Speaker 1: Welcome to healthy Ish.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on the podcast of From Body
Speaker 2: and Soul. I hope your new year is buzzing along.
Speaker 2: I'm the host of Felicity.
Speaker 1: Harley.
Speaker 2: My guest today came all the way from the UK
Speaker 2: and has a nifty acronym dose to help us all
Speaker 2: distress our minds, energize our bodies and restore mental health. Yes,
Speaker 2: please to all of the above. TJ Power is a
Speaker 2: neuroscientist and author with a very impressive social following, and
Speaker 2: he joins me to explain the dose effect. TJ Welcome
Speaker 2: to healthy Ish, Thanks for having me, and welcome to Australia.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to be I.
Speaker 2: Feel like we could do a whole separate podcast on
Speaker 2: the story of why you are in Australia, but we'll.
Speaker 1: Leave that for another time.
Speaker 2: Now, Happy New Year and give us one healthy is
Speaker 2: resolution for this year, something that you want to.
Speaker 3: Achieve me personally, say I'd recommend to other Well you
Speaker 3: all right? Say the biggest impact I have on my mind.
Speaker 3: The biggest factor that has a big impact on my
Speaker 3: mind is how frequently I open social media apps. I
Speaker 3: obviously speak a lot about dopamine and I've tested a
Speaker 3: few times throughout this year, the idea of only being
Speaker 3: allowed on Instagram at ten o'clock in the morning, three pm,
Speaker 3: and then eight pm. And it is phenomenal how much
Speaker 3: it changes my mental health when I stick to it.
Speaker 3: And I'll do it for a week or so, and
Speaker 3: then I'll lose the pattern, and then I'll start going
Speaker 3: on it more frequently. And twenty twenty five, that's the
Speaker 3: year I'm going to make that like a really stable
Speaker 3: part of my life.
Speaker 2: So just three times a day. Is there some neuroscience
Speaker 2: behind the three times a day thing?
Speaker 3: Or Yeah? Effectively, Instagram or TikTok or Facebook, whatever your
Speaker 3: platform might be, is very overstimulating for the dopamine system.
Speaker 3: It raises it to a very unnatural level, causing it
Speaker 3: to crash out. When it crashes out, we feel kind
Speaker 3: of low mood and get really kind of depressed and demotivated.
Speaker 3: It's not a very nice feeling. If you reduce the
Speaker 3: frequency of activation of that dovemin system from the quick
Speaker 3: dove mein of social media, you're not going to burn
Speaker 3: out the system as much. You're going to feel a
Speaker 3: little bit more motivated and positive in your brain. And
Speaker 3: that's where I want to be in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Don't we all? And how do you stick to it?
Speaker 2: You just have to be focused on your boundaries and
Speaker 2: quite militant about it. Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of those things I like the idea
Speaker 3: of like balance and not being too ridiculous about these things. However,
Speaker 3: with social media, for me, if I don't have a
Speaker 3: really clear structure in place, it then just gets into
Speaker 3: that loop where you're just opening it all the time.
Speaker 3: And because of how dopamin works, it drives our behavior.
Speaker 3: The more you open it, the more you then open
Speaker 3: it more and more often. So for me, I use
Speaker 3: an app so that when I click Instagram, it does
Speaker 3: take about ten seconds for the app to open. It
Speaker 3: like comes up with this annoying animation that's smart, which
Speaker 3: I find really helpful because then it gives me ten
Speaker 3: seconds to think about is it actually in my slot
Speaker 3: where I can have my social media moment. And the
Speaker 3: other part of it is just being really discipline. I've
Speaker 3: actually found that saying to other people I'm going to
Speaker 3: do it really helps. Then they're like, you said you
Speaker 3: weren't going to go. Like if I say to my girlfriend,
Speaker 3: I'm doing ten three and eight or if I get
Speaker 3: them trying to do it with me, then it can
Speaker 3: help me stick to it.
Speaker 2: Well, good luck, hey, and I think you all just
Speaker 2: made us feel seen. You know, you're an expert in
Speaker 2: this area and you still struggle with it.
Speaker 3: It's so hard. This dove me stuff is so hard
Speaker 3: for the modern brain. Like our brain has craved dove
Speaker 3: mean for hundreds of thousands of years. Originally it could
Speaker 3: only access it from things like hunting and building and
Speaker 3: foraging for fruit. And now it can just get it
Speaker 3: that get our finger tips at any moment, and it's
Speaker 3: very difficult for our brain to manage.
Speaker 2: Let's talk more about domain in a minute, but first
Speaker 2: just set us up with what the dose effect is
Speaker 2: all about.
Speaker 1: What does it stand for?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so dose is this acronym for these four primary
Speaker 3: brain chemicals. We have dopamine, which is the super famous one.
Speaker 3: It creates all of our drive and motivation.
Speaker 1: So hot right now that this one isn't it?
Speaker 3: It needs to be hot, Like, it's so relevant to
Speaker 3: how humans are feeling. I actually think it's the main
Speaker 3: main factor impacting the whole of society s mental health
Speaker 3: is the disruption of dopamaine as a chemty. We then
Speaker 3: have the O, which is oxytocin. That's the one that
Speaker 3: connects humans together. We have serotonin, which is responsible for
Speaker 3: our mood and our energy levels. And then endorphins, which
Speaker 3: is a very useful chemical that can de stress our brain.
Speaker 2: And what are the benefits of activating dose into our life?
Speaker 1: How can it help us?
Speaker 3: For the majority of human history, these chemicals were extremely
Speaker 3: high and it led to our brain being in a
Speaker 3: much more positive, motivated, and connected state. And if you
Speaker 3: look at, for example, hunter gatherer tribes that are still
Speaker 3: operating today. And the reason I speak into that idea
Speaker 3: is the whole of our research at Dose Lab is
Speaker 3: focused on this thing called evolutionary mismatch, which is the
Speaker 3: idea our brain spent three hundred thousand years running around
Speaker 3: in a forest developing these chemicals. We didn't just develop
Speaker 3: them in the last twenty years when we found out
Speaker 3: about them. They've been our brain a long time. And
Speaker 3: if you go and visit these hunt to gatherer tribes
Speaker 3: and ask them or try and explain to them the
Speaker 3: ideas of depression and demotivation and poor attention spans and
Speaker 3: lack of connection, their brain ligy cannot comp this experience
Speaker 3: taking place because they're still living. How our brain is
Speaker 3: evolutionarily designed and we don't have to go back and
Speaker 3: live like hunting gatherers. But there are certain actions when
Speaker 3: you learn about the dose effects that you can add
Speaker 3: to your life that lead to our brain feeling much happier.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're kind of stuffed. We've stuffed ourselves in
Speaker 1: many ways, haven't we.
Speaker 2: If you go back to, you know, thinking about how
Speaker 2: we used to leave versus the world today and surviving
Speaker 2: and thriving.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about dopamine. Tell us more about this chemical.
Speaker 3: Effectively evolved in our brain to make us enjoy the
Speaker 3: experience of hard work. And if you take the example
Speaker 3: of them having to hunt for hours and hours to
Speaker 3: find food, like it would have been a hard thing
Speaker 3: to do to successfully find that food, and this chemical
Speaker 3: motivated us to do it and then gave us a
Speaker 3: really pleasurable experience when we successfully access food, so that
Speaker 3: we think that was fun, so we would do it
Speaker 3: again and again and we would survive. As a specie
Speaker 3: in the modern world, an example of earning your dove
Speaker 3: mein effectively would be something like changing and washing your bedding,
Speaker 3: which is a very niche example. But we all wake
Speaker 3: up in the morning one day and we look at
Speaker 3: our bed and the sheets are a bit crinkled and stuff,
Speaker 3: and we think I'd probably washed my bedding today, and
Speaker 3: then about a week later we're like, oh, yeah, actually,
Speaker 3: definitely need to wash my bedding. Now. We go through
Speaker 3: the hell of unbuttoning that douve do you guys call
Speaker 3: it a duvet and don dona, So you un button
Speaker 3: your doner. You go through the hell of jamming all
Speaker 3: in the washing machine, washing it, getting it dry, putting
Speaker 3: it all back on.
Speaker 1: Eventually, and it's a nightmare to get.
Speaker 3: You find yourself that evening, nine ten o'clock at night
Speaker 3: getting into your freshly washed bed, and you have that
Speaker 3: really enjoyable experience. You've never got into your freshly washed
Speaker 3: bed and thought, I really regret the fact I to
Speaker 3: wash my bedding today. It's this pleasurable experience. And doveman
Speaker 3: just evolved as a chemical to reward us for effortful
Speaker 3: actions that would help us as a human being. We
Speaker 3: do still do things that are effort in our modern world,
Speaker 3: but we've now invented a lot of ways to hijack
Speaker 3: that elevation of dove me through social media and sugar
Speaker 3: and alcohol and so on, and these are then causing
Speaker 3: that chemical to break down effectively and not operate as well.
Speaker 2: You know what, you just validated that clean shape thing
Speaker 2: because I have my joy list, as I call it,
Speaker 2: crawling into clean sheets. It makes me feel amazing, like
Speaker 2: a nice experience. And it's actually a joke in our
Speaker 2: family because my sisters are the same. We all love
Speaker 2: clean sheets and we want to stay in a hotel.
Speaker 2: We just kind of it can be rustic, but as
Speaker 2: long as it has clean sheet. So talk to us
Speaker 2: about the symptoms that lower dopamine or how do we
Speaker 2: feel and how does low dopmine show up in our lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so if we were doing the effort for actions,
Speaker 3: you'd find that you're waking up in the morning, you're
Speaker 3: super motivated and doing effortful things like making yourself a
Speaker 3: nice breakfast, a healthy breakfast, going out for a walk,
Speaker 3: going to work. It doesn't feel that challenging. You just
Speaker 3: kind of do it with these. If you're waking up
Speaker 3: and you're pretty low in dove, mean, everything is going
Speaker 3: to feel super hard. So the idea of even making
Speaker 3: your bed or trying to stay off your phone, or
Speaker 3: cooking food or doing xcess. It all feels like, oh,
Speaker 3: you can't be bothered. It's so much effort. That's the
Speaker 3: initial stage of low dose mean is like and I
Speaker 3: can't be bothered type mind. If we get really really
Speaker 3: low and dose mean, that's when we can feel quite depressed.
Speaker 3: Then we get into that state where doing anything feels horrible,
Speaker 3: even like showering or seeing people, whatever it might be.
Speaker 2: So you're saying the main causes of low dopmine in
Speaker 2: our society today are things like one, social media.
Speaker 3: Yeah, social media is definitely number one because of the
Speaker 3: immense frequency of interaction with it. It's not necessarily like
Speaker 3: it doesn't spike dopamine more than say alcohol, for example.
Speaker 3: But we're not all just like sipping alcohol all day
Speaker 3: every day. We might be, but that's quite rare if
Speaker 3: you're sipping alcohol all day every day. Whereas social media,
Speaker 3: it's from the moment we wait, the moment we're sleep.
Speaker 3: A lot of us are opening these apps at fifty
Speaker 3: to one hundred times a day. That over activation through
Speaker 3: the social media is definitely the number one factor. And
Speaker 3: then sugar and also alcohol big factors.
Speaker 2: And you also said you've got porn in there. I mean,
Speaker 2: you've got a quite bold I saw on your Instagram
Speaker 2: where you admitted that you used to watch porn and
Speaker 2: then definitely you switched it off.
Speaker 3: Porn was something like I grew up and I remember
Speaker 3: googling like a few words when I was like a teenager.
Speaker 1: And thinking, like many other men out there, yeah.
Speaker 3: I wonder what things like that look like without clothes on,
Speaker 3: And then came to discover as a teenager, oh wow,
Speaker 3: you can watch that video versions of these things that
Speaker 3: were in my imagination. And then for like ten years
Speaker 3: that was just something I interacted with. I had no
Speaker 3: idea it was necessarily bad for my brain. All my
Speaker 3: friends around me were doing it. All my friends around
Speaker 3: me still do it now. Like I don't know anyone
Speaker 3: as a man that doesn't watch it.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I've got a twelve year old and
Speaker 1: that horrifies me.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I sorry to say, he may have seen the
Speaker 3: which is sad, or he may in time. I think
Speaker 3: in the UK at the moment, the average age that
Speaker 3: a boy has seen its nine years.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's in Australia, which is wild.
Speaker 3: So it is something that you kind of when you're
Speaker 3: growing up as a boy, you don't think, oh, it's
Speaker 3: that bad for you. But when I came to really
Speaker 3: study neuroscience and when deep ins this research, I realized
Speaker 3: that this is really overactivating the system. And you experience it,
Speaker 3: particularly as a man like you watch it, it's very pleasurable.
Speaker 3: During afterwards, you very rapidly feel pretty deflated and almost
Speaker 3: like a bit of like a shameful guilt feeling just
Speaker 3: like comes over you. And it is something that over
Speaker 3: the last few years I really tried to cut out
Speaker 3: of my life and it has been phenomen or how
Speaker 3: big of an impact I actually had.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and good on you for speaking out about that.
Speaker 3: Thanks. I think it's one of those things that's having
Speaker 3: such a huge impact that it has to be talked about.
Speaker 3: Like I didn't grow up thinking, oh, I really want
Speaker 3: to be that guy that goes and talks about poor
Speaker 3: and that wasn't really in the game plan, but it
Speaker 3: feels like it just has to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, good on you.
Speaker 2: So talk us through some actions, as you call them,
Speaker 2: things that we can implement in our lives regularly that
Speaker 2: will help. Now when it comes to open what do
Speaker 2: we want to do? What's the approach. Do we want
Speaker 2: to regulate it? Do we want to rise it and fall?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: How do we what's the ideal that we're aiming for.
Speaker 3: You want to have in your mind the idea of
Speaker 3: earning it. Basically, you want to earn pleasure. That example
Speaker 3: of changing and washing your bed, and you're earning pleasure.
Speaker 3: None of it is enjoyable until the moment.
Speaker 1: You get I might do that every day now, Yeah, just.
Speaker 3: Rapidly changing and watching your bed, even if you take
Speaker 3: something like an easier example waking up and then making
Speaker 3: your bed really nicely and make sure it is all nice.
Speaker 3: And if you don't have lots of nice pillows and stuff,
Speaker 3: like making your bed a nicer thing to make so
Speaker 3: you have a bit of effort.
Speaker 1: I love that example.
Speaker 3: That is a good example. The big thing, first of all, though,
Speaker 3: for doping is this idea of phone fasting. Fasting from
Speaker 3: food is obviously like a massive phenomena now, and our phone,
Speaker 3: we really need to develop the relationship with it whereby
Speaker 3: we find it okay to be separate from it. I
Speaker 3: think if society could become comfortable with separating from our phone,
Speaker 3: it's like it would be a massive beneficial thing for
Speaker 3: mental health. And when we wake up first thing in
Speaker 3: the morning, avoiding the phone is like the number one
Speaker 3: thing if I could change one thing about the world,
Speaker 3: if I could put like a law in place that
Speaker 3: everyone had to follow to try and improve mental health,
Speaker 3: it would be wake up in the morning, not snooze
Speaker 3: your alarm, as tempting as it is, but that really
Speaker 3: depletes the dopamine. And then you get out of bed,
Speaker 3: You go and brush your teeth, you flash cold water
Speaker 3: on your face, you make your bed, and maybe you
Speaker 3: step outside for a few minutes, not even for very long,
Speaker 3: just so your brain's seen some sunlight, and then go
Speaker 3: into the phone. That's so different for your dopamine pathway.
Speaker 2: What is there any timeframe that you should be off
Speaker 2: your phone of a morning.
Speaker 3: I would say a minimum goal will be fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: That would be incredible. If you could wake up that's not.
Speaker 1: Very minutes before I was thinking going to stay an hour.
Speaker 3: That would be a good thing to work towards over time,
Speaker 3: Like if it was within your eMate to be able
Speaker 3: to wake up, do a little bit of that morning stuff,
Speaker 3: brushing your teeth and so on, and then go for
Speaker 3: a walk and have the whole walk before you come
Speaker 3: back on your phone. That would be incredible for your brain.
Speaker 3: The beneficial effects of also having the nature and the
Speaker 3: movement and the sunlight would be phenomenal. But if you
Speaker 3: started with fifteen minutes and then kind of built from there,
Speaker 3: that would be the goal.
Speaker 2: What do you do in the mornings? How does a
Speaker 2: neuroscientist approach the mornings?
Speaker 3: I do take my mornings like pretty seriously. To be honest,
Speaker 3: I think how your morning begins has a humongous impact
Speaker 3: on how the rest of the day is going to go.
Speaker 3: And it's really clear in the neuroscience that wherever that
Speaker 3: first source of dope mean is from, it really our
Speaker 3: brain really craves in that direction for the rest of
Speaker 3: the day. So if effort is what it gets doping from,
Speaker 3: it's going to pursue effort. If easy, quick pleasure is
Speaker 3: what it gets its doping from, you're heading in that direction.
Speaker 3: So this morning, for example, like I had this today,
Speaker 3: I wanted to feel good today. I woke up, I
Speaker 3: really want to snooze alarms when I wake up, so
Speaker 3: I kind of forced myself when along goes off to
Speaker 3: just sit on the side of the bed. My girlfriend
Speaker 3: finds it kind of weird. I kind of sit there
Speaker 3: with my head in my hand, just so I don't
Speaker 3: go back to sleep. I go to the bathroom and
Speaker 3: brush my teeth, cold water on my face, and then
Speaker 3: go downstairs. I step outside for like two minutes, and
Speaker 3: then when we have enough time, Like we had enough
Speaker 3: time this morning, so we woke up a bit earlier.
Speaker 3: We went out for a walk for maybe like an
Speaker 3: hour or something. We did actually quite a good walk.
Speaker 3: We actually saw a brown stake as well.
Speaker 1: An englishman.
Speaker 3: It was very small.
Speaker 1: I was imagining this massive show.
Speaker 3: She told me even brownsnakes that small can kill you.
Speaker 3: So I was there stressing good. But I thought, well,
Speaker 3: this is coming out hunter gathering, so this is actually
Speaker 3: good to have this experience. We went for a walk,
Speaker 3: came home with then did a little bit of breath work.
Speaker 3: I think breath work is really cool. It's very good.
Speaker 3: I'm someone that struggles with a lot of like overthinking.
Speaker 3: My brain is very rapid and worries about various things,
Speaker 3: and I find that deep breathing stuff you can do
Speaker 3: is really effective for calming the brain. Then I got ready,
Speaker 3: went on my computer for the first time.
Speaker 1: Do you do any specific breathing techniques.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's We have this particular YouTube channel
Speaker 3: we love following called Breathe as Sandy. That's a nice
Speaker 3: shower to Sandy. But it's so good and it's so
Speaker 3: easy to follow, and obviously it's all free, and we
Speaker 3: go on there and it's just basically deep inhalations through
Speaker 3: your nose, big exhalations. You do that for about sixty seconds,
Speaker 3: and then we hold our breath for ninety seconds and
Speaker 3: we just kind of cycle around that. And as I say,
Speaker 3: like my mind is just like quite stressed out, like
Speaker 3: I just slightly orient towards of mine that's quite like
Speaker 3: rigid like that, and it gives me this huge release.
Speaker 3: And for me are someone that was super hooked on
Speaker 3: a lot of the quick dove mein that's kind of
Speaker 3: what led me into this world. And the big deep
Speaker 3: breathwork stuff is the thing that I found closest to
Speaker 3: the high that the quick dopemin used to give.
Speaker 1: Mm Oh, I love breathwork.
Speaker 2: Talk to us a bit about flow state because I
Speaker 2: know you study this, you need to write fasis on it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: One of my thesis on this on the interaction between mindfulness.
Speaker 1: And flows regulate dopamine.
Speaker 3: Flow state is like really at the core of exactly
Speaker 3: what dove mean is all about. For our four hunter
Speaker 3: gather ourselves, they spent a huge amount of time in
Speaker 3: deep states of focus. Like if you were hunting, you
Speaker 3: were in the zone for hours. If you were foraging
Speaker 3: for fruit, if you were building shelter, if you were
Speaker 3: making a fire. It was always activities that had us deeply,
Speaker 3: deeply focused. And now it's a lot like kind of
Speaker 3: sitting at our desk working, what's happening, emailing, It's like
Speaker 3: so many eating at the same time. It's like so
Speaker 3: many activities at once. And it's really clear that when
Speaker 3: our brain enters these prolonged deep states of focus, it
Speaker 3: builds an absolute ton of dopamine, and evolutionarily that makes
Speaker 3: sense because the more it builds, the more motivated and
Speaker 3: focus you'd become. And in our modern world, what's actually
Speaker 3: happening is a lot of us have things that might
Speaker 3: be able to get us into flow state. This could
Speaker 3: be cooking, it could be making music, it could be
Speaker 3: in your work life, it could be something artistic or creative.
Speaker 3: And what we've basically found in our research is rather
Speaker 3: than people actually engaging with their flow state a lot
Speaker 3: of the time. Now we're actually watching people on social
Speaker 3: media engage with our flow state instead. And if you
Speaker 3: look at your social media feed, you'll notice there's like
Speaker 3: a pattern or a theme of videos that come up
Speaker 3: quite regularly. It might be cooking. Cooking is often one
Speaker 3: that people like to.
Speaker 1: Watch one skiing snow skiing.
Speaker 3: At the moment, yes, like those people are dancing dancing,
Speaker 3: and they're beautiful flow states, and we're kind of vicarious
Speaker 3: the experiencing flow state, but not getting the dove mean benefits.
Speaker 3: We're not actually physically interacting with the activity. And if
Speaker 3: you want to access flow state, if you look at
Speaker 3: your social media feed and have a thing that what
Speaker 3: is really coming up quite often, and then ask yourself
Speaker 3: the question am I actually engaging in this activity? Like
Speaker 3: people love watching cleaning videos for example, cleaning is unreal
Speaker 3: for our dopemin and rather than just like getting a
Speaker 3: bit of satisfaction as to watching someone else clean, if
Speaker 3: you can clean, then you're actually building it naturally.
Speaker 1: Will be back after the shot break with more from TJ. Power.
Speaker 2: One thing I do love about your book, and you've
Speaker 2: explained on this podcast, is just you know, comparing ourselves
Speaker 2: back to when we were cave people. And I think
Speaker 2: that's so important to you know, to get your head
Speaker 2: around when you talk about this, because that was like
Speaker 2: thousands and thousands of years.
Speaker 1: We evolve like that now modern day society.
Speaker 2: I don't know the actual like what if if we
Speaker 2: looked at modern day it would be what six minutes
Speaker 2: of one hour or something compared to how we evolve,
Speaker 2: you know, how there is that.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is.
Speaker 3: Honestly, we spent ninety nine point nine percent of human
Speaker 3: history outside that's yeah, basically all it's so new and
Speaker 3: we obviously and I hed think, oh no, because we've
Speaker 3: been evolving over the last few thousand years quite a lot.
Speaker 3: And we had the advent of farming twelve thousand years ago,
Speaker 3: so that really began to change things for humans because suddenly,
Speaker 3: like the pursuit of food wasn't the primary goal for everyone.
Speaker 3: It's only meant people could do other things. Then over
Speaker 3: the last few thousand years, things started to speed up,
Speaker 3: but still in all of those lifestyles before the advent
Speaker 3: of basically technology, life was still a much more physical experience.
Speaker 3: Humans were much more connected, We spent way more time outside,
Speaker 3: our nutrition was way more clean. And it's really in
Speaker 3: the last thirty years that we have radically changed things.
Speaker 3: We've moved to sedentary, digital lifestyles that are spent indoors.
Speaker 1: And non community.
Speaker 2: I think the other important thing, you know, and you
Speaker 2: talk about this in your book, is coming to like
Speaker 2: humans evolved and we exist because we were in tribes
Speaker 2: and we supported each other, whereas now we're so solo
Speaker 2: in that it's everything about the self rather than about
Speaker 2: the community.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. Like for most of human history, we
Speaker 3: were oxytocin driven, and that basically means we were driven
Speaker 3: by how every day can I be making sure that
Speaker 3: group survived so that you could survive as well. But
Speaker 3: it was all about the team. And as we've evolved
Speaker 3: in the last eight, ten to twenty years, things have
Speaker 3: become very dope being driven. Like our life is very
Speaker 3: in the pursuit of either success and progress and money
Speaker 3: that's a big priority for many of us, or is
Speaker 3: the pursuit of high levels of pleasure from alcohol and
Speaker 3: stimulation and stuff like that. And we really do need
Speaker 3: to consider how much community experiences are we having, how
Speaker 3: bonded are we to the people around.
Speaker 2: Us talk to us a bit about the eendorphins, why
Speaker 2: are these important for survival and perhaps some key principles
Speaker 2: as you write about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's super interesting, and dolphins really helped us with
Speaker 3: like extreme stress in our mind. If we were out
Speaker 3: there in the wild and you suddenly had like a
Speaker 3: rustling in the bushes, or you still and it was
Speaker 3: so small it wasn't wrestling, but I saw it.
Speaker 1: Did you get a photo of it?
Speaker 3: No phones with us phones. I actually yesterday went out
Speaker 3: for a walk in the afternoon and I didn't take
Speaker 3: my phone with me. And I've literally just got tipped
Speaker 3: to Australia a couple of days ago, and I ended
Speaker 3: up getting so lost in the bush that I had
Speaker 3: to go to a round them person's house and knock
Speaker 3: on their door and then ask them to direct me
Speaker 3: home because I didn't know.
Speaker 1: We've gone in full bush men mode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually do live this dose lifestyle away from
Speaker 3: the phones. Anyway, back to indorphins, back to in dolphins.
Speaker 3: So in that moment of physical danger, we needed a
Speaker 3: chemical that could rapidly take stress out of our mind,
Speaker 3: so you didn't like run away think oh my god,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna die. You just got in the zone and
Speaker 3: survived it. And as soon as our body experienced physical
Speaker 3: activation like running and sprinting and physically fighting, indorphins would
Speaker 3: flood our brain to take that stress and fear out
Speaker 3: of our mind. And whilst we're obviously not running away
Speaker 3: from bears anymore kind of this morning, it's really useful
Speaker 3: if we can activate this chemical more often, because obviously
Speaker 3: there's still many other stresses in our modern world.
Speaker 2: So how do we activate it? I mean, obviously exces
Speaker 2: is a big one. I mean, you know talk twenty
Speaker 2: runner and we know the runners high. What about because
Speaker 2: you write a bit about strength versus endurance versus motivation
Speaker 2: when it comes to activating dolphins, can you talk a
Speaker 2: bit about the importance of each of these.
Speaker 3: A variety is really important, Like humans evolved for both
Speaker 3: endurance activities and obviously lifting heavy things and moving things about.
Speaker 3: And it's really important to understand that endorphins activate most
Speaker 3: when you're putting your body under the most physical pressure
Speaker 3: it can experience. Like the faster I had to run
Speaker 3: away from that bear, effectively, the more endorphins I would need.
Speaker 3: So if you're doing an endurance activity, say you were swimming.
Speaker 3: We're at the harbor ESA, and I was told there
Speaker 3: are sharks in there, so don't swim in that harbor.
Speaker 3: But if you were swimming, it's in the moment that
Speaker 3: you decide I'm going to swim as fast as I can.
Speaker 3: That you're getting the biggest release With the more strength
Speaker 3: side of things, it'd be if you were in the
Speaker 3: gym and you were squatting. It'd be in the last
Speaker 3: two or three reps where you go past your failure
Speaker 3: point that you're getting a big activation. And it's really
Speaker 3: important to utilize that as a motivator when you're exercising effectively.
Speaker 3: So when you're the end of your swim, for example,
Speaker 3: or the end of a set, in that moment, if
Speaker 3: you can say to yourself, like, this final bit of
Speaker 3: really pushing is going to activate my endorphins, and knowing
Speaker 3: in your mind that that's going to be the absolutely
Speaker 3: best scientific way to destress your brain is really useful.
Speaker 3: Because I'll have days at work where I think, Wow,
Speaker 3: I'm like super stressed by a variety of different tasks
Speaker 3: or whatever it might be. Going to the gym won't
Speaker 3: be on my priority list. I think, oh God, I
Speaker 3: gotta go to the gym, but I'll know that if
Speaker 3: I go there and if I push myself in the evening,
Speaker 3: I'm going to feel super calm. And for many of us,
Speaker 3: we think destressing is kind of just sitting on the
Speaker 3: sofa and like having a glass of wine and watching TV.
Speaker 3: That's really just like a dopamine experience that's turning our
Speaker 3: brain off temporarily, but actually destressing our brain is physically
Speaker 3: activating the body.
Speaker 2: Now, this is a little personal question from me. I
Speaker 2: don't get the same dopamine hit Like I just ran
Speaker 2: a half marathon this year. Cool, Well, I have to
Speaker 2: run further to get the same meat hit.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Is that what's going on up here?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Effectively, you're building tolerance.
Speaker 1: To what creates what it's annoying for you.
Speaker 3: It is annoying for sure. Sometimes novelty is actually the
Speaker 3: best way to then get a new dopamine hit, Like
Speaker 3: it might be that something different could give you a
Speaker 3: great doping hit, Like if you did a triathlon and
Speaker 3: you include a cycling and swimming into the mix because
Speaker 3: of the novelty, you'd get a greater activation of dopamine.
Speaker 3: In a situation like that, it would have to be
Speaker 3: something more.
Speaker 1: I have to go for the marathon.
Speaker 3: You may have to go for the marith that is
Speaker 3: a long way, or maybe like a goal around pace
Speaker 3: would be like another thing that would provide a dopamine
Speaker 3: here as well.
Speaker 1: What about told us about how hate can increase in dolphins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the rule of endorphins is physical activation of
Speaker 3: the body, and hot environments, particularly something like a sauna,
Speaker 3: is actually pretty challenging for the body. Like if you're
Speaker 3: in there, the beginning is normally like, oh, it's not
Speaker 3: too bad in here, and then once you used to
Speaker 3: past ten minutes, it's like, well this is getting quite
Speaker 3: difficult and you very much want to leave. At that point.
Speaker 3: In that moment, your body is experiencing physical danger, like
Speaker 3: it doesn't know your body that it's just a sauna
Speaker 3: and you're going to get out soon. It might think, well,
Speaker 3: this is my new environment where I live, and this
Speaker 3: is going to be hard to deal with, So dolphins
Speaker 3: will begin to release. We have a very similar experience happening.
Speaker 3: Even when we take a warm bath, our body experiences
Speaker 3: this thing called the heat stress response, where again it
Speaker 3: doesn't know that that hot bath isn't going to get
Speaker 3: hotter and hotter, so it prepares for danger and releases.
Speaker 1: I mean, what is it? Pretty basic? Really when you
Speaker 1: think about.
Speaker 2: We probably over complicate things, but if we just come
Speaker 2: back to again evolutionary history, they're pretty basic things.
Speaker 3: They are basic things, and I really believe a lot
Speaker 3: of the solution to the mental health difficulty we're facing
Speaker 3: in the modern world is actually quite basic. And it's
Speaker 3: really interesting mental health. If you were experiencing a lot
Speaker 3: of difficulty in your mind and you ask yourself the question,
Speaker 3: have I experienced like a big life event recently that's
Speaker 3: causing this pain, Like if you'd been through someone passing away,
Speaker 3: or a divorce or a breakup or something like that,
Speaker 3: that would be a very natural cause of like a
Speaker 3: mental health difficulty. If you're not going through a big
Speaker 3: life event, but you're experiencing a lot of low mood
Speaker 3: and depression and anxiety, it's very likely that your lifestyle
Speaker 3: is actually causing that experience to happen and the brain
Speaker 3: is just out of balance. And if we add in
Speaker 3: the behaviors that our brain always utilize to balance it,
Speaker 3: we can feel a lot better.
Speaker 2: Just before we leave endorphins tops a bit about music
Speaker 2: and laughter, because these are two actions, as you call them,
Speaker 2: that I think we are just undervalued. We do.
Speaker 3: If I start with the laughter one. Laughter is super interesting.
Speaker 3: In all of our data at dose Lab, we ask
Speaker 3: people the question how much do you like laughing? From like,
Speaker 3: over twenty thousand responses, we have a nine point eight average,
Speaker 3: so as you would expect people like laughing. We then
Speaker 3: ask them how often do you feel you laugh? And
Speaker 3: we have a five point one average to that question.
Speaker 3: So people love laughing, but they're actually not laughing as
Speaker 3: often anymore because of technology, because so much of our
Speaker 3: social chill time is now behind the screen and not
Speaker 3: with other humans. And just with this idea of physical
Speaker 3: activation of the body, when you really really laugh, like
Speaker 3: you actually feel pain within your stomach and that is
Speaker 3: a huge endorphin releaser. And you'll notice that laughing is
Speaker 3: like the opposite feeling of being stressed. It's this really free,
Speaker 3: calm feeling. And asking yourself the question am I putting
Speaker 3: myself in enough laughter environments? Am I going to environments
Speaker 3: where I laugh regularly? Is a really key question.
Speaker 2: You know, we did an episode on laughter yoga Christy
Speaker 2: and it was one of the most listened to episodes,
Speaker 2: which is in my mind intinctively.
Speaker 3: People might feel drawn towards the idea maybe I'm actually
Speaker 3: like too serious now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I need to and it's something a bit different,
Speaker 2: and maybe I need to do it. And I think
Speaker 2: that maybe the marrying of the yoga with the I mean,
Speaker 2: I've never done it.
Speaker 3: Well, yoga like this whole stretching world is also physical
Speaker 3: activation of the bodies. You're getting like this double activation
Speaker 3: of endorphins.
Speaker 1: Actually I missed that one because the stretching is really important,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 3: Stretching is incredible. It's such a good activator of the
Speaker 3: chemical If you do yoga, for example, you reach those
Speaker 3: points we think, I hate this position, You're in a
Speaker 3: bit of physical difficulty, and it's in those moments again
Speaker 3: that endorphins are activating like crazy. I also think stretching
Speaker 3: is such a huge thing for longevity, and it's very
Speaker 3: clear that science and medicine is evolving a lot. And
Speaker 3: I really think over the next two to three decades,
Speaker 3: our capacity to live for longer periods of time is
Speaker 3: definitely going to advance as a specie. And if we
Speaker 3: get lucky enough to do eighteen ninety one hundred, whatever
Speaker 3: it might be. Being some one that has a physically
Speaker 3: able body is massive for your quality of life. It's
Speaker 3: probably number one for your quality of life. And if
Speaker 3: you can have like a short regular stretching practice in
Speaker 3: your life now, your last couple decades are going to
Speaker 3: be radically different.
Speaker 2: What are some of the key actions that you implement
Speaker 2: in your life around the dose idea?
Speaker 3: Around the dose I did it? I would say for me,
Speaker 3: the things I take most seriously is the phone fasting
Speaker 3: one hundred percent, like it's regular physical separation from the
Speaker 3: devices they can where it's literally not near me so
Speaker 3: I can't check it. I would say on oxytocin, like
Speaker 3: real presence with human beings, so like trying to make
Speaker 3: sure I really connect and bond with people when you
Speaker 3: listen carefully, when you make eye contact, when you physically
Speaker 3: connect with them, it builds it. I would also say
Speaker 3: gratitude is massive in my brain. I think gratitude is
Speaker 3: very calming for our thoughts. Our brains can really orient
Speaker 3: towards like what isn't going to plan in our life
Speaker 3: and get super stressed out, And when you really deeply
Speaker 3: think through what you're grateful you're like, oh, actually, there's
Speaker 3: quite a lot here that is going on.
Speaker 2: What practices do you have around that do you just
Speaker 2: mentally go, I'm really I'm really grateful for this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think when you feel gratitude, that feeling,
Speaker 1: and that.
Speaker 3: Feeling is like love in your body. It's very calming
Speaker 3: for our body because it's like so reassuring, like our
Speaker 3: brain and body can hear these different thoughts and it's like, wow,
Speaker 3: I've got all this stuff. This is amazing. And in
Speaker 3: terms of the practice, when I'm back home, I have
Speaker 3: this like walk that I do each morning. It's just
Speaker 3: like a religious practice I have every day, and there's
Speaker 3: a particular bench I like to sit on and I've
Speaker 3: kind of pared it to the idea of gratitude, so
Speaker 3: it like in my head, I see the bench and
Speaker 3: I know the gratitude is coming. And then I'll think
Speaker 3: through a few things I think through like some people,
Speaker 3: my girlfriend, my mom, my house, nature, whatever it might be.
Speaker 3: But the most important factor, and my girlfriend actually taught
Speaker 3: me to do this, is that when I ask myself
Speaker 3: the question of what I'm grateful for, I then ask why,
Speaker 3: and then I actually think through like why is it
Speaker 3: actually useful that I have that thing? Why is it valuable?
Speaker 3: And how does it make me feel? And going through
Speaker 3: that protocol regularly is super important. And social media is
Speaker 3: creating this experience in the modern brain whereby we are
Speaker 3: constantly thinking about what we don't have. We see people
Speaker 3: with better lives, more money, better holidays, better looking, better
Speaker 3: shopping stuff, whatever it might be. And gratitude is this
Speaker 3: constant reminder of, oh, I actually do have quite a lot.
Speaker 3: It's very key, especially if you have teenage kids or
Speaker 3: young kids. Teaching them to think in that way is crucial.
Speaker 2: Doesn't worry you where social media is going to put
Speaker 2: us as a society and culture.
Speaker 3: It's interesting social media because I obviously also see it
Speaker 3: from the lens of like I get to tell the
Speaker 3: world about dose because of my social media account. So
Speaker 3: I'm in this ironic position of saying, like, don't use
Speaker 3: social media, do much.
Speaker 2: My lips, right, We can dream of ski trips that
Speaker 2: we might want to go on, or see places, or
Speaker 2: you know, be exposed to things that we probably never
Speaker 2: would have been without it.
Speaker 3: For sure, So I think there's a learning element that
Speaker 3: is cool. I really think the short video component of
Speaker 3: social media is the most difficult part. I don't think
Speaker 3: society was that addicted to social media before COVID. I
Speaker 3: think COVID is where everything changed for everyone on their phones.
Speaker 3: Covid is when TikTok was invented. Over the next two years,
Speaker 3: everyone copied TikTok's form, and it's inside those short video
Speaker 3: scrolling experiences that we get the most rapid dove mean
Speaker 3: increase and it traps our brain inside there. And I
Speaker 3: think social media is something that definitely is advantageous to
Speaker 3: society from a learning perspective, but society needs to recognize
Speaker 3: as also having a lot of detrimental impacts. And this
Speaker 3: idea of less frequent openings of the apps, I think
Speaker 3: is the only answer.
Speaker 2: To be honest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, good luck with that, and you might have
Speaker 1: inspired a few listeners.
Speaker 3: We didn't do the singing.
Speaker 1: Oh, the singing, Yes, singing is important us.
Speaker 3: With the singing, I don't want to add that at
Speaker 3: the end of it, because it's so good for us singing,
Speaker 3: and I think lots of people have experienced that moment,
Speaker 3: like driving in their car on their own and singing
Speaker 3: a song and actually concluding in the head that they're
Speaker 3: quite a good singer and like dancing around in their car,
Speaker 3: Singing is phenomenal for that endorphin system. And if ever
Speaker 3: you're pretty stressed out, or if ever you know that
Speaker 3: you're going to have quite a stressful day ahead with
Speaker 3: work or whatever it may be, If when you're driving
Speaker 3: in your car or you're on a walk with music
Speaker 3: on or something, if you can sing, it's phenomenal for
Speaker 3: that chemical. The more you go for it, the more
Speaker 3: beneficially it's going to be. So whether that's in front
Speaker 3: of people, like if you're confident like that, that's cool.
Speaker 3: If you're like me and you're pretty bad at singing,
Speaker 3: just singing on your own, but really going for it
Speaker 3: is incredible for distressing.
Speaker 2: Your brain a lot more singing this year. Thanks for
Speaker 2: remembering that one, and sorry were mister it and thank
Speaker 2: you gratitude for you coming in today.
Speaker 1: Thank you on your holiday.
Speaker 3: I've loved it.
Speaker 2: Well, friends, listeners, fans. If you do want to read
Speaker 2: more about the Dose Effect, his book is by the
Speaker 2: same name.
Speaker 1: It is out now.
Speaker 2: It is actually really good, a great book for twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. You can dip in and dip out, learn
Speaker 2: a bit about all the different neurotransmitters and well how
Speaker 2: you can harness it to regulate your emotions this year. Hey,
Speaker 2: thanks for listening to this episode. Thank sure you rate
Speaker 2: and review it, tell us what you think anything else,
Speaker 2: head to bodyansoul dot com dot you follow us on socials,
Speaker 2: grab our print edition which is out in your local
Speaker 2: Sunday paper. If you do have any direct feedback, you
Speaker 2: can DM me at Felicity Harley across socials. Anyway, thanks
Speaker 2: again for listening and until next time, stay hopy.
Speaker 3: Hm