The 4 Chemicals That Run Your Brain…and Your Life | Tj Power
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What four chemicals control our thoughts and feelings?
What if I told you your life is being controlled by four chemicals that your brain makes, and once you learn to harness them, which are about to do nearly everything from love to accomplishing to health, gets better. In this conversation, you'll discover the four brain chemicals that control nearly everything you do and feel. how to turn the right ones up to boost motivation and fuel action and achievement. You'll learn which ones deliver you into the Zen zone and dial down stress and anxiety and how to tap them. And you'll learn how to rewire your brain chemistry to deepen love and connection and joy. Our guide is acclaimed neuroscientist, founder of the Dose Lab and author of The Dose Effect, TJ Power.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And we'll jump right in after the break. You make sort of a bold claim, which maybe isn't so bold. Maybe we're all feeling this in a lot of different ways.
How does modern life disrupt brain chemistry?
And it's this notion that modern life is disrupting the way that our brains work, especially on a neurochemical level. Take me into this.
Our brain chemicals are a fascinating world to investigate. We have these four that I'm particularly focused on in my research lab. Dopamine, which is super famous, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins. And they very conveniently spell the acronym DOSE. These chemicals evolved over a huge period of time. For our pre-hominin ancestors, 2.5 million years. For our homo sapien ancestors, 300,000 years. And they really evolved for a very different experience of life, one that was deeply connected with nature, tons of sunlight, tons of movement, tons of effort. Our environment now is very different to the one that humanity grew up in, and it's causing disruptions to the balance of these chemicals.
So what is that disruption doing to us? How's that actually showing up in our lives?
Yeah, so with each of these chemicals and our whole goal with DoseLab is to really demystify these rather than just seeing them as sort of like quote unquote happy hormones.
What is the difference between dopamine and oxytocin?
They have very specific functions. So for example, how it may show up for us is if our dopamine level was very low, we'd find it really hard to take action towards any form of goal. So if you were like, I need to work hard on a project or I need to get myself to go to the gym or I need to spend longer cooking so that I can eat healthier. If the dopamine is low, it's very hard to get momentum. oxytocin is much more about the love and connection we feel if you're feeling lonely and disconnected and potentially struggling with your confidence about who you are that could be oxytocin serotonin explores our energy levels and the stability of our mood If your mood is very fluctuating, you're thinking a lot in your brain, you're very worried and you're very tired, that would be serotonin.
And then endorphins really help us to tolerate stress through physical action. If you're feeling a lot of tension inside you, stressed out, angry, frustrated, it's going to be tricky there. And the useful thing about understanding your own dose is that if you end up not feeling good for whatever reason, you're then going to be able to create a game plan as we'll explore today as to how you could alleviate that challenge.
So, I mean, here's my curiosity around this. The sort of like quote symptoms that you just listed out, which so many of us have felt we've moved in and out of, sometimes stayed in for long windows of time, sometimes it's sort of like passing, you know, a lack of motivation, a lack of energy or a lack of a feeling of disconnection or isolation, stress, mood fluctuations. We live in a world where it's really easy for us to point to all of these things happening around us as, oh, this is why it's happening, right? So we have all these external circumstances, these external stimuli that somehow we can look at and say, this is why I'm feeling this way. This is why I just can't get up out of bed. This is why I can't motivate to go and move my body or eat healthier.
This is why I'm feeling disconnected.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What four chemicals control our thoughts and feelings?
0:00–0:56
2
How does modern life disrupt brain chemistry?
0:56–2:01
3
What is the difference between dopamine and oxytocin?
2:01–3:52
4
How does serotonin affect mood and gut health?
3:52–5:05
5
Why is physical movement essential for stress release?
5:05–6:31
6
What are the 20 free behaviors to recalibrate brain chemicals?
6:31–7:19
7
How can technology impact our brain chemistry?
7:19–8:45
8
What actionable steps can we take to improve our well-being?
8:45–59:41
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Good Life Project
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