How to Naturally Trigger Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphins - Your Happy DOSE
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In today’s high-paced world, feelings of stress, fatigue, and burnout have become all too common. While these challenges are complex, our brain chemistry plays a powerful role in managing our mood, motivation, and resilience. Four key chemicals known as neurotransmitters, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, which I refer to as the ‘Happy DOSE’, are central to how we experience pleasure, reward, and connection. By understanding these ‘feel-good chemicals’ and how to stimulate them in healthy ways, we can strengthen our mental fortitude, resilience, and overall wellbeing.
To truly understand their role, we need to look back in time to see how these chemicals supported our ancestors’ survival. At their core, these neurotransmitters evolved over millions of years to reinforce behaviours that kept our ancestors alive and thriving. They respond to triggers in the same way today but the world has changed drastically which means the type and frequency of triggers around us can result in ‘over-dosing’ or ‘under-dosing’ on the Happy DOSE.
In this article, we’ll explore how each of these chemicals helped our ancestors survive and provide practical insights on how to maintain balanced levels in today’s environments.
Dopamine: The Motivation and Reward Chemical
What It Does
Dopamine is often known as the ‘motivation molecule’ because it’s tied to our reward system. Every time we complete a goal or anticipate a reward, dopamine is released, creating a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Throughout evolution, dopamine’s role in driving motivation helped early humans take essential actions, from hunting to exploring.[1]
Role In Human Survival
Hunting and Gathering: Dopamine provided a sense of reward when people located food and ate it or completed a successful hunt, ensuring sustenance for survival.
Problem-Solving and Tool Creation: Dopamine rewarded creativity and critical thinking which encouraged innovation and adaptability that helped us evolve. For example, creating tools for building, or strategising hunting methods.
Shelter and Security: Dopamine was released when shelter was found or fires were lit, providing warmth, protection, and a way to diversify diet.
Tribal Belonging: Experiences like social cohesion, reproduction, and resource sharing were rewarded with dopamine release, reinforcing survival benefits of group living.[2]
Modern Insight
While dopamine is essential for motivation, modern lifestyles can lead to overstimulation through behaviours that provide ‘quick hits’. such as virtual connections through social media and video games. It can also drive overeating as we feel rewarded for consuming nutrient dense foods high in sugar and fats. This served us well when we spent days tracking animals across the African savannah, however today dialling a delivery service and enjoying a takeaway meal require nowhere near the same effort.
Dopamine driven habits can create dependency. Overtime constant overstimulation can lead to a lack of motivation, procrastination, or even depression because we feel deprived when we aren’t stimulated, making normal everyday activities seem boring.
Boosting Dopamine Naturally
Set Small, Achievable Goals: Break larger goals into smaller tasks. Each time you achieve one, you’ll get a dopamine boost that motivates you to keep going. If the goal is to curb behaviour like time on social media, set specific viewing times each day. While social media is a trigger for dopamine on its own, delaying the gratification of viewing it will also stimulate dopamine because you have made a conscious effort and achieved your goal. You can also attach rewards to some goals, for example - you want to be healthier by reducing take-away foods in your diet. With the money you save you could buy something or go to an event. Small wins are highly rewarding and encourage a positive outlook.
Pursue Novelty and Learning: Engaging in new experiences or learning a skill, like a language or hobby, stimulates dopamine through feelings of satisfaction and curiosity, helping sustain motivation. Make it a fun and engaging experience with no pressure to be perfect or the best. There is enough of that in the world already. It could be as simple as exploring a new part of town or cooking something for the first time.
Oxytocin: The Bonding Hormone
What It Does
Oxytocin, often referred to as the ‘love hormone’, is essential for social bonding, trust, and cooperation. Released during physical contact, acts of kindness, and positive social interactions, it helped early humans form strong community bonds, which were critical for survival.[3]
Actions It Supported for Survival
Maternal Bonding and Infant Care: Oxytocin reinforced the bond between mothers and their children, which was essential for protection and nurturing.
Community Cohesion: Oxytocin promoted group bonding as well, allowing early humans to establish cooperative communities. This was vital for sharing resources, protecting against threats, and raising children together.
Modern Insight
Today, with more interactions happening online rather than in person, opportunities for genuine bonding can be limited. Social media often provides a shallow sense of connection without the oxytocin boost that comes from in-person relationships. Over time, this can lead to loneliness or emotional disconnection. Chronic stress or prolonged isolation can also lower oxytocin levels, contributing to anxiety and emotional instability.
Boosting Oxytocin Naturally
Prioritise Human Connections: Spend time with loved ones, share hugs, or smile at others to boost oxytocin naturally. Even regular interactions with familiar shop staff or a hairdresser can make a difference.
Engage in Kindness: Acts of generosity, such as helping a friend or volunteering trigger oxytocin enhancing wellbeing and fostering community.
Serotonin: The Mood Stabiliser
What It Does
Serotonin is crucial for mood regulation, emotional stability and confidence. It also plays an important role in the quality of our sleep and levels of alertness during the day which help us focus on tasks, reduce stress and control our dietary intake. It’s influenced by sunlight exposure, diet, and social belonging, and has always been essential for a sense of calm and happiness. Throughout evolution, serotonin played a role in maintaining social harmony, which was critical for group cohesion.[4]
Actions It Supported for Survival
Social Status and Group Respect: Serotonin reinforced feelings of self-worth and confidence within social hierarchies, which increased one’s standing and security within a group.
Energy Regulation: Serotonin helped to stabilise energy levels and sleep-wake cycles essential for survival.
Modern Insight
Indoor-focused lifestyles can reduce natural serotonin-boosting activities, like exposure to sunlight and exercise. This depletion can contribute to low energy, irritability, lack of motivation and reduced emotional resilience. Chronic stress and sleep deprivation are also linked to serotonin depletion, impacting mood stability and dietary control.
Boosting Serotonin Naturally
Get Sunlight Exposure: Regular sunlight encourages serotonin production, lifting mood and energy levels. Spend 10–15 minutes in sunlight each day, especially in the morning.
Sleep Hygiene: Develop evening routines that promote quality sleep such as minimising blue-light exposure from devices 2-3 hours before bed and not eating 2-3 hours before bed. These can both seem challenging, but small steps towards these goals can make a difference – and boost your dopamine as you achieve new milestones!
Practice Gratitude: Writing in a gratitude journal or expressing appreciation can increase serotonin. These acts create positive experiences that boost mood stability. You can even jot down a positive observation from the day to help shift perspective. It can create a chink in the cycle of negativity.
Endorphins: The Natural Painkillers
What It Does
Endorphins are the body’s natural pain relievers, released in response to stress, discomfort, or physical activity. They help us cope with pain and promote resilience in challenging situations.[5] The are also released in physical acts that we associate with joy. The more endorphins are released, the more elated we can feel.
Actions It Supported for Survival
Physical Endurance and Pain Management: Endorphins allowed early humans to endure long hunts, physical exertion, and injuries by dulling pain and reducing stress.
Social Play and Bonding: Laughter and play released endorphins, which reinforced bonding and reduced tension within groups.
Modern Insight
Sedentary lifestyles with hours at a desk or streaming shows on the couch limit natural endorphin release. This lack of activity and reduced social interaction can lead to stress sensitivity and low mood. As a result, people can seek feel-good confidence boosting effects through artificial means, like turning to sugar, alcohol, or other substances which mimic endorphins (and dopamine). Over time this can lead to dependency.
How to Stimulate Endorphins in a Healthy Way
Engage in Regular Exercise: Physical activity, particularly cardiovascular exercise, is a powerful endorphin booster. This could also be in the form of dancing - even in your own home. Exercise doesn’t have to be intense; a brisk walk or a short workout can improve mood and resilience. This is especially so if you walk in the sunshine because we have endorphin receptors in our skin that are triggered by sunlight. It’s important to assess what constitutes a safe amount of time in the sun to avoid sun damage or skin cancer.
Find Moments of Laughter: Laughter releases endorphins, which is why sharing a joke with friends or watching a funny film feels so uplifting.
Moving in the sunshine and laughing with others creates an endorphin trifecta.
A Balanced Sense of Wellbeing
While each neurotransmitter has a unique role, they work best when balanced. As you have seen from the examples, a singular experience has the potential to trigger more than one neurotransmitter. Live music is another example; imagine you have gone to a venue to see a band that you bought tickets for a month ago. You are excited with anticipation and the idea of doing something different this weekend. You are with friends and happy strangers, and you are all moving to the music together. There is bound to be some laughter, singing or at least humming. All these experiences together deliver a full Happy DOSE.
When feeling down or fatigued, we often feel like spending time alone. But remember, it’s our reduced real-world lifestyles that can contribute to these feelings in the first place. A simple walk or a visit to a cafe to watch the world go by can trigger feel-good chemicals. Consider visiting a park or explore a new part of town. There are countless ways to ‘self-administer’ a Happy DOSE.
Intentional practices like goal-setting, social bonding, hobbies, outdoor activities and exercise can sustainably boost dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins in a healthy way. This can reduce craving their benefits through potentially harmful and less fulfilling activities. Remember, these activities don’t need to be high-achieving or approval-seeking initiatives either. They are for your personal benefit.
For more insights and practical advice on how your senses can influence your mood and behaviour visit Nriched Living and follow Total Sensory Wellbeing on Instagram.
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References:
[1] Puglisi-Allegra, S., & Ventura, R. (2022) 'The dopaminergic pathway mostly involved in reward', National Center for Biotechnology Information. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8992377.
[2] Yamaguchi, Y., Lee, Y.-A., & Goto, Y. (2015). ‘Dopamine in socioecological and evolutionary perspectives: implications for psychiatric disorders’, Frontiers in Neuroscience, 9, 219. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4468839/
[3] Sartorius, A.M., Rokicki, J., Birkeland, S., et al. (2024) ‘An evolutionary timeline of the oxytocin signaling pathway’, Commun Biol 7, 471, Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06094-9
[4] Bamalan, O.A., Moore, M.J., & Al Khalili, Y. (2023) 'Physiology, Serotonin', StatPearls, National Center for Biotechnology Information. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK545168/.
[5] Sprouse-Blum, A.S., Smith, G., Sugai, D., & Parsa, F.D. (2010) 'Understanding endorphins and their importance in pain management', Hawaii Medical Journal, 69(3), pp. 70–71. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3104618/.