The Brain Mechanic: How to Optimize Your Brain for Peak Mental Performance, Neurogrowth, and Cognitive Fitness (Think Smarter, Not Harder Book 10) By: Peter Hollins

00:02:44 Get Moving and Sweating.

00:13:06 Bend and Stretch (Your Brain).

00:22:52 Express Yourself Physically.

00:56:59 How to Do a Dopamine Detox.

Hear it Here - https://bit.ly/3FNWZP4

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BHSHN48C

Sorry, you can’t actually “train your brain.” But you can force it to adapt, grow, and perform to it’s full potential.

The brain is the seat of our consciousness, identity, and higher thoughts. But it is also a flesh and blood machine that can wear down, grow tired, and malfunction. Learn how to prevent this and be your best.

Become quicker, sharper, smarter, more observant.

THE BRAIN MECHANIC is a guide to how to revitalize, polish, and fix-up your brain. The truth is, you’re probably underperforming mentally. It’s not personal, it’s just how you’re wired. This book provides a series of steps and plans for you to get on track to your best thinking days.

Drawing from the most recent, up-to-date research on brain health.

Peter Hollins has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author. He has worked with a multitude of individuals to unlock their potential and path towards success. His writing draws on his academic, coaching, and research experience.

Understand the everyday forces that fundamentally change your brain.

•The deep connection (and surprising) between the body and the mind.

•Everyday actions and habits to increase focus, discipline, and critical thinking.

•The emotional power of social bonds and ties, and how they empower us.

•Why we need breaks, and what we should actually do for a mental rest.

•Neuroplasticity - the real brain training - and how to do it daily.

•The vagus nerve and how it makes or breaks your sense of calm.

Fine-tune your thinking. Be your brain’s mechanic.

#AlbertEinsteinCollege #Alzheimers #Bartz #BDNF #BehavioralAddiction #Biodanza #Biology #Bosland #BrainMechanic #Breuning #CBT #ChantalVillemure #ChristopherBergland #ClinicalPharmacology #DMT #Dopamine #DopamineDetox #DOSEChemicals #DrCameronSepah #DSMDiagnostic #Endorphin #FNDC5 #LorettaBreuning #Magrone #Manninen #McQuaid #PNAS #PTSD #ResearcherJoyceGomesOsman #SaraLazar #Serotonin #RobertMSapolsky #YaakovStern #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #PeterHollins #TheScienceofSelf #TheBrainMechanic #NeurofitnessAndNeurotransmitterFine-Tuning #

The brain mechanic, how to optimize your brain for peak mental performance, neuro-growth, and cognitive fitness, written by Peter Hollins, narrated by Russell Newton. When you break your leg, you go to the doctor. When you experience depression, you go to the psychiatrist or psychologist (maybe). And when you’re having an existential crisis, you might even consult a spiritual teacher or life coach. Though we like to divide ourselves up into “body, mind, and spirit,” the truth is that human beings are complex wholes, and “mental health” is not different from “physical health” or even “spiritual health." It’s all just health in the end. It’s obvious when you think about it - There is no mind without a brain, and your brain is as much a physical part of you as your legs or spleen or immune system.

It doesn’t matter how high-minded your ideals, how strong your will, how lofty your dreams—if your physical being is compromised, then you can never reach your highest cognitive or intellectual potential. Although it might seem counterintuitive, one of the best ways to boost not just mental health but your brain’s ability to do what it does best (think!) is to take care of your entire organism—and that includes your physical body. Take care of your physical fitness, and your brain inevitably benefits, and vice versa—build a strong, healthy brain, and it will in turn help you maintain your physical health. This might seem an obvious point to some, but for others, we’re dedicated to all systems working hard, pushing the boundaries, and burning the midnight oil. This simply won’t work because we’re not steel and oil machines that can be pushed in that manner. In this chapter, we’ll talk about just how to prepare the body so that the mind can follow. The way we can increase our neurofitness actually has little to do with activities involving the brain; rather, it’s about actions that will benefit the brain as a side effect.

You will notice this theme throughout the book as well. It’s a point that bears repeating - As we understand our physiology and neurology better and better, it becomes clear that the brain adapts up or down to our daily tasks and lifestyle (and not to supposed brain training programs that purport to increase your intelligence). So how can we make sure it is adapting in a way we want? Get Moving and Sweating. Physical fitness can often be defined by how active you are, or how much exercise you engage in. And to be honest, that’s not a bad metric to use. The vast majority of us could stand to exercise a little more than we currently are, even beyond the purposes of this book to boost our brain functioning.

Of course, it’s been shown that exercise assists with general cognitive functioning, including memory. But sometimes when we talk about the benefits of exercise, it becomes difficult to separate what helps the brain versus what supports a healthy lifestyle in general. These elements are too intertwined to bother separating, but for instance, the body reacts to exercise by improving insulin response, reducing inflammation, boosting flexibility, increasing bone density, and becoming more resistant to injury or illness. Additionally, exercise makes you happier through the release of endorphins, it increases your self-esteem and confidence, and it even reduces the symptoms of stress and anxiety. But you probably knew those benefits already. When you exercise, what exactly happens in the brain? One notable study was conducted at Radboud University in the Netherlands.

Male and female subjects took a memory test, and then one-third of them exercised immediately after the test, one-third exercised four hours after the test, and the remaining third did not exercise after the test. The subjects were collected two days later to repeat the same memory test, and the group who exercised four hours after the initial test performed the best without fail. It appeared that exercise was effective in helping the brain stabilize and store the memory. This study seems fairly conclusive in itself, but it’s just part of a larger body of literature that shows surprising effects that transfer from below the neck to above it, so to speak. In another study done at the University of British Columbia, researchers found that aerobic exercise, the kind that gets your heart and your sweat glands pumping, also appears to boost the size of the hippocampus. Of course, this is the brain area involved in memory and learning. In another study, researchers concluded that even among people who did not meet the activity guidelines, each hour of light-intensity physical activity and achieving 7,500 steps or more daily was associated with higher total brain volume.

Those who moved more scored better on the memory and thinking tests, and every increase in physical activity by one standard deviation was associated with a thirty-one percent lower risk of dementia, the researchers reported. The association between physical activity and cognitive function remained consistent even after the authors accounted for the participants’ brain pathology and whether they had dementia, according to the study. Even though elderly populations will greatly benefit from staving off cognitive decline, there are marked effects for everyone else below the age of sixty, and in fact, as young as twenty years old. These new studies come from Yaakov Stern and his colleagues at Columbia University, and they found exercise increased executive functions, which are generally thinking skills that we use in our everyday lives, including our ability to regulate our behavior, pay attention, organize, plan, and achieve goals. Stern also found exercise caused physical changes in the thickness of certain areas of the brain, similar to prior findings involving the hippocampus. The participants were then randomized to undertake either a six-month aerobic exercise training program, or a six-month control program of stretching and core-strengthening exercises. Participants were all tested for cognitive parameters, including executive function, processing speed, language, attention, and episodic memory, before the exercise programs were initiated, and then at twelve and twenty-four weeks.

They also underwent MRI brain scans to identify any changes in brain structure. By the end of the six-month intervention, individuals who did aerobic exercise increased their executive function test scores by 0.5 points, which was statistically significant when compared with the 0.25-point improvement shown by the stretching and toning group. At forty years of age, the improvement in thinking skills was 0.28 standard deviation units higher among those who did aerobic exercise, compared with those who did stretching and toning. At age sixty, the difference was 0 standard deviation units higher, the researchers reported. The researchers stated, “Since a difference of 0.5 standard deviations is equivalent to twenty years of age-related difference in performance on these tests, the people who exercised were testing as if they were about ten years younger at age forty and about twenty years younger at age sixty." Interestingly, brain imaging at the start of the study and at week twenty-four suggested that aerobic exercise training was also associated with structural changes in particular regions of the brain - increased cortical thickness in the left caudal middle frontal area. The message is clear and resounding and really summed up in the title of this section - get sweating, get out of breath, and raise your heart rate to a point where you need to rest afterward.

Both directly and indirectly, you’re doing your brain good. And we haven’t even mentioned BDNF yet. Exercise is instrumental in the production of a brain protein called FNDC5, which eventually releases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF has been shown to aid general brain functioning and memory processing by preserving existing brain cells, promoting the growth of new brain cells, and encouraging overall brain growth. Human brains tend to shrink when we grow older, but exercise, which creates BDNF, can literally increase the size of your brain. The presence of BDNF is especially supportive of long-term memory. Most BDNF activity occurs in the brain areas most correlated with high-level cognition, learning, and recall—the hippocampus, cortex, and basal forebrain.

BDNF can also help proper sleep regulation and (though this is not a promise) can curb excessive appetite, which could lead to marginal weight loss. Conversely, the lack of BDNF can cause depression, and people suffering from Parkinson’s disease tend to have low levels of the protein. Researcher Joyce Gomes-Osman reviewed studies that associated exercise with different brain functions. Her goal was to find what “doses” of exercise were most effective for certain types of cognitive function. While Gomes-Osman stressed that there wasn’t a “magic number” that will unfailingly promote greater brain function, she did determine that elderly people who managed one hour of exercise three days per week showed the greatest improvement in brain functioning and speed. At this point, you probably don’t need any more convincing as to the virtues of exercise for your brain, but let’s leave with just one final vital piece of information. Your brain has the highest oxygen requirement of any organ in your body, up to twenty percent of your entire body’s usage.

When you improve your cardiovascular system through exercise and ensure that blood is pumping more efficiently through your arteries, you will have greater access to oxygen. It’s the same with water—the brain is, on average, composed of seventy percent water, and exercise typically makes you more aware of hydration. Feed your hungry brain by making sure its supply systems are optimized. There is one small caveat that comes with an issue few of us will ever encounter - too much exercise. As you’ll read later when we discuss stress, when exercise becomes so excessive and strenuous that it begins to create an anxious mental state, whether from burnout or discomfort, then your neurofitness goes straight down the toilet. Likewise, overtraining can weaken the immune system and create harmful inflammation that may completely wipe out any potential exercise benefits. However, overall, the maxim of healthy body, healthy mind holds true.

Bend and Stretch (Your Brain). We’ve talked about how the body directly affects the mind, but what about training the two systems in a synergistic manner? One increasingly popular method that might have sprung to mind is yoga, which has ancient roots as a complete system of development and maintenance of body, mind, and spirit all at once. I promise this discussion isn’t going to verge into “woo-woo” territory, but rather will look at the simple scientific evidence. By now, yoga has been extensively studied for decades for its effect on mood, well-being, and overall physical health. But more recently, researchers are discovering noteworthy cognitive benefits to getting out the yoga mat and limbering up for some downward-facing dog. Yoga postures, breathing techniques, and the cultivated focus on mindful presence in each moment can have subtle but profound effects on the way your brain works.

In fact, those with major depression or mental disorders like PTSD often show shrinking of the hippocampus. What better proof that mental health is really not so different from physical health? In general, scientists now understand that stress can reduce hippocampal (and overall brain) volume, but also that a person with a smaller hippocampus is more prone to developing certain mental disorders. So how do we know which caused which? The relationship between the size of these various parts of the brain and your mental state is likely complex, but one thing is clear - When you take care of your brain health, you reap cognitive, emotional, and intellectual rewards while fending off the onset of age-related degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. This is turn can feed back into physical health, with physiological and behavioral changes mutually reinforcing one another. Granted, many of these studies are ongoing and their results should be interpreted with a grain of salt.

Small sample sizes and cross-sectional designs means it’s a little harder to tell if yoga alone is indeed the cause of the findings—it may be true that those who naturally have more gray matter find themselves doing more yoga, for whatever reason. There may also be a third variable, like socio-economic status or education, that affects both the likelihood of doing yoga and having greater cortical volume. Further, there’s the question of what aspect of yoga actually benefits our wayward brains and causes relaxation; is it the physical act alone with the increased blood flow, BDNF, and rise in endorphins after the fact, or is it rather the mental space and clarity that one practices while engaging in such a peaceful activity? Later in this book, we’ll explore some interesting evidence for the value of stretching, since it enhances endorphin production and protects the brain—whether you’re doing a professional downward-facing dog asana or not! Regardless, few would argue that taking the time to breathe, center yourself, and stretch a few times a week could fail to have benefits, especially when practiced over years. For some people, yoga is primarily a spiritual or even social discipline, and it’s this that ultimately provides the benefits. However, as we ponder the specific causes for these improvements, do we really need to get caught up in the “why” when we have a very clear “how”?

This type of analysis might cause too much paralysis, when sometimes we can just start doing rather than contemplating. It turns out that this action-based mindset is key to achieving the entirety of the life you want, not just an improved and optimized brain. What remains to be seen in future research is whether the promising effects described here can be repeated on wider scales, or indeed if those with reduced hippocampal volume or gray matter can actually reverse their condition by doing yoga. If so, it may be more common in the future to find age-related therapies leaning heavily toward yoga and meditation instead of chronic medication. In the meantime, though, there is nothing to be lost by introducing a little yoga into your own routine. Ask any devoted yogi, and they may wax lyrical about the benefits—even beyond those that could be measured quantitatively by brain studies. Proponents will describe the sense of calm and present-mindedness that comes with regular practice.

It’s a form of self-care, a way to quiet a busy mind, and a wonderful method for nurturing that mind-body connection and developing body awareness. Yoga is like moving meditation for some. Yoga is great for stress reduction and maintaining flexibility. But over and above all this, it simply feels good. In this chaotic and overstimulated world, many people find enormous benefit to simply drawing in fresh breath, stilling the mind, and getting into their bodies. This is something we will certainly revisit when we talk about mindfulness and meditation as a supplement to our daily routines. It could be this ability to reconnect with the body that’s key.

We all live in a hyper-cerebral world, surrounded by noisy distractions and abstract concepts, symbols, and language, and most likely we work in occupations that center on monotonous mental and intellectual labor. We spend days sitting or driving, browsing online, watching TV—in effect living in the world as though we were merely giant brains propped up by the life support systems we call our bodies. We may live this way for decades, only engaging with our bodies or emotions when they fail to behave as we think they should, or if we fall ill. But a more holistic perspective reminds us that we are our bodies. Nothing can convince you more of the primacy of your physical being than falling seriously ill. In that situation, it doesn’t matter how much personal development you’ve indulged in, or how dazzling your career is. We live in a world dominated by the brain.

But, paradoxically, it’s in cutting our cognitive selves off from our bodies that we actually undermine our ability to think well, make decisions, solve problems, or really create. Express Yourself Physically. We know that any activity producing a modicum of sweat is going to have surprising neurological benefits. But another beneficial, perhaps neglected, practice is dancing. Dancing is exercise, but it is not goal directed, not arbitrary and abstract in the way that a bicep curl or a ten-second sprint is. Dancing can be lyrical, expressive, joyful, sociable, exhilarating—it’s the ability to move the body poetically and to gain pleasure from the sheer privilege of being alive and able to move and breathe. Dancing is a hobby, a passion, and an art, but it can be so much more than that.

Rhythmically moving the body to sounds and responding dynamically to music is not just fun, it is extremely good for your health, too. When you dance, you’re engaging in cardiovascular exercise, you’re breathing deeply, and maybe you’re even breaking a sweat. We know this second part is always beneficial to our mental and cognitive health, but the part about expression and creativity cannot be understated. Engaging in artistic activity lifts you emotionally. In fact, dance is increasingly employed as a therapy for alleviating the symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses. Dancing is the whole package—when you move this way, you’re engaging your emotional, physical, and mental self. Your body moves and your heart beats.

You smile and feel great, uplifted by the beat and enjoying your partner dancing with you, if you have one. If you’re taking a dance class, maybe you have to focus on dance moves and pay close attention to coordinate your motor functions properly so you can execute complex movements right on time with the music. And, if you’re a real dance enthusiast, you may even experience an ecstatic moment of selflessness, of total flow and absorption in the moment, more closely resembling prayer or deep meditation than a boring old treadmill workout. In dance/movement therapy (DMT), the physical movement of the body is understood as a language in its own right, able to communicate and express our experience just as well as words. Dance is a way to remind ourselves that we all possess this vocabulary. The interesting thing is that when we reconnect with our physical selves this way and “change channels,” our cognitive functioning only benefits. Stress levels are reduced, endorphins are released, and we reap the emotional, social, and even spiritual benefits of having explored our full range of human expression.

Along with this come feelings of freedom, liberation, confidence, and self-assuredness. Multiple studies have shown that dance can improve memory and general cognitive function, specifically boosting spatial and working memory. Verghese and his colleagues at Albert Einstein College of Medicine even found a seventy-six percent drop in risk of dementia onset when their participants danced regularly. Other studies show that dancing can also reduce the symptoms of depression. We already know that maintaining physical activity as we age is vital for keeping motor and mental skills intact, but a more holistic practice like dancing can also boost mood, perceptual abilities, memory, and other cognitive skills. On top of all that, it can be a deeply rewarding artistic or social practice. It might seem like a tall order, but dancing does all of this by stimulating nerve growth factors in the brain (BDNF, as we have covered).

These factors are responsible for the health of sensory neurons. Essentially, dancing enhances the connections between the cerebral hemispheres—the left and right parts of the brain—and thus boosts neuroplasticity, which in turn bolsters the ability to make new neural connections. Naturally, this is great news for anyone trying to enhance their ability to change and adapt their brains—i.e., learning new things! Though dance is now being used to treat degenerative neurological conditions like stroke and cerebral palsy, you can reap the benefits too. Don’t worry if you’re uncoordinated or feel like you’re not “good” at dancing. All that’s required is that you move (it won’t hurt to try to enjoy yourself, either) in a way that satisfies you emotionally—that makes you feel free-spirited and uninhibited. If you’re studying for an exam, you may get more benefit from taking a dance break than trying to cram an extra twenty minutes in.

In this way, you are activating different parts of your brain, increasing blood flow to your brain, creating a vivid memory, and simply waking up. If you’re shy, put on some loud music when you’re home alone, draw the curtains, and let go in complete darkness. You could actively imagine your brain making all its wonderful connections between the music, your breathing, your heart rate, and the movement of your muscles. Make it a “moving meditation,” or simply kick back and do whatever you want, so long as it makes you feel good. You may find yourself energized both physically and psychologically by the time you sit back down to study again. A long-term dance practice may be as beneficial as yoga. Join a dance group you like the look of—why not try a class in ballet, tap, salsa, ballroom, hip hop, or something completely different, like Tahitian hula.

If choreography is not your idea of fun, try freeform dance classes that encourage expression and spontaneous movement, like Biodanza. This is movement that’s less about choreography and more about lived, real physical expression in the moment. You forget about the office, about your worries, about everything, and simply sink into the music, letting your body take the lead for once. Yes, you may feel silly at first, but once you drop the self-consciousness, your brain will thank you. If that’s a little too out there for you, why not just head out with some friends to a place where you can simply feel the music and get lost in a crowd? “Ecstatic dancing” may sound very serious indeed, but it’s nothing more than taking a few deep breaths, feeling the music inside, and allowing your body to respond to it as it will. Like with yoga, you may find it tempting to try to pinpoint exactly what part of the act is truly blessing your brain.

Is it the artistic creativity, the sense of liberation, the physical sweat aspect, or the emotional satiation that often follows? Well, it’s all of them, and they all work together. The body is the brain, and we forget this at our own peril. If boosting your brain health is your goal, which form of physical exercise should you choose? Well, at its most basic, any form of movement is better than being sedentary, but beyond that, the choice is yours. If yoga feels like a boring, pressure-filled obligation that you don’t really enjoy, then don’t force it. Likewise, if you prefer to get your heart rate up by hiking and wouldn’t be caught dead in a CrossFit gym, that’s okay too!

Your body was born to move, and your brain is happiest when your body is doing just that. Pick an activity that stimulates and challenges you but isn’t too difficult that you feel demotivated or overwhelmed. Pick something that fits your lifestyle, your stage of life, your skillset, your preferences, and the needs and limits of your unique body. Takeaways - •Physical fitness begets neurofitness. It may be tempting to separate the two, but in truth, they are inexorably linked to your optimized thinking and functioning. We may not be able to specifically train the brain, but by training our bodies in specific ways, we can effect the changes that we want. •The first step to physical fitness is to work up a sweat on a regular basis.

Of note, this should be aerobic exercise that gets your blood pumping and your heart rate up. This also increases the blood flow to your brain, kicks off a host of metabolic and hormonal changes, and energizes you. It’s been shown that aerobic exercise can increase the size of parts of our brains responsible for higher cognitive functions and memory, and can even fight cognitive decline and brain diseases. The brain is a hungry, hungry organ, so we should make sure the systems that feed it are optimized and healthy. •Yoga and dance have also been found to be effective in increasing neurofitness. This may be surprising because they are not strictly seen as aerobic activities. Sure, dance can be as strenuous as running, but part of the benefit with these modes of exercise is the ability to express emotions in a gratifying way.

This is demonstrated by the fact that these modes do a lot to battle and prevent depression and anxiety. How often are we able to truly unplug, let go, express ourselves, or reflect upon our lives? The links are not one hundred percent definitive, but the benefits have been documented time after time, so perhaps the “why” is not as important as the “how." •Emotional wellness and calmness are a train of thought that makes one think of mindfulness and meditation, and it turns out that these methods do provide some of the same avenues to brain boosting. The restorative power of dance and yoga actually uncovers another rabbit hole we will dive into later - self-care. Chapter 2. Neurotransmitter Fine-tuning. Understanding DOSE Chemicals .

We’ve looked at the brain on a structural level and seen how it’s part and parcel of our entire physical being. In this chapter, let’s zoom in and look at the functioning of the brain—which is mediated and manifested by the release of certain brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. These are the brain’s electrochemical messengers. It’s strange to realize that every one of your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs originates and reveals itself as a chemical in your brain. The way you communicate, solve problems, set goals, and perceive yourself comes down not just to this or that brain chemical, but also to their overall relative proportion. Most cakes contain flour, eggs, and milk, but the relative amount of each of these ingredients determines whether the cake is good or not. Similarly, all human brains contain these same neurochemicals, but their relative amounts make a big, big difference!

Oxytocin. This neurotransmitter is all about human connection and bonding. It’s released any time we are close to others, and because it feels so good, it has encouraged our species to be pro-social and empathetic. Oxytocin has found to be high in pregnant women during and after labor (the chemical stimulates uterine contractions as well as breastfeeding) and in men and women during orgasm. Interestingly, it’s low in teenagers and those living isolated lifestyles. This “love hormone,” which is released any time we bond, cuddle, or have sex, is associated with better mental health, monogamy, more satisfying relationships, and characteristics like loyalty and trustworthiness. It’s not as simple as that, though.

Giving birth, breastfeeding, having sex, or being in love release potent doses of oxytocin, but you don’t need to have such full-on experiences to add little oxytocin bubbles throughout the day. Any nonsexual contact will do the trick, including hugs, cuddles, holding hands, massages, and eye contact. You can even stimulate oxytocin release by giving yourself a small massage. You can also - •Give a gift. •Tell someone you love them. •Do yoga or other mind-body exercises. •Listen to music that makes you feel good.

•Enjoy a leisurely meal with friends or family. •Try loving kindness meditation. •Have a hot bath. •Play with a pet. •Have a good conversation with someone you care about. One fool-proof way to build more oxytocin in your life is to consciously create feelings of trust. Trust encourages oxytocin release.

If you deliberately and strategically seek to be generous with your time and trust in others, they will respond in kind. Follow your gut a little more, take time to get to know people, and have a little faith in the good intentions of others. Finally, stop thinking in terms of transactions and what you can get from people (or what they can get from you!) and think in terms of service, relationships, and interdependence. Consciously and deliberately cultivating trust this way navigates a path between too little oxytocin and too much, and finds that sweet spot of connection and contentment. Serotonin. Serotonin is a powerful mood regulator and plays multiple roles in the body’s homeostatic balance, not just as a mood stabilizer, but with nutrient absorption in the gut, immune health, and blood circulation. Serotonin is sometimes called the “confidence molecule” because high levels are associated with lower rejection sensitivity, enabling an individual to place themselves in situations that will increase self-esteem, which in turn means a person deliberately seeks situations that can create feelings of competency and self-esteem.

When serotonin is high, you feel happy, focused, confident, energized, and “in the zone." You don’t worry, you’re socially engaged, you sleep better, and you overall feel safe and assured in the world. You’re resilient. Without serotonin, you’re depressed, fearful, and unmotivated. You don’t take risks or put yourself “out there” because you lack faith in your own abilities to rise to new challenges or cope with change. Loretta Breuning is the author of the bookHabits of a Happy Brain and founder of the Inner Mammal Institute. According to Breuning, "onfidence triggers serotonin.

Monkeys try to one-up each other because it stimulates their serotonin. People often do the same." But serotonin also creates feelings of confidence, meaning that it’s a catch-22. If you have low self-esteem, it’s a sign your serotonin could be low, too. Breuning believes that to maintain healthy levels of serotonin, we need to support our need for respect and status. How? •Focus on your wins and achievements, and don’t dwell on failures that can’t be changed.

Instead, look at how far you’ve come. Just a few moments of reflecting on your past achievements can give you a boost of serotonin and make you feel proud of yourself. •As with oxytocin, challenge yourself to try something out of your comfort zone now and then. (Soon, we’ll see how setting goals can also boost dopamine levels.). Every new challenge is a chance to show yourself you can do it, and build feelings of competence. •Revisit the way you feel respected. Your early experiences with what won you respect and esteem established certain neural pathways, but not all of these are healthy or valid.

You can respect your need for status while questioning the way you get these needs met. You might have needed to put others down in the past or compete viciously, for example, but what other healthier ways could you feel good about yourself today? •Believe in yourself. This means acknowledging that it’s also okay to want some admiration, respect, and acknowledgment for your achievements. Start by giving that to yourself. •Exercise. Research shows that even a little can boost your feelings of confidence and wellbeing.

•Eat better. Because most of your body’s serotonin is made in the gut, your diet is important. Eat an unprocessed diet rich in fruit and vegetables, wholegrains, and good quality proteins, plus fermented foods and probiotics (such as kimchi, kombucha, or yogurt). •Reflect on difficult situations in the past, but only those that you survived and overcame. This will reaffirm for you that you can do the same in the face of current adversities. •Go outside and get just twenty minutes of natural sunlight on your skin, which has been shown to boost serotonin levels. •Connect to your leadership potential.

What do you know and what can you teach others? How can you inspire others with your sense of purpose? •Confidently assert boundaries. Sometimes, confidence looks like being clear and assertive about our limits and needs. Serotonin is created in the gut, so sometimes “trusting your gut” is a way to foster more confidence and self-courage! Simply saying “no” and meaning it can provide a boost of confidence-enhancing serotonin. Just like with oxytocin, serotonin levels are best balanced consistently and gradually.

Don’t try to change all at once; rather, find small steps you can take to nurture your sense of self-pride over time. If you find you’re being too hard on yourself, pause and remember all the amazing things you’ve achieved and give yourself permission to feel good about them. Endorphins. The role of these neurochemicals is to mask pain and make it easier to tolerate discomfort. The word comes from endogenous (meaning “from within”) and morphine (a pain-relieving opiate). These natural painkillers are closely connected to the fight-or-flight system and kick in any time we face pain or stress. However, we also secret endorphins during eating, sex, and exercise (i.e., the famous “runner’s high”—the brief euphoria runners experience when they push themselves to their physical limits).

•Have a nice hot sauna. •Try aromatherapy. •Volunteer. •Spend time with friends. Increased endorphin levels can actually encourage dopamine release (more on this shortly), reminding us that all four of the DOSE neurochemicals interact and work together—just like those cake ingredients! But there are limits. “Endorphins evolved for survival,” says Breuning.

“If you were high on endorphins all the time, you would touch hot stoves and walk on broken legs." In other words, remember that endorphins are primarily there for emergency situations, so don’t overdo it. Dopamine. We’ve left the most interesting neurotransmitter for last. Dopamine is one seriously misunderstood molecule! In his book Behave - The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, Robert M. Sapolsky describes a study that concluded that when a monkey received a reward after pushing a lever, the monkey’s brain released dopamine. The next time he pushed the lever, however, his brain released dopamine before the reward even appeared, showing that dopamine is not a feeling of satisfaction with a reward, but the pleasant anticipation of one.

Sexual arousal, for example, can result in greater dopamine levels than actual sexual fulfilment, just as the act of ordering a delicious meal in a restaurant may feel more emotionally satisfying than taking the first bite! Thus, dopamine is about the expectation of reward and fulfilment and is powerfully connected to reward and a feeling of purpose. There’s a reason this brain chemical evolved. Every time we approach a reward (i.e., something that increases our survival), we trigger dopamine release that basically tells our brains, “This is good! Keep doing this!" So, when a predator is hunting a tasty prey animal, their dopamine levels are through the roof, and this is associated with a system-wide increase in energy levels—energy that is needed to catch the prey. Dopamine increases a sense of alertness and focus, but the object of that focus can change depending on who you are.

Any time we engage in potentially rewarding behavior (eating, having sex, accomplishing a goal), we get a burst of dopamine. Whenever dopamine flowed when you were young and in your formative years, certain neural connections in your brain cemented themselves, so you were wired up to seek out those sensations again. Dopamine is a motivation chemical, prompting you to seek out certain behaviors that feel good—and that persistence can take endless forms - •Scrolling through profile pics on a dating app. •Striving toward a professional qualification. •Chasing that rush you get from winning at gambling. •Figuring out how to finally solve a challenging brain puzzle. In every case, dopamine is there to spur you on to take action toward a goal you are focused on, and it spurs you by making you feel good.

A dopamine release is like a little reward along every step of the way, motivating you, encouraging behaviors, and even creating long-term habits (in this case, a habit is - “this felt good in the past, so I will keep doing it in the present”). Dopamine explains why it feels good to have a goal and work to reach it—and it also explains why those with low dopamine can suffer from depression, low motivation, or lack of interest in life. When it comes to dopamine, then, it is not simply a question of creating more. Rather, it’s about how you use it and what role it plays in your life. After all, a heroin addict and a highly motivated med student may both have overactive dopamine release, but for very different reasons and with very different results! How do you optimize your own dopamine levels? According to Breuning, there are plenty of unhealthy ways to increase dopamine, including overconsumption of caffeine and sugar, and recreational drug use.

But there’s one primary healthy way to boost it, and that’s to "mbrace a new goal and take small steps toward it every day. Your brain will reward you with dopamine each time you take a step. The repetition will build a new dopamine pathway until it's big enough to compete with the dopamine habit that you're better off without.”. Your goals can be big or small, personal or professional, long term or short term—in fact, it’s probably a good idea to mix them up. What matters is being proactive in your goal setting and to take steps toward it—it’s these steps that create the sense of dopamine-mediated reward. A Few Things to Keep in Mind. While the goal itself is important, it’s the little rewards that lead to it that help cement those dopamine pathways.

Break down big tasks into smaller ones and pause to reward yourself often, enjoying your sense of accomplishment and movement. Challenge is good, but don’t put the fulfilment of the goal too far off into the future. If it’s difficult to create a feeling of reward, reconnect to your higher purpose behind the goal. This will make you feel that your actions are still connected to the goal, and dopamine will be released. You’ll know that you have an issue with dopamine if you feel uninspired, demotivated, bored, or uninterested in life in general. If you notice this happening, it’s time to embrace a new goal and ask yourself - what’s the first smallest step I can take toward that goal? Notice how you feel after you take that step (hint - probably a lot happier!).

How to Do a Dopamine Detox. When the brain’s dopamine reward-system is misaligned or focused on an unhealthy target, it can lead to addictive behavior. With this understanding, there is now a growing trend to partake in “dopamine fasting,” a concept first coined by Dr. Cameron Sepah. However, the term can be misleading since the program isn’t about fasting at all and creates the misconception that dopamine itself is something harmful that needs to be reduced or eliminated. This is not the case! Dopamine fasting, Sepah told the New York Times, is a behavioral therapy approach that attempts to disconnect from unhealthy stimuli that disrupt our dopamine system, such as push notifications and other digital cues and alarms. The idea is that this constant onslaught of stimuli trains our brains in unhealthy ways; every time our smartphone pings, we get a dopamine burst ...which cements that neural pathway and has us addictively and compulsively checking our phone, hoping in some way for another “reward."

A dopamine fast, then, is a misnomer since it is not a fast from dopamine, but rather a re-calibration exercise. With dopamine fasting, the idea is to regain dopamine sensitivity and find joy in simple, healthy things again. Instead of needing behavior like emotional eating, gambling, excessive porn use and masturbation, novelty seeking, recreational drugs, and addictive gaming, dopamine fasting attempts to reset our habits and untrain our neural pathways. In CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), this technique is simply known as “stimulus control." When you experience pleasure (dopamine release) during a behavior, you are more likely to repeat it—the stimulus that triggers the behavior and your response become paired, i.e., the behavior is conditioned. For example, you release dopamine every time you scroll through social media. The stimulus (seeing your phone on the table) now produces a conditioned response (you cannot help but pick up the phone and scroll mindlessly).

A dopamine fast is about breaking these conditioned responses—which necessarily means changing your dopamine levels. If you have noticed any addictive or compulsive behaviors in yourself (given the way that technology is designed, it’s almost inevitable), you can do a dopamine fast or “detox." You’ll know you have a problem if your habits are getting in the way of your responsibilities and obligations or are causing you distress. The process is simple ...but not always easy. Step 1 - Remove the Stimulus.

Make the thing that triggers the addictive behavior difficult or impossible to access.

You could try to physically remove your smartphone from your presence, install website-blocking tools on your desktop, or schedule certain commitments to coincide with the ties you’re most likely to want to engage in the behavior.

If food is a problem, you could make sure to keep forbidden snacks out of the kitchen.

If gaming or gambling is the problem, you could make sure that you don’t have access to the internet outside of work hours or take a route home that avoids passing by a casino, for example.

Step 2 - Practice Urge-Surfing.

The impulse to engage in the habit will still arise, because your brain has been wired to expect reward coming from that behavior.

Furthermore, it’s not always possible to avoid being exposed to the triggering stimulus.

So when it does arise, instead of trying to avoid or escape these feelings of craving, try to “sit with” them.

“Ride the wave” by merely noticing the urge and realizing that you can experience it without necessarily needing to succumb.

Remind yourself that every time you choose not to engage, you weaken that neural pathway.

With a spirit of non-judgment, keep on becoming aware of the impulse, breathe, and allow it to pass—because it does!

Notice how it increases, reaches a peak, and then dies off again.

Each time you do this, you train a different response in yourself.

It does get easier.

Step 3 - Reconnect to Your Values.

In the throes of addiction, it can feel like all you want is to engage in the behavior, and nothing else matters.

But this is just proof of how powerfully motivating a chemical like dopamine can be!

As you practice Steps 1 and 2, simultaneously see what you can do instead of the compulsive behavior.

To do this, remind yourself of what you actually value.

Is it health, knowledge, connection with loved ones?

Chances are, the habit or addictive behavior doesn’t ultimately bring you closer to these things, and probably even undermines them.

“Doing nothing” is difficult, if not impossible.

But opting instead for a behavior that is aligned with your values will help you normalize your sense of purpose and motivation.

Look at all the time in your schedule you save by cutting back on dopamine-spurring behaviors and ask how you can better use that time instead.

Perhaps you can take good care of your health (cook a good meal, exercise, go for a walk), socialize, learn something new, tidy up your home, create or enjoy art, read, listen to music, relax or even sleep, travel, do a hobby, or give back by volunteering.

Remember that dopamine fasting is NOT - •Trying to live a life of little pleasure (it’s about optimal levels of dopamine!).

•Trying to reduce dopamine (rather, you are reducing compulsive behavior).

•Being acetic, stopping work, or going on a sabbatical (you are not retreating from life).

Dopamine fasting is more about balance.

Exactly how you practice dopamine fasting will depend on you, your “addictions,” your goals, and your unique situation.

But here are some ideas to get you started - •Look at your schedule and block out times of day when you won’t engage in the behavior, and limited times when you will.

For example, you could decide that you only watch TV for an hour on Saturdays and Sundays, no more.

Nobody can tell you exactly what your limits should be; however, it’s important that there are limits.

•Seek balance.

Try to moderate your exposure to extreme over-stimulation, such as heavily processed and addictive foods, intense gaming or TV, highly emotive online news content, manipulative advertising, lots of novelties, or thrilling, high-arousal, adrenaline-inducing activities.

•Try not to eliminate behaviors but replace them.

You might find that simple distraction at the peak of your craving is enough to divert your attention until more self-control kicks in.

For example, install an internet blocking app on your computer and put a book next to it so that you are encouraged to pick it up to entertain yourself instead.

Takeaways - •Neurotransmitters are the brain’s chemical messengers, and there are four major types, called DOSE chemicals, that greatly influence our overall experience - dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins.

•Oxytocin is the love hormone responsible for feelings of bonding, connection, empathy, and safety.

You can increase oxytocin by consciously fostering trust in your social network and being more trustworthy yourself.

Think in terms of service, relationships, and interdependence and strategically trust those around you to create warm connections.

•Serotonin is a mood stabilizer and “confidence hormone,” which is all about self-esteem, self-determination, and competence.

To increase serotonin levels, believe in yourself, confidently assert boundaries, have the courage to lead, and dwell on your achievements rather than your failures.

•Endorphins are the brain’s natural painkillers and mitigate anxiety and depression, boost self-esteem, modulate appetite, and even enhance immune response.

To increase it, we can try vigorous exercise, spicy foods, stretching, or laughing.

•Dopamine is the brain’s reward molecule and involves the anticipation of future pleasure, which cements our habits.

We can create more dopamine any time we set a new goal for ourselves and reward ourselves with every baby step toward that goal.

•If you battle with addiction, a dopamine detox or fast might help.

Try to avoid or remove the triggering stimulus, but when you inevitably encounter it, practice “urge surfing” and facing discomfort without succumbing.

Reconnect to your values to replace the compulsive behavior with something that genuinely brings benefit to your life instead.

This has been The Brain Mechanic. How to optimize your brain for peak mental performance, neuro-growth and cognitive fitness.

Written by Peter Hollins. Narrated by Russell Newton.