You also felt many times why you love doing much work like playing video games, browsing the internet, etc. but same not applied with the case with the studies, reading books and other works, even you know this will benefit for you in the longer term. Ever wonder why this happens? The answer is your body feels pleasure and desire because of a chemical in your body called “Dopamine”.
What is Dopamine? How does this affect our body?
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, which after release feels pleasure and desire, it then becomes a motivation for us. If your body has less amount of dopamine then it makes you lethargic and you don’t like to do any work. Playing video games, watching movies & web series and any other work releases a very large amount of Dopamine, that’s why you don’t get tired of doing this kind of stuff.
You may have heard or read the Rat and lever experiment. Let me tell you about this in brief:-
Scientists are experimenting on rats to know the effect of dopamine in day-to-day work. They connected a rat’s head with some electrodes and then allowed the rat to pull a lever. Every time a rat pulls the lever they give a shock to him and it releases dopamine. After this, the rat pulls the lever until they become exhausted by the work. But when scientists block the dopamine receptor then the rats become so lazy, even if they don’t eat or drink they eat only when food is provided to them near their mouth. So, here you see what dopamine does in the body of rats and the same applies to us.
Is it bad or good?
Basically, dopamine low is also a bad thing as it makes you lethargic, and if this condition continues for a longer duration then it leads to disorder in the body. Now, what happens if the amount of dopamine is large for a longer duration. Then our body develops a tolerance level to it. Which makes high levels of dopamine become normal after tolerance and these causes sometimes become worse when the person is addicted to something dangerous for his body like alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc.
Can we control this dopamine detox?
There are methods you can control this large amount of dopamine secretion in your body and it is called “Dopamine detox”. Some medical reports also suggest, the human body naturally produces dopamine, no matter if it is exposed or not to certain stimuli. Let’s talk about the methods:-
Spend a whole day without doing any activity which stimulates you like not using a phone, spend a day without browsing social media.
Track your habits like why you are doing it, sometime it may be possible like you stop your work and go out and eat any kind of junk food which harms your body, by tracking your activity there are chances you stop your work just for exhaustion which can be overcome by a power nap or you are hungry for this you can take an apple with you during the work.
So here we conclude dopamine is very important for our day-to-day activity but like every other chemical, it also becomes toxic when its amount is higher in the body and its deficiency makes you mentally weak.
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