Happy Brain Chemicals: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphin

Discover your happy brain power in seconds! Help others discover their power over their dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphin. Here's a fun way to start making peace with your inner mammal.


The brain chemicals that make us feel good are inherited from earlier mammals. They evolved to do a job, not to make you feel good all the time. When you know their job in the state of nature, your ups and downs make sense. More important, you can rewire yourself to enjoy more dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphin in sustainable ways. You can reduce cortisol too!

It’s not easy, alas. Happy chemicals only flow when you take steps that promote survival. But our brain defines survival in a quirky way: it cares about the survival of your genes, and it relies on neural pathways built in youth. To make life harder still, happy chemicals are quickly metabolized, and our brain habituates to the rewards it has. So you always have to do more to get more happy chemicals. That's why we often have a treadmill feeling. It’s not easy being a mammal!

When you know how your brain works, you can find healthier ways to enjoy happy chemicals and relieve unhappy chemicals. You can build new neural pathways by feeding your brain new experiences. But you have to design the new experience carefully and repeat it a lot!

The Inner Mammal Institute has free resources to help you make peace with your inner mammal: videos, blogs, infographics, and podcasts. Dr. Breuning’s many books illuminate the big picture and help you plot your course. You can feel good in new ways, no matter where you are right now.


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#happychemicals #brain #brainanatomy #brainchemical #dopamine #serotonin #oxytocin #endorphin #InnerMammalInstitute

[AswinPBabu-qsdc]

Dopamine-plessure
Serotonin-happiness

[WhoThisMonkey]

Understanding how your brain chemistry works, is a great way to escaping substance abuse too.

[frankblangeard]

"Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in one place". "If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that".

[kantesh]

"You can develop new dopamine pathway but it will take lot of reputation" well said

[TomHendricksMusea]

For many years I've tried to find out a basic reason why we and almost all creatures need to sleep.

So taking a break from physics ...

Suggestion that a key part of the need for sleep is the body's need to make serotonin, which it does in a symbiotic relationship with gut bacteria in the large intestine.

Suggestion that we sleep to first produce serotonin, then to draw it into the body through the extraction of water in the large intestine.

Though it can be synthesized, there seems to be a major difference in the health benefits from the microbiome made serotonin, and the artificially made serotonin.

Here's some notes on both how important serotonin is and how widespread it is in all living things.

Besides mammals, serotonin is found in all bilateral animals including worms and insects, [19] as well as in fungi and in plants.[20] Serotonin's presence in insect venoms and plant spines serves to cause pain, which is a side-effect of serotonin injection.[21][22] Serotonin is produced by pathogenic amoebae, and its effect in the human gut is diarrhea.[23] Its widespread presence in many seeds and fruits may serve to stimulate the digestive tract into expelling the seeds.[24]

Gut bacteria manufacture about 95 percent of the body's supply of serotonin, which influences both mood and GI activity.

Serotonin was shown to exert functions in innate as well as adaptive immunity. Serotonin stimulates monocytes (23) and lymphocytes (24) and hence influences the secretion of cytokines. Vascular smooth muscle cells respond to serotonin by synthesizing interleukin (IL)-6, a possibly atherogenic mechanism (25)

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter than has been identified across all forms of life. In recent years the presence and function of serotonin in plants (phytoserotonin) is becoming an increasingly active area of research. Serotonin has been found to function as a plant growth regulator, and a stress defense molecule.May 24, 2017

Although serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) was discovered 60 years ago (1), the study of serotonin and its receptors continues to yield new biological insights of medical relevance in virtually all major organ systems, including the cardiovascular, pulmonary, gastrointestinal (GI), and genitourinary systems as well as the central nervous system (CNS) (2).

Serotonin is made from the essential amino acid tryptophan. An essential amino acid means it can’t be made by your body. It has to be obtained from the foods you eat.

[brainmaker]

This is so good! I'm going to watch it again! (inside joke...) Wonderful video to share far and wide.

[ryanfrizzell]

Great video. Now I know more about dopamine and serotonin. With this knowledge I can better manage my own dopamine and serotonin.

[delwarhussain]

Wonderful! The video has explained it in a simplified way

[mimirhermestrismegistus]

Best explanation yet. Closer to are roots and the metaphysics of the belief system. Hence we can hack and control us being conscious lifeforms..

[gdwtoiy]

These hormones are not only released when you do something for yourself, in humans it's a wrong assumption, they are also there when you do something for others without expecting anything back.

[TerrelleCheers]

Real choices = 100% honesty = *Reason*

[mrgratitude]

Thank you for this inspirational message

[Rg-eskv]

Very nice, I'm. Looking to naturally heighten serotonin levels to counter act high levels of cortisol that come about due ptsd which is the pregonitor of depression

[palmraisan]

this is good
thank you for telling me all that

[Joethebro]

To remember these chemicals I use the acronym d.o.s.e.

[BladesAcademy]

I myself can reconstruct the pathways between stimulants and happy chemicals.

[beechy]

This is brilliant - thank you guys. I can use this in lessons on mental health for young people - it helps makes sense of the neuro science.

[ExploreLearnEnglishWithGeorge]

meditation or sleep cycle reset your dopamine levels, ie dopamine detox (receptors can be fixed within 14 months of low dopamine stimulation)

[ankurchowdry]

Using too much mobile screen can lower happy hormones

[alphalifestyleacademy]

I have been binging on your videos. Please don't stop. Your videos are so helpful.