9 Natural Ways to Boost Your Feel Good Hormone – Dopamine

When you are feeling a sudden burst of happiness, it is actually your brain sending dopamine through your system. Dopamine is called the ‘happy hormone’ and it helps in emotional responses as well as your attention. It urges us to accomplish something and creates a sensation of pleasure after we receive a reward. That’s why we need to build our dopamine levels so that we can be happy most of the time in our day. Here are some of the ways to increase our dopamine level:

1. Exercise

When you exercise daily, you help in the release of dopamine. Even a 20-minute workout can release dopamine and reduce feelings of tiredness. Also, vitamins E and C supplements will help in increasing your dopamine level also. Vitamin C helps in maintaining normal functions of neurotransmitters and thereby helps in normal emotional responses too.

2. Protein Intake

In proteins, there is an amino acid which is referred to as tyrosine. This helps in dopamine-activation. It is found in foods like beef, eggs, and soy. More tyrosine also helps you to improve your memory and encourages deep thinking too.

3. Probiotics

If our gut is healthy, then the body stays healthy – it is almost like the second brain. It has a number of neurotransmitters too which can produce dopamine. So, when our gut produces more dopamine due to the intake of healthy probiotics, it affects our mood.

4. Sleep

One of the best ways to increase your dopamine level is to maintain your sleep timings and not disrupt it. This will help you to feel replenished when you wake up again in the morning.

5. Music

It has been found that when you listen to good music, the activity in the reward center of the brain lights up and helps in the facilitation of dopamine levels. So, turn on your favorite track more often.

6. Meditation

There are several advantages of meditation and recent studies have found out that the increase of dopamine level happens to be one of them. After meditating for about an hour, it was found out that there was a 64% increase in dopamine levels. It was much higher than the dopamine produced during 60 minutes of rest. So, keep meditating and have a great day.

7. Sunlight

You must have seen that when it is a cloudy day and there is little sunlight, the environment becomes gloomy. That’s because a lack of sunlight can result in a decrease in dopamine production. It was seen that about 68 healthy adults who received about a month of sunlight exposure had a high density of dopamine receptors in their body.

8. Massage

Stress reduces dopamine level. If you want to keep your dopamine level up, then you need to de-stress yourself and the best way to do so is to get yourself a nice massage. It has been seen to reduce stress and increase dopamine levels.

9. Going For a Walk

If you just walk at a regular pace without exerting any pressure, you will feel a sense of elevation and joy. That is because your body is producing dopamine to keep you happy.

So, try to incorporate these habits in your life and see how your dopamine levels increase. It will definitely change your life.