How To Reset Your Brain's Dopamine Balance - Anna Lembke - #392

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Oh, hello, friends. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Anna Lembke. She's a psychiatrist who is chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University and an author. Dopamine is a key neurotransmitter in our reward pathway. It tells us when to feel pleasure and pain, it can cause depression and anxiety, and it's being hijacked by the modern world. Phones, video games, porn, food. Our world is filled with cheap dopamine, which in turn is making us miserable. Expect to learn how dopamine creates a seesaw balance of pleasure and pain, why cravings to use your phone are driven by dopamine, the truth about dopamine detoxing, how to reset your brain's balance, the most successful interventions for changing your relationship to dopamine long-term, and much more.
This is one of the most fundamental levels of understanding that I think everyone needs in the modern era. This is the chemical which is being manipulated the most by the hyper-convenient, super-abundant world that we have about us. And yeah, it's like children in school need to be taught this. They need to understand what dopamine is, how it plays a role in their lives, and how to control it. The excesses of pleasure end up causing us pain. And that paradox is something that I totally didn't realize. There is so much to take away from today. I really, really hope that you enjoy it. If you do and you want to meet some other people who are also interested in the same things as you, like life hacks and productivity and optimization and culture and sense-making and learning new things, join the Modern Wisdom Locals Community. modernwisdom.locals.com. Over a thousand people have already joined and we're having some awesome conversations on there. There's discussion threads about every episode and you get to make new friends and also have conversations that you don't need to worry about being canceled for. modernwisdom.locals.com. In other news, this episode is brought to you by MyProtein. Long story short, MyProtein have got 50% off everything site-wide for the next seven days. So if you are listening to this in between Monday, the first of November and Sunday, the seventh of November, you can get 50% off everything site-wide. Modern Wisdom is the code and bit.ly slash ProteinWisdom is the link. Bit.ly slash ProteinWisdom. Go and get yourself some clearways, stock up on everything, whether that's apparel, accessories, supplements, foods, bars, whatever it is that you need. In the UK and the US, 50% off for the next seven days. If you're listening after that, that's 37% off for the code Modern Wisdom. bit.ly slash ProteinWisdom. Go and stock up on everything that you need from MyProtein right this moment. In other other news, this episode is brought to you by Reebok and their amazing Nano XI's. You need to get your training shoes correct. No matter what it is that you're doing, whether it's running, high intensity stuff, plyometrics, interval training, weightlifting, crossfit, you need to get the shoes right. You can wear old shorts and t-shirts, but the shoes are what you are deploying your force through the floor with. The Nanos are stable and supportive. They've got a little bit of a heel drop, which means that squatting is easier. They've got a flat sole, which actually gives you proper stable foundation. If you haven't used a proper pair of training shoes before, it's quite difficult to actually describe just how big of a difference it makes. But I will never ever go back to lifting in anything other than these. I've been in love with them for three years and they're a game changer. Also, they've actually reduced the price on some of them now, so you can get them for, I think they're a hundred pounds normal price. And now with discount with the Modern Wisdom MW20 discount, they're 80 pounds for a pair of these shoes, which is criminal. Also, you get 20% off everything else site-wide. So hoodies, t-shirts, tops, jackets, joggers, whatever it is that you need, men's and women's, but only in the UK, I'm afraid. You get 20% off everything site-wide. reebok.co.uk and MW20 is the code. That's reebok.co.uk and MW20 for a big fat 20% discount. But now it's time to learn about dopamine with Anna Lembke.
It's like one of those buzzwords at the moment. I've seen dopamine fasting and dopamine detoxes thrown around YouTube a lot, and we're talking about imbalances in the brain. Is it chemical? Is it environmental? What's your favorite framework for explaining what dopamine is and how it affects us?

**Anna Lembke** (4:50)
Well, my framework for communicating the role that dopamine has in our brain, it really has to do with the fact that pleasure and pain are processed in the same part of the brain. It's a part of the brain called the reward pathway. And pleasure and pain effectively work like opposite sides of a balance. So when we do something pleasurable, that balance tips to the side of pleasure, and we get a little release of dopamine in our brain's reward pathway, which is reinforcing and feels good. But one of the overarching rules governing this balance is that it wants to remain level. It doesn't want to be tipped for very long to the side of pleasure or pain, and the brain will work very hard to restore a level balance or what's called homeostasis.