Mental Equilibrium

We all wake up some days in a bad mood, during the day we struggle to retrieve information from our memory, and many a times before we go to sleep we know there is really no motivation to even wake up next day. We all would have faced that villain in our life.  

Most of us don’t realise this change in us is often caused by brain’s reward system. Brain often looks for opportunities to reward us for doing various things and this reward is nothing but sheer happiness. Who doesn’t want to be happy? All our philosophers had lived and died advocating that happiness is all that is strive for in human life. It was too late when I realised that a natural chemical produced in my body can be of this big significance to my day. 

As always man’s quest to control and regulate continues even when it is our own natural chemical. This feel-good hormone often famously nick named as dopamine, has the capability to drive all the facets of human body from waking up to sex drive to good sleep. We often over complicate dopamine by providing guidelines on how to produce it in the body. I am sure you would guess by now dopamine needs no motivation as she herself is the motivator. For the geeks who might be interested, we have identified good amount of Tyrosine production in your body. For everybody else, any activity that you love to do in your life can actually help you produce more dopamine in you. Yes, you can recharge your battery from the power at home and charge your home from the battery. A large chunk of people had understood how regular meditation can help these batteries to be filled.

With Internet on your side, it’s never a challenge to find what contains tyrosine. I am sharing few pointers only for the benefit of people who lack motivation due to reduction in dopamine production. A balanced diet rich in protein, nuts, berries, fruits and vegetables can do the trick. But isn’t that what does the trick for everything? Good to avoid sugars and unhealthy food as it might be a short term solution having adverse effect. Coffee and chocolates which are everyone’s go to dopamine producer can do the trick too. The turmeric which is heavily used in cooking in various parts of the world is found to be good at regulating our dopamine. 

We often blame lack of motivation which boils down low dopamine levels as the reason for not exercising but interestingly enough, good exercise routine can help you produce dopamine instead. Another magical solution is sleep which helps in managing all the chemicals found in the body. The Vitamin D from sun or other sources(if you know), can help in regulating our dopamine. It’s great if you can find way to exercise under sun if you are from a part of world where you can find abundant sunlight. The second brain called gut works in tandem with the first brain to produce and managing how much food feeling we deserve to have. Keeping gut happy with probiotics is a cheat code we need to know. Scientists had found that dopamine can even be produced by body when fed with water while you are parched. Now how much more easy can it get? I wonder what’s stopping us from feeling good from today after knowing this much about dopamine.

As much low dopamine can cause depression and stop you from enjoying life from all aspects, overdoing it won’t help either as it often leads to  ADHT, aggression and what not! It can often be understood as the perfect balance between physical and mental states of our body. By now you would have realized dopamine production and exhaustion is a vicious cycle and this is one cycle we desire to have in our life. Now that we have demystified dopamine, cheer up and it’s again time to feel good!