How To Improve Dopamine to Feel Motivation

00:00:00.000 | We really all have a sort of dopamine set point.

00:00:05.000 | And if we continue to indulge in the same behaviors

00:00:09.040 | or even different behaviors that increase our dopamine

00:00:11.660 | in these big peaks over and over and over again,

00:00:14.260 | we won't experience the same level of joy

00:00:16.820 | from those behaviors or from anything at all.

00:00:20.600 | Now that has a name, it's called addiction,

00:00:22.840 | but even for people who aren't addicted,

00:00:26.240 | even for people who don't have an attachment

00:00:28.220 | to any specific substance or behavior,

00:00:30.620 | this drop in below baseline after any peak in dopamine

00:00:34.420 | is substantial and it governs whether or not

00:00:37.500 | we are going to feel motivated

00:00:38.580 | to continue to pursue other things.

00:00:41.220 | Fortunately, there's a way to work with this

00:00:44.140 | such that we can constantly stay motivated,

00:00:46.380 | but also keep that baseline of dopamine

00:00:48.700 | at an appropriate healthy level.

00:00:50.640 | A previous guest on the Huberman Lab podcast

00:00:52.960 | was Dr. Anna Lembke.

00:00:54.140 | She's head of the Addiction Dual Diagnosis Clinic

00:00:56.900 | at Stanford, has this amazing book, "Dopamine Nation,"

00:01:00.320 | "Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence."

00:01:02.280 | If you haven't read the book,

00:01:03.300 | I highly encourage you to check it out, it's fantastic.

00:01:06.260 | The other terrific book about dopamine

00:01:08.220 | is "The Molecule of More," which is similar in some regard,

00:01:12.260 | but isn't so much about addiction,

00:01:13.700 | it's more about other types of behaviors.

00:01:16.080 | Both books really focus on these dopamine schedules

00:01:19.780 | and the relationship between these peaks

00:01:21.420 | and baselines of dopamine.

00:01:22.800 | In Dr. Lembke's book,

00:01:25.740 | and when she was on the Huberman Lab podcast,

00:01:27.580 | another podcast,

00:01:28.420 | she's talked about this pleasure-pain balance,

00:01:30.300 | that when we seek something that we really like

00:01:33.040 | or we indulge in it, like eating a little piece of chocolate,

00:01:35.420 | if we really like chocolate, there's some pleasure,

00:01:37.780 | but then there's a little bit of pain

00:01:41.340 | that exceeds the amount of pleasure, and it's subtle,

00:01:44.500 | and we experience it as wanting more of that thing.

00:01:47.940 | Okay, so there's a pleasure-pain balance,

00:01:50.020 | and I'm telling you that the pleasure and the pain

00:01:52.900 | are governed by dopamine to some extent.

00:01:54.920 | Well, how could that be, right?

00:01:56.360 | I've said before, when you engage in an activity

00:01:59.140 | or when you ingest something that increases dopamine,

00:02:01.860 | the dopamine levels go up to substantial degree

00:02:04.580 | with all the things I listed off.

00:02:06.500 | Where's the pain coming from?

00:02:10.340 | Well, the pain is coming from the lack of dopamine

00:02:13.340 | that follows, and you now know

00:02:16.820 | what that lack of dopamine reflects.

00:02:20.220 | How do you know?

00:02:21.340 | Well, earlier we were talking about

00:02:22.920 | how dopamine is released between neurons,

00:02:26.300 | and I mentioned two ways.

00:02:27.340 | One is into the synapse,

00:02:28.700 | where it can activate the postsynaptic neuron,

00:02:30.980 | and the other was what I called volumetric release,

00:02:33.020 | where it is distributed more broadly.

00:02:35.260 | It's released out over a bunch of neurons.

00:02:37.900 | In both cases, it's released from these things

00:02:42.220 | we call synaptic vesicles, literally little bubbles,

00:02:45.060 | tiny, tiny little bubbles that contain dopamine.

00:02:48.020 | They get vomited out into the area or into the synapse.

00:02:51.820 | Well, those vesicles get depleted.

00:02:54.920 | For the synaptic physiologists out there,

00:02:58.680 | we call this the readily releasable pool of dopamine.

00:03:03.160 | We can only deploy dopamine that is ready to be deployed,

00:03:07.360 | that's packaged in those little vesicles and ready to go.

00:03:09.700 | It's like when you order a product

00:03:11.480 | and they say out of stock until two months from now,

00:03:14.800 | well, it's not ready to be released.

00:03:16.560 | Same thing with dopamine.

00:03:17.480 | There's a pool of dopamine that's synthesized,

00:03:20.680 | and you can only release the dopamine

00:03:24.260 | that's been synthesized, it's the readily releasable pool.

00:03:27.960 | The pleasure-pain balance doesn't only hinge

00:03:31.260 | on the readily releasable pool of dopamine,

00:03:33.660 | but a big part of the pleasure-pain balance

00:03:37.380 | hinges on how much dopamine is there

00:03:40.860 | and how much is ready and capable

00:03:42.940 | of being released into the system.

00:03:45.420 | So now we've given some meat to this thing

00:03:49.220 | that we call the pleasure-pain balance.

00:03:51.480 | And now it should make perfect sense

00:03:53.920 | why if you take something or do something

00:03:56.880 | that leads to huge increases in dopamine,

00:04:00.020 | afterward, your baseline should drop

00:04:02.480 | because there isn't a lot of dopamine around

00:04:05.220 | to keep your baseline going.

00:04:07.200 | What about the more typical scenario?

00:04:08.760 | What about the scenario of somebody

00:04:11.200 | who is really good at working during the week,

00:04:14.640 | they exercise during the week, they drink on the weekends?

00:04:18.220 | Well, that person is only consuming alcohol

00:04:20.760 | maybe one or two nights a week.

00:04:22.540 | But oftentimes that same person will be spiking

00:04:27.040 | their dopamine with food during the middle of the week.

00:04:29.920 | Now we all have to eat,

00:04:31.040 | and it's nice to eat foods that we enjoy.

00:04:32.840 | I certainly do that.

00:04:34.000 | I love food, in fact.

00:04:35.920 | But let's say they're eating foods

00:04:38.860 | that really evoke a lot of dopamine release

00:04:40.720 | in the middle of the week.

00:04:41.680 | They're drinking one or two days on the weekend.

00:04:44.320 | They are one of these work hard, play hard types.

00:04:47.120 | So they're swimming a couple of miles in the ocean

00:04:49.900 | in the middle of the week as well.

00:04:52.700 | They're going out dancing once on the weekend.

00:04:54.460 | Sounds like a pretty balanced life as I describe it.

00:04:57.900 | Well, here's the problem.

00:04:59.740 | The problem is that dopamine is not just evoked

00:05:04.860 | by one of these activities.

00:05:06.080 | Dopamine is evoked by all of these activities.

00:05:08.860 | And dopamine is one currency of craving motivation

00:05:13.460 | and desire and pleasure.

00:05:15.780 | There's only one currency.

00:05:18.040 | So even though if you look at the activities,

00:05:21.300 | you'd say, well, it's just on the weekends,

00:05:23.040 | or this thing is only a couple of times a week.

00:05:25.880 | If you looked at dopamine simply as a function,

00:05:28.400 | as a chemical function of peaks and baseline,

00:05:31.500 | it might make sense why this person,

00:05:33.040 | after several years of work hard, play hard,

00:05:36.000 | would say, yeah, you know, I'm feeling kind of burnt out.

00:05:38.640 | I'm just not feeling like I have the same energy

00:05:40.400 | that I did a few years ago.

00:05:41.920 | And of course there are age-related reasons

00:05:43.840 | why people can experience drops in energy.

00:05:46.980 | But oftentimes what's happening

00:05:49.780 | is not some sort of depletion in cellular metabolism

00:05:52.660 | that's related to aging.

00:05:53.640 | What's happening is they're spiking their dopamine

00:05:55.980 | through so many different activities throughout the week

00:05:59.320 | that their baseline is progressively dropping.

00:06:01.820 | And in this case, it can be very subtle.

00:06:04.100 | It can be very, very subtle.

00:06:05.440 | And that's actually a very sinister function of dopamine,

00:06:10.440 | we could say, which is that it can often drop

00:06:13.420 | in imperceptible ways,

00:06:15.300 | but then once it reaches a threshold of low dopamine,

00:06:19.900 | we just feel like, hmm,

00:06:21.020 | we can't really get pleasure from anything anymore.

00:06:23.140 | What used to work doesn't work anymore.

00:06:25.000 | So it starts to look a lot like the more severe addictions

00:06:27.640 | or the more acute addictions

00:06:29.540 | to things like cocaine and amphetamine,

00:06:31.180 | which lead to these big increases,

00:06:32.940 | these big spikes in dopamine,

00:06:34.220 | and then these very severe drops in the baseline.

00:06:37.940 | Now, of course, we all should engage in activities

00:06:41.540 | that we enjoy.

00:06:42.780 | I certainly do, everybody should.

00:06:44.380 | A huge part of life is pursuing activities

00:06:46.720 | and things that we enjoy.

00:06:49.240 | The key thing is to understand this relationship

00:06:51.780 | between the peaks and the baseline

00:06:53.180 | and to understand how they influence one another.

00:06:55.480 | Because once you do that,

00:06:56.860 | you can start to make really good choices in the short run

00:06:59.880 | and in the long run to maintain your level

00:07:02.300 | of dopamine baseline,

00:07:04.420 | maybe even raise that level of dopamine baseline

00:07:07.420 | and still get those peaks

00:07:09.340 | and still achieve those feelings of elevated motivation,

00:07:13.020 | elevated desire and craving.

00:07:14.560 | Because again, those peaks

00:07:17.380 | and having a sufficiently healthy high level

00:07:20.820 | of dopamine baseline

00:07:22.260 | are what drove the evolution of our species.

00:07:23.940 | And they're really what drive the evolution

00:07:25.300 | of anyone's life progression too.

00:07:27.320 | So they're a good thing.

00:07:28.160 | Dopamine is a good thing.

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How To Improve Dopamine to Feel Motivation | Dr. Andrew Huberman

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