Neuroscientist: 3 proven ways to HACK your dopamine - TJ Power

alcohol Drugs porn sugar social media all of it to me the only way I found a way out of it is having TJ power TJ has built an incredible career as a neuroscientist International Neuroscience speaker and online mental health content creator the big reason to explore that idea of why tribes and stuff is significant is the human brain spent 300,000 years doing that 99.9% of human history so like these chemicals did develop for that experience which is why it's so fascinating to understand I've got questions what are the four happiness chemicals we have as human

beings dopamine oxytocin serotonin and endorphins do you think social media should come with a health warning 100% in the mornings sex is a good idea or a bad idea humans need connection so 100% if it was watch porn in the morning that would be hell for your dopamine system so what's the difference biochemically in the brain between having sex and watching porn the biggest difference is that if someone say it like Unfaithful what chemical might be the motivating factor in a situation like that relationships that do have more oxytocin with the more nurturing and more

love and more connection are going to be more sustainable than a relationship that's built off of the premise of just like excitement and pleasure this cold water thing has exploded across the internet because it's so the extreme other end of pleasure it's just pure pain Yeah we actually have a ice bath in the studio [Music] today this episode is dedicated to anyone who takes screenshots on their phone but then forgets to ever look at them I know you've probably heard this a million times on other podcasts but following or subscribing really helps the show and

the more followers we get the more likely it is that I'm able to book new exciting and insightful guests for the show so if you subscribe I will continue to keep to my word and promise to never let this podcast be sponsored by hu TJ thank you so much for joining us thanks for having me let's start with the very Basics what are the Four Happiness chemicals we have as human beings we've got four chemicals dopamine oxytocin serotonin and endorphins very conveniently the first letter of each of those spells dose and if we as humans

focus on getting our dose of brain chemicals each day it feels pretty good and from an evolutionary Viewpoint what did those biochemicals how did they serve us each one of them had a specific function that was effectively driving human survival dop me for example was motivating us to do extremely hard and challenging things that would Keep Us Alive so we had to spend hours and hours hunting building shelter exploring new places to try and live doine was rewarding all of that hard challenging work oxytocin was driving us to connect have families be a part of

a tribe serotonin was guiding us towards healthy food and rest and like making sure our body was effectively taken care of and then endorphins was this chemical helping us cope with the physical and psychological stress that the world of chasing bears and running around out there had to offer and each of them basically serves a specific function if they were low we' then get messages saying work harder connect with the group more eat healthier rest more and effect itively that's what they're here to do guide us towards healthier Behavior if we looked at dopamine specifically

what's the difference between a neurotypical brain and an ADHD brain yeah so all human brains have the capacity to manufacture this dopamine chemical it works basically as little vesicles in our brain little Bubbles and the average brain will basically have a certain Basel sign that it produces and a neurotypical brain and then someone with ADHD has what's called Low Baseline dopamine so their brain effectively just produces slightly less dopamine than the average brain which comes with its challenges that we can explore and abilities that's the big thing if you go back to when we were

in tribes cave men and Cave women where would our dopamine highs come from yeah and I just to to reflect on that question the big reason to explore that idea of why tribes and stuff is significant is the human brain spent 300,000 years doing that 99.9% of history so like these chemicals did develop for that experience which is why it's so fascinating to understand in terms of the kind of activities that would have boosted it successfully finding food so finding some fruit coming across some fruit after looking for three hours or finding some honey or

finding successfully hunting down some meat anything to do with building shelter would have been very significant like creating safety for us and our families anything that was to do with procreation would have also had an impact so having sex with our partners creating kids raising our kids all these things that effectively were effortful actions that enabled us to survive for longer and if you could plot the highs and lows of those dopamine hit hits on a graph how would that graph look back then compared to how it might look today the biggest difference is it

took a long time to experience the dopamine reward so say for example I'm a hunt gatherer I wake up in the morning and it's like okay I need to find food for my family and then I set off maybe with a group of other hunting haers and we spent like 3 four hours searching for through or hunting down an animal and gradually on a really slow curve dopamine goes through this rise we successfully find the food and our brain gives us this big reward to motivate us to continue to do this every morning and then

we come back with the food and it's like nice okay good good experience of dopamine if you compare it to now we sit on our phone wake up in the morning rather than getting out of bed and going and hunting for food we're like I just have a little Scroll of Tik Tok because that's like a nice pleasurable thing to do suddenly dopamine flies so high much higher than even hunting an animal would have done even though it took us 3 hours cuz is very artificially designed to get our dopamine up and it goes so

high within 30 seconds of going on and then you'll notice like you get this crash when you put your phone down you feel like a state of inaction can't really be bothered do anything you might feel a bit low or a bit depressed when you really engage with these things too much and it's all about that it's either slow curves or fast curves slow is the game and in terms of the people look at their phone in the morning so that's if that's not advised what does the perfect morning routine look like effectively anything that

just feels like a little bit of Engagement of effort and I understand this is hard I woke up every day from like 10 years old whenever I got an iPhone went on my phone so I appreciate it's a difficult thing to do I do think for an individual with ADHD it's the single most important thing you could possibly change in your life is how you start your morning because your brain wakes up with this abundance of dopamine and it's like okay how can I use this to attack my day hunting find the food or whatever

it may be and then we just like use all of that dopamine up inside the phone if you were to wake up the best thing I think you can do is immediately go to the bathroom and start brushing your teeth just get the toothbrush start doing it even if you feel sleepy just start doing it because it's going to be something that's effortful that's going to begin to wake you up and like the idea of having to do it for two minutes is a bit annoying and you get yourself through the brushing of the teeth

then splash cold water on your face then come back and try and make your bed appreciates effort but these kind of things are significant and then your whole goal is to get Outdoors as quickly as possible sunlight has a huge impact specifically the bright morning sunlight on the rise of this dopamine chemical so interesting apart from the phone what other readily available sources of dopamine sort of easy quick fixes are best to watch your usage of the framework you always want to have in your head is is it making me feel really really good really

really quickly so something like when you go to the gym you don't walk through the gym and think oh my God I feel amazing right now but you'll feel good eventually once you've been at the gym for a while or once you finished if you take something like Tik Tok you'll notice immediately you feel good something like vaping is a really really big one to watch out for cuz it's super addictive huge pleasure spikes which is why you want it especially a lot of people might wake up in the morning start scrolling Tik Tok and

have a hit of their Vape which is fair but something that's going to be really difficult vaping social media you've then got pornography massive like huge Monumental spikes more than those two huge spikes and then sugary food super significant like a sugary breakfast is going to be something that's really important to avoid I just think like and I might be wrong but in the history of humankind I don't think we've ever been able to reach into our pockets and pull out a source of instant dopamine I can p go on my phone and I can

pretty much guarantee I can go on Tik Tok or Instagram and within 10 seconds I can be hysterically laughing by a funny real or a bit of content do you think social media should come with a health warning in the same way that cigarettes and alcohol do 100% I think social media is probably more destructive for the human being than alcohol and cigarettes in terms of the scale of the impact it's having and whilst it's really clear that like something like alcohol and cigarettes immediately can make you feel kind of crap like when they wear

off the big thing with social media is the frequency of how often we engage with it and whilst like yeah you might get drunk each evening which really is not going to be very good for your dopamine system social media you could spend 10 hours a day scrolling it whereas you're unlikely to just wake up and drink all day every day it's going to be too detrimental and with these dopamine spikes and crashes if you're really frequently always engaging always engaging you're just just like burning out the engine like if you got in your car

every morning if you had a manual car and you didn't put it in gear and just held down the accelerator if you did that for a week the car engine isn't going to work anymore you'll burn it out and effectively that's what so many of us are doing we're just burning the dopamine engine out if you get low dopamine levels you get into this state where you procrastinate you feel depressed you can't focus on anything you get really excited about stuff and you feel really crap it's like this really volatile place it's not good to

be what is effort dopamine vers non-for dopamine the big difference is is are you having to engage some kind of challenging hard work feeling in order to earn the experience of dopamine and it's so important that over the hundreds of thousands of years we were evolving that whatever created us God or nature whatever it might be deeply programmed into us the idea of working hard because it was just not easy like actually imagine sleeping outside every day for 300,000 years it was a lot of hard work so it was designed that if we did things

that are effort eventually dopam would rise in our brain it would reward reward the effort and now we over the last few years we invented cigarettes even something like brothels when they were originally invented that was like taking the effort out of trying to have sex with someone and then you have alcohol got invented then you have social media and you have sugar and Ultra processed food and all of these things require absolutely zero effort for your brain and then suddenly you have these huge pleas pleasure spikes and effectively the effort leads to a slow

curve of dopamine increasing no effort just means massive Spike big crash after the morning routine is there any other things people can do throughout the day to get natural healthy dopamine hits yeah for sure one of the simplest way to constantly be maintaining your dopamine levels is with discipline in your home environment and it's something that those with ADHD like myself included it can be really easy to just put off those tasks and your house gets Messier and Messier and you'll know that occasionally maybe when the house gets messy enough there has been moments where

you've been like all right I'm going to do it and then you end up actually cleaning more than you even intended to clean because you start actually getting a dopamine hit off cleaning itself and individuals that really prioritize it up making sure their bedroom is organized making sure the Works Space that they're working at is organized keeping their surfaces clean when you eat your lunch immediately washing it up putting it in the dishwasher little moments of Home discipline is actually going to be something that's constantly raising the Baseline throughout the day and if you're someone

who might do all of that but then struggle to unwind in the evening and struggle to sleep is there a routine that someone could adopt as they approach bedtime that will give them an easier time falling asleep the biggest thing is understanding melatonin melatonin is an alternative chemical here melatonin melatonin is built by serotonin one of the dose chemicals and melatonin when it comes into US it creates the Deep desire for Sleep effectively it begins to put the body into a state of rest and in the evenings evening sunlight is the biggest thing that's going

to create that experience and for most of us we kind of come home from work and we spend the whole evening inside that is typically how we do things if you go for an evening walk it's something that's going to be extremely beneficial it's basically kickstarting the system because our brain spent a long time outside and like when it saw the evening sunlight come it'd be like okay prepare for sleep and on the other side the morning sunlight was okay prepare for Action so evening sunlight is massive the other side of it would be maximizing

your serotonin which is all about your nutrition so things like a high protein dinner followed by a nice evening walk that's going to be optimal are there any other dopamine hacks that are sort of easily accessible someone could do in the house that would help them with their focus the cold shower thing is very significant it's not just some like Trend online putting oursel into cold environments is something that really scientifically has a massive impact on dopamine having a cold shower is obviously an annoying thing to have to do but that is the whole framework

of this chemical is it is all about effort it's not about quick easy like pleasurable wins like social media is and uh if you have your normal shower in the morning warm shower if you put some music on when you get in the shower then once you've washed wait for like a chorus of a song that you really enjoy to come on as the chorus comes on turn it to cold and just do all you can to stay in that water just like fight the fact it's painful realize that humans are designed to cope with

extreme physical pain some cold water on you each morning isn't that bad like relatively speaking and then what you discover is you suddenly start feeling like little bit more driven a little bit more motivated a little bit more focused in the mornings and that itself drives you to continue to have the cold shower you're obviously a big fan of the cold showers because I asked you to tell me one item that represents ADHD in in your life and you said it was Ice H is that the reason why I is your ADHD item I think

it's really important that humans come to discover that like life can't be really comfortable all the time I think like discomfort is a really key component of building like a nice life of having fulfilling experience in your life working hard like feeling successful and this cold water thing has exploded across the internet because it's so the extreme other end of pleasure it's just pure pain it's horrible cold cold immersion and whilst there's lots of other things that we can do that are like not as painful that still great for dopamine cold water is like this

moment with yourself where you're thinking yes I'm going to do something I really really don't want to do and then there's those moments especially as an ADHD individual where you really need to complete a specific task submit a homework complete an assignment clean your house take your washing out whatever it might be and in those moments where it's like I need to take action but I can't bother to do it you remind yourself of well I did manage to freeze myself to death in a shower so like I have the capacity to do things I

don't want to do yeah we actually have a ice bath the studio today so perhaps you can walk me through exactly what happens when I lower myself into one 100% let's do it okay and deep breath and then the goal is to slow your breathing down as much as you can so nice that's good that's impressive that's your first ever ice bath and you're managing it how should I be breathing the goal is a of your trying to give your heart some reassurance your heart is effectively speeding up as a result of the cold temperature

the more slowly you breathe out the more you send a message to your heart to calm itself down when you have free divers for example that try and hold their breath for ages they have to get their bodies really calmed so they do slow breathing that's really unpleasant and interestingly the unpleasant thing that's occurring within your brain and body is what's going to create this massive boost in dopamine as your body prepares itself effectively for danger that's what it thinks it's going through so when's the best time to get in a nice paath the big

thing to understand is this dopamine chemical that we're seeking to naturally boost in the modern world is really responsible for our motivation levels and at the start of our day we're wanting the maximum amount of motivation so we have good discipline in our work with our food choices with our exercise so if you can get into these cold environments first thing in the morning it's going to provide the greatest benefit to your day and how long do the effects last you're looking at about 2 and 1 half hours of your dopamine levels being higher so

say for example when we drink an alcoholic drink it might only last for about 15 minutes the spike of dopamine then we get this crash that creates more and more desire for alcohol with this this is activating an alternative side of your brain in something called the hypothalamus which means that you're suddenly going to have this prolonged increase of dopamine in your brain leading to more motivation productivity attention these kind of things and and what particular traits of ADHD would this be helping with it would be helping with procrastination massively sometimes when you're in an

ADHD individual and you get into one of those challenging States you get into the state of inaction where you just like want to do stuff but you can't get yourself to do it you like you're scrolling your phone and you think I really need to do that task I need to clean my house I need to do my work and you can't get yourself into a state of action this is going to create this massive rise of dopamine which is suddenly going to lead you thinking okay I can do it I've now done this like

big challenging activity and everything else is going to feel easier yeah that's a good amount of time you've been in there 60 seconds is your goal in there you've done easily two or 3 minutes oh so painful I'm going to get out okay good man let's go so painful respect well thank you for guiding me through that TJ I'm feeling very energized very focused um with the questions let's do it what part do real human imperson connections with family and friends play on the ADHD brain regards to our biochemistry yes so human connection will have

an impact on dopamine it is a chemical that will rise but the predominant chemical that's going to rise when we connect with someone is going to be oxytocin oxytocin is this chemical that effectively lives within the human brain to bond us together when a mom gives birth in that moment of birth the baby and the mom experience this huge surge of oxytocin it connects them up and as we go through life and we develop human connection with our friends our family romantic connection it creates this rise of oxytocin and sometimes for individuals with ADHD there

can be like an isolating component of it I think that's one of the reasons there's become this massive like ADHD community in the world is because individuals with ADHD are seeking for people to understand where they're coming from and how they're feeling and a moment of good human connection where you feel seen for example and acknowledged as someone with that it's going to be magic for you what if someone wants that connection but they go to their closest their nearest and dearest then they don't understand and ADHD or neurod Divergence do you think that lack

of connection can cause isolation I do I think when you feel like you're navigating a specific Challenge and it's not being understood it's like a painful frustrating feeling and for my lens as a neuroscientist just because this is how I have kind of decided to study and see the world I think it's really important to explain to the individual how this is occurring actually in your brain from a dopamine standpoint and explain this idea of the average human brain has a certain amount of dopamine as someone with HD I'm producing less of it which does

make things like hyperactivity and impulsivity and difficulty like taking action in my life like more challenging for me and like providing them with a base of exactly why it's happening but then also helping like that person understand that there are good things that you can be doing with one another and stuff that's going to support building this dopamine chemical so the person feels like they could actually help you with it I think that'd be quite cool an issue I've had with maintaining connection with friends and many people I've spoken to in the community is that

they find it quite easy to make friends but they often struggle to maintain friendships through often object permanence you quite literally can forget people exist that sort of out of sight out of mind so do you have any tips advice for someone who wants to maintain a connection with someone but is struggling to keep that connection within that front and center yeah I think that's interesting I think part of the reason that can happen for an individual with ADHD is when you meet someone that itself is a dopamine hit get this big spike and then

maintain your connection with that person isn't going to be quite as exciting that's why like an individual that was dating people for example like you might meet someone it feels super exciting at the beginning and then the dopamine May reduce over time and you lose interest effectively which is super common you then effectively want to be laser focus on how do I maintain a good amount of this oxytocin brain chemical within this relationship and there are a number of factors that really impact oxytocin when I was in the process of writing the book for example

we were really deeply investigating and researching human connection and discovered this whole research area that basically demonstrates when two humans text one another and you're sitting there texting on your phone none of the oxytocin hormone releases at all and then when you call one another and hear one another's voice immediately this oxytocin bonding chemical begins to release in the brain and it's very important like for an ADHD person to think how can I maintain these strong relationships and really the way to do it is to not have loads of them because if you constantly try

and make new ones you have this abundance of relationships and it's like how do I maintain these whereas as someone that has navigated similar things myself it's much better to nurture just a small amount like three or four friends that have just like a small amount of connections rather than try and maintain loads that makes a lot of sense actually kind of just keep a really close knit Inner Circle much easier to sort of water and maintain that Garden than having and make your biggest focus in those relationships how am I providing a contribution to

their life effectively like our brain is so deeply designed and evolved in a way to want to contribute to a group and that's why whenever you do something nice for someone it feels rewarding rewarding experience is oxytocin and if you're more focused on like how can I contribute and make their life better it's actually going to demonstrate and like create a more nurtured relationship oxytocin is that the same chemical that you transmit in a romantic intimate setting yeah 100% when two humans like physically make contact with one another hugging kissing sex cuddling all that kind

of stuff it's going to drive that but also any time in which you feel a sense of belonging in a group you feel like you're making eye contact with someone you feel like you're asking good questions anything that's like deeply connecting to humans drives the chemical is there an optimal time to be exposed to oxytocin before you're hoping to fall asleep that's an interesting question 100% oxytocin is going to have an effect on how quickly you fall asleep oxytocin has a big effect on our nervous system which is just like how calm or stressed out

our body is and I've actually had a very interesting experience with this recently I have a lovely girl friend called Georgia and she's from Australia and I wear this tracking thing which is like a whoop and it tracks my heart rate and I can see like in the data a ridiculously clear transformation in my heart rate since she's been here since we've been cuddling effectively because my body's going to go into a calmer State my heart's going to slow down so my body's going to sleep better all as a result of the oxytocin chemical building

so if you have a partner that you can lie with and cuddle that's going to be amazing to increase how quickly you fall asleep if it's that you're not in a relationship at the moment having a nice conversation with someone before you go to sleep like calling them on the phone or in to them sending them some voice notes having an oxytocin type experience is going to calm the body and for those with ADHD they do have really hyperactive nervous systems which is why you get so excited about everything so it's good big oxytocin increase

going to calm them down you can actually quantify the romance 100% like it's actually so interesting this data like my record of what's called Green recoveries was four in a row and I've been wearing this thing for two and a half years and Georgia came here nine days ago and I had nine green recoveries in a row which I've never had before and nothing else changed I maintain like quite a routine lifestyle with that kind of ADHD I have to be always in structure and my food didn't change my exercise didn't change nothing changed except

the cuddling effectively which is pretty interesting and if someone's listening and they're thinking I'm I'm with my partner is there an optimal time to say partake in a oxytocin releasing activity prior to wanting to go to sleep I would say uh the final activity effectively of the day I think uh if you for example can cuddle on the sofa a bit and spend like a nice bit of intimate time together have dinner together chat with one another and this is where the modern world is so fascinating because oxytocin is getting hit hard by our desire

for dopamine like so say for example you're sitting on the sofa in the evening with your partner and you're spending the majority of that time scrolling your phone whilst they scroll their phone whilst you also have a TV on there's no oxytocin being facilitated there and some people struggle like with their oxytocin lives effectively sex lives and then they get into bed and they're like oh we should have sex because that's what humans are designed to do but then you haven't been building oxytocin throughout the evening whereas you take the average hunter gatherer they're going

to be freezing all evening cuddling and then naturally sex will arise so if you can have as much like intimate connection and conversation and cuddling on the sofa before brush your teeth get in bed have oxytocin as the final thing you're engaged with that's going to maximize the Sleep cool you used the word sex before I did I was like can I use it I'm like I'm 35 I can use the word sex we are actually allowed to say sex apparently in the mornings a good idea or a bad idea I would say humans need

connection 100% I would say if you had to pick between morning and evening evening would be a better time to have sex because your body can go into more of a restful State and whereas like in the morning you're wanting more of an action oriented state if it was watch porn in the morning that would be hell for your dopamine system and hell for your desire to have a productive day but as someone that just really feels human connection is lacking I 100% wouldn't say don't have sex in the morning I think humans should have

as much sex as they can with people they feel a connection with so what's the difference biochemically in the brain between having sex and watching porn the biggest difference is that alteration in how quickly the dopamine is going to spike like say for example you look at the porn one you're sitting there say you're scrolling Instagram or something you see someone you find hot and then your brain's like oh I could watch porn and then suddenly you're over to the next app and you're on Safari and you're searching porn very quickly doping it's spiking and

then you're scrolling through and you're seeing all these videos and your dopamine is elevating like extremely extremely fast you're then engaging in the activity very quickly activity is over and maybe in the space of like less than 5 minutes your dopamine's gone from Baseline to ridiculously high because it got so high it then seeks to try and rebalance itself because everything in the human body is trying to rebalance and then it crashes it which is why after watching porn a pretty deflated feeling can arise you can kind of feel almost like shameful and guilty after

watching porn and that feeling is occurring because of the dopamine crashing out when you take something like sex especially if it's like good intimate sex with someone you're connected with you spend the evening connecting and having conversation and dop me like gently increases then you cuddle on the sofa little bit more increase then you lie in bed and you kiss and you cuddle and you gradually work your brain towards this like big high of finishing whilst having sex and it's a nice slow curve and then it slowly calms back down and that Spike crash versus

the slow increase very different for the brain is there more oxytocin released in the early stages of a relationship interestingly the early stage of relationship is going to be very dopamine based it's very like excitement stimulation like oh my God this is so fun and then oxytocin is going to develop as connection builds between those two people and it's fascinating because if you actually look at this between male and female brains female brains will actually begin to release oxytocin slightly earlier in a relationship than a male brain so a male brain might just be finding

it really exciting whereas and this is on large averages but a female brain which is more oxytocin oriented might begin to develop more feelings of connection faster than a male brain would a female brain is really designed to find like a nurturing relationship where a male brain was more like on the hunt looking for lots of things back in the day and if in a relationship you can try and move towards oxytocin quicker where you don't just have sex but you also spend time holding hands and cuddling and talking and stuff that's how proper connections

build and in our modern world it can be quite sex oriented where you go on dating apps and the goal is just to have sex with that person just to have sex with them and that's not really building oxytocin which is the actual chemical you need to develop a sustainable relationship and if someone say it like Unfaithful in a relationship what chemical might be the motivating factor in a situation like that dopamine is effectively deciding it's like effectively you're choosing dopamine over oxytocin like you might have a loving relationship but the idea of a new

person having sex with that person might be so exciting that it's like in this moment I'm going to pick that in a similar way to you're drinking alcohol and you think I should definitely stop now because I feel I'm going to feel really [ __ ] tomorrow but then you still keep drinking the alcohol it's the excitement of how will that drink make me feel effectively and relationships that do have more oxytocin within them more nurturing and more love and more connection are going to be more sustainable than a relationship that's built off of the

premise of just like excitement and pleasure can you explain the difference between genetic vers behavioral ADHD in the current day and why there might be some overlap there yeah this is fascinating because for hundreds if not thousands of years humans will have always had the likelihood of some developing ADHD and again reminding you this is a lower level of opine production than the average human brain the neurotypical brain and that's always been a factor some brains will naturally be born and they're just producing less dopamine similar to some brains produce less insulin and glucose some

bodies work differently behavioral ADHD will be occurring as a result of consistently spiking and crashing this dopamine chemical so you might take a neurotypical person that had very normal natural dopamine levels but then they have spent 5 to 10 years watching porn and scrolling their phone loads eating loads of sugar drinking loads of alcohol all that easily done behaviors that I don't judge like I personally have engaged with that stuff a lot I found it very very hard to navigate these kind of things but all these spikes and crashes spikes and crashes begins to what's

called Lower this Baseline level of production because your brain is effectively getting so exhausted by the big highs big lows that it's like okay I'm just going to start giving you less of the molecule I just won't give you as much to produce in a very similar way to how like things like diabetes Works where you burn out the glucose system and then it can't produce glucose anymore and it can't produce insulin to manage the glucose so behavioral ADHD is too much engagement in pleasure genetic ADHD is just from birth you have low dopamine production

I want to find out why some people with ADHD are high functioning and what they're doing right um but first I want to do the washing machine of woses every week I ask my Instagram Community to send me their ADHD wos and it goes in the washing machine because for me the washing machine represents my biggest wo which is memory loss and okay interesting that memory is very dope of me connected that makes sense you said you said before we started filming you could explain why I always leave my laundry in the machine I can

so effectively there will be a moment in your head where I think you you're in a more proactive productive State and you think I should do my washing hair and the reason you're in that state is because you've got elevated dopamine from something maybe you had a go shower or maybe something cool had happened with work you felt more excited something cool in your relationship something had given you natural dopamine stimulation so you're at high level at high dopamine we want to do thing we want to do loads of productive stuff so you put your

washing in then maybe that day you might eat some sugar like normal natural sugary meals that we eat process food or you spend a lot of time on your phone whatever it may be and you crash the dopamine then in a low dopamine State your brain is going to completely forget about wanting to be action oriented and it's just going to be seeking for more and more quick pleasure so it will effectively leave the washing because it's like no I don't have enough dopamine to even think about something like that right now and that's why

those with ADHD do sometimes just like are forgetful of action effortful behaviors fascinating is that why sometimes I can sort of start to clean my room put all like rip my bed up put it all in the machine but then I've I can quite instantly lose dopamine and lose the motivations so I'm actually I've made a bigger mess than what I started with because I've started a task I've had to make a mess in order to progress with that task but then the dopamines left me and I I end up with a a bigger mess

than what I what I started with 100% because we have this thing called anticipatory dopamine where dopamine Rises at the thought of doing something productive so you're like I'm going to clean my room CH everything out cuz the thought of it is great and then it's like oh that's actually going to require a lot of do means to do that can't really be bothered would' rather go and set my phone on the sofa for a bit that's it and easily done and the biggest thing to understand with ADHD is the more consistently and we'll get

to this with the high functioning the more consistently you fight that small battle and get through it just like what the cold shower is training you to do the more you're going to be able to cross that hurdle and then get these big natural elevations in dopamine which leads to these high functioning lives super fascinating let's find out what's in the washing machine this week in the washing machine of woes I know tidying and washing and doing all of those adult things are good for me but my depression just means I have so much trouble

getting up and doing them it's so hard to motivate myself do you have any tips just to get me up and get me to start something even if I don't finish it yeah this is a great question and interestingly we train a lot of the staff at the NHS that's one of our biggest like clients for this dose product many individuals come to us us navigating this depressive low mood experience and one of our primary challenges between session one and session two is simply making sure you try to do seven days where you make your

bed every day and you try and do it quite nicely like you take a few minutes and you try and do it quite nicely and that begins to then create an increase in some dopamine levels their next challenge is then to see if they could get one of the rooms in their home clean and they go through a process of when when am going to do that and the biggest thing is effectively starting with the bed making so that's your biggest goal for a week or ignore the rest of the house it's just every day

I got to try and make this bed and I know it's annoying but like there's just this natural dopamine that is increasing in your brain as a result and this is why for example like if you go into the military or something it's one of the biggest things is make your bed every day because they instinctively know humans are going to be more disciplined if the day starts like that and once you've done that the goal is to try and Tackle one room in the home a bathroom would be really good because it's a particularly

annoying room to have to clean and I'd advise like try to take some stuff off the sides like you know what it's like with ADHD where your shelves are just covered in all your bathroom products and it's like mess everywhere and hair in the sink and it's just Carnage in there and uh one of the great ways to get yourself to do it is to get your phone and prop it up and face it towards wherever you are and put the video camera on and put the time lapse on okay you're not going to post

this video you can post it if you like doing that kind of thing but this is just for you you're going to put the phone up and you're going to start a time-lapse video of you cleaning the bathroom and it's going to do two things it kind of begins to motivate you because you're curious what this video is going to look like because timelapse videos go really fast but the other thing it means is that once you've been doing it for 5 minutes or so and typically you'd give up you're going to think oh well

if I give up now then the time-lapse video will be [ __ ] because I'm going to have to go on my phone so it like kind of like means you can't go on it and we also do this a lot with kids studying in school they video themselves studying when they're doing their homework and it means they can't pick up the phone and go and check so I would say make the bed seven days then focus on cleaning one room whilst you clean it put a time-lapse video on and start there and then try

and each week focus on one new room in the house a lot of people with ADHD often find task initiation easier if there's somebody there with them or the community sort of dubbed it body doubling interesting so I suppose what's going on biochemically with that situation if someone's there are you sort of feeding off their energy we're going to get a bigger dopamine hit if we feel like someone else is seeing the success of the behavior like athletes for example with all those people watching it getting Monumental rises in dopamine because there loads of people

celebrating their success and if you're in an environment where someone else is seeing you successfully doing something your brain is going to get this like increasing dopamine the other side of it is the accountability component where lots of us if there was a camera on us all the time we wouldn't necessarily lie in our bed all day like eating crisps and like scrolling our phone but there's no accountability to it it's one of the reasons porn is like one of the most underspoken about negative behaviors in the world is because such a private thing that

no one knows about that we're doing so it's like oh no one knows it's fine even though we know it's making us feel [ __ ] and there's that accountability to component there's someone seeing you do it and we regularly and this kind of comes back to the previous question get the teenagers in the schools we train to put each other on FaceTime whilst they do the cleaning so they can kind of talk and have a bit of human connection whilst they do it and they feel like they're both making progress together so that body

doubling idea if it's possible like working together in this way like study with me videos are massive those kind of things I think they're effective certain people with ADHD who might be high functioning and successful what are they doing right effectively the interesting thing about this ADHD thing is because you're coming from low Baseline dopamine levels all the addictive stuff that can give you quick dopamine sugar porn social media alcohol vaping these things create even bigger highs than the average person so when you drink a drink of alcohol when you scroll on your phone you're

getting a bigger elevation of pleasure in your brain which is why it's so difficult to navigate this modern world as an ADHD brain the alternative side of that to look at is if you do something that is of value to you so you successfully complete a project and you find out a specific aspect of your work that you really like doing or you get really into an artistic project like digital art or you start getting good at a musical instrument or you start getting really good at a really challenging video game and challenging video games

for context are actually quite good for your dopamine levels just like you got these big spikes off the quick behaviors you also get bigger spikes than the average brain on these challenging behaviors your dopamine is going to go through a bigger climb effectively and it means that those with ADHD if they find something to channel the dopamine into are actually going to experience greater levels of performance like if you took like a hunter gatherer that grew up genetic ADHD they're 10 years old and suddenly it's like you've got a build or you've got to climb

or you got to like uh hunt for food or look for food they're going to go out there and do it and they're going to feel even better than the average person in that tribe and they're going to want to put in more effort and they're actually going to probably become the highest functioning person within that Hunter gather of tribe and I imagine for most of time ADHD actually was the high performing human indiv individuals within our world but then trying to fit into school in our modern society has become really really challenging because it's

not necessarily how the ADHD brain works because ADHD likes hyper focus on one thing not t at once does the pursuit of dopamine for ADHD people increase the risk of addiction for sure you're you are much more prone to addiction because of these big elevations like personally I found real challenges with alcohol Drugs porn sugar social media all of it to be honest like all of it has been so exciting to my brain that I've been like wow I really want that and ultimately for me the only way I found a way out of it

is having something to sacrifice those behaviors for so say for example I really wanted to stop watching porn but it's like oh no know to watch porn and it's like really pleasurable when I watch porn so like I'll just keep doing it but ultimately the only thing that could convince me to stop watching porn wasn't thinking about anyone else what anyone else would think or anything like that it was I really like being in a high productive state in the morning I love being able to attack my goal of building do and all that kind

of stuff and I notice and if you do observe yourself more like observe how you feel and your motivation level you'll notice if you watch porn at night you are waking up in a slightly more demotivated state so then once I had this clear goal I was willing to chase I was then willing to sacrifice porn or sacrifice getting super drunk on alcohol sacrificing e loads of sugar in the kind of order of a higher aim that I was orienting towards which is something that once you come to understand as an individual individual with ADHD

can lead you onto a pretty exciting path what steps could someone take if they're listening they've got ADHD they think that they've got that within them that ability to be high functioning but there like something stopping them is there like a step they could take to increase their chance of being high functioning person with ADHD the most significant thing I've seen and now guided thousands of people to do we've done like close to 50,000 people through this dose process the most significant I've seen thing I've seen people do is go on headphone free walks for

60 minutes in nature a few times a week and there's such a big thing in like mental health sport like go on a walk go on a walk and I really appreciate that that sometimes doesn't sound like the best thing it's I can't really bother to do that I when I was like kind of exploring the idea of could I go on a war for 60 minutes without my phone thought that sounds like absolute hell all the noise in my head all the critique or the like negative selft talk I would experience or the boredom

I would experience but what I came to discover is really the answers to all the things you're seeking for in your life whether it's a healthier life whether it's a career goal you have whether it's a working based thing you're seeking for all of the answers to your challenges are out there in the choir and for someone with ADHD their nervous system is really hyperactive they're constantly seeking for new stimulation if you're at home it's like I really want to work on that project and then you see something Instagram it's like actually know I'd really

like to do this and it's like actually I'm going to become a cook and then it's like you're just constantly jumping around to loads of [ __ ] if you spend a prolonged period of time outside in the quiet with just your brain in nature because that calms the nervous system down build serotonin which why it's so good if you spend prolong periods of time out there on a consistent basis eventually the boredom and critical selft talk begins to reduce itself and all these like exciting solutions to what you're really dreaming for this high functioning

Life begin to become clear ever since I got a dog five years ago that gave me a reason to get out and the the trajectory of my ability to think clearly and problem solve went up they were always on those dog walks I've got a reason now I have to go out every morning maybe not an hour say half an hour um Barefoot sometimes it's such a nice feeling to just connect with nature um and I often come back make a video that does really well or think up something and it often stems from that

time spent on the walk we really need the quiet because we as humans like to live our most fulfilling experience of Life need to be like utilizing our talents we need to be doing something with our skill set like hundreds of thousands of years hunt gatherers growing up everyone had a specific function in that tribe some people great with the food the hunting the tools the building the kids whatever it might have been and so many of us in our modern world aren't accessing our skill set and the real reason that's happening is because we

all instinctively are good at certain things we might be really good at cooking or art or sport or whatever it might be but we're vicariously watching everyone else do the thing we're good at on our phones all the time and we're sitting there and we have this urge within us to pursue something we care for but we're just watching other people do it on the feed and we're vicariously experiencing that Joy so like I can't really be bothered and these aren't even really conscious thoughts for us I hope these like thoughts as you listen to

this begin to make you think like maybe I actually want to be doing that thing and what really guide people to do is spend some time over the next few days really pondering whilst they're scrolling these short video platforms what is the main piece of content that I love watching is it cooking is it cleaning is it sport is it something to do with work art whatever it might be and then with that in mind I want you to go out for 60 Minutes on a walk without your phone in the quiet and really Ponder

what are the steps you'd have to take in your life in order to orient yourself towards actually getting yourself engage with that thing cuz your happiest life is on the other side of actually engaging in that hobby yeah great essentially really monitor your knej reactions I guess and see what you're genuinely intrinsically drawn towards yeah like I spent ages loving watching nature videos and stuff like that thinking nature is quite cool as a kid like I like playing out there when I was a kid then I became an adult and just like oh what's nature

I'm just going to work and like drink and do all the like modern adult stuff and then had this realization of like I actually can make videos in nature like that is an option for me to do in my life and I suddenly realized this thing that I was watching everyone else do on my feed is something that I could personally be doing and that's when I started feeling fulfilled whereas when you're in this kind of like inaction state where you don't feel like you're making that much progress it makes you feel crap so it's

like that difference in I'm going to engage rather than I'm going to watch others engage are coffee and dopamine related yeah coffee is super interesting caffeine as a substance is very connected to our dopamine system and effectively it's going to create an increase in the amount of availability of dopamine within the brain so whereas like when you did that cold water immersion that itself actually increased dopamine effect ively coffee is like turning the engine on it's going to mean there's a load of dopamine like ready to go if you engage with a valuable behavior for

dopamine so say for example you really want to do a really focused task like you're trying to get into Flow State which is like hyperfocus you want to have your coffee immediately before trying to engage in that task it's going to increase the availability of dopamine and then you're going to do it that's why people like caffeine before training in the gym before working tasks is really good and that's why for example on the other side people like drinking Jaga bombs and V red balls because if you drink caffeine and you have alcohol at the

same time you get this massive Spike of dopamine so caffeine is good I wouldn't advise having it when you first wake up similar to like the whole idea of not having social media when you first wake up or porn when you first wake up you're really want to try and earn your first coffee and like for me I absolutely love coffee it's one of my favorite things but I know I can't have loads of it and if I wake up I have this framework where like I've got to do something that's effort before I'm allowed

to have that coffee I've got to go on a walk or I've got to like complete a specific task in my work get my bedroom organized but if you feel like you're earning the coffee then you have the coffee then you step yourself back into a nice action State that's going to be the best is there like an optimal time between waking up and having your first coffee you really don't want it within 90 minutes of waking up I would say your brain is going through this whole Sarcan Rhythm process where it's like waking up

as a result of sunlight hopefully as a result of sunlight a lot of us spend the morning inside and then it's going through like a calling off period in the evening and in the morning cortisol which is a stress hormone is that's going to really help wake up our body but if we have coffee in that moment where it's trying to naturally wake itself up it basically throw throws off the natural functioning of our Energy System if you push your morning coffee back just by like 90 minutes than normal which I know is annoying but

these things are all worth just testing and if it works then you can yourself decide to keep doing it but if you push it back it's going to mean the afternoon crashes and they're like I need another coffee I need another coffee is going to happen less often if you I'm fascinated by the idea of the smartphone and sort of the instant dopamine hit that's available now if you had one bit of advice or one warning for somebody say a teenager who's just at that age where they're allowed their first smartphone what would that be

biggest thing I would want you to constantly become conscious of as you engage with it more and more is is this providing the majority of the joy in my life smartphones can provide Joy I like going on social media like on the train home from this I'm sure I like I'll go on social media and have some fun but if it's providing the majority of your joy you're heading for a path of this low dopamine state where you are in definitely going to start over engaging get into low dopamine and ultimately end up in these

like depressed demotivated head spaces whereas if you think I'm going to use it as something that's fun to engage with like occasionally but I'm going to try and get the majority of my joy from personally fulfilling what I can be good at as a human being whether that's sport artwork whatever it might be but if you see it as I have to get joy naturally social media can be a little bonus on top rather than social media is the priority and I'll do some things occasionally that distinction is really key a big issue within the

ADHD Community is rejection sensitivity dysphoria RSD are you familiar with that term I actually am not so I'd love you to explain it it's it's a often out of proportion reaction to a perceived criticism or a rejection often stems from the fact that we've been exposed to so much more criticism in our early years so when we're an adult and we're exposed to a criticism or a rejection we can often react in quite a visceral violent way um and it can cause tremendous problems in relationships at work um and I wondered and if you don't

know what it is that's cool but I wonder if you knew what might be happening biochemically in the brain when that reaction does happen I imagine definitely connected to like trauma response within the body and as a young person if you're experiencing a lot of critique about yourself whilst you're someone that's trying to build their self-esteem and become like a confident human it's going to really like stress your nervous system out like in those moments where you were critique your heart rate would have really risen your blood pressure your thoughts would have gone really fast

like these are natural like stress response uh reactions to these kind of experiences and I imagine if as an adult you suddenly have like a very similar Lane of critique about who you are as a person I imagine it's immediately evoking that trauma response that was patented into you as a kid and I think it's a really important thing to become aware of and try and work with because sometimes people would be critiquing you and it's just horrible it's just like well that's just not true like I hate you for that because it's just like

that's that's not reality but asking yourself and trying to become honest with yourself and this is where again These Quiet walks in nature become very very impactful on your life because you start to Tor yourself much more and in that moment maybe say okay so you get this big stress response I'd really go similar to what we did in the ice bath there towards the slow breathing focus on trying to breathe out as slow as you can to calm the stress response down and then really ask yourself and try and be as like authentic as

truthful in to yourself as possible and say like is there truth in that sentence or is there not and it's very likely there might not be and then it's fine you can just be frustrated with that person and you can just think I don't necessarily need that advice but I think sometimes as a result of hating criticism it can make us hate all criticism and sometimes criticism is a of value like Carol DW great psychologist in America has that whole growth mindset idea and growth mindset is basically the sort of brain that is open to

receiving guidance and there's a balance there to be found but being open to receiving guidance is important do you think it's possible for somebody when they are triggered or they're reacting to a criticism or a rejection you think it's possible for somebody to know the difference between a genuine proportionate response to a real criticism or maybe a disproportionate response to something someone said because it's triggered them to a past trauma I would always go in those situations because that's very nuanced like it's going to be very unique the situation that happens there I really strongly

believe and as someone that's really studied this whole neuroscience nervous system world of like how is our brain and body connected the whole gut feeling thing is really significant we have the same amount of uh microbes in our gut as the same amount of like effectively neurons within our brain like our our gut is an extremely sophisticated speaking mechanism to our brain and in a moment like that you get this reaction you get thoughts in your head you get like fiery in your body really i' always comes to this breathing thing it's very significant there's

even something called the physiological sigh which is effectively where you take a big breath in and then you do an extra one and then you breathe out and it simulates like a really calming response to heart so try and get the body calm first like if you try and start talking immediately that's when fire is going to erupt so like if you if you have to step away and just say I'm going to try and chill myself out like and so on once You' got the body to a calm place I'd always be trying to

like ask that feeling within your tummy like is this a proportional response or is this like some kind of reactive thing and I would trust the wisdom of your guy I think the guy is an extremely wise guide yeah I mean brilliant it's such I wanted to get that question in there because it's such a such a pain Point within particularly the ADHD Community this whole concept of RSD and and of course some reactions are going to be proportionate and valid because we are going to receive genuine criticism some we are going to experience [

__ ] sometimes also at the same time we are also going to be triggered because we were exposed there is to hear there is a way to tell the difference is is super important I actually experienced this very recently I had someone close to me talk to me about the like path I'm taking and whether this is good this like whole dose thing is a long-term path for me and I absolutely love dose and it like really evoke that question in me of like am I getting annoyed at this because it's criticism or is this

genuine like guidance of value to me and I like I've had spend some real time like thinking through like I respect this person's guidance and I have spent a long time like thinking through how am I responding to this and like what feels most authentic and truthful to myself and it is really like a case of like how honest with yourself can you become and with all this guidance I'm giving whether it's around relationship with all these addictive behaviors or whether you're taking action towards your goals like this why I recommend so much the time

and quiet in the nature because you start having honest questions with yourself just like in a relationship you build a relationship honesty is like a really key part of it the same as the relationship with yourself and the more honest and authentic you are to like what your body feels the better you're going to effectively respond in those sort of situations fascinating and a big question to finish what does your knowledge of dopamine teach us about our external Pursuit of Happiness when uh brilliant psychiatrist that goes by the name of Schultz in uh Cambridge started

studying dopamine really hard in the 1980s he basically discovered that we always thought the big dopamine Spike came when we successfully got something so for Hunter gather is like food shelter whatever it might be for us now it might be the big job promotion find the relationship have sex with the new person whatever it might be the big new exciting things we always thought the Pinnacle of the dopamine was there what schz came to discover is that the greatest dopamine spike is actually prior to successfully acquiring the thing you're seeking for it's not actually when

you get it so it'll go through a curve where it go increases really high say in like a marathon it might be 24 or 25 miles that you're actually at the highest point and then at 26 you're actually going be slightly lower than that and the reason that happened is because dopamine is completely responsible for motivation and focus it was say for example if you're hunting an animal it's more important that you got more dop just before you get it once You' got it because it's going to enable you to be in the highest performing

State when you think about happiness the interesting thing there is actually acquiring the things we're seeking for isn't necessarily the path to happiness it's just being in the pursuit of things that we think seem exciting and of value to our life and with that making sure you've always got a clear go and a clear Mountain you're climbing is insanely important like when you look into the mental health of people that win Olympic gold medals or celebrities that reach the Pinnacle of their careers or people that win the lot very quickly after reaching the absolute peak

of experience depression can actually be what arises following that experience of like I really wanted this thing and then you get it and then you actually feel lower so always making sure that there's a clear path of a mountain you're climbing whether it's a health goal a career goal a family goal an artistic Pursuit but being in the pursuit of a goal is actually what's going to create the happiest brain yeah no it's fascinating I I've heard similar is that that sort of Everest summit moment the journey to get there is is the part and

you often get whether you Summit Everest or you sell your business or you make the bed in the morning whatever it is for you um afterwards you can find yourself in a bit of a slump and if someone's in that slump is there any way that they can reduce the impact of it in terms of they've just reached the thing that they really wanted and then they're entering the low after it I would say it's spending time like clarifying what's the next Mountain I'm going to climb and always remember like it doesn't always have to

be a massive Mountain doesn't have to be I've got to build some massive new business or I've got to whatever it might be it's like what's like something in the next seven days that feels like a cool Pursuit for me I'm spending time with my girlfriend at the moment she's clarifying what her work is going to look like and if you try and make it huge like building this big course and it's going to change the world or that it's like such a complicated Mountain to climbs then it actually can be overwhelming whereas if you

make like clear goals each week if like that is something that would be a really cool thing to achieve by this Friday and you have a clear Mountain then you spend some time like I I use this thing called structured where I literally build it into my my calendar how I'm going to climb the mountain effectively and whether it's work or it could become something artistic or it could become something with your health just making sure you have a clear route and like a five-day path towards it it's probably going to be the best game

plan brilliant we have a closing tradition TJ on the podcast where we ask everyone what their most impulsive moment is wow that's uh interesting question what was my impulsive moment most impulsive thing you've ever done and it's allowed to be a stupid thing to have done oh stupider the better I uh and I like to try and delete this memory from my brain but decided once when I was uh intoxicated with alcohol to do a there there and back on a h Lane train track which was pretty stupid not through a ill Mental Health Challenge

through a impulsive oh my God I'm going to see if I can run there and back and I mean that's probably the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life so that was very impulsive sorry you say you ran over a train track I literally got in tried to run to the other side it's a very wide train tried to run to the other side and run back and uh yeah I mean that was ridiculously stupid thing to do and as I say it wasn't like a mental health suicidal thought it was more of a

like I wonder if I could do that in that time it was like a dopamine desire effectively and uh haven't thought about that for about 10 years so I'm greatly appreciative of the fact it's now back in my brain do you remember if there was a slump after you achieved it I actually remember getting out and just thinking like that was so stupid now it's got a crash and that is exactly how this doam me system works it like likes the idea of something ridiculously no and exciting and then you do it and you think

[ __ ] so uh yeah wasn't a great feeling after was exciting in the moment I tried to do it that is ADHD and dopamine basically TJ this has been a lot of fun thank you so much thank you for having me