Gemma Speck

And it's not that experts are necessarily opposed to these kind of like abstinent stints.

They just really disagree with the idea of the use of the term detox.

Dopamine, detox, detoxifying, dopamine isn't a toxin.

It's not something your body needs to be rid of in order to build back up a purer or healthier reserve.

As one Harvard article as well in 2020 put it, you also can't fast from a naturally occurring brain chemical.

If we could deliberately deplete dopamine, we know the outcome of that.

Parkinson's, literally, that is what a lack of dopamine, that is what a fast depletion of dopamine is.

does.

Do you know what I mean?

So you actually don't want that.

You don't want your brain to be without it.

Dopamine definitely does rise in response to rewards.

The availability of dopamine increases with anticipation and the anticipation of pleasurable activities.

But there's no way that you can go into your brain or you can directly influence the level of dopamine available in your brain through behavioral choices.

other than like maybe maybe diet but only then in terms of like increasing levels and the availability and the health of your of your own brain what's really happening is not with dopamine detoxes is not that you're increasing sensitivity it's not that you are literally reducing dopamine levels because that's impossible unless you have a neurodegenerative disease it's

It's that you're practicing mindfulness.

That is why dopamine detoxes work.

Again, not that they're the right term, but that's why the premise behind them works.

A dopamine fast is basically just reasserting control over behaviors that have become unmanageable because you're finally paying attention to the ways that they become detrimental to your life and the self-control that you may or may not be able to have over them.

The results we see of needing less to feel a similar level of reward or gaining control over certain habits is not the depletion or the, it's not that you are asserting control over dopamine.