58:28.880 | if you want all the details,

00:58:30.340 | but you want to try and view sunlight

00:58:32.200 | as early in the day as possible,

00:58:33.840 | five to 10 minutes on a clear day,

00:58:36.480 | minimum 10 to 20 minutes on a cloudy day,

00:58:39.520 | minimum 20 or 30 minutes on a very overcast day,

00:58:43.640 | minimum without sunglasses.

00:58:45.660 | Don't stare at the sun.

00:58:47.080 | Please don't damage your eyes.

00:58:48.380 | Look off, slightly off from the sun,

00:58:50.040 | but yes, you want to face eastward towards the sun,

00:58:52.120 | and on those cloudy days,

00:58:53.340 | that's especially important to do.

00:58:55.000 | Why?

00:58:55.840 | Well, viewing morning sunlight

00:58:57.620 | increases cortisol early in the day,

00:58:59.320 | which is excellent because you want cortisol elevated

00:59:02.960 | early in the day and you want it lower later in the day,

00:59:04.960 | and because of the relationship

00:59:06.860 | between the cells in your eye that sense sunlight,

00:59:09.600 | specifically morning sunlight,

00:59:11.320 | believe it or not, that happens,

00:59:12.640 | and signal to your hypothalamus

00:59:14.160 | and the relationship between the hypothalamus

00:59:16.240 | and the pituitary and other endocrine organs,

00:59:19.720 | it sets in motion a dopamine-related cascade

00:59:23.600 | in neuromodulators, dopamine,

00:59:26.540 | and hormones that lead to states of wellbeing,

00:59:29.880 | elevated mood, alertness, et cetera, throughout the day.

00:59:32.700 | It also helps your sleep at night,

00:59:33.880 | but today we're talking about dopamine.

00:59:35.040 | So yes, believe it or not,

00:59:36.140 | that morning sunlight exposure

00:59:37.480 | does increase your levels of dopamine, not just cortisol.

00:59:41.520 | And fourth on the list is going to be movement,

00:59:44.120 | exercise of varying kinds.

00:59:46.000 | It could be resistance training,

00:59:47.000 | it could be cardiovascular training.

00:59:48.420 | That does increase levels of dopamine.

00:59:50.960 | Here, we're not talking about achieving peaks in dopamine.

00:59:54.600 | That could be accomplished

00:59:55.720 | through setting a personal record, a PR,

00:59:57.940 | or through sprints or heavy lifts,

01:00:00.500 | or learning some new dynamic movement.

01:00:02.540 | What we're really talking about here

01:00:04.100 | is getting into a regular exercise program

01:00:06.620 | of if not every day, at least five days a week,

01:00:09.700 | a mixture of cardiovascular and resistance exercise.

01:00:12.560 | That we also know is known to elevate

01:00:16.160 | and maintain an elevated level of baseline dopamine.

01:00:20.220 | So it's not just about the euphoria you feel

01:00:22.280 | during or after exercise.

01:00:24.060 | It's also about the baseline level of dopamine

01:00:27.500 | that's achieved through regular movement

01:00:29.820 | and engaging in movement.

01:00:31.060 | And if you're asking, how could that be?

01:00:32.560 | Well, you already know the answer.

01:00:34.400 | The circuits in the brain and body that generate movement,

01:00:37.600 | not just goal-seeking, but movement itself,

01:00:40.380 | as I mentioned earlier, that nigrostriatal pathway.

01:00:44.320 | And yes, that circuit is separate

01:00:46.520 | from the VTA nucleus accumbens to cortical circuit,

01:00:49.700 | the mesocortical circuit

01:00:50.860 | that we've mainly been focusing on today, but they interact.

01:00:54.140 | And so by engaging in regular movement,

01:00:56.180 | you ensure that you're maintaining elevated levels

01:00:58.660 | of baseline dopamine, which is what you want

01:01:01.220 | if you're going to be able to engage

01:01:02.620 | in any kind of motivated pursuit behavior of any kind.

01:01:05.880 | So those are the fundamentals that will set the level

01:01:09.300 | of baseline dopamine in your system.

01:01:12.820 | A couple of key points.

01:01:14.100 | Yes, there is variation based on both genetics

01:01:18.020 | and circumstance in baseline levels of dopamine.

01:01:20.340 | Someone's going through a particularly hard time,

01:01:22.540 | or if somebody inherited a gene

01:01:24.380 | in the dopamine synthesis pathway

01:01:26.260 | that simply affords them higher levels of baseline dopamine.

01:01:28.760 | We likely know these people.

01:01:30.260 | They seem hyper-motivated all the time,

01:01:31.980 | not just based on prior success,

01:01:34.280 | but they just seem to have a lot of energy

01:01:36.300 | and a lot of go drive.

01:01:37.620 | You know, you talk about activation energy.

01:01:39.300 | Some of you may know what that term means.

01:01:40.740 | Others of you won't.

01:01:41.940 | Having low activation energy is great.

01:01:43.740 | I mean, the amount of energy that it takes

01:01:45.160 | to get into action to pursue adaptive

01:01:47.260 | and meaningful, healthy goals.

01:01:48.580 | Some people just seem to have lower activation energy

01:01:51.120 | and higher levels of dopamine

01:01:52.460 | are probably associated with that.

01:01:54.800 | Some of us have lower levels of baseline dopamine.

01:01:57.700 | Regardless, everyone needs to engage

01:02:00.060 | in the foundational things

01:02:02.440 | that I just mentioned a few moments ago,

01:02:04.320 | every 24 hours, or at least strive to.

01:02:06.900 | There is no escaping that.

01:02:08.360 | I'd like to just take a brief moment

01:02:09.920 | and thank one of our podcast sponsors,

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01:02:24.020 | for the simple reason that blood work is the only way

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01:02:29.340 | lipids, metabolic factors, et cetera,

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01:02:36.320 | is that most of the time it does not come back

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01:03:26.080 | Now, there are things that can increase

01:03:27.560 | one's baseline level of dopamine further,

01:03:30.520 | and some of those get us into the realm of supplements

01:03:34.360 | and prescription drugs, but for now,

01:03:35.700 | I just want to mention a few of them

01:03:37.140 | that are purely behavioral in nature, are zero cost,

01:03:40.200 | and that have been shown in the research literature

01:03:42.800 | to increase baseline levels of dopamine

01:03:45.200 | for long periods of time.

01:03:46.480 | And this is important because if any of you

01:03:48.680 | are out there listening to this thing

01:03:50.080 | about peaks and troughs and baselines,

01:03:52.340 | you might be asking, well, wait,

01:03:54.360 | what's the difference between a baseline and a peak, really?

01:03:58.340 | Because if, for instance, you get a big peak,

01:04:02.480 | well, that's a peak in the baseline,

01:04:04.280 | so how do you distinguish between peak and baseline?

01:04:06.640 | And, well, there's a trough,

01:04:08.100 | and let's say that trough lasts an hour,

01:04:09.920 | is that hour-long trough your baseline?

01:04:12.520 | Or where's your set point?

01:04:14.160 | How do you establish your set point?

01:04:15.760 | And more importantly, how do you raise your set point?

01:04:18.080 | Ah, well, if you're not already asking that question,

01:04:20.120 | I just asked it for you.

01:04:21.760 | I define an increase in your baseline level in dopamine

01:04:24.980 | to be anything that increases dopamine

01:04:26.960 | for more than one hour.

01:04:29.160 | When we think about cocaine, amphetamine, pornography,

01:04:32.880 | sex, caffeine, things of that sort,

01:04:35.160 | regardless of how long one engages

01:04:37.480 | in a bout of those behaviors or substances,

01:04:40.260 | the increases in dopamine are going to be

01:04:42.960 | relatively short-lived,

01:04:44.120 | on the order of minutes to an hour, sometimes longer.

01:04:47.200 | Now, I didn't say that's how long

01:04:48.760 | you're engaging in the behaviors,

01:04:49.920 | I said that's how long those increases in dopamine

01:04:52.360 | are going to occur,

01:04:53.380 | even if you were to continually engage in those behaviors.

01:04:56.000 | And remember, with continual engagement

01:04:57.800 | in a dopamine-spiking behavior,

01:05:00.440 | behavior that increases dopamine peaks,

01:05:02.420 | the height of those peaks, remember,

01:05:03.760 | gets lower and lower and lower,

01:05:05.040 | especially in a short amount of time,

01:05:06.560 | and then drops below baseline.

01:05:08.980 | There are tools and techniques that you can use

01:05:10.560 | to elevate your baseline level of dopamine

01:05:12.520 | for long periods of time.

01:05:14.640 | And here, again, this is done in addition

01:05:18.300 | to the basic tools that I mentioned a few moments ago.

01:05:21.080 | The simplest one for which there are excellent data,

01:05:24.320 | and here I'm referring to data published

01:05:25.700 | in the European Journal of Physiology,

01:05:27.400 | I'll provide a link to this,

01:05:28.880 | is that exposure of your body up to the neck to cold water,

01:05:33.880 | and it doesn't have to be super cold, by the way,

01:05:37.480 | to cold water has been shown to increase baseline levels

01:05:40.480 | of dopamine and the other so-called catecholamines,

01:05:43.120 | which include norepinephrine and epinephrine,

01:05:45.160 | but for sake of today's discussion, dopamine in particular,

01:05:49.600 | for not just one, but at least two,

01:05:52.980 | and probably as long as four or five hours.

01:05:55.360 | There've been some additional scientific studies

01:05:57.760 | after the paper I just mentioned,

01:05:59.840 | and it's really remarkable.

01:06:01.440 | You can accomplish this a number of different ways.

01:06:03.480 | You could get into a cold shower in the morning,

01:06:05.640 | and I do recommend doing this in the morning,

01:06:06.960 | and in that case, it's okay to get the water on your head.

01:06:09.760 | In fact, I recommend it.

01:06:11.440 | You could get into an ice bath.

01:06:13.140 | You could get into a cold plunge.

01:06:14.960 | In these circumstances, I'm not suggesting this

01:06:16.960 | for sake of increasing metabolism or fat loss.

01:06:19.840 | You know, the whole discussion around deliberate cold

01:06:22.220 | and metabolism and fat loss

01:06:23.560 | has become a little bit controversial,

01:06:25.000 | that we won't go there now,

01:06:26.600 | mostly because we're focused on the clear ability

01:06:29.760 | of deliberate cold exposure to increase dopamine

01:06:32.340 | for long periods of time, aka your dopamine baseline.

01:06:35.620 | The ways to do this vary depending on the temperature.

01:06:38.420 | So for instance, there are data pointing to the fact

01:06:41.400 | that if you want to get a long lasting increase

01:06:44.100 | in your baseline dopamine,

01:06:45.280 | you could take a very cold shower or cold plunge or ice bath

01:06:50.280 | for a very brief period of time,

01:06:51.840 | anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes,

01:06:54.120 | maybe three minutes, but probably 30 seconds to two minutes.

01:06:56.840 | Now you might ask, what is very cold?

01:06:58.720 | Here I have to be careful

01:06:59.540 | because I don't want to recommend anything

01:07:01.320 | that's going to cause anyone to have a heart attack

01:07:03.500 | or go into shock or anything of that sort.

01:07:05.660 | It's going to vary by person

01:07:09.240 | depending on your level of cold tolerance.

01:07:11.200 | So what I recommend is if you are going

01:07:13.540 | for the short exposure, long dopamine release approach,

01:07:17.640 | that is 30 seconds to two minutes,

01:07:20.080 | that you start warmer than you think you need to,

01:07:22.360 | and then you ease into it over a few days.

01:07:25.080 | But we're really talking about ranges in temperature

01:07:27.660 | from anywhere from about 37 degrees Fahrenheit

01:07:30.760 | to about 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

01:07:32.880 | Again, be careful, approach it with caution and ease into it.

01:07:37.600 | I do recommend doing this early in the day,

01:07:39.680 | and I should mention not after strength

01:07:42.160 | or hypertrophy training because within the six hours

01:07:44.680 | after strength or hypertrophy training,

01:07:46.460 | this deliberate cold exposure,

01:07:47.560 | especially immersion up to the neck,

01:07:48.800 | can suppress the strength and hypertrophy adaptation

01:07:52.000 | that the training is designed to accomplish, okay?

01:07:54.480 | So that's one approach.

01:07:55.680 | The other approach that's supported by the literature

01:07:58.080 | to increase baseline levels of dopamine

01:08:00.260 | for very long periods of time,

01:08:01.360 | in fact, this is the original approach,

01:08:03.280 | is to get into warmer water, so not warm, but warmer,

01:08:06.880 | so 60 degree Fahrenheit water up to the neck,

01:08:10.960 | and to stay there for about 45 to 60 minutes.

01:08:14.460 | The reason I don't think most people will do that,

01:08:17.180 | or that most people would prefer

01:08:18.320 | a shorter, colder exposure protocol,

01:08:21.120 | is that most people don't have 45 to 60 minutes each morning

01:08:23.920 | to get into water and sit there.

01:08:25.400 | And in that study, they actually had them sitting

01:08:26.920 | in lawn chairs, basically, in the shallow end of a pool

01:08:29.560 | up to their neck for a full 60 minutes,

01:08:31.880 | and then measuring dopamine release and so forth.

01:08:34.160 | So there are a bunch of different ways to do this.

01:08:35.760 | I should emphasize, I don't think you need

01:08:37.000 | to be super precise about the temperature

01:08:39.520 | and even the duration.

01:08:40.880 | What I recommend is find a temperature

01:08:43.600 | that's uncomfortably cold to you,

01:08:45.120 | meaning that you feel agitated and you want to get out,

01:08:47.560 | but that you're confident you can safely stay in.

01:08:49.620 | And again, I can't give a simple prescriptive to everybody,

01:08:52.240 | but this is known to increase baseline levels

01:08:54.760 | of dopamine significantly, in fact, double them or more

01:08:58.480 | for long periods of time, meaning hours,

01:09:00.520 | up to four, maybe even six hours into the day,

01:09:02.960 | which is one of the reasons I suggest doing this

01:09:04.560 | early in the day.

01:09:06.200 | I happen to get into a cold plunge or take a cold shower

01:09:09.000 | first thing in the morning.

01:09:09.880 | I do go outside and get my sunlight first sometimes.

01:09:11.800 | Sometimes I do the cold first.

01:09:13.740 | It really depends on my circumstances

01:09:15.240 | and how I'm feeling that day.

01:09:16.440 | I don't think it really matters which one you do first,

01:09:18.600 | but you want to try and get both of those in early

01:09:20.760 | in the day because you really want the catecholamines

01:09:22.840 | and cortisol elevated early in the day.

01:09:25.040 | Okay, so that's deliberate cold exposure.

01:09:26.500 | We already talked about exercise.

01:09:28.360 | So if you're doing your exercise early in the day,

01:09:30.360 | there's no reason why it couldn't be done in concert

01:09:32.700 | with this deliberate cold exposure.

01:09:34.700 | I recommend doing the deliberate cold exposure first

01:09:36.680 | for the reasons we talked about a few minutes ago.

01:09:39.120 | And then of course, there are compounds,

01:09:40.560 | both prescription and over-the-counter compounds

01:09:42.980 | that can indeed raise your baseline levels of dopamine

01:09:45.840 | for an hour or more.

01:09:47.600 | And when I say an hour or more,

01:09:48.800 | it really depends on individual variation

01:09:52.440 | in terms of how quickly you metabolize dopamine.

01:09:56.640 | And it depends on individual variation in how you manage

01:10:00.120 | or tolerate different dosages of drugs

01:10:02.120 | and different types of drugs.

01:10:03.080 | So the typical drugs,

01:10:04.600 | and here I'm talking about legal prescription drugs

01:10:07.880 | for increasing dopamine are things like Ritalin, Adderall.

01:10:12.560 | Modafinil and armodafinil also tap into this system.

01:10:15.960 | And I did an entire episode about ADHD,

01:10:17.880 | which is the typical context in which you hear

01:10:19.700 | about these prescription drugs.

01:10:21.380 | But assuming it's prescribed by a doctor

01:10:23.400 | for either clinical reasons like ADHD or for other reasons,

01:10:26.840 | all of those compounds do significantly increase

01:10:29.320 | baseline levels of dopamine for many, many hours.

01:10:31.780 | That's absolutely clear and it's one of the major reasons

01:10:34.080 | why those drugs are so effective

01:10:35.760 | in increasing motivation and attention.

01:10:37.840 | Then there are compounds that are sold over-the-counter,

01:10:40.040 | things like amino acids, such as L-tyrosine itself.

01:10:43.120 | That's a very commonly sold and used amino acid.

01:10:46.520 | It's present in a lot of so-called pre-workout formulas.

01:10:49.760 | I, as many of you know,

01:10:50.940 | am a fan of single ingredient supplements for the most part,

01:10:54.240 | aside from foundational supplements like AG1,

01:10:57.280 | which give you many, many micronutrients kind of all together

01:11:01.200 | because it would be nearly impossible

01:11:02.360 | to consume each of those as individual ingredients

01:11:06.060 | and get the right amounts, et cetera.

01:11:07.700 | But for all other supplements,

01:11:09.540 | I'm a big believer in parsing what you need

01:11:12.300 | and what's most effective for you

01:11:14.240 | in single ingredient formulations.

01:11:16.020 | And the typical ways in which people work

01:11:18.900 | to elevate their baseline levels of dopamine

01:11:22.000 | with supplements are using either L-tyrosine,

01:11:24.460 | which as I mentioned earlier,

01:11:25.520 | is the rate limiting enzyme for dopamine,

01:11:27.860 | or by using what's called macuna purines,

01:11:30.500 | which is actually very similar to L-dopa,

01:11:32.600 | which is the treatment for Parkinson's.

01:11:34.700 | Macuna purines actually comes

01:11:36.100 | from the velvety outside coating of a certain bean.

01:11:39.980 | I know it sounds really esoteric,

01:11:41.060 | but that's actually where it's found in nature,

01:11:43.320 | and is really 99% L-dopa.

01:11:46.420 | And I confess having tried macuna purines,

01:11:49.440 | having examined the scientific literature on macuna purines,

01:11:52.600 | there is some evidence that it can increase dopamine,

01:11:55.240 | especially in that tuber infundibular pathway,

01:11:58.500 | because it can tap into some of the hormone-related functions

01:12:01.340 | of the pituitary.

01:12:02.520 | It does increase alertness and mood.

01:12:04.780 | It might even increase libido, motivation, et cetera.

01:12:07.860 | But the effects of macuna purines tend to be very much

01:12:11.240 | of the increasing the peak in dopamine,

01:12:13.980 | and then very quickly dropping that peak.

01:12:16.760 | In other words, the peak trough phenomenon,

01:12:18.300 | not for increasing baseline levels of dopamine.

01:12:21.740 | Now, it's likely different for people with Parkinson's

01:12:25.220 | who are taking prescription drugs

01:12:26.700 | that are similar to macuna purines.

01:12:28.180 | So if people have Parkinson's,

01:12:29.380 | oftentimes they are prescribed things like L-dopa,

01:12:33.320 | which is in the pathway to dopamine synthesis.

01:12:36.420 | Or they are prescribed things like bromocriptine,

01:12:39.340 | which will indeed increase dopamine.

01:12:42.220 | And I do realize that some people

01:12:43.740 | use those prescription drugs recreationally,

01:12:45.660 | which I don't recommend.

01:12:47.200 | Those drugs can be used to increase baseline levels

01:12:50.840 | of dopamine, but more typically,

01:12:52.280 | they cause peaks in dopamine and troughs in dopamine,

01:12:54.820 | which is why I do not recommend them.

01:12:57.060 | They are not going to allow you to accomplish what you want

01:12:59.540 | if your goal is more motivation, et cetera.

01:13:01.700 | In fact, they are likely to do the opposite,

01:13:04.780 | give you a big peak in alertness,

01:13:06.560 | and then a crash that can include depressive symptoms

01:13:09.420 | and just not feeling very good.

01:13:11.080 | L-tyrosine, however, has been examined

01:13:13.780 | in the scientific literature,

01:13:15.460 | and at reasonably low dosages,

01:13:18.140 | has been shown to increase circulating

01:13:20.660 | and available levels of dopamine,

01:13:22.540 | both in the brain and body,

01:13:23.820 | and lead to increased cognitive performance,

01:13:25.980 | and in some cases, physical output.

01:13:27.900 | I'll provide links to a few of these studies,

01:13:29.820 | but the two that I really parsed most finely

01:13:32.500 | for sake of this episode,

01:13:33.820 | really just focus on taking L-tyrosine

01:13:36.340 | under conditions where your baseline levels of dopamine

01:13:38.820 | are reduced due to stress,

01:13:41.080 | and under conditions where there's no stress

01:13:43.980 | and people are trying to increase

01:13:45.220 | their baseline levels of dopamine

01:13:46.580 | for sake of improving cognitive function.

01:13:48.680 | The first paper is entitled,

01:13:50.060 | Effect of Tyrosine on Cognitive Function

01:13:51.940 | and Blood Pressure Under Stress.

01:13:54.040 | I'll provide a link to this in the show note captions,

01:13:56.280 | and it's one of many papers, really,

01:13:58.880 | dating back to the early '90s,

01:14:00.200 | exploring how relatively high, frankly,

01:14:03.480 | relatively high dosages of L-tyrosine

01:14:05.920 | taken under conditions of stress

01:14:07.940 | allow people to rescue some of their cognitive function

01:14:10.880 | in terms of working memory tasks

01:14:12.420 | and other kind of cognitive tasks,

01:14:13.660 | visual pursuit tasks, and so on.

01:14:16.660 | The second paper is entitled,

01:14:18.040 | Tyrosine Improves Working Memory

01:14:19.580 | in a Multitasking Environment,

01:14:21.200 | and the second paper is perhaps more interesting

01:14:23.320 | because it involves exploring

01:14:25.020 | the use of tyrosine supplementation,

01:14:27.380 | basically taking tyrosine about an hour

01:14:29.260 | before a cognitive task or set of cognitive tasks

01:14:31.780 | that involve a lot of multitasking and working memory.

01:14:34.340 | Working memory, for those of you that don't know,

01:14:36.480 | is your ability to maintain small batches of information

01:14:39.460 | in your mind for relatively short periods of time.

01:14:41.980 | So for instance, if I tell you my phone number,

01:14:44.100 | or the phone number where I grew up, 4932931,

01:14:46.780 | if you can remember that,

01:14:49.620 | chances are you'll remember it for 30 seconds, 60 seconds,

01:14:53.000 | but that you won't remember it tomorrow

01:14:54.500 | 'cause there's really no reason to.

01:14:56.020 | A lot of the tasks that we do throughout the day

01:14:57.960 | involve working memory,

01:14:58.920 | and working memory is very subject to interference

01:15:02.020 | from other tasks that we happen to be doing,

01:15:04.320 | like looking at our phone or having a conversation

01:15:06.160 | or trying to navigate through a city.

01:15:08.220 | It involves a lot of attention,

01:15:09.900 | and this study shows that tyrosine improves working memory,

01:15:13.280 | especially in the context of multitasking

01:15:16.080 | and having a lot of conflicting goals,

01:15:17.900 | and they did a number of really nice experiments here.

01:15:20.660 | It's, again, it's a small study, not that many subjects,

01:15:23.180 | but it's one of several papers.

01:15:24.740 | In fact, this is the paper that kind of set in motion

01:15:26.960 | the domino of other papers exploring the efficacy

01:15:29.780 | of L-tyrosine for cognitive performance.

01:15:32.040 | And they looked at working memory tasks, of course,

01:15:34.780 | but also auditory visual tasks,

01:15:36.600 | and they involve some interference of visual cues

01:15:39.280 | and things of that sort,

01:15:40.180 | and they saw some really interesting effects.

01:15:42.360 | Basically, when we need to attend to multiple things

01:15:47.240 | at the same time, L-tyrosine can help us do that,

01:15:50.960 | at least as it relates to memory.

01:15:53.300 | When I say L-tyrosine, what I really mean

01:15:54.920 | is having your baseline levels of dopamine elevated

01:15:58.320 | can really help navigate multitasking environments,

01:16:02.200 | especially as it relates to working memory,

01:16:04.520 | and this is true under conditions of stress

01:16:06.160 | and under conditions of not stressful, okay?

01:16:09.800 | You might say, "Well, isn't multitasking stressful itself?"

01:16:11.900 | Yes, it can be,

01:16:13.320 | but when we talk about under conditions of stress,

01:16:15.040 | we're talking about people who are sleep-deprived,

01:16:16.520 | we're talking about people that are under

01:16:18.160 | other kinds of psychological or physical stress,

01:16:20.000 | L-tyrosine can help in that context as well.

01:16:22.300 | So as I mentioned before, in these studies,

01:16:24.520 | they used very high dosages of L-tyrosine,

01:16:27.600 | so high that actually I don't recommend them.

01:16:29.760 | They did measure stress hormones,

01:16:31.240 | they did measure blood pressure and things of that sort,

01:16:33.360 | but I want to caution you, I do not recommend,

01:16:35.880 | I will say it again, I do not recommend

01:16:38.500 | following the dosages that were used in these two studies

01:16:42.720 | because they are exceedingly high.

01:16:44.940 | They used 100 milligrams per kilogram of body weight

01:16:49.340 | of tyrosine one hour prior to these cognitive tasks.

01:16:52.380 | Now, I weigh about 220 pounds,

01:16:55.500 | I'm a little bit lighter than that,

01:16:56.860 | so that's 100 kilograms approximately.

01:16:59.380 | Translated from this study,

01:17:01.780 | that would mean that had I participated in the study

01:17:05.300 | and I wasn't in the placebo group,

01:17:07.100 | but I was in the L-tyrosine group,

01:17:08.940 | I would have been given 10,000 milligrams of L-tyrosine,

01:17:12.180 | which is 10 grams of L-tyrosine.

01:17:14.480 | I do not recommend that.

01:17:16.420 | In fact, there are papers showing

01:17:18.200 | that as little as 500 milligrams,

01:17:21.620 | but perhaps up to one gram, that is 1,000 milligrams,

01:17:24.680 | or 1,500 milligrams, a gram and a half, of L-tyrosine,

01:17:28.140 | taken 30 to 60 minutes before a cognitive or physical task,

01:17:31.400 | can increase baseline levels of dopamine

01:17:33.360 | for extended periods of time

01:17:34.860 | and thereby improve performance

01:17:36.860 | on those mental or physical tasks.

01:17:39.420 | So if you are somebody who's interested

01:17:41.780 | in trying L-tyrosine,

01:17:43.140 | please know that the increases

01:17:45.020 | in baseline levels of dopamine can be substantial.

01:17:48.920 | They are long lasting,

01:17:50.100 | which qualifies them as baseline increases

01:17:53.180 | as opposed to peaks.

01:17:54.340 | And I would say you should also start

01:17:55.560 | with the lowest possible dose.

01:17:56.840 | So for most people, 250 to 500 milligrams

01:17:59.880 | is going to be a reasonable starting dose

01:18:01.460 | depending on your body weight.

01:18:02.780 | Smaller people start with 250, larger, maybe 500.

01:18:06.580 | Keep an eye on whether or not you're combining it

01:18:07.960 | with caffeine or with any other stimulants.

01:18:09.960 | And keep in mind that, again,

01:18:11.600 | the bigger the peak in dopamine,

01:18:13.720 | the bigger the trough in dopamine afterwards.

01:18:15.840 | So pay attention to whether or not you experience a crash

01:18:18.200 | that same day or the next day.

01:18:19.920 | But chances are,

01:18:20.760 | if you're using a relatively low level of L-tyrosine,

01:18:23.400 | so anywhere from 250, maybe 500 milligrams

01:18:27.560 | or 1,000 milligrams of L-tyrosine

01:18:29.720 | prior to cognitive or physical work

01:18:31.520 | and taken early in the day, by the way,

01:18:33.120 | 'cause this can act as a bit of a stimulant,

01:18:34.880 | that you're going to achieve these long lasting increases

01:18:37.280 | in baseline dopamine.

01:18:38.740 | But please also keep in mind

01:18:40.320 | that I always, always suggest

01:18:43.400 | that you engage in the proper behaviors

01:18:46.940 | and you disengage from the improper behaviors

01:18:49.220 | as a first line of offense on any health goal.

01:18:53.560 | So now you know how to set your baseline levels of dopamine

01:18:56.160 | at the highest possible level.

01:18:58.240 | You, of course, want to guard

01:18:59.360 | that baseline level of dopamine very carefully.

01:19:02.280 | So for instance,

01:19:03.120 | you want to avoid any kind of behaviors or substances

01:19:06.280 | that are going to peak your baseline level of dopamine

01:19:08.920 | very high or very sharply,

01:19:11.520 | or if you do engage in those types of behaviors,

01:19:14.120 | whatever they may be,

01:19:15.400 | that you are well aware

01:19:17.000 | that your baseline level of dopamine

01:19:18.820 | will drop far below what it was

01:19:21.860 | after that peak has fallen.

01:19:23.500 | You will be essentially in the quote unquote trough.

01:19:26.880 | If, however, you find yourself in that trough,

01:19:29.800 | you now have the knowledge to understand

01:19:31.580 | that that trough will resolve if you wait enough time.

01:19:35.360 | That baseline level of dopamine

01:19:37.400 | that you were at prior to the peak

01:19:38.840 | will come back, you will feel better.

01:19:41.480 | However, most people don't know that,

01:19:44.100 | and as a consequence, when they feel that low,

01:19:47.260 | that is, they feel kind of amotivated,

01:19:50.240 | maybe a little bit depressed,

01:19:51.400 | maybe a lot amotivated or a lot depressed,

01:19:53.860 | following some quote unquote peak experience,

01:19:56.440 | what they end up doing

01:19:58.820 | is thinking about what caused that peak experience

01:20:01.200 | and then go back and try to re-engage in the behavior

01:20:04.840 | and try and regenerate that peak experience.

01:20:07.000 | But you now know that that is a terrible strategy.

01:20:10.200 | In fact, that strategy will only lead to diminished peaks

01:20:13.600 | from the same experience.

01:20:15.200 | It will lead to, in many cases,

01:20:17.180 | pursuing more and more intense experiences

01:20:20.680 | to try and recapitulate, recreate that big peak,

01:20:23.520 | which won't work.

01:20:24.640 | Or even worse, people start stacking and combining

01:20:28.400 | different dopamine-increasing behaviors

01:20:30.720 | in order to try and obtain something like that initial peak,

01:20:34.680 | when in fact, all they need to do, all you need to do,

01:20:38.240 | is simply wait,

01:20:39.480 | because the way that the dopamine circuitry is arranged

01:20:42.300 | is that it's not just about pleasure, as you know,

01:20:44.840 | it's about motivation, desire, pursuit, and pleasure,

01:20:48.200 | and it also has everything to do with pain and discomfort.

01:20:52.780 | Now, when people hear the word pain,

01:20:54.720 | they often think, oh, pain, okay,

01:20:56.560 | so a physical pain or an intense emotional pain.

01:20:59.980 | But today we're going to talk about pain

01:21:01.220 | a little bit differently.

01:21:02.440 | We're going to talk about the pain associated

01:21:04.420 | with the trough and dopamine

01:21:05.720 | that occurs after a big peak in dopamine

01:21:08.380 | as a period in which pain and effort go hand in hand.

01:21:13.380 | And I'll return to this in a moment,

01:21:14.620 | but I want you to just note that in your mind,

01:21:16.520 | kind of earmark that in your mind,

01:21:18.380 | because what we're about to talk about

01:21:20.220 | is how to leverage that pain and to use effort

01:21:23.040 | as a way to not just get out of the trough more quickly,

01:21:25.880 | but actually to get back to a higher level of baseline

01:21:28.760 | as you exit that trough.

01:21:30.880 | Meanwhile, I really want to harp on this one point

01:21:33.500 | that I made a moment ago,

01:21:34.720 | which is that after some big experience,

01:21:38.120 | so it could be a vacation or a night out partying

01:21:40.980 | or the birth of a new child,

01:21:42.760 | all of these are well-known phenomena

01:21:44.880 | that lead to troughs or deficits in dopamine afterwards,

01:21:48.720 | which can cause a sort of postpartum depression.

01:21:51.080 | Postpartum depression is a phrase

01:21:53.240 | normally used to describe literally postpartum,

01:21:56.440 | post birth of a child depression.

01:21:58.320 | And that has many causes,

01:21:59.540 | not just related to dopamine baselines,

01:22:01.680 | although it does involve dopamine baselines,

01:22:03.660 | but it has hormonal aspects and other aspects as well.

01:22:06.740 | But postpartum depression is also used to describe

01:22:10.300 | any time that our baseline dopamine

01:22:12.200 | has gone down way, way below what it was

01:22:15.200 | prior to some recent peak or exciting,

01:22:17.880 | exhilarating win or behavior.

01:22:20.780 | A couple of things that one can do

01:22:22.600 | in order to get out of that trough more quickly.

01:22:24.780 | The first one is simply to wait

01:22:26.840 | with the understanding that you will get out.

01:22:29.380 | I know that sounds overly simplistic

01:22:30.880 | and maybe a little bit brutal,

01:22:32.740 | but I think most people don't realize this.

01:22:35.440 | They don't realize that the dopamine circuitry

01:22:38.020 | does take time to replenish,

01:22:39.360 | and it has everything to do with restoring

01:22:41.600 | both the synthesis of dopamine,

01:22:43.520 | as well as what's called

01:22:44.360 | the readily releasable pool of dopamine.

01:22:47.200 | So dopamine is packaged in these little spherical things

01:22:49.640 | that we call vesicles.

01:22:50.520 | Those vesicles are released from the ends of nerves.

01:22:53.720 | So in this case,

01:22:55.620 | we're talking about the nerves that originate,

01:22:57.400 | again, in VTA, a nucleus accumbens,

01:23:00.200 | and send their little wires up to the prefrontal cortex,

01:23:02.680 | and that's where dopamine is released.

01:23:04.800 | And that readily releasable pool of dopamine

01:23:07.280 | takes time to replenish,

01:23:08.520 | and that can take several days in order to replenish.

01:23:11.720 | Just knowing that can help you through that process.

01:23:14.500 | And of course, then it raises the question,

01:23:16.440 | is there anything that you can do

01:23:17.600 | to accelerate that process?

01:23:19.280 | And indeed there is,

01:23:20.480 | and indeed this is what I consider,

01:23:22.460 | not just something to get you out of a trench

01:23:25.360 | of kind of lower mood and motivation,

01:23:27.520 | but actually what represents the holy grail of motivation.

01:23:31.520 | Today, I'm going to talk about this pain effort process

01:23:34.520 | as a very powerful way to get out of sticking points,

01:23:38.720 | but more importantly,

01:23:39.960 | to get into a mode where effort and reward

01:23:42.980 | can actually accelerate your progress

01:23:45.760 | along any path to any goal,

01:23:47.820 | and in a way that you can do it repeatedly.

01:23:49.880 | And this is not simply taking mechanisms from biology

01:23:52.920 | and painting names on them.

01:23:54.320 | Rather, this is leveraging mechanisms in biology

01:23:56.800 | that are well-defined in the animal and human literature

01:23:59.620 | that have parallels to the addiction

01:24:01.520 | and addiction recovery literature,

01:24:03.680 | but that have been shown in specific circumstances

01:24:06.760 | to really allow people to engage in motivational pursuits

01:24:10.580 | in a variety of contexts,

01:24:11.800 | school, relationships, work, et cetera,

01:24:14.020 | in an ongoing way,

01:24:15.240 | and in a way that never depletes their baseline of dopamine

01:24:18.120 | to the point where they have to do a lot of extra work

01:24:20.520 | to get it back,

01:24:21.760 | and in a way that allows them to be really motivated

01:24:24.520 | in a variety of contexts in an adaptive way.

01:24:26.920 | So what we're really talking about here

01:24:28.540 | is regardless of your genetics,

01:24:30.400 | regardless of who your parents are,

01:24:31.700 | which obviously you couldn't select,

01:24:34.400 | being able to leverage your dopamine system

01:24:37.640 | in order to be maximally motivated when you want to be,

01:24:41.120 | and indeed to avoid procrastination.

01:24:44.260 | I'd like to tell you about a classic experiment

01:24:46.400 | that I've described once before on this podcast,

01:24:48.420 | but frankly, this experiment is so crucial,

01:24:51.040 | I don't think it can be described enough.

01:24:53.380 | This was an experiment that was done at Stanford

01:24:56.120 | many years ago and involved children,

01:24:58.480 | but it's actually been repeated in adults.

01:25:01.360 | The experiment involved observing a classroom

01:25:03.440 | of young children,

01:25:04.400 | so these were kids about kindergarten age,

01:25:06.420 | a little bit older,

01:25:07.600 | and observing which activities kids liked to do

01:25:10.600 | in their free time.

01:25:11.820 | So their structured time where they had to,

01:25:14.000 | these are little kids, so they'd play blocks

01:25:15.560 | or they had to sing or they had to write

01:25:18.180 | or do what they could, or I suppose draw,

01:25:20.520 | they're probably not writing significant prose at that age,

01:25:23.900 | but then they had free time

01:25:24.780 | where they could do whatever they wanted.

01:25:26.340 | And what the researchers did was observe the children

01:25:29.340 | who selected by their own choice to draw pictures.

01:25:33.180 | So there were some tables out with crayons and markers

01:25:35.600 | and paper, et cetera,

01:25:36.440 | and there were some kids that would just naturally go

01:25:38.440 | to that activity every day

01:25:39.620 | 'cause they liked that activity.

01:25:41.500 | And they measured how much of the free time

01:25:44.360 | these children elected to use their free time drawing,

01:25:47.640 | doing these different art projects.

01:25:50.100 | And then what they did was they started introducing rewards

01:25:54.760 | to these children.

01:25:55.600 | They started putting a gold star or in some cases,

01:25:58.060 | a silver star on their pieces of artwork

01:26:00.700 | and telling them what a good job they did.

01:26:02.720 | And the kids really liked that.

01:26:04.980 | In fact, who wouldn't, right?

01:26:06.580 | They're not only doing an activity that they like,

01:26:08.320 | but they're also getting a reward for it.

01:26:10.460 | So you can probably see where this is all going.

01:26:12.300 | What they were doing was they were increasing the amount

01:26:14.340 | of dopamine that these children experience.

01:26:17.000 | And again, in parallel experiments done with adults,

01:26:19.980 | if you take adults who enjoy a particular activity,

01:26:22.160 | you let them do activity,

01:26:23.080 | and then you start rewarding them for that activity,

01:26:25.280 | especially when you surprise them with a reward

01:26:27.620 | for an activity they already like,

01:26:29.780 | they report that being a much more pleasurable experience

01:26:32.240 | than had they just done the activity.

01:26:34.660 | Then what they did with these children

01:26:36.360 | and in the experiments with adults done later on

01:26:39.600 | was they cease giving them the reward,

01:26:42.600 | and then they observe what percentage of their free time

01:26:44.920 | they spend doing that activity, drawing.

01:26:48.120 | And what they observed was, you guessed it,

01:26:50.520 | a drop in the total amount of time

01:26:53.180 | that the children elected to do this activity

01:26:55.460 | that initially they were doing quite a lot.

01:26:57.920 | In other words, their total satisfaction or desire

01:27:01.740 | or motivation to engage in this activity

01:27:03.720 | dropped below what it was prior to ever receiving a reward.

01:27:07.160 | And again, this has been repeated in a variety of contexts

01:27:09.560 | in different populations, different cultures,

01:27:11.000 | different countries, men, women, boys, girls,

01:27:14.780 | lots of different backgrounds.

01:27:16.700 | So what this tells us is everything you already know,

01:27:19.480 | which is that reward prediction error

01:27:22.060 | is not just about the desire to do something

01:27:24.880 | and you carrying it out and it being pretty good,

01:27:28.080 | amazing or not good, okay?

01:27:30.760 | I always like to joke that the nervous system

01:27:32.440 | sort of codes things into three bins.

01:27:34.760 | You can think about this in terms of food

01:27:36.040 | or any type of experience.

01:27:37.480 | It can either be yum, yes, I really like that.

01:27:39.900 | Yuck, I really don't like that.

01:27:41.660 | Or meh, it's kind of so-so.

01:27:44.280 | What the scenario led to where rewards were received

01:27:46.840 | for an activity that people already like to do

01:27:48.780 | and then removed was that an activity

01:27:51.400 | that at one point was a yum becomes a meh.

01:27:55.900 | And that all reflects a drop in baseline dopamine, why?

01:28:00.140 | Because the activity that the children or adults liked

01:28:03.860 | combined with the gold star or the monetary reward or praise

01:28:08.860 | that children and adults seem to like

01:28:11.180 | compounded to create a bigger peak in dopamine

01:28:13.740 | and therefore a bigger trough in dopamine.

01:28:16.740 | And if you're already wondering whether or not

01:28:18.520 | their desire to engage in that activity

01:28:20.140 | eventually came back, it did indeed.

01:28:22.740 | So essentially what I described all matches precisely

01:28:26.300 | with dopamine reward prediction error

01:28:28.240 | and the fact that peaks in dopamine

01:28:29.980 | give rise to subsequent troughs in dopamine

01:28:32.020 | that if one waits long enough,

01:28:34.060 | allow baseline levels of dopamine to return to normal.

01:28:37.140 | And of course the amplitude of that dopamine peak

01:28:40.220 | has been varied by giving more money or less money

01:28:42.740 | in different scenarios.

01:28:43.780 | Nearly all the different derivations of the experiments

01:28:46.060 | that you could imagine that map onto

01:28:47.980 | the dynamics of dopamine release

01:28:49.460 | that we've been talking about during this episode

01:28:51.580 | all played out exactly as one would have predicted

01:28:54.620 | based on the neural circuitry and the dynamics of dopamine.

01:28:57.540 | I recommend that you leverage this knowledge

01:28:59.860 | to make sure that any activities that you enjoy to do,

01:29:02.860 | whether or not you enjoy it a little or a lot,

01:29:05.180 | but especially if you enjoy it a lot,

01:29:07.920 | that you guard and protect by making sure

01:29:11.520 | that you don't start layering in or attaching reward

01:29:15.300 | or other sources of dopamine releasing behaviors

01:29:19.200 | or substances to that specific behavior.

01:29:22.080 | Or if you do, that you don't do it terribly often.

01:29:26.540 | Now, how often is terribly often?

01:29:28.020 | We'll get to that in a moment,

01:29:29.080 | but let me give you an example from my life

01:29:31.140 | just as an example, but you will likely have

01:29:34.020 | and you'll know people that will have different examples.

01:29:36.820 | I love to exercise.

01:29:39.280 | I know to some people, this might seem foreign,

01:29:41.880 | but I love to exercise.

01:29:43.540 | I love to do resistance training.

01:29:44.940 | I love to run.

01:29:46.540 | I am not one of those people

01:29:48.220 | that doesn't like the experience of exercising,

01:29:51.220 | but likes the feeling afterwards, quote unquote.

01:29:53.620 | I hear that a lot.

01:29:54.460 | I don't like to exercise,

01:29:55.420 | but I love the way I feel afterwards.

01:29:57.020 | I love physical training

01:29:58.980 | and I love the way I feel afterwards,

01:30:01.220 | but I mostly love the feeling during.

01:30:04.020 | I don't know why I'm wired that way.

01:30:05.820 | I can't say that I'm somebody

01:30:07.460 | who likes to do hard things across the board.

01:30:10.000 | There are plenty of difficult things in life that I dread

01:30:12.600 | or that I'm sort of meh about,

01:30:15.020 | but for me, hard exercise,

01:30:17.140 | intense exercise of a particular kind,

01:30:19.700 | resistance training and running in particular,

01:30:23.180 | both give me a yum, yes, I love this kind of feeling.

01:30:26.940 | And yes, it persists for me quite a long while afterwards,

01:30:30.700 | both for sake of the way that it changes my neurochemistry,

01:30:33.160 | but also my sense of satisfaction,

01:30:34.620 | but I just simply love it.

01:30:36.860 | Now, years ago,

01:30:37.820 | I discovered that if I drink a cup of black coffee

01:30:41.080 | or an Americano or a double espresso or some yerba mate,

01:30:45.080 | that my workouts can be quite a bit more intense.

01:30:47.360 | I can run further.

01:30:48.860 | And then I also discovered

01:30:50.440 | that if I were to take a pre-workout energy drink

01:30:53.620 | or I took say 300 milligrams of alpha GPC

01:30:57.220 | and 500 milligrams of phenylethylamine

01:31:00.300 | and perhaps even 500 milligrams of L-tyrosine

01:31:03.220 | and perhaps did that alongside the caffeine

01:31:05.240 | and the yerba mate,

01:31:06.300 | then yes, absolutely, I really liked those workouts.

01:31:09.460 | I could be like a laser in terms of focus.

01:31:11.620 | I could exert even more effort, put on some music,

01:31:14.900 | and I could achieve even better performance.

01:31:18.340 | And then I also discovered

01:31:19.540 | that I could export that protocol of caffeine, yerba mate,

01:31:23.960 | and various supplements to my cognitive work.

01:31:25.860 | So when I was studying or writing papers

01:31:27.780 | or writing grants or in the laboratory,

01:31:29.920 | when I was doing experiments with my hands in those days,

01:31:32.460 | cutting brain tissue and staining it

01:31:33.880 | and working really long hours.

01:31:35.340 | And I discovered that all of those things,

01:31:38.620 | all of those behaviors compounded with my love of exercise

01:31:41.820 | and my love of doing science and gave me these big peaks

01:31:45.940 | in what to me felt like even important experiences.

01:31:49.680 | They felt unlike anything else.

01:31:52.200 | They were just so, so peak in their nature, which was great.

01:31:56.820 | And it did indeed enhance my performance.

01:31:58.960 | However, while it did not create a dependency

01:32:02.860 | for those different substances, caffeine,

01:32:05.940 | supplements, et cetera, what I noticed was that in the days

01:32:10.420 | and sometimes weekends afterwards,

01:32:11.980 | even though for much of my career,

01:32:13.500 | I confess I've worked weekends as well,

01:32:15.460 | but I would notice that I'd experienced

01:32:17.220 | a real trough in energy.

01:32:18.900 | I just would not feel that good.

01:32:20.820 | And then if I kept up those behaviors consistently

01:32:24.740 | and I was consistently adding in these other,

01:32:27.380 | let's just call them what they are,

01:32:28.420 | dopamine releasing or stimulating behaviors and substances,

01:32:32.780 | that my enthusiasm for physical training or running

01:32:36.680 | or for doing experiments actually started to diminish.

01:32:39.580 | And this was really discouraging to me at the time

01:32:41.500 | because I started to think, okay, maybe I'm burnt out.

01:32:43.380 | Maybe I have adrenal burnout,

01:32:44.660 | which by the way, doesn't exist, folks.

01:32:46.180 | Your adrenals don't burn out.

01:32:47.500 | There is something called adrenal insufficiency syndrome.

01:32:49.920 | You can overstimulate your system

01:32:52.060 | by way of too much adrenaline, epinephrine and norepinephrine,

01:32:55.780 | but that's a separate thing.

01:32:57.120 | There's no such thing as adrenal burnout per se.

01:33:00.180 | But I didn't know that.

01:33:01.140 | So I thought, gosh, I'm really burnt out.

01:33:02.740 | When in fact, it's now obvious to me what I was doing.

01:33:06.540 | I was combining too many dopamine releasing

01:33:09.400 | or stimulating behaviors and substances

01:33:12.060 | for things that I already enjoy doing as behaviors,

01:33:14.940 | namely exercise and doing experiments,

01:33:17.580 | anything related to science actually.

01:33:20.100 | So what this means is not to avoid taking things

01:33:24.940 | or doing things that amplify your amount of dopamine,

01:33:28.260 | but to be very cautious about how often one does that

01:33:31.260 | and how many different dopamine stimulating behaviors

01:33:34.380 | or compounds one stacks,

01:33:36.220 | especially in terms of taking those things

01:33:40.100 | or stacking those things in and around behaviors

01:33:43.620 | that you already really enjoy doing.

01:33:45.400 | I was essentially just creating another version

01:33:48.220 | of the kids in nursery school or first grade

01:33:50.860 | with the gold star experiment.

01:33:53.460 | I was basically just doing the exact same thing.

01:33:55.740 | And when I realized that and I changed my relationship

01:33:59.680 | to those compounds, I didn't eliminate them all together,

01:34:02.820 | but I started realizing, for instance,

01:34:05.300 | that I didn't need to double up on yerba mate

01:34:09.100 | and coffee every workout.

01:34:10.900 | Sometimes I would do one, sometimes I would do the other.

01:34:13.420 | Frankly, I always do one or the other.

01:34:15.580 | It's rare that I ever do any kind of physical training

01:34:17.940 | without some caffeine first.

01:34:19.220 | And I do my physical training

01:34:20.620 | typically in the early part of the day.

01:34:21.900 | So that's fine, doesn't interfere with my sleep.

01:34:24.660 | I might do a hike without caffeine,

01:34:26.420 | but if I'm in a weight trainer, I'm going to run.

01:34:28.920 | I tend to drink coffee beforehand or have yerba mate.

01:34:31.700 | Or if I occasionally, meaning about once every third,

01:34:36.460 | sometimes every other, but usually about every third workout

01:34:39.280 | I'll take 300 milligrams of alpha-GPC,

01:34:42.380 | maybe occasionally, maybe every third or fourth workout.

01:34:47.220 | And these are resistance workouts, mind you, not running.

01:34:50.420 | I'll take 500 milligrams of L-tyrosine

01:34:52.340 | or more typically 500 milligrams of phenylethylamine.

01:34:55.780 | And very, very rarely, maybe once every two or three months,

01:34:58.660 | I might stack all of those things together

01:35:00.580 | prior to a workout.

01:35:01.980 | But of course, I'm always mindful to also include workouts

01:35:05.780 | or runs or bouts of cognitive work.

01:35:08.340 | So that could be grant writing,

01:35:09.460 | prepping for a podcast, et cetera,

01:35:10.900 | where I don't do anything prior.

01:35:13.240 | Maybe just my caffeine,

01:35:14.500 | because I have a baseline level of caffeine

01:35:16.020 | that I use each day to function like many people.

01:35:19.220 | There's a baseline level of caffeine

01:35:20.540 | that just allows us to function

01:35:22.280 | if we're a perpetual user of caffeine.

01:35:23.880 | I talked a lot about this on the episode in caffeine.

01:35:26.540 | But the key here is be cautious.

01:35:30.020 | I would say be very cautious about stacking and layering

01:35:33.740 | in too many dopamine peak-inducing behaviors

01:35:37.820 | all at once on a regular basis.

01:35:40.080 | The key point here is if you are somebody

01:35:42.020 | that can engage in these intrinsically joyful activities

01:35:45.180 | for you, these activities that you're really motivated to do

01:35:47.380 | whether or not it's skiing or playing music

01:35:49.140 | or dancing, et cetera,

01:35:50.580 | without the need to layer in additional dopamine

01:35:53.600 | releasing mechanisms or compounds or activities,

01:35:58.060 | well then I highly recommend you do that

01:36:00.200 | because then you are essentially making yourself

01:36:03.300 | one of those fortunate few

01:36:05.140 | that does not require additional stimuli

01:36:08.740 | and therefore can hold on to that pleasure,

01:36:11.580 | can hold on to that intrinsic pleasure and motivation

01:36:13.980 | to engage in these behaviors over time,

01:36:16.120 | which frankly there is no replacement for.

01:36:19.340 | There is no pill or bottle or potion or motivational speech

01:36:22.340 | or podcast or book that can replace intrinsic motivation.

01:36:27.340 | Intrinsic motivation is perhaps the holy grail

01:36:30.660 | of all human endeavors and behaviors

01:36:33.080 | because it encompasses so much of what brought us

01:36:35.360 | to this point in our species evolution

01:36:37.180 | and also what brings each and every one of us

01:36:40.100 | closer and closer to our goals.

01:36:42.100 | And if it's happening with enjoyment

01:36:43.620 | without the need to layer in additional tools,

01:36:46.220 | well then you have really tapped into the source.

01:36:49.460 | And when I say the source,

01:36:50.500 | I don't mean it in any kind of mystical way.

01:36:52.620 | I think it's quite clear by now

01:36:54.460 | that when we hear about chi from Eastern medicine

01:36:57.560 | or we talk about motivation drive and pursuit

01:37:00.420 | in Western neuro-biological languages

01:37:02.940 | that relates to dopamine,

01:37:03.980 | or we hear about the source,

01:37:05.660 | maybe in my podcast episode with the one and only Rick Rubin,

01:37:09.940 | incredibly productive music producer

01:37:12.200 | who's just an unbelievable track record

01:37:15.600 | in terms of creative endeavors,

01:37:17.000 | and he talks about the source,

01:37:18.340 | we're really talking about the same thing,

01:37:20.700 | which is this set of circuits within us

01:37:22.980 | that allow us to identify what we want

01:37:25.260 | and then lean into effort

01:37:26.700 | and then to do that in a persistent way

01:37:28.920 | that allows us to reach our goals.

01:37:30.300 | And if we can do that with an intrinsic sense of pleasure,

01:37:33.560 | well, that is nothing short of magic.

01:37:36.460 | But of course it's not magic, it's science.

01:37:38.880 | And of course, most people are not concerned

01:37:41.460 | about trying to protect the things they already enjoy

01:37:45.200 | in order to make sure that they can continue

01:37:46.820 | to do those things and enjoy them.

01:37:48.740 | Most people are thinking about how they can engage

01:37:52.540 | and pursue things that are less than pleasureful to them,

01:37:56.020 | or how they can continue to engage in motivated behaviors

01:38:00.200 | when the going gets tough, or, and this is a big one,

01:38:03.380 | I hear this over and over again

01:38:04.660 | as a request to cover on this podcast,

01:38:06.780 | how people can overcome procrastination.

01:38:09.940 | What we're going to talk about now

01:38:11.040 | is how the dynamics of dopamine release

01:38:13.300 | that you already are aware of

01:38:15.120 | plus an additional dynamic that we haven't quite talked about

01:38:18.940 | can allow you to leverage dopamine

01:38:21.700 | in a way that really will bring you

01:38:24.380 | to the holy grail of motivation and drive,

01:38:27.740 | which is when effort starts to become the reward itself.

01:38:32.740 | In other words, when friction becomes the reward.

01:38:36.420 | I know that sounds crazy to some of you,

01:38:38.300 | but when friction becomes the reward,

01:38:40.580 | you can pass from an idea and a goal,

01:38:43.260 | no matter how daunting, to successful completion of that goal

01:38:47.880 | while experiencing what essentially will feel like pleasure

01:38:50.900 | the entire time.

01:38:51.940 | Now, that doesn't mean it will be bliss the entire time,

01:38:54.780 | but what is very possible is to leverage the dynamics

01:38:58.180 | of both dopamine peaks and dopamine troughs

01:39:02.080 | in order to not just maintain your baseline level

01:39:04.880 | of dopamine, but to also pull yourself

01:39:07.700 | out of any kind of procrastination

01:39:09.900 | or other kind of overthinking trenches very quickly

01:39:13.020 | and get back into a mode of pursuit.

01:39:15.460 | So how do we make effort the reward?

01:39:17.980 | You may have heard about this in the context

01:39:19.620 | of so-called growth mindset.

01:39:21.180 | Growth mindset is the incredible discovery

01:39:23.780 | and research papers from my colleague, Dr. Carol Dweck

01:39:27.860 | in the psychology department at Stanford.

01:39:30.020 | And there are others such as David Yaeger

01:39:31.740 | at the University of Texas, Austin,

01:39:34.060 | who have leveraged the so-called growth mindset

01:39:36.900 | as a tool that young people and adults alike can use

01:39:41.420 | in order to get better at anything.

01:39:43.380 | And the basic contour of growth mindset

01:39:45.900 | is to adopt the mindset that if you can't do something

01:39:50.140 | or if you can't do it well,

01:39:52.340 | that you can't do it or can't do it well yet.

01:39:55.960 | It's that word yet that's really key.

01:39:57.500 | And there are a number of different tools and techniques

01:39:59.120 | that people use to adopt growth mindset,

01:40:00.900 | but it's all starts with that relationship

01:40:03.740 | to not being able to do it yet.

01:40:06.500 | Now, that all sounds pretty straightforward

01:40:09.180 | when you tell yourself,

01:40:10.460 | but when we are in a performance context,

01:40:13.360 | when we expect ourselves to be able to motivate

01:40:16.760 | or when we expect ourselves to be able to perform

01:40:19.140 | and we can't, that often sets up

01:40:21.700 | a downward spiral of motivation

01:40:24.380 | because we are so used to being attached

01:40:27.220 | to the relationship between desire,

01:40:30.300 | motivation and outcomes, reward prediction error.

01:40:33.760 | We want something, we want that A in class

01:40:36.460 | or we want to learn how to dance

01:40:37.840 | or we want to be able to do this physical skill

01:40:41.040 | of another kind or learn a language

01:40:43.440 | or get the mate we desire or make the relationship work

01:40:46.940 | or make the business work on and on.

01:40:49.340 | And then we get the outcome that we don't want

01:40:51.600 | and our confidence, for lack of a better word,

01:40:54.220 | drops over time.

01:40:55.640 | Oftentimes, that leads to situations

01:40:58.080 | where we are not motivated, we are A motivated.

01:41:01.000 | It can even lead to situations

01:41:02.680 | where we are downright depressed.

01:41:05.740 | There's also circumstances where people,

01:41:08.740 | myself included, of course, procrastinate.

01:41:11.100 | We know we should do something,

01:41:12.480 | but somehow we can't get motivated.

01:41:14.080 | We know that if we put in the effort, we'll get there,

01:41:16.520 | but we can't do it either

01:41:17.840 | because we don't like the activity

01:41:19.120 | or we're just not feeling great.

01:41:20.760 | Now we could be quote unquote, not feeling great,

01:41:23.600 | not feeling motivated because our dopamine baseline is low.

01:41:26.500 | And so I absolutely encourage everybody

01:41:29.600 | to take a look at themselves

01:41:31.300 | anytime they're in a motivated state,

01:41:33.180 | take a look at the landscape of their life,

01:41:34.920 | not just at that moment,

01:41:36.040 | but in the preceding days and weeks,

01:41:38.720 | and ask whether or not you've been tending

01:41:40.620 | to those foundational things that we talked about earlier,

01:41:42.740 | whether or not you are engaging any other of the tools

01:41:46.260 | that we talked about earlier

01:41:47.180 | to see if you can get into a motivated state.

01:41:49.640 | However, if all of those boxes are checked,

01:41:51.560 | you answer, yes, I'm doing all those things,

01:41:52.980 | I'm just not motivated, or I'm just,

01:41:54.680 | for whatever reason, I just procrastinate.

01:41:56.880 | I don't know, I don't want to do it,

01:41:58.140 | or I'm not feeling motivated.

01:41:59.960 | Well, then there's a very potent set of tools

01:42:02.100 | that you can leverage to overcome states of lack

01:42:05.160 | of motivation, overcome procrastination,

01:42:07.540 | and indeed can help you deal with things like overthinking

01:42:10.780 | as it relates to procrastination

01:42:12.260 | and lack of motivation as well.

01:42:14.180 | So the way this works is the following.

01:42:16.580 | If you recall, a peak in dopamine

01:42:19.620 | is followed by a trough in dopamine.

01:42:21.840 | That trough in dopamine is experienced

01:42:24.940 | as pain or wanting or craving.

01:42:29.080 | That pain that I'm referring to

01:42:30.640 | is actually a craving or a wanting,

01:42:33.340 | and it's a craving or wanting for a specific state

01:42:37.700 | that you would like to achieve

01:42:39.440 | that is different than the one that you're in.

01:42:40.840 | You want to get out of that trough.

01:42:42.880 | And as you recall from earlier in the episode,

01:42:45.160 | that trough is the stimulus

01:42:47.820 | for the ongoing release of dopamine

01:42:49.780 | that provides the propeller,

01:42:51.460 | the motivation to go forward and seek some goal, okay?

01:42:55.920 | So when we are not motivated,

01:42:57.440 | when we are in a so-called amotivated state,

01:43:00.500 | or when we are procrastinating,

01:43:02.000 | or when we just sort of can't seem to get in gear,

01:43:04.960 | the key to getting out of that pain trough

01:43:07.820 | is one of two things.

01:43:08.800 | I already told you earlier, you can just wait,

01:43:10.880 | can wait till your motivation comes back,

01:43:12.500 | and a lot of people do wait.

01:43:13.880 | In fact, they procrastinate.

01:43:15.620 | They start doing other things that are less painful

01:43:18.760 | than the state that they happen to be in

01:43:21.320 | when they are trying to get into gear to go work out,

01:43:23.960 | 'cause I realize not everyone wants to do that,

01:43:25.600 | or to study or to have a hard conversation,

01:43:28.540 | it's whatever it is.

01:43:30.060 | And what do they do?

01:43:30.900 | They start engaging in activities that we,

01:43:33.360 | and indeed they, would not consider pleasureful activities.

01:43:37.040 | They start, for instance, cleaning the house.

01:43:39.080 | So seemingly out of nowhere,

01:43:40.380 | they start engaging in these activities

01:43:42.000 | that normally are not intrinsically pleasureful for them,

01:43:44.940 | they're not highly motivated to do them,

01:43:46.720 | as a replacement for doing the very thing

01:43:49.320 | that they quote unquote need to do or ought to do,

01:43:51.880 | and that they're procrastinating to do.

01:43:54.440 | What they're essentially doing here

01:43:56.000 | is a mild type of addiction replacement.

01:43:59.840 | In other words, rather than be in the painful state

01:44:03.100 | and wait for it to pass,

01:44:04.580 | they're doing things that give them

01:44:05.800 | some sense of accomplishment ostensibly

01:44:08.640 | to give them the sense that they're completing things.

01:44:11.660 | And perhaps, and I don't know,

01:44:13.480 | because I'm not in the psychology

01:44:15.520 | of knowing what other people are thinking,

01:44:17.900 | perhaps in order to generate the momentum

01:44:20.120 | in order to get engaged enough or motivated enough

01:44:23.380 | to study or work out or whatever activity it is

01:44:25.520 | that they're trying to avoid through procrastination.

01:44:28.440 | Now, what's interesting about this dynamic

01:44:30.800 | is first of all, it's extremely common.

01:44:34.240 | And second of all, a lot of people will use this as a tactic

01:44:37.440 | so that they get very close to the deadline

01:44:39.880 | to complete something,

01:44:40.760 | and then they go into a sort of pseudo panic

01:44:43.560 | and then use anxiety as a way

01:44:46.120 | to leverage their mental and physical resources

01:44:48.800 | to complete that thing.

01:44:50.340 | How do I know the contour of this so well?

01:44:52.720 | How do I understand the inner dynamics of it?

01:44:54.860 | Well, part of that relates to my work as a neurobiologist

01:44:57.460 | and reading the papers that I'll mention to you in a moment,

01:45:00.280 | but it also relates to the fact that I'm somebody

01:45:02.560 | who waits quite a while,

01:45:05.060 | right up until the sort of last minute possible

01:45:08.320 | to complete something for activities that I don't want to do,

01:45:11.180 | something I've been working on my whole life.

01:45:13.320 | In any case, I'm very familiar

01:45:14.680 | with the procrastination process.

01:45:17.040 | So how can we overcome procrastination?

01:45:19.320 | Well, it turns out that there are findings

01:45:20.600 | from within the addiction literature

01:45:22.660 | that turn out to be very powerful

01:45:24.340 | towards leveraging our way out of procrastination.

01:45:27.280 | And it has to do with this.

01:45:29.120 | You already know,

01:45:31.140 | because I've told you probably a dozen times now,

01:45:33.380 | that the depth of the trough after a dopamine peak

01:45:37.480 | is proportional to how high that peak was

01:45:39.400 | and how steep it was, how quickly that peak occurred.

01:45:42.680 | It turns out that not only is the depth of the trough

01:45:45.140 | proportional to that,

01:45:46.520 | but the rate at which you get out of that trough

01:45:50.320 | is proportional to how steep that trough is.

01:45:54.680 | Let me explain this for you

01:45:56.000 | in as clear terms as I possibly can.

01:45:58.880 | Imagine you're in an amotivated state,

01:46:01.280 | you're just not feeling motivated, you're procrastinating.

01:46:04.640 | You may think, okay, the thing to do here is something,

01:46:08.600 | I'll clean the house, I'll take care of some bills,

01:46:10.560 | I'll do something, or I'll just wait.

01:46:13.320 | Those approaches, as we talked about before,

01:46:16.000 | generally don't work or at least don't work quickly,

01:46:18.640 | or they lead you right up to the deadline

01:46:20.160 | and that's the deadline that forces you

01:46:21.560 | to get something done, or you just don't get it done

01:46:23.580 | and you don't succeed in your goal.

01:46:25.040 | That happens a lot as well.

01:46:26.740 | However, if you were to take that state

01:46:30.260 | of being unmotivated or procrastinating

01:46:33.440 | and actually do something that's harder

01:46:36.900 | than being in that amotivated state,

01:46:39.000 | in other words, doing something that's more effortful,

01:46:43.160 | even painful, you can rebound yourself

01:46:46.680 | out of that dopamine trough much more quickly.

01:46:49.920 | So what do I mean you want to put yourself in a state

01:46:51.920 | that's worse than or harder than the state that you're in

01:46:54.700 | or do something quote unquote more painful?

01:46:56.640 | And here I want to be very clear.

01:46:57.820 | I'll say this three times,

01:46:58.800 | but I'm going to say it for the first time now.

01:47:00.440 | When I say more painful,

01:47:02.360 | I do not mean doing any kind of tissue damaging

01:47:05.240 | or psychologically damaging behavior

01:47:08.400 | or anything of that sort that's going to render you injured

01:47:11.660 | or not well, even in the short term.

01:47:13.660 | That's not what I'm referring to, okay?

01:47:15.220 | Let's just get that one out of the way.

01:47:16.760 | What I'm referring to is the fact that, for instance,

01:47:19.760 | if you're feeling amotivated, but you find yourself

01:47:22.440 | cleaning the house as a way to procrastinate,

01:47:25.200 | you can say, well, cleaning the house is harder

01:47:27.440 | than sitting down and doing nothing,

01:47:29.880 | but actually in that moment or in those moments,

01:47:32.960 | that's not the case or else you wouldn't be doing it.

01:47:36.680 | The reality is that the dopamine system works

01:47:40.880 | according to what feels hard or easy in the moment.

01:47:44.540 | In other words, if you're feeling amotivated,

01:47:46.940 | you need to do something and put yourself into a state

01:47:50.360 | that's harder than the state you're in.

01:47:53.480 | So for instance, if you're sitting around

01:47:55.720 | feeling amotivated or you find yourself tending to tasks

01:47:59.380 | that are irrelevant to the goal

01:48:00.660 | that you really should be focused on,

01:48:03.100 | you need to put your body and mind

01:48:05.220 | into a state of discomfort quickly.

01:48:08.520 | And the way to do that is to either engage

01:48:11.520 | in some tangential activity,

01:48:14.220 | meaning an activity not related to your goal

01:48:16.160 | that puts your body into a very different state.

01:48:18.580 | So here again, I'll default to the obvious one,

01:48:20.600 | which is something like cold shower or cold immersion,

01:48:24.880 | which not only increases dopamine long-term

01:48:27.580 | or over several hours rather,

01:48:29.260 | but for most people is experienced as pain.

01:48:32.420 | That pain causes a rebound out of that dopamine trough

01:48:35.720 | faster than it would occur

01:48:37.700 | if you had just stayed in that amotivated state

01:48:39.720 | and waited for it to go away

01:48:40.800 | or done something like cleaning up

01:48:43.080 | that for whatever reason felt like it required

01:48:45.280 | less friction.

01:48:46.740 | When I say friction, I mean limbic friction.

01:48:48.660 | Your limbic system is always in this dialogue

01:48:50.660 | with your forebrain and limbic friction goes two ways.

01:48:54.180 | Limbic friction can be you're tired

01:48:55.860 | and you don't want to do something.

01:48:57.820 | And so you have to quote unquote, motivate to do it,

01:49:00.680 | energize yourself to do it.

01:49:02.300 | Or limbic friction can be that you're nervous and scared

01:49:05.740 | and anxious to do something

01:49:06.820 | and you have to calm yourself in order to lean forward

01:49:09.020 | into action in order to do that thing despite the anxiety.

01:49:12.340 | I realize this can be a little bit confusing as a concept.

01:49:14.440 | So I want to go into a bit more detail.

01:49:15.960 | Let's imagine that you or somebody else

01:49:19.260 | does not like to exercise.

01:49:20.660 | You don't want to exercise

01:49:21.620 | and you're trying to get your minimum

01:49:22.900 | of five days per week exercise

01:49:25.160 | and you're just not motivated to do it.

01:49:27.740 | There are a couple of different techniques to doing this.

01:49:30.220 | Assuming you've taken care of all the baseline stuff,

01:49:32.820 | all the foundational stuff we talked about earlier,

01:49:34.980 | and you're just not getting in gear

01:49:36.340 | and you find yourself checking your phone

01:49:38.660 | or maybe you're tending to some tasks.

01:49:40.820 | Obviously those things are quote unquote, easier for you.

01:49:43.700 | Meaning they cause less limbic friction

01:49:47.040 | than engaging in exercise.

01:49:49.140 | The typical advice would be just exercise for one minute.

01:49:54.800 | Okay, just get one minute of exercise or five minutes

01:49:57.260 | and then use the successful completion

01:50:00.280 | of that one or five minutes as a milestone

01:50:02.220 | that allows you to then move to the next milestone.

01:50:04.520 | And indeed that approach can work.

01:50:06.500 | And it's exactly what I'm describing here

01:50:08.460 | when I say that you're in a state of lack of motivation

01:50:12.360 | or procrastination or both.

01:50:14.400 | And you need to put yourself into a more painful,

01:50:18.480 | not less painful state.

01:50:19.540 | So what do you do?

01:50:20.380 | You push up against that friction

01:50:23.220 | and you exercise for a short while

01:50:25.580 | and then that pops you out of that trough.

01:50:28.460 | That's possible, but for a lot of people,

01:50:30.820 | even that won't be possible

01:50:32.200 | because they just can't get motivated

01:50:33.540 | or they do that one minute or five minutes

01:50:34.920 | and they're just like, okay, I'm still in the trough.

01:50:37.100 | I'm not actually feeling that great.

01:50:38.900 | In those circumstances,

01:50:41.180 | it makes sense to do something that's tangential

01:50:43.560 | to the whole path that you're trying to pursue,

01:50:45.680 | this goal that you're trying to pursue.

01:50:48.080 | That is, believe it or not,

01:50:49.520 | much worse than just being a motivated.

01:50:52.160 | And when I say worse, I don't mean picking some task

01:50:55.460 | that normally you don't like to do,

01:50:56.960 | but now you're willing to do.

01:50:58.300 | I mean, literally thinking about what would be worse

01:51:01.740 | than being in this state?

01:51:03.400 | Again, without causing yourself tissue

01:51:04.980 | or psychological damage, what would be worse?

01:51:07.480 | Well, cold water would be worse for many people,

01:51:10.460 | very cold water.

01:51:11.720 | So the key is to figure out something that,

01:51:14.340 | for lack of a better way to put it, really sucks,

01:51:17.220 | really sucks, and yet is safe.

01:51:19.580 | And by doing that, you steepen the trough,

01:51:23.600 | you steepen the slope of the trough,

01:51:26.500 | which we know brings you back

01:51:28.700 | to your baseline level of dopamine more quickly.

01:51:31.420 | Now, for some people, that will be deliberate cold exposure

01:51:33.820 | through cold shower, ice bath.

01:51:35.080 | And I have to tell you that if you're cringing

01:51:36.540 | as I say this, well, then there you go.

01:51:38.940 | You now have a tool that you know you cringe

01:51:42.180 | even when you just think about,

01:51:44.100 | and therefore represents a great tool for you.

01:51:46.480 | So if I'm procrastinating to do something

01:51:48.220 | I really need to do, should I just simply wait

01:51:50.820 | for that procrastination to evaporate?

01:51:52.820 | No.

01:51:53.660 | Will it eventually evaporate?

01:51:54.940 | Maybe.

01:51:55.820 | Will a deadline eventually surface that will trigger me

01:51:58.720 | into an anxious or activated state

01:52:01.780 | that will allow me to complete what needs to be done?

01:52:04.260 | Maybe, hopefully.

01:52:06.900 | But better would be to get out of that amotivated state,

01:52:10.260 | that state of procrastination quickly.

01:52:12.660 | And to do so,

01:52:13.860 | you need to leverage something that's painful.

01:52:15.720 | So for instance, I heard a beautiful lecture recently

01:52:18.580 | done by Dr. Anna Lemke at Stanford School of Medicine

01:52:21.580 | discussing dopamine and some of the things in her book

01:52:24.120 | and some newer findings as well.

01:52:26.460 | And somebody in the audience asked her the question,

01:52:29.060 | does meditation increase dopamine?

01:52:31.660 | Now, earlier we talked about how non-sleep deep rest

01:52:33.900 | and yoga nidra has been shown in the scientific literature

01:52:36.620 | to increase dopamine.

01:52:37.840 | But I also mentioned earlier that classic forms

01:52:40.620 | of meditation, whether eyes open or eyes closed,

01:52:43.260 | so-called open monitoring or closed monitoring meditation,

01:52:46.700 | sitting there or lying there and focusing,

01:52:48.660 | does not increase dopamine levels per se.

01:52:51.500 | However, for most people,

01:52:52.940 | especially people who find it hard to meditate

01:52:55.740 | or who don't do that practice very often,

01:52:57.780 | meditation is effortful.

01:53:01.300 | Getting into meditation and staying in meditation

01:53:04.220 | is effortful.

01:53:05.700 | So if you find yourself in a state of procrastination,

01:53:08.460 | oftentimes a brief five to 10-minute meditation

01:53:11.540 | where you absolutely do not allow yourself to do anything

01:53:14.380 | besides close your eyes, focus on your breath,

01:53:17.420 | and when your mind drifts, get back to your breath,

01:53:19.780 | is not only extremely difficult and extremely frustrating,

01:53:23.940 | unless you're a well-practiced meditator,

01:53:25.940 | but it's often difficult and frustrating not just to do,

01:53:28.820 | but to get into that practice,

01:53:30.420 | and not just to get into that practice,

01:53:32.180 | but to maintain that practice

01:53:33.720 | for that mere five to 10 minutes,

01:53:35.680 | because it's just not a natural state for us to be in.

01:53:37.740 | We have to force ourselves.

01:53:39.300 | So it is effortful.

01:53:40.880 | In fact, it qualifies as a basically available

01:53:44.200 | almost anywhere, anytime type of effortful activity

01:53:47.540 | that if you dislike it,

01:53:49.420 | perhaps even as much as some people dislike

01:53:51.880 | deliberate cold exposure, well then, perfect.

01:53:54.340 | You now have an additional tool in your kit

01:53:56.520 | that you can use anytime you are feeling

01:53:58.720 | amotivated and procrastinating.

01:54:01.360 | Now, there are numerous examples I could give,

01:54:03.200 | and hopefully there are numerous examples

01:54:05.020 | that you're thinking about.

01:54:06.340 | The key is to have a short list

01:54:07.920 | of about five different effortful,

01:54:11.020 | AKA painful activities that you can employ

01:54:14.100 | anytime you're feeling amotivated

01:54:16.080 | or in a state of procrastination,

01:54:17.880 | keeping in mind that the goal is not what you accomplish

01:54:21.180 | inside of that activity,

01:54:22.460 | although it is important

01:54:23.300 | that you actually engage in that activity.

01:54:24.900 | I actually have to make myself meditate

01:54:26.780 | in that five to 10 minute little bout of effortful

01:54:30.100 | or painful activity.

01:54:31.540 | But it's not about achieving an outcome.

01:54:33.740 | It's about forcing your body and mind

01:54:36.180 | into a deeper state of pain and discomfort.

01:54:39.460 | In other words, taking yourself from that trough

01:54:41.700 | that you're already in and steepening

01:54:43.740 | and deepening that trough,

01:54:45.540 | because in steepening and deepening that trough,

01:54:48.380 | we know that the return from that trough

01:54:51.520 | to normal and even elevated levels of baseline dopamine

01:54:56.520 | is going to be faster and more robust.

01:54:59.200 | And in doing that, you will quickly find yourself

01:55:02.140 | back into a motivated state,

01:55:04.160 | because not only does it teach you

01:55:05.660 | that doing hard things is possible,

01:55:08.200 | that's sort of a more of a subjective cognitive learning,

01:55:11.020 | but it actually taps into the very neurochemical system

01:55:14.540 | that allows you to then feel motivated and capable

01:55:17.480 | to pursue the larger goal,

01:55:18.940 | which is the thing you're really concerned about after all.

01:55:21.700 | So as is often the case,

01:55:23.500 | perhaps always the case on this podcast,

01:55:26.040 | we covered a lot of material.

01:55:27.900 | We covered dopamine and what it is.

01:55:29.620 | We talked about the circuitry

01:55:31.180 | and the different kinds of circuitry,

01:55:32.820 | focusing mainly on this mesocortical pathway

01:55:36.200 | that is so vitally important to motivation for any goals.

01:55:40.860 | Talked about the relationship between peaks and troughs

01:55:43.120 | and baselines and the foundational tools

01:55:45.540 | that allow us to set and maintain

01:55:47.140 | a healthy baseline level of dopamine,

01:55:49.240 | as well as ways to protect that baseline level of dopamine.

01:55:52.460 | And we talked about how to get ourselves

01:55:53.940 | out of states of procrastination and a motivation

01:55:58.100 | by not just waiting out those troughs and dopamine,

01:56:01.700 | but actually making those troughs and dopamine steeper

01:56:05.340 | by engaging in things that are effortful

01:56:07.320 | and things that we really don't want to do in those moments,

01:56:10.820 | provided that those things are safe,

01:56:13.140 | we can get out of those dopamine troughs more quickly

01:56:15.900 | and back to our dopamine baseline or even above baseline.

01:56:19.740 | And we talked about what I really view

01:56:21.220 | as the holy grail of motivation,

01:56:23.980 | which is to be able to learn to attach reward

01:56:26.360 | to the effort process itself,

01:56:27.980 | and to do so by not just understanding,

01:56:30.960 | but also learning to subjectively recognize

01:56:33.500 | and somatically experience release

01:56:35.340 | of these different stressful chemicals within our body.

01:56:38.380 | I realize this was a lot of information and yet throughout,

01:56:41.420 | I've tried to highlight tools that you can use

01:56:43.260 | that range from behavioral

01:56:44.700 | to nutritional supplementation tools, cognitive tools.

01:56:47.780 | And keep in mind that all of these different segments

01:56:50.220 | of the podcast is always our timestamp.

01:56:52.060 | So if you feel the need to go back and listen to any of these

01:56:54.160 | in order to get clearer understanding,

01:56:56.540 | we've made that easy to do so.

01:56:58.300 | So simply look for the timestamps in the show note captions.

01:57:01.300 | If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast,

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01:57:31.140 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

01:57:33.460 | During today's podcast and on many previous episodes

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01:57:38.420 | While supplements aren't necessary for everybody,

01:57:40.500 | many people derive tremendous benefit from them

01:57:42.500 | for things like enhancing sleep, hormone support, focus,

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01:57:58.940 | go to Live Momentous, spelled O-U-S,

01:58:01.120 | so livemomentous.com/huberman.

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01:58:07.180 | it's a monthly newsletter that provides summaries

01:58:09.580 | of podcast episodes and toolkits.

01:58:12.100 | Toolkits are summaries and links to specific protocols

01:58:15.580 | that you can use that have been discussed

01:58:17.500 | on various podcast episodes.

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01:58:34.400 | Thank you once again for joining me

01:58:35.820 | for today's deep dive discussion into dopamine

01:58:38.580 | and its practical applications.

01:58:40.380 | And last, but certainly not least,

01:58:42.660 | thank you for your interest in science.

01:58:44.460 | [upbeat music]

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Leverage Dopamine to Overcome Procrastination & Optimize Effort | Huberman Lab Podcast

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