Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. Dopamine is the brain chemical that allows us to have feelings of bliss, pleasure, euphoria, drive, motivation, focus, and concentration. In addition to simply making you feel good, dopamine helps control weight, energy levels, and supports brain and heart health. Increasing dopamine is known to improve cognitive function, particularly attention and memory tasks. Dopamine is easily oxidized. Foods that are rich in antioxidants such as fruits and vegetables may help protect dopamine-using neurons from free radical damage.
When your brain is forced to function on insufficient amounts of dopamine, you become more likely to experience a range of health problems such as weight gain, depression and involuntary body movements.
Dopamine Deficiency Symptoms
-lack of motivation
-fatigue
-inability to feel pleasure
-low libido
-sleep problems
-apathy
-procrastination
-memory loss
-inability to concentrate
-mood swings
-hopelessness
7 Ways to naturally increase dopamine level
Eat bananas
Bananas, especially ripe bananas, are an exceptional food for regulating dopamine because they have a high concentration of tyrosine. There’s a large list of foods that increase Tyrosine, including: Almonds, Avocados, Bananas, Beef, Chicken, Chocolate, Coffee, Eggs, Green Tea, Watermelon, Yogurt.”
Curcumin
One of the active ingredients in Turmeric, it is capable of effortlessly crossing the blood-brain barrier and lifting your dopamine levels. Further, research has shown that curcumin inhibits memory loss issues from dopamine deficiency.
Enough Sleep
In order to increases dopamine naturally, you’ll want to make sure that you’re getting enough sleep. Lack of sleep has been shown to reduce concentrations of neurotransmitters and their receptors. While a reduced receptor count doesn’t necessarily mean that the neurotransmitters themselves are reduced, it’s generally not a good sign to have insufficient receptors to respond to the dopamine.
Meditation
Sometimes the best way to do something is by doing nothing. Specifically, you do nothing physically but in your mind you’re trying to sort out your thoughts. Whether you meditate, pray or do simple self-reflection, all these activities are linked to increased dopamine levels.
Decrease Your Caffeine
Although coffee gives us a much needed boost in the mornings, like sugar, it is only temporary. After the initial kick of caffeine is over, dopamine levels in the body decrease. So if you feel you need coffee to get going, enjoy one cup. After that, go decaf or drink plain water.
Ginkgo Biloba
Ginkgo can increase dopamine while enhancing oxygen flow and blood flow to the brain – promoting healthy transmission of nerve impulses.
Red Beets
Red beets are rich in the amino acid, betaine. Because it works as a kind of anti-depressant, betaine not only helps dopamine production but also gives your morale an added boost.
Sources:
1. http://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/01/20/10-ways-to-increase-dopamine-levels-in-the-brain/
3. http://naturalon.com/increase-dopamine-levels-naturally-and-beat-depression-without-pills/view-all/
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