The mindbodygreen Podcast
590: The science of dopamine, oxytocin, & serotonin | Neuroscientist Tj Power
Sun, 27 Apr 2025
“ If you can fix your relationship with your phone and food, big shifts happen with your mental health,” explains Tj Power. Power, lead neuroscientist, author, and founder of the DOSE Lab, joins us today to explore the vital role neurotransmitters play in our health, how to naturally boost dopamine, and how to build routines that set you up for long-term success. Plus: - Neurotransmitters 101(~2:25) - Dopamine levels (~3:20) - How to naturally support dopamine levels (~4:00) - Boredom & the impact on the brain (~5:30) - Health implications for low dopamine (~6:55) - Routines to set yourself up for success (~7:55) - Dopamine & technology (~10:55) - What is oxytocin (~15:15) - How to increase oxytocin (~16:20) - Serotonin & the gut (~22:18) - Endorphines & destressing (~26:10) - Exercise as an elixir (~28:55) - The importance of play (~32:00) - Time alone (~33:45) - Reward systems & dopamine (~36:00) - The importance of sleep (~43:00) Referenced in the episode: - Follow Tj on Instagram (@tjpower) - Learn more about his research (https://thedoselab.com/lab) - Pick up his book, The Dose Effect - What Made Maddy Run by Kate Fagan - Research on texting vs calling on hormones (PMCID: PMC3277914) We hope you enjoy this episode, and feel free to watch the full video on YouTube! Whether it's an article or podcast, we want to know what we can do to help here at mindbodygreen. Let us know at: [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and guest of this episode?
Welcome to the My Buddy Green podcast. I'm Jason Wachub, founder and co-CEO of My Buddy Green and your host. This podcast is brought to you in part by Stash. Saving and investing can feel impossible, but with Stash, it's not just a reality, it's easy.
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What if the secret to feeling motivated, connected, and calm wasn't more productivity hacks or a 10-step routine, but better brain chemistry? Today's guest, TJ Power, is here to show us how to work with our brain, not against it. A neuroscientist, mental health educator, and the author of The Dose Effect, TJ is on a mission to change how we think about well-being in the digital age.
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Chapter 2: What are dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins?
Serotonin is our kind of mood stabilizing chemical that really wants us to live very natural experiences of life as a human. And then endorphins is this very useful chemical that can de-stress our brain whenever we need.
Very helpful. And I think our audience is probably somewhat familiar with all of these, but less familiar, or maybe it's just me, when you start to dig into the why, the what behind these. So let's start with dopamine. So we want high dopamine, not low dopamine, correct?
We want naturally high dopamine. There's differences between just any old high dopamine or naturally high.
Well, I think that's a very important point. So let's go there.
Yeah, effectively your brain has the capacity to build dopamine. They're called dopamine vesicles. They get built in an area of the brain called the ventral tegmental area. You can imagine it as like a little dopamine factory. And some things will naturally and slowly build these bubbles and then send them to what we call the reward center.
If you took something as basic as cleaning your house, that would be slow dopamine. It's not super fun to do it, but you feel kind of satisfied after you've got it all organized and clean. You've built some of these bubbles and send some of them to your reward center.
When you take something like social media, we open social media, your brain starts mass shipping these bubbles to the reward center. But because there's no effort involved, it doesn't actually manufacture any. And then you get into low dopamine as a result.
there we go the elephant in the room we got there quickly so let's talk about that i think you know i think there's been lots of commentary on dopamine and the role that technology is playing and so how can we focus before we get to the avoiding technology and social media and best practices which you talk about in the book
What are some of the things we can do beyond cleaning the house, which I'm all for, to naturally impact our dopamine in a positive way?
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Chapter 3: How can we naturally support and boost dopamine levels?
You might build stuff out in nature. But if we can Find a task in our life that we can enter a prolonged state of focus, sort of 45 minutes to an hour where we don't do anything else. We don't think about anything else. We just do that one thing. That's a magical way to build dopamine.
And I think about boredom a lot here. You know, this idea that I think most people, myself included often, when you tend to be bored, you pick up the phone. And how do you, because boredom is going to happen. You're going to be waiting in traffic. You're going to be, you know, waiting in line, like boredom. How do you think about boredom and avoiding the urge for that quick dopamine hit?
How do you build that resilience?
Yeah, I think you have to have a reason to avoid picking it up. There has to be something that you care for that motivates you to not. Because I grew up, I had like a phone since I was 11 years old, an iPhone. So I really grew up inside technology and social media. And
When I attempted to break the addiction to it, moments like that, where you're in traffic or even you're in a coffee shop with your partner and they go to the bathroom and you're like on your own for two minutes. And you're like, I have to go on my phone in this two minute gap. There's like that massive desire and pull towards it.
And for me, when I think about this, if I'm faced with that situation. I know that having good mental health is a desire of mine, feeling happy and at peace in my brain and also being motivated to do my work and things like that. These things are a value to me.
And I know that with every phone check, especially if they're too frequent, I'm depleting the molecule that's going to lead to me having good mental health and good capacity to chase my goals. So I utilize that as the motivating energy, like to not let me pick it up.
And in terms of the impact to our overall health and mental health specifically, if our dopamine is off, what are the implications? Whether it's the phone or whatever it is, what sorts of health issues do we encounter when we're out of balance?
If your dopamine is low, you'll feel very deflated. You'll feel that kind of low mood, deflated, I can't be bothered to do anything type energy within you. And that in itself isn't a great feeling.
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Chapter 4: What is the impact of technology and social media on dopamine?
It's just open it straight to Insight Timer. I do about a 15 minute silent, just breathing based meditation. I'll then brush my teeth and then I'll normally either I'm walking or I'm going to the gym. And then I'll really try and not go onto technology for the first maybe 60 minutes.
When I eventually am going to go on technology, and I think this is a game changer for everyone, my laptop will always be the first way in which I see technology, not my phone. I'll open my laptop and head into WhatsApp and email and these things that you know you need to do, but via the laptop instead of the phone. So social media is not tempting.
So it feels like limiting time on your phone is half the battle with dopamine.
It really is because we've had access to quick dopamine for a while. Things like alcohol and cigarettes and sugar, pornography. These things have been here for some of them, a few hundred, if not a thousand years. But the phone has increased the frequency in which we can access dopamine. Like we weren't drinking alcohol, having a sip every sort of five to 10 minutes all day, every day.
But that's how we're operating with these phones. So the addiction to it is so much stronger than anything else ever before. And it's,
so overstimulating because short form content particularly is very dopaminergic because of the amount of novelty that's in those feeds and novelty increases dopamine that it's just constantly plummeting our dopamine level making us feel bad then we procrastinate then we're not happy with our productivity and so on well you mentioned reaching for you know alcohol sugary food pornography
It feels like those are things one reaches for when they're emotionally upset or there's something going on. They're looking to get outside themselves. And what's your take on that connection? What's a better reach when you're stressed? Like we all know the cliche, we're stressed, we reach for the pint of ice cream in the freezer.
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Chapter 5: How does boredom affect our brain and dopamine levels?
Yeah, I mean, it would be situational. I think in those moments, yeah, often we're seeking for pleasure. We're seeking for distraction from our emotional experiences. If it's porn, we could also be seeking for love and connection, but we're kind of falsely getting it via that method. I think situationally it would vary. Sometimes, say, for example, I've been working till 2, it's like 2 p.m.
for me right now, and I might get like a bit exhausted. And then it could be tempting to be like, okay, now I'm going to go sit on the sofa and just smash some short form content. That could be quite after I've been working for a while. But I'll know that if I do that, I'm going to feel a bit flat this evening if I just spend hours scrolling short form content.
But if I wanted to chill, if I was to go to the sofa and go on YouTube on the TV and pick a 10 minute video or a 20 minute video or a podcast like this, lie back on the sofa and watch it. Long form content like that really doesn't disrupt our dopamine pathway very much at all. So it's almost being selective over which type of content we consume when we're seeking for that feeling of chilling out.
I think it's very practical. You're better off watching a documentary that's 90 minutes than going on TikTok, which seems to be probably the most disruptive thing I can think of in terms of dopamine.
It is because it's all about novelty. Dopamine always for our ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years would rise when something novel in our environment would occur. So if you saw some fruit or a deer or some honey, dopamine would rise and it would create the desire to take action towards that thing. And TikTok is just novelty, novelty, novelty, novelty.
So then your brain goes crazy on the dopamine. Whereas when you watch a movie like Gladiator, I watched that the other day. When you watch Gladiator, particularly Gladiator 1, because it's less dopamined up than Gladiator 2, you just sort of sit back and at times you're a little bit bored. And it's just that it's so good to learn to be okay with that slower feeling.
Yes, because I think eventually you just become numb. You do. You need bigger and more frequent quick hits. And it's this cycle which leads to nothing good in terms of one's mental health and ability to function in the world.
It doesn't. And I think that's why we've never seen mental health struggling as much as it is right now in our society. And we had access to a lot of the other dopamine for a very long time, as I said. But the phone is a thing that is radically changing very fast in our relationship to it as a species. And that's why I think it's right at the core of this challenge.
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Chapter 6: What are the health implications of low dopamine?
And it's important to know some people might think, OK, I'll try that. I'll try to watch a movie tonight with my phone in another room. That would be a good experiment. And you might sit there and actually feel a bit like agitated and irritated in the uncomfort of not having so much stimulation.
And it's important to understand in our research lab, we study this thing called the boredom barrier, whereby there is a moment about 10 to 15 minutes into a slower paced experience where your brain does settle and it feels okay with the fact that's the level of stimulation you're only going to get. But you have to get to it.
You have to battle through the moment of like, oh, I really need more than this.
Yes. And so we touched on this, but let's go there next. Oxytocin connection.
This is the chemical that creates the deep desire within us as humans to bond with one another. And it facilitates our family relationships, our romantic relationships, our friendships that we have. And
Effectively, in the modern world, this chemical, rather than sort of spiking it and crashing it like dopamine, it's just very under-satisfied, this chemical, because we're living in dopamine land where society has become so obsessed with success and pleasure, we're undervaluing the deep need for just moments of slow human connection. And a simple example of dopamine land instead of oxytocin is
If you're sitting in bed, lying in bed with your partner, and you're both scrolling your phones instead of talking or cuddling, you're choosing dopamine over oxytocin in that moment.
I think everyone can relate to that at some point. And so this one is also, I think, worrisome given the loneliness epidemic. Walk us through an ideal way to build oxytocin. Is it as simple as... a conversation, IRL? Walk us through the different modalities, like what this looks like ideally in the real world.
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Chapter 7: What routines help set you up for long-term dopamine success?
Yeah, definitely. So right at the core of oxytocin is physical touch. So if ever in your life you have a moment where you're interacting with a human that you feel comfortable to hug, always you should be taking that opportunity to hug that person. Kids, family, partners, colleagues, if you're good friends with them, But we really need more physical touch.
And ever since COVID, physical touch is rapidly reduced. And it's a really core component of our system. It needs oxytocin through the physical touch. And the big thing to understand is many people in the modern world are struggling with sort of a stressful, anxious, fearful feeling within their mind.
And as a hunter-gatherer, and I always refer back to this because these chemicals weren't built for this world we're in now. They were built for the original way humans operated for 99% of human history.
As a hunter gatherer, if you were cast aside from the tribe, that would have been the most anxious and stressful experience ever because you would not survive alone in the wild and your oxytocin level would become extremely low because you were disconnected from the group. For many of us now, because this chemical is under satisfied, whilst we're not out there in the wild on our own,
Our biochemistry almost perceives that we are because it's not satisfied from a connection point of view. So touch is at the forefront. Then the way in which you socially connect with people is really important. So when you're with people, the eye contact you make, the questions you ask, how well you listen, how engaged you are in that conversation and not distracted by technology.
These kind of things enable good oxytocin to transfer between you.
And I believe it was oxytocin in the example I'm going to use. So there's a fantastic book. It's a heartbreaking book written by Kate Fagan. It's called What Made Maddie Run? And it came out, I think, maybe a decade ago. And it's just this terrible story around a female athlete at the University of Pennsylvania here in the States and here in the UK who ended up taking her own life.
And it was this situation where... Everything looked okay. She's running, she's at an Ivy League school, she has friends. And the theme of one of the stories is she's suffering and so much of the exchanges are happening on text. And I think I recall that there's a significant difference between...
A parent saying to a child over text, in terms of oxytocin, I love you, everything's going to be okay, versus the boost from a parent saying that, looking eye to eye at their child and touching the child. It is a world of difference. I think that's an important note. It was one of the things they made a point of in the book, which I thought was a salient point.
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Chapter 8: What is oxytocin and how can we increase it for better connection?
We are. And I think nutrition is a complicated landscape in the modern world because there are so many opinions and there's like, we need to be extreme meat eaters or extreme vegans, or you have to follow this diet or that diet.
And it can be very complicated for maybe the average person who's not a nutritionist themselves to actually understand like, which of these foods am I supposed to be eating? But I think by and large, if we can get back to the core of just
most of our diet being natural foods that were here on earth before we got here as humans if the food if you look at it on your plate and you think could that actually exist without human intervention then yeah it's probably going to be pretty good for your health it's going to be good for your microbiome and the serotonin production and then of course as you dive deeper into nutrition you can optimize your protein and your antioxidants and everything those sort of decisions are really good decisions to be making but i think
The addiction we currently have to ultra-processed food in the modern world, like here in the UK, 57% of our calorie consumption on average is ultra-processed food, which is a huge proportion. I don't actually know the exact figure for the US, but I imagine maybe some.
I think it's probably higher.
Might be even higher in the US. Yeah. We got to do something about that.
Yeah. And I think to your point, lots of opinions on which diet is best. And my view is it's highly individualized. Where we sit in 2025, there's lots of testing where you can dial that in and figure out what ultimately is the best diet for you. But amongst all the different tribes and opinions on diets, There is consensus.
Ultra processed foods are terrible for your health and you should try to avoid them. They're going to happen, but they shouldn't be 50 to 60% of your calories.
Definitely. And I think these two things, I think foods and phones are the big thing that if society, if you like really get good with your food and your addiction to your phone, I think big shifts happen with your mental health.
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