What are dopamine receptors and how are they relevant?
Well, they control the pleasure we feel, and can be important for mood and motivation too.
Interestingly enough, there aren’t that many things that will increase these (compared to say, increasing just plain dopamine levels).
Loads of stuff will do that.
Too much dopamine release can down-regulate or desensitize the dopamine receptors though, leading to less pleasure instead and so on.
Therefore, increasing dopamine receptors and not dopamine itself is the better choice, if you can.
This can also increase your lust and pleasure derived from less stimulating activities, and make you less prone to addiction to high-dopamine drugs, food and activities.
Reward System: How To Increase Dopamine Receptors
As mentioned at the start, stuff that increase your dopamine receptors are somewhat few and far inbetween, but they do exist, and I’ll share them with you right here:
1. Sexual Abstinence
Abstaining from sex and other sexual behaviour can fairly quickly increase both dopamine and testosterone receptors.
2. Avoid Overstimulating Stuff (Dopamine Detox)
This is a great one, albeit not that easily done, if you’re still more attached than you should be to your screens, video games, social media, TikTok, porn and so on.
Fast food comes to mind here too, as do hard drugs.
An abstinence here can let your dopamine receptor density go back more towards normal, and fairly quickly.
3. Fasting
Fasting is another one, and that too a type of abstinence (from food this time, and sometimes water too).
Start with intermittent fasting as a lifestyle change, and then extended ones should you feel the need to really boost dopamine receptor density and recovery.
4. Exercise
Exercise, our #4, is also great at increasing dopamine receptor density, along with making you feel considerably better as well.
5. Sunlight
Then we have sunlight, that also boosts your dopamine receptors, making for a nice and fifth contender.
Make use of them all together however, for best results and a more sensitive reward system.
Wrap-up
Want to reset your brain and reward system and increase or recover your dopamine receptors, for a better and more well-functioning life?
Then just do the above stuff and you’ll get there in no time!
/Emil
