Dr. Alok (Dr. K)

And, and Sadhguru also emphasized a certain amount of, uh, what is it?

Chemical, the importance of chemicals.

So he's, he's definitely like the first guru that I've heard talk about that in that way.

Um, so here's the thing.

If you have a life without oxytocin, if you aren't getting oxytocin, how can you live a life without dopamine?

So this is where like no amount of water is gonna be a substitute for food, right?

So our biological system is designed to have oxytocin and dopamine, and you can't substitute one for the other.

In fact, I think part of the problem is that when we start substituting or trying to use dopamine instead of oxytocin, that's what actually creates the most problems.

And I know that getting oxytocin is hard because oxytocin oftentimes requires another person.

You can't hug yourself and get a dose of oxytocin.

It's terrible.

It has to be another person or creature, animal.

And so then what happens is when we're oxytocin deficient, which comes from physical touch, hugging, cuddling, things like that, then there's a certain amount of mood disturbance that comes with oxytocin deficiency, right?

We feel anxious.

We feel sad.

We feel alone.

And then we want some way to get rid of those feelings.

And this is where dopamine comes in because dopamine is a pleasure molecule.

So when we get dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, we feel pleasure.

And so even though we feel pleasure, it's not a substitute for anxiety, like relief.