Dr. Robert Lustig

And number seven, pleasure is dopamine and happiness is serotonin.

They are not the same.

Two different neurotransmitters, two different sets of receptors, two different areas of the brain, two different mechanisms of action, two different clearance mechanisms.

They're not the same.

There are things that we do that raise our dopamine and everything that raises our dopamine lowers our serotonin.

And everything that raises our dopamine also ends up increasing the damage that cortisol does because dopamine is excitatory.

So when dopamine fires, you excite the next neuron.

So that increases neurotransmission, that increases energy need because every time a neuron fires, it uses up a lot of energy.

But cortisol, the stress,

actually increases the need for energy because cells that are responsive to cortisol basically need increased energy to be able to maintain their firing rate.

So what you have is you have an increased need and the inability to generate it.

That means that those neurons are now at risk, risk of death.

And that's called addiction.

So the dopamine cortisol thing going together is what drives virtually all of these problem behaviors.

And it's what has basically interfered with our stress resilience.

And it's built into the system.

It's baked into the cake.

Now there are things we could do to fix it.

Like I said, we could get social.

We could generate purpose outside of ourselves.