How Perfectly Yoga Boost Dopamine in Brain? 6 Fascinating Truth about Yoga You Never Imagined
If you have Depression or mental issues such as (trauma, fear psychosis, anxiety, etc.), you know – the complicated part is that you devote a lot of time worrying about things you can’t control. It’s an abysmal sentiment and it’s 100% fruitless! You can’t change what you can’t control right? A ground-level truth about yoga that you can take off the mat to everyday life and fight to boost your dopamine by staying in the present. This is especially helpful for individuals with depression and anxiety. Well, let’s know how yoga can increase and boost dopamine in brain which you’ve never imagined. The topic I will cover are
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What is dopamine?
Dopamine is produced in several areas of the brain area. Dopamine is also a neurohormone released by the hypothalamus. Dopamine has many purposes in the brain, including control in behavior and cognition, motor action, enthusiasm and reward, a reserve of prolactin production, sleep, mood, attention, and learning.
Dopamine helps neurons to connect with each other over short distances. Dopamine holds particular interest for neuroscientists because of its role in motivation, addiction, and several neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson’s disease.
Most of the brain’s dopamine is produced in the mid-portion of our brain by neurons that connect to the striatum, where the dopamine is released. Dopaminergic neurons (i.e., neurons whose primary neurotransmitter is dopamine) are present chiefly in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain.
Dopamine plays many roles in the brain, most notably related to movement, motivation, and reinforcement of behavior. However, until now it has been difficult to study precisely how a flood of dopamine affects neural activity throughout the brain.
How Our Brain Function When We Have Good Dopamine Level?
Dopamine is one of over one hundred neurotransmitters in the human brain. It is the main brain chemical messenger and when we have enough store of dopamine we feel motivated.
A high in Dopamine delivers a sense of satisfaction in our mind after accomplishing a task. It also is released when playing sports, learning something new, finishing a task or project, or getting the big promotion you wanted at work.
Often called the “FGFM – Feel Good Factor in Motivation”. A good amount of Dopamine in our brain delivers the drive and focus we all need in order to be productive. It is heavily involved with our attention span, focus, follow-through, motivation, and the ability to experience pleasure.
Many times it is found that high dopamine concentrations did not make neurons more active. However, higher dopamine levels did make the neurons remain active for a longer period of time.
“There has been a lot of work on the immediate cellular consequences of dopamine release, but here what we’re looking at are the consequences of what dopamine is doing on a more brain-wide level,” says Alan Jasanoff, an MIT professor of biological engineering, brain and cognitive sciences, and nuclear science and engineering.
Why We Lose Dopamine?
Dopamine plays a part in controlling the movements a person makes, as well as their emotional responses. The right balance of dopamine is vital for both physical and mental wellbeing.
Loosing dopamine is mainly because to numerous mental health illnesses but does not show to the person in behavior or activities.
The most common causes why we lose dopamine include:
- Excessive addiction to alcohol
- Drugs
- Smoking
- Excessive use of technology
- Excessive watching of porn
- Depression
- Schizophrenia
- Psychosis, including hallucinations or delusions
- Parkinson’s disease
Whenever there is excessive use of any addiction the level of dopamine goes down with each time we intake any substance like alcohol, drugs etc.
There is a lot of study made for Parkinson disease which has a strong connection with dopamine.
In Parkinson’s disease, there is a loss of the nerve cells in a specific part of the brain and loss of dopamine in the same area.
It is also understood from many study that drug exploitation can bring havoc in decreasing dopamine levels. Studies have shown that repeated drug use could alter the thresholds required for dopamine cell activation and signaling.
They further add that ‘excessive dopamine release at the wrong moment can cause irrelevant things to take on an unnecessary consequence. This can even result in mania, hallucinations, or even schizophrenia’. But they were not very clear as to why this excessive release occurs. However, they saw that a lack of dopamine in some areas of the brain may act as a trigger for Parkinson’s disease.
Damage caused by drug or alcohol means each time we intake them the thresholds of addiction goes higher and higher. As a result it is more difficult for a person to experience the positive effects of dopamine. Drug abusers have also been shown to have significant decreases in dopamine receptors and dopamine release.
Foods which contain high sugar and saturated fats can subdue dopamine extensively. A lack of protein in a person’s diet could mean they do not have enough l-tyrosine, which is an amino acid that helps to build dopamine in the body. Ultimately fat without protein leads to obesity when we lose dopamine.
An interesting study establish that people who are obese and have a certain gene are more likely to lose dopamine too.
Why we need to boost dopamine?
The principal symptom of dopamine insufficiency is depression, the feeling of boredom (chronic boredom), apathy, loss of satisfaction, chronic fatigue and low physical energy with no desire to move the body. There is a general lack of drive, motivation and enthusiasm.
A lack of dopamine is associated with the following consequences:
- Lethargy
- Lack of focus
- Amnesia
- Irritability
- Insomnia
- Low sex drive
- Inability to appreciate from previous happy activities
- Symptoms of ADHD
- Sugar cravings
- Lower motivation
A boost in dopamine makes a person much active and people are usually focused. Unfortunately, many of the things that people do to boost their focus and energy end up backfiring.
There are many unnatural ways to pursue out a “dopamine repair.” For example, anything relates to bring the balance in our daily regime and bring back the natural flow of dopamine in our brain.
A person who thinks they need to boost the dopamine in the brain real quick should see a doctor because for the long run it has much bigger way to harm their personal life as people start daydreaming, hallucination starts happening. The loss of dopamine in our brains is treatable. There is no conclusive evidence that a supplement, food, or other home remedies can boost and increase dopamine overnight.
A number of healthy lifestyle approaches should help to boost dopamine in brain. They include:
- Yoga
- Exercise
- Massage
- Meditation
- Activities that bring normal happiness (such as gardening, reading, learning something new, etc.)
Connection of Yoga with Dopamine
Interestingly, a wide form of effort exists representing the practice of Yoga and meditation in various parts of India. Many times you can see person trains their body and mind to focus on a concept or idea, and yoga, a discipline where experts perform harmonized sets of physical, mental, and spiritual activities derived from ancient Indian traditions. These practices not only can slow but potentially reverse the symptoms associated with depression and ailments in mind and its evolution over time.
Several studies have acknowledged that neurons pathways are enhanced by yoga and meditation. Truth about Yoga is including those related to dopamine reflexive function, neurotransmission, and inflammation.
In 2014 a novel healing program for the cure of dopamine enhancement program was conducted. It was found that for neurodegeneration, incorporated yoga and meditation into a regimen targeting multiple aspects of early brain and neuropathology, achieving sustained cognitive improvement in 9 out of 10 patients.
These studies provide evidence that yoga or meditative practice brings a lot of improvement in dopamine and strongly suggest that yoga contributes to slowing the advancement of mental decay in dopamine in our brain.
Dr. B N Gangadhar, Director, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS). Regarding the connection of yoga with our neuro and brain function says
“Yoga is known to change the underline biology of the disease. For instance, in patients with depression, there are high levels of cortisol and low levels of brain repairing chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor. When you treat such patients with yoga, their cortisol level drops, levels of brain repairing chemical increases and depression gets better”.
The most recent exploration educations on yoga and its connections to brain activity or dopamine health have exposed the optimistic long term changes that occur in your brain with regular practice of yoga.
As noted by MRI and close monitoring of brain activity Yoga brings increasing gray matter which in turn provides better brain function in a specific areas to bring back dopamine at a normal level. Wherever you get more gray matter- the better that part of the brain works.
Few days before Kushendra Tiwary, ISHA Hatha Yoga teacher at Yoga with Kush says,
“The pandemic has brought in a lot of uncertainty about each and everything. You can literally die the next day and you won’t know. There can be COVID-19 carriers around you. Also, since a lot of people are working from home, their routine has changed, people are complaining of change in the sleep cycle, among others. Amidst this, people have become slaves to their situation. And here comes the role of yoga – it’s not about becoming passive about anything but accepting a lot of things.”
How yoga increase and/or boost dopamine in brain
Recovering from a bad lifestyle or coming out from an opioid addiction takes its toll on the mind and body. It’s utmost important that you pay close attention to both.
Once you start yoga slowly you will feel the boost of dopamine in brain. you’ll not only benefit from the mood-boosting assistance of exercise, but you will become an improved health freak too.
There’s a long list of reasons why yoga is good for you. It helps you lose weight, it boosts your mood, and it helps maintain physical functionality.
But what if I told you yoga can help you recover from addiction, you need to find out How perfectly yoga boost dopamine in brain instead.
Yoga boost dopamine in brain
The state of euphoria that comes with using heavy use of the drug causing the brain to release endorphins. Endorphins reduce pain, boost pleasure, and create an overall sense of well-being.
When you stop using cannabis addiction, porn or alcohol addiction etc., the brain stops releasing endorphins, the brain send signal for receiving more of those addiction drugs. And this can cause symptoms such as anxiety and depression in recovering addicts.
Finding a Form of Exercise
Finding a form of exercise, such as running or weight training can be a great way to tackle these withdrawal symptoms.
To increase or boost dopamine in brain naturally with yoga you have to be consistent on it and practice a few things associated with it. Such as –
1. Practice yoga regularly – In general, yoga is one of the best things you can do for your brain. It increases the construction of new brain cells, slows down brain cell aging, can increase your levels of dopamine. Yoga has also been associated with improved mood and overall a better outlook on life.
2. Practice yoga with meditation – There are thousands of research studies proving meditation is a great neuro-mechanical exercise of the brain from healing trauma or increasing our concentration or focus. Yoga with meditation brings a mental wellbeing feeling as it boost the dopamine naturally and provides balance in your overall activity.
3. Eat yogic or healthy foods – Whenever you bite those fruits such as almonds, bananas, avocados or foods like eggs, beans, fish, and chicken rich in Tyrosine it slowly brings back the natural level of dopamine in our brain.
4. Yoga-Nidra or yoga sleep – To ensure that your brain boost dopamine naturally, you have to make sure that you’re full filling your sleep quota. A proper sleep keeps the body toxin-free and rejuvenates cells in the body. Yoga Nidra brings a boost in dopamine as well as repairs the brain cells also.
5. Yoga massage – From many research, it is found that massage therapy is great for decreasing cortisol (a stress hormone). To avoid stress we must keep practicing yoga consistently with massage also…
6. Yoga sound – In India there are many scriptures telling (Raaga) the sounds that should be chanted along with the timing in 24 hours. The specific sound if chanted properly bring a huge boost in pleasurable feelings and Help to restore brain cells damaged by drug abuse
As well as reducing anxiety and stress, yoga can also:
- Reduce cravings
- Create a sense of accomplishment and boost self-esteem
- Encourage better sleep, which is often distressed when recovering from addiction
- Fill the void left by the absence of your drug use
- It’s easy to understand why yoga? (though might not be the first thing on your mind)
Conclusion
Getting motivated to yoga can be difficult. Especially for someone recovering from an addiction. Getting started is the hardest part. It’s important to find a form of yoga that works for you. It is no surprise that Yoga can increase dopamine, improve our mood, decrease stress, and help with focus and concentration. Research has demonstrated that much of this is achieved due to an increase in dopamine levels. Having acknowledged the necessity of yoga within us to deal to boost dopamine in our brain, I myself have experimented with several creativities and involvements. If you have some more ideas about boosting dopamine please share in the comments.
Further Reading On Different Topics
Have you enjoyed reading about “How Perfectly Yoga Boost Dopamine in Brain? Fascinating Truth about Yoga You Never Imagined”? Well, Enjoy reading various Topics on Yoga and about Steps to Control India’s Overpopulation (2020) also. please check the article Overpopulation in India 2020also. Take a look at our collection of articles about books for life as well as other categories in health & Inspiring Indians Life also.. Alternatively, read our article about the top benefits of honey for fighting against coronavirus to increase our stamina, & other interesting ideas for Various vegetables in our daily groceries.
References
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4769029/
https://draxe.com/fitness/yoga-nidra/
https://www.naturalhealthmag.com.au/content/yoga-bliss-effect
https://brainmd.com/blog/7-ways-to-boost-dopamine-focus-and-energy/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3860493/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26123500/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1056871915000714
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6971819/
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/what-is-yoga-nidra
Author: Yogi