The Ultimate Guide to Maximizing Dopamine Naturally: Everything You Need To Know

All addictions are your body's attempt to lower stress and increase dopamine levels in the brain

Serotonin has always been thought (or is still being though) of as the happy hormone and that by increasing it, it has an anti-depressant effect, right?

What if I told you that’s not true at all. SSRI drugs are the most commonly prescribed drug for depression, anxiety and other mental disorders and more than 90% of the people on anti-depressant medication are on SSRI. Doctors prescribe it at the drop of a hat and most don’t even know the severe side effects that come with it or educate their patient on them.

Now you might think, we’ll so many people do get benefits from SSRI, so why is that?

There are a few reasons, namely:

Although all SSRI drugs inhibit the uptake of serotonin and increase total serotonin levels, some of them actually inhibit certain serotonin receptors, increase allopregnanlone in the brain (alloprenanolone is a GABA agonist which is now approved for depression), increase dopamine as well, inhibit histamine and desensitize other serotonin receptors.

For example, prozac, one of the most common anti-depressant, increases allopregnanolone and inhibits the serotonin receptors, 5-HT2C and 5-HT3.

More recent SSRI drugs under development antagonize even more serotonin receptors. This is because medicine is finally catching up and realizing the serotonin doesn’t “cure” depression. Plus, people on SSRI drugs might tell you they feel better, but most of them experience anhedonia (lack of enjoyment in life), which is a key function of serotonin.

Dopamine is actually of the happy hormone which causes you to enjoy life more, feel motivated, want to do and achieve things and so on.

most people find out about this decades too late.

after years of brain fog, terrible sleep, constant sickness, inability to lose weight, deteriorating mental health.

they finally see a doctor who runs tests and says “your dopamine is dysregulated” like it’s some mysterious condition that just happened to them.

nah forget that.

it didn’t just happen. it’s been building for years through patterns you didn’t understand.

the good news is that it’s completely reversible.

So you want to feel energetic, creative, focused, goal-driven, fulfilled, pleasure, happiness, bliss, excitement and enjoyment?

That, my dear reader, is the effects of dopamine.

For this article I want to discuss how to actually increase dopamine. As briefly mentioned above, most people have reduced dopamine due to chronic stress, inflammation, bad diet, poor sleep, constant bombardment with technology, lack of good company and so on.

When dopamine is low, we need to do repetitive addictive things just to get a big squirt of dopamine in the brain for a couple minutes. Wonder why natural food taste so bland and you have no energy to put in the effect to create a good meal, whereas it’s soooo easy to just pop by the drive way and get a supersize everything?

Low dopamine.

Alright, let me just fill you in on how dopamine is created and a little on how it functions and then we’ll go over strategies and supplements to increase dopamine. If you want to skip this part, just scroll down to the strategies and supplements.

In short:

Dopamine is synthesized from the amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine and also from L-dopa by the enzymes phenylalanine hydroxylase, tyrosine hydroxylase and DOPA decarboxylase respectively.

Dopamine binds to 2 main receptor types, namely D1 and D2, but D1 consists of 2 subtypes (D1 & D5) and D2 consists of 3 subtypes (D2, D3 & D4).

Dopamine is then broken down by the enzymes monoamine oxidase-B (MAO-B) and catechol-o-methyltransferase (COMT).

Dopamine is able to:

• Reduce water retention

• Increase T3

• Improve cognition – mental clarity, ability to concentrate & focus, improved learning, memory, recall, well-being, solution seeking, creativity, etc.

• Lower prolactin

• Increase the metabolic rate & desire to be active and explore

• Improve insulin sensitivity and glucose disposal

• Lower serotonin synthesis

• Release GABA and promote calmness

Symptoms of low dopamine include:

• Lack of motivation

• No creativity

• No goal setting or ambition

• Brain fog

• Negativity (rarely happy)

• Don’t enjoy much – anhedonia

• Apathy

• Low problem-solving ability

• Anti-social

• Fearful, nervous, anxious

• Attention deficit, etc…

First I want to discuss with you a few easy strategies on how to increase your dopamine, then I’ll go over the supplements that will have the most potent effect of dopamine levels.

Let’s jump in.