Has it ever crossed your mind, why does certain activities makes us lethargic and bored while other activities are easy and more desirable.
When it comes to using social media or binge- watching our favourite show on Netflix we are able to do it for hours. On the other hand activities like reading or exercising just for 20-30 mins becomes a daunting task.
Many might argue that watching or browsing are passive activities while exercising or reading requires good amount of effort.
Its not our habits, its our neurophysiology.
Dopamine is a Neuro-chemical which is released during most activities. Certain activities which give immediate reward results in surge of dopamine release whereas activities which gives delayed rewards often releases less dopamine. Therefore, Dopamine becomes a chemical which determines the desire for performing any task.
A typical example can be desire towards junk food over healthy eating options. We understand the fact that fast food makes us obese and unhealthy but still we desire for it as they enhance our taste and smell receptors releasing a good amount of dopamine which lights up the pleasure centres of our brain. Same phenomenon happens during smoking, taking drugs or drinking alcohol.
Another example can be obsessing over our social media accounts. Certain social media activities such as follow requests or even unexpected DMs gives us a dopamine surge as our brain releases more dopamine every time we get a notification. Ultimately, we keep browsing our phones for hours drenching our brain in a pool of dopamine.
How does it even affect us?
A surge in dopamine over a period of time increases our threshold and it reaches a new normal state as our brain adapts to the increased dopamine levels (Neurophysiological Homeostasis). This increases our tolerance for more dopamine. This often leads to less desire towards certain task as it doesn’t meet the optimum dopamine threshold. Therefore, activities such as exercising or studying doesn’t interest us anymore even if we want to do it.
Overtime, this leads to mental exhaustion (or mental fatigue), addiction or even depression.
What is Dopamine detox ?
Dopamine detox is a regime where a certain day in a week, one should embrace boredom.
Limit the activities which increases surge in dopamine such as:
- Internet and mobile use
- Using Computer
- Watching TV
- Gaming
- Watching Porn
- Coffee or tea
- Eating stimulating food
- Chatting with friends
Instead encourage activities such as:
- Eating bland healthy food
- Exercising
- Meditation
- Journal writing
- Reading a book or novel
This might feel like a difficult task intially as you may feel bored, languorous and lazy but as you keep doing it every week, it decreases the dopamine tolerance and helps the dopa receptors of the brain to recover. Overtime, activities such as reading or exercising doesn’t become hard to perform and one is able to focus more as other brain stimulating activities are limited.
Who should do it?
Anyone experiencing signs of mental exhaustion or burnout should practice detox more often. Students or athletes specially the young growing population should be in a habit of abstaining from such overstimulating brain habits. For people who show clinical signs of mental disorder or depression should get psychological help from experts before practicing this.
How it should be done?
There is no one size fits all while practicing this detox regime. Practice can be done on a daily basis -where you allow few hours of low dopamine activity followed by few minutes of high dopamine activity. It can be done on a weekly basis too. One should try to follow it strictly but not perfectly.
In summary, Dopamine detox is a practical tool especially when you are preparing for an exam or any competitive sporting event. The same reason why many athletes limit or abstain from social media activity and mobile usage during training to perform and focus better. As Dopamine detox helps to build your concentration over activities which matter, it ultimately improves your performance.
Depending on what they are, our habits will either make us or break us. We become what we repeatedly do.
Sean Covey
The Runnerslab 
you described how life should be keep going .
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Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. This is so informative.
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An awesome piece! So many things make sense now. Out at the right time, good job✨
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This information is so very useful, these r all the information which we all have to know very well coz to maintain our health and to keep ouself on a safer hand .
Tahnku so much for this .
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