Hey there, it's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson from Bright Line Eating®, and today we're going to talk about healthy dopamine. This question was sent in from Barb and she said, "Recently I've heard you mention a healthy, gentle kind of dopamine hit. Can you say more about that? Especially in connection to Bright Line Eating. I'm clear that our habits and many other aspects of the program have desired effects, but an overview would be a great reminder and encouragement. Thanks for your consideration, Barb."
I would love to talk about this. And you're so right. There is a healthy way to stimulate dopamine that doesn't lead to problematic outcomes. For those who aren't familiar with something, we talk about a lot here in Bright Line Eating, let me just give the basics. People tend to come to Bright Line Eating with weight struggles, and not just weight struggles, but food struggles like an addictive relationship with food. What these people have experienced is that they have brains that tend to get more affected by the ultra-processed food environment that we live in right now. Sugar and flour and foods that you buy in convenience stores and movie theater, snack bars and things like that, we eat them, and they hit the addictive centers of the brain with floods of dopamine beyond what the brain ever expected to be having to deal with. Those floods of dopamine caused the receptors over time to downregulate, which means that they thin out, they become less numerous, less responsive, and they're trying to restore balance to restore equilibrium. These floods of dopamine keep coming as we go to a coffee shop and buy sugar and flour there. It's sugar, flour, caffeine, sugar, flour, caffeine everywhere we turn. And these dopamine receptors are trying to get back to a good level, and so they just make the receptors less responsive.
Now, the problem is that we need to keep eating that way in order to just stay at baseline to feel okay. If we stop eating all that sugar and flour all day, every day we feel depressed, irritable, desperate, needy, we have cravings, we feel off, like we start to go into some withdrawal and we need some sugar and flour to just get back to a baseline state. This is addiction. The addict after a time isn't using to get high. They're using to get normal, to just be okay for a bit and be able to cope again.
So, what's healthy dopamine? What our data show here is that in Bright Line Eating, when people do the Bright Line Eating Boot Camp, within eight weeks, the cravings that they experienced have subsided, not entirely, but significantly, and those dopamine receptors have healed significantly. We do want to be careful not flooding those receptors with excess dopamine. We want to be avoiding big sessions of watching lots of pornography, for example, because that's a lot of stimulation for those same receptors. We want to be avoiding snorting rails of cocaine. We want to be avoiding going crazy, one click shopping or going to casinos and doing slot machines, right? There are all kinds of things that can flood those dopamine receptors with too much dopamine.
But what I want to say now is that everything I've just been talking about is just one of the dopamine circuits in the brain. It's the desire circuit. It's the circuit about more about the motivation to go get more. It's the circuit that's there to ensure our survival. It's about sex, it's about food, it's about protection and safety. It's if anything is awry or there's something salient for our survival, like a big bunch of ripe berry bushes or a potential mate or something like that, that part of the brain is going to be surprised. Then it's going to rewire its memory to train itself to go back to those berry bushes or to pursue that mate or something like that. Memory and the desire circuit go hand in hand so that the brain can go pursue and get more of that dopamine stimulation. And in our modern environment with ultra-processed foods, and pornography, and things like that in the mix, this can be problematic for people whose brains are very smart and attuned and sensitive and wire up well to that kind of thing. We tend to be the ones that survived the best in the olden days and that get addicted the most in present day times. God bless us, but that's the desire circuit. "I need more" circuit.
There are other dopamine circuits. In particular, there is the control circuit. Now, this isn't in the mesolimbic reward pathway, the deep, deep addiction centers in the brain. If the brain's a cue ball, the reward centers are kind of like right in the middle of the sphere in there, but toward the front of the brain here in the frontal lobes, you've got the control circuits, and these are also dopaminergic. This is about planning and preparation and checklists and calendars, and to-do lists and making progress and accomplishing tasks, tasks and setting up our environment in an orderly way to make sure that we feel secure. That is another way to get healthy dopamine. My goodness, there's all kinds of ways to do it.
So, I am very dopaminergic as a person. I'm sure that doesn't shock you and I have set up my whole day to get little dopamine rewards. I don't call them hits necessarily, but rewards or stimulation hits to me sounds addictive. I'm not looking to get myself a hit, but I am looking to get a pleasant reward. I have habit stacks that when I execute them, each time I do a task, my brain gets a little dopamine reward because it's my habit stack. As I progress through it, every time you make progress toward a goal, I'm going to say that again, every time you make progress toward a goal, even turning toward being about to make some progress toward a goal, you get a nice dopamine release. So, there we go. I have my habit stacks, and as I turn toward doing the first thing, I get some dopamine. As I complete that task and move toward the next thing, I get some dopamine as I complete that task and move toward the next thing, I get some dopamine and first thing in the morning, my brain is already going, ah, we are on track. I feel amazing. Then over breakfast, I sit there, and I open my Wordles, and I solve the Wordle, and I get some dopamine. I get dopamine just by opening the app. Boom. My brain is like, oh, we're about to make progress. Dopamine. It turns out that even the finger tapping of video games or of screens even that finger tapping releases dopamine. The dopamine circuits all over those screens, baby. It knows what it wants with those smart screens. Then I do Wordle, and I do Quordle, and I do Worldle, and I do anti Wordle, and I do Phrasle, and I do all these little games, and I send them the results to a group that I'm a part of where we share our scores every morning. That doesn't really stoke with me. That releases serotonin, especially if I've done especially well on one of those puzzles. Yesterday, I got the Phrasle in one. I looked at the boxes and I knew the phrase, "a penny for your thoughts," and I typed it in, and that was a good dopamine blast. Then I shared that out with my group, and I got serotonin, the feeling of being esteemed in a group of people. I got some serotonin from that.
As I go through my day, I'm getting dopamine all through the day. I have calendar trackers, so I'm still doing my 15 minutes a day decluttering challenge. So, when I turn toward doing that 15 minutes, I get some dopamine. When the timer goes off and I've completed my 15 minutes, I get some dopamine when I put my marker on the calendar that I did it, I get some dopamine. I have a sense of how I like my house ordered. When I put the laundry in the dryer, I get some dopamine. When I fold the laundry and put it away, I get some dopamine. All of this sort of progress toward the state of the world that I want to create this controlled dopamine is manageable. It's healthy using dopamine in a way to create the life that I most want to have.
This is what I did not have when I was mired in my food addiction, drowning in my excess weight. I was not doing laundry. I was not doing dishes. I was not waking up and doing a habit stack. I was sleeping until three in the afternoon, three in the afternoon, sometimes four every day. My husband can attest I was a mess, and I felt like I was treading water, and not able to keep my mouth and nose above the water. I was half drowning. I would sometimes exert a big effort and get up for a breath, but then I would just sink down and I was sputtering and floundering. That's how my life felt. The control dopamine...I am in a symbiotic relationship now with it where I'm doing things and getting these dopamine rewards. The net result is that I'm keeping my head way above that water. I am doing the tasks and chores, handling the responsibilities, and I've gamified it all throughout my day, these things that I hate to do, like opening mail, my decluttering challenge, gamifies opening the mail because the mail just has to sit on the counter for an hour until it becomes clutter. And now, opening the mail is my decluttering, and I can set my timer and spend 15 minutes opening the envelopes. I get that dopamine by progressing toward meeting that goal. I am now using my brain, my heavily dopaminergic brain to support the life that I want to be living.
Okay, a couple more thoughts here before we wrap this up. I just want to say that another aspect of dopamine is creativity. Remember, dopamine is the only neurotransmitter that can see what's not in the here and now that can predict the future, that can imagine worlds that don't exist right now that can imagine anything other than what exists right now. Dopamine is the only one. So, creativity and insight and inspiration are all about dopamine. And so, doing art is another thing that can get you a dopamine reward. You're using your dopaminergic systems by thinking outside the box, by planning a project, by conceiving, and then creating anything that doesn't exist right now. That means writing. That means playing music. All of that is dopaminergic. Dopamine is the only thing that can conceive or create of something that's not already in existence right here, right now. So, creativity...go at it. There's 10 bajillion ways to implement that in your life.
And then finally, I just want to say, of course, that dopamine is not the only happy chemical. That there's serotonin, there's oxytocin, there's endorphin, and there's so many ways to use the here and now chemicals in a symbiotic relationship with dopamine to create a brain that is so nourished and so fulfilled that you don't need to be turning to food for anything more at all because you truly have enough. Dopamine never truly has enough. Enough, does not exist for dopamine. Dopamine always wants more. But, if you use your controlled dopamine to do the laundry, to do your 15 minutes of decluttering, to write down your food the night before, you get a dopamine reward. Writing down your food the night before, reading your nightly readings, and now you sit there at the end of a beautiful, Bright day and survey your surroundings and the socks are in the sock drawer. The food is written down and committed for the next day. Three Bright, beautiful meals are eaten and done and dusted. You can now survey your surroundings and let the here and now chemicals flood in and know that you're safe, you're well, you're happy, you're Bright, and breathe in that peace and feel grateful that you've built a brain that's supporting your new Bright life. So, thank you for that wonderful question. So glad to talk with you about dopamine and the healthy ways that we can use it to support the life that we want to be living. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
