Dopamine

from how to ADHD, right? This is what made this term famous.

So you want to build your DOPA menu like a cafe menu, right? There's appetizers, there's entrees, there's sides, there's specials, and there's desserts.

So I'm going to break down each one of these now.

An appetizer could be something like a five-minute hit, right? A song, a dance break, a glass of water, your favorite coffee.

Wow.

Dopaminergic.

Yeah.

Whatever.

So here's what this episode is about.

It's about the dopamine crisis, why you cannot focus, why you cannot finish what you start, and why you increasingly cannot feel the normal range of human motivation and satisfaction that every generation before you took for granted.

More than that, it's about the specific, research-backed protocol for fixing it in yourself.

Not a hack, not a tip, a complete neurochemical recalibration, laid out phase by phase, so you can actually run it starting today.

Let's begin.

It's a recalibration.

Not a dramatic single event, but a systematic restructuring of your relationship with reward, effort, and discomfort.

And this is where the real protocol for you begins.

So here's the story most people carry around.

Dopamine is the pleasure chemical.

You eat the chocolate, you get a kiss, you win money, and your brain releases dopamine.

And that's the reward.

The liking, the wanting was gone.

So put these two together.

Dopamine fires at the cue that predicts the reward, not at the reward itself.

And dopamine is what makes you go after something.

There is a rush that happens in our body, especially in high sugar, high fat, high salt foods, those chips, right? This is when we eat it.

Dopamine is released.

Dopamine feels like motivation.

It feels like connection.

And honestly, we know from scans that when we eat, especially high fat, high sugar, high salt foods, that it actually decreases cortisol, in our bodies, the stress receptors in our bodies for a little bit of time.

I know about dopamine and I know about the stress receptors because of what I study, but I'd be curious if oxytocin is released.

I'm not sure, which is the bonding chemical.

But I do know that when we're enjoying a good meal, Dopamine's released.

crazy that song made that song like literally carried him yeah and tito for like six months and made randall out of nowhere come on that's true that's

true all right but i i got tired of the pamina just because of how many times it got played out but All right, all right, we'll go Dopamina.

We'll go

Dopamina.

We'll go Dopamina.

I-Way.

I-Way, I-Way.

There seems to be a few... husband-wife partnerships where neurologists and neurosurgeons, there's a few of them I've come across.

Just lastly about sort of this background of getting to know you, Kimia, what was this book that you read when you were 12 years old that changed your

life? Oh my gosh, that was called Dibs in Search of Self.

And I can't remember who wrote it.

So what's going on, Camille? What's happening to Dave right now? Can you just explain that?

Yeah, so in simple terms, I like to think in simple terms, the dopamine level is dipping.

And what one needs is a certain level of dopamine just in the background to keep pathways functioning normally to keep all the neurons firing that allow us to move freely and for thoughts to flow freely and for some of the other things that happen in the body.

So for example, pain or anxiety or bladder, all of these things are to some extent dependent on having this tonic constant level of dopamine in the background.

Yeah.

I really do hate when my, in my younger years, it was exciting enough and dopamine, what's that word? Dopaminergic enough to where you just sort

of

get, you overlook the frustration and the annoying annoying parts yeah but as you get older and life becomes more varied and uh your responsibilities go all over the place those small things that used to you used to overlook become just they become such a pain and you know if i I think there's, generally speaking, too much technology in all of our lives.