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4 Ways To Increase Happy Chemicals In Your Brain

Did you know you can control your happiness? Being unhappy seems to be the new normal. So many people have their faces stuck in their phones that they’ve lost the ability to enjoy their lives. Don’t let that be you.

 

“So, what do I do?” you ask. You make use of the chemicals, hormones, and neurotransmitters in your brain.

 

These natural substances work together to help out with certain bodily processes. Their other function? They regulate our moods.

 

When you have a better understanding of how these chemicals work, you learn how to regulate and adjust them naturally.

 

In this post, we’ll share with you four ways to increase these happy chemicals in your brain.

 

Let’s get started.

 

What Are Happy Chemicals?

 

Our brain stimulates certain glands to release dozens of different chemicals. They’re sent out into the bloodstream and get to where they need to go.

 

These chemicals, aka hormones, are involved in various bodily processes. There’s a hormone for managing digestion, heart rate, and reproduction. Basically, anything your body does is regulated by one hormone or another.

 

They also have the ability to make us feel joy, sadness, hunger, or pumped up with energy. They’re usually referred to as ‘feel-good’ or ‘happy’ hormones.

 

These chemicals fluctuate throughout the day. This is why you feel lethargic mid-afternoon or excited for an upcoming party you’re attending.

 

Below, you’ll find the four main happy chemicals in our bodies. Then, in the following section, we’ll tell you how each one affects our moods.

 

• Dopamine
• Endorphins
• Oxytocin
• Serotonin

 

4 Ways To Increase Happy Chemicals

 

The great thing about these happy chemicals is we have power over them. We can either increase or decrease how much of them are released through the choices we make each day.

 

Let’s explore how you can take full advantage of these natural happy chemicals of yours.

 

Find Time To Exercise

 

Exercising has so many health benefits. The most important benefit is that it affects our emotional and mental well-being.

 

Studies show that when you exercise for at least 20 minutes, your body releases endorphins. The science behind it is that they induce a sense of euphoria.

Have you ever heard of the ‘runner’s high?’ Guess who’s behind that? That’s right, endorphins!

 

Endorphins are also popular among athletes because they can block pain signals. They do this by binding to opioid receptors in the central nervous system. As a result, your feeling of pain is considerably reduced.

 

To take full advantage of your natural mood stabilizers, exercise outdoors. You’ll get some serotonin coursing through your veins in addition to endorphins. Plus, working out with a group provides even more benefits than going at it alone.

 

If you can find some friends to exercise with, that’s amazing! Yet, if all your friends are busy, join a class and exercise with strangers. Who knows? You may end up striking up a conversation with one of them, which your brain will reward you for with a shot of oxytocin.

 

Cook A Meal With A Loved One

 

In theory, preparing a meal and enjoying it with someone you love can activate all four happy chemicals! Let’s take it one feel-good hormone at a time.

 

First off, there’s the bonding and sharing special time with a loved one. All those feelings tell the brain it’s time to produce some oxytocin, the ‘love’ hormone.

 

The great thing about oxytocin is it doesn’t specify what type of love. Your brain will release it when you’re with your partner on a romantic night out or when you’re shaking someone’s hand.

 

Now, let’s talk about endorphins and dopamine. These are released whenever you’re eating something delicious.

 

Having someone special to share the meal with just boosts their levels even more. Don’t forget to laugh, as well. Studies show that laughter is truly ‘the best medicine’ because it triggers endorphin release.

 

Finally, there’s serotonin. One way to get some is by eating certain foods that restore your gut health, especially those that contain tryptophan.

 

Tryptophan is an essential amino acid. It’s vital for your health, but your body can’t make it. So, you have to find foods that contain this amino acid, which your body transforms into serotonin.

 

Eating prebiotic foods is also a terrific way to support healthy gut bacteria. By taking care of your microbiome, you can regulate your mental and emotional health.

So, eat right, be happy. It’s that simple. Fascinating, right?

 

Check out just a few of the foods that help maintain a healthy gut microbiome. Some of them contain tryptophan as well, so it’s a win-win!

 

• Wheat and oats
• Onions and garlic
• Legumes
• All types of berries
• Citrus fruits
• Apples
• Beetroot
• Mushrooms

 

Enjoy The Sunshine

 

According to research, spending about 10 to 15 minutes outdoors works wonders for our moods. It can help stimulate the production of not one, but two, happy chemicals: endorphins and serotonin.

 

Even if it’s a bit cloudy out, take a few minutes to enjoy being outdoors. Getting a breath of fresh air as you walk around the block can do wonders for your mood.

 

If it’s sunny outside, then all the better. Just make sure you take your sunscreen along.

The reason? When you’re outside, your body absorbs Vitamin D from the Sun. This activates the production of an enzyme that converts tryptophan into serotonin. How cool is that!

 

Not only that, but the natural light from the sun cues certain areas in our retinas to produce serotonin. This phenomenon explains why many people suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) in winter when the days are shorter.

 

Get Enough Sleep

 

Everyone knows they need anywhere between seven to nine hours of sleep each night. However, few people recognize the link between sleep and their hormones.

 

When you don’t get the sleep your body craves, you create an imbalance of chemicals in your body. Dopamine is especially affected, and accordingly, you wreak havoc on your mood. You start suffering from mood swings, lethargy, and lack of focus.

 

This flows onto your mental health and you begin spiraling towards feelings of despair. It can even lead to depression. Not surprisingly, your physical health will start to suffer as well.

 

To prevent all that, all you have to do is get some quality sleep. Just those few hours can really make a world of difference.

 

First off, they can help regain the balance of happy chemicals you need to feel good. You’ll also be able to manage stress better and improve your concentration skills.

 

There are tips and tricks you can try to get those invaluable hours of sleep each night.

 

• Don’t drink anything with caffeine at least two hours before bedtime
• Avoid heavy meals several hours before going to bed
• Turn off all screens an hour before bedtime
• Reduce the lighting and noise in your bedroom
• Meditate for at least five minutes before bedtime to relax and reduce stress
• Set up a schedule where you go to bed and get up at the same time, even on weekends

 

The Smart Way To Smarter Brain 4 (Infographic)

The Smart Way To Smarter Brain 3 (Infographic)

The Smart Way To Smarter Brain 2 (Infographic)

 

The Smart Way To Smarter Brain 1 (Infographic)

Make Your Brain Work Faster Than Ever

It is evenly important to exercise the brain like other body parts. If your brain is not energized then it is apparent that you start losing focus. Nevertheless, when you learn the facts you will be provoked to involve yourself in activities that train your brain. These activities are simply one of the finest ways to invigorate a weary brain, build focus and rouse it simultaneously. Constant worry can influence the brain in a multiplicity of unhelpful ways and is a massive problem for scores of people. You can keep your mind sharp by keeping it lively. It is said by neurological experts that the brain keeps changing and learning irrespective of age. Truthfully, as we turn older our subconscious skills tend to diminish, lowering our concentration power.

 

As you grow, have you noticed that it is difficult to recollect certain details in a book as you finish reading it? It happens when you find it hard to pay notice to things going on around you as your brain is having obscurity staying focused on a task. People who often indulge in multi tasking experience a hard time keeping focused on one task when the need crops up. Such people have automated their mind to do a variety of jobs, concurrently. By indulging in a range of exercises your brain will begin to see an up-gradation in your dispensation speed. You will start comprehending things faster and in the first shot and it will seem like someone has flicked a switch within you. 

 

Meditation is a very good way of exercising the brain, if you do not want to lose your cognitive abilities and instead make them sharper, you have to determine the ways to keep your mind healthy. A good source of finding out more of these exercises is the internet. This includes exercises to boost IQ and creativity, pacing up brain processing and memory enhancement.

 

How to Speed Read

Looking to save yourself time and get more done in the small amounts of time you do have in the day? 

 

Then how about trying to speed read? 

 

Speed read is the process of scanning through text while at the same time still taking in all the information. This is something some people are very good at and other people struggle with, so let’s look at some methods you can use to learn it.

 

Use a Tool

 

One easy way to learn to speed read is to try using a tool such as ‘spreader’. Spreader is a program that lets you paste a large amount of text into a website and then quickly runs through all the words, showing you one word at a time for a set duration. You can choose that duration and then by looking at the word count, the program can tell you precisely how long it will take to read that content. You can this way read a very big novel in a couple of hours!

 

Use ‘Jumps’

 

Normally we read by letting our eyes scan left to right across the page. You can speed this up though by letting your eyes ‘jump’ from one block of text to the next and by taking mental snapshots as you go.

 

When you do this, you may notice you are no longer sounding the words out to yourself but instead just trying to take the meaning in. This is a good thing – as you remove the need to mentally verbalize you can start reading with ‘unsymbolized thought’ which is much faster.

 

Time Yourself

 

Timing yourself at any task is an easy way to get quicker. Likewise, if you’re giving yourself 30 minutes to read in the evening, why not challenge yourself to see how many pages you can get through and then try to better that next time? The old saying goes: ‘that which is measured, improves’.

 

Eventually, try going just a little faster than you can comfortably understand.

 

Have a Goal

 

Often, we don’t need to read a lot of the text in an article or even a book. If you’re trying to get a specific piece of information from the text then set out with the goal of retrieving that and then look only for relevant content in the page. This is a good way to make sure that you aren’t wasting time by reading long introductions etc.

 

Becoming an Avid Reader (Infographic)

How to Fuel Your Brain With Energy

What is your fitness philosophy?

 

In other words: why do you train and exercise? What is it that you hope to achieve by being physically active?

 

Many of us train because we want to look better. Some of us train because we want to be healthier and stave off disease. Others train because they want to perform better at a particular sport or activity they enjoy.

 

But I have a different reason for training: I train because I want to change the way I feel and because I want to change my mindset. And this is also one of the driving factors behind my diet choices.

 

Tiredness

 

One of the biggest limiting factors in most of our lives – one of the things that most prevents us from achieving all that we want to achieve – is tiredness. You wake up in the morning and instead of leaping out of bed filled with enthusiasm, you instead struggle to drag yourself up and to actually start being productive. Then you get home and instead of doing something fun, interesting or productive, you instead just crash on the sofa and watch day time TV. Sound familiar?

 

Everything you do is less enjoyable when you’re tired. All of your decisions are worse. All of your challenges are harder. And I’m not talking about physical tiredness – I’m talking about mental tiredness. And that’s what you can actually fix with the right training program and diet, unbeknownst to many.

 

How to Increase Brain Energy

 

So how can you increase energy in your brain? One method is to increase the strength of your heart. If you do this, then you’ll be able to pump more blood, oxygen and nutrients to your brain, thus allowing it to perform more optimally. How do we do this? With steady state cardio This means the kind of cardiovascular exercise that involves long durations of exercise. A good example is running a few miles twice a week, which can help to enlarge the left ventricle in your heart. This also reduces stress by helping you to lower your resting heartrate and thus produce less cortisol.

 

Also important is to increase the efficiency of mitochondria. These are the parts of the cells that turn glucose into usable energy and the more you have and better they function, the less tired you will feel. You can increase these with a combination of HIIT training and foods/supplements that are known to support them such as CoQ10, PQQ, l-carnitine and others.

Everything You Need to Know About Panic Attacks in Order to Stop Them

It’s one thing trying to improve your ability to control your own stress response so that you can combat anxiety and improve your health. But it’s quite another when you experience serious panic attacks that leave you crippled and that prevent you from engaging in normal activities.

 

But in fact the tools you will use to achieve both ends are similar. The difference is just that panic attacks might require a more intense and a more focused approach.

 

And in either case, understanding the biology behind the experience can be a fantastic tool to help you take control more effectively.

 

Let’s look at what panic attacks are and how you can take them on head-to-head.

 

The Basics of Panic Attacks

 

When you experience any kind of stress, it’s because your sympathetic nervous system is releasing specific hormones and neurotransmitters into your system. Specifically, these are:

 

- Adrenaline (epinephrine)

- Noradrenaline (norepinephrine)

- Cortisol

- Testosterone

- Estrogen

- Dopamine

- Serotonin

 

When these occur together, your experience of pain is dulled, you become more attuned to your senses, your thoughts are focused, your strength increases your muscles contract. Your heartrate accelerates significantly and more blood and oxygen are sent to your muscles.

 

But the thing is that this increases your overall strength your reflexes and your ability to fight or run. This is a useful response in the right context.

 

The problem is when you misinterpret these signals and cause a panic attack. What happens in this case is that you notice yourself get anxious and you become worried that this is going to cause you embarrassment or make you faint (perhaps because you have previous experience with panic attacks). You begin to hyperventilate and this combined with the elevated heartrate causes chest pain. And some people mistake that chest pain for the signs of a heart attack.

 

All this makes you more anxious and that in turn means you ramp up the response even more. Your heartrate increases more, you get more anxious and eventually you might even start to get dizzy from all that oxygen.

The Solution

 

The solution then is to recognize that you’re having a panic attack but not to give it any power over you. And the way you do this is to try and detach yourself from it and essentially continue to go about your normal business. Of course, this is easier said than done but as soon as you stop letting it control you and as soon as you aren’t afraid of panic attacks, you’ll find they end a lot more quickly and eventually they can stop happening entirely.

 

Cognitive behavioral therapy can help with this, as can using the technique known as AWARE which is simply a set of steps to remove yourself from the experience and to avoid being afraid of the stress.

 

Most people will have a panic attack at some point in their lives but if you can understand what is happening and control your emotions, you’ll find it can disappear as quickly as it arrived.

 

How Anxiolytics Work and Whether You Should Use Them

If you can control stress, calm your mind and avoid anxiety then you’ll find it has huge benefits for both your body and your mind. The stress response actually makes us stronger, faster and even smarter in the short term. But over time, this can place a serious strain on the body that eventually wears you down and leaves you more susceptible to illness and other problems.

 

This is why people who experience a lot of anxiety might consider the use of anti-anxiety medications called anxiolytics. But what exactly do these do? How are they affecting your mental state? And should you use them? Let’s look at the way they work in more detail.

 

What is an Anxiolytic?

 

Anxiolytics are any drugs that reduce the stress response and to do this, they alter the neurotransmitters and hormones that the brain produces in order to encourage calmer and to act even as a mild sedative.

 

One of the main neurotransmitters that anxiolytics act on is GABA. GABA stands for Gamma Aminobutyric Acid and is a neurotransmitter that suppresses neuronal activity. That is to say that when it is released, it prevents neurons from firing. This in turn causes you to experience few thoughts and ‘slower’ thinking. It lowers the heartrate and it makes you less attuned to your surroundings.

 

GABA is one of the neurotransmitters that is affected by alcohol in fact and is responsible for some of the symptoms that we associate with being drunk. This is why some people will self-medicate with alcohol for stress or social anxiety.

 

Alternatively, some anxiolytics work by increasing serotonin. Serotonin is the ‘feel good’ neurotransmitter and this is also how anti-depressants work such as SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors).

 

The Problem

 

To increase GABA, most anxiolytics work by blocking the reuptake of GABA in the brain so that there is more of it free in the brain. When you do this over a long period of time however, it causes changes in the brain and adaptations. Specifically, because there is too much GABA, the brain stops producing as much of it itself and decreases the number of receptors. Now you need to take larger doses of anxiolytics to experience the same heightened levels of GABA and now you will likely feel even more anxious when you’re not using them. This is called ‘tolerance and dependence’ and it can lead to addiction.

 

What’s more, is that anxiolytics do not address the thinking that leads to the release of those hormones in the first place, it deals with the symptoms rather than dealing with the cause.

 

And then there are the short term, immediate side effects associated with anxiolytic use such as drowsiness and confusion.

 

So, should you stop using anti-anxiety medication? This is very easy to say but not so easy if you experience frequent and severe bouts of anxiety. You should always listen to your doctor’s advice. But just know that this medication is not a long-term solution. Focus on therapy in conjunction with medication in order to address the root cause of the issue more permanently.

 

How Your Body and Mind Are Intimately Linked Through Your Hormones

In the book Calm Mind, Healthy Body, we discuss in detail the importance of having a calm mind and we look at how controlling and calming your thoughts can ultimately improve your health by removing the stress response. 

 

But did you know that this also works just as potently the other way around? That is to say that your health can also impact on your stress levels? Even your hunger can impact on stress, which in turn impacts on hunger again. It’s a complex interplay and in a moment, we’ll see more about this works and why your lifestyle is a key factor in controlling your stress.

 

What Happens When You Eat

 

If you’re stressed right now, then one method you might be able to use to fix that is to eat more. When you eat, your blood sugar spikes. This is then in turn followed by a spike in insulin, which triggers the body to remove the sugar from the blood along with any nutrients.

 

If you’ve eaten carbs (which provide the fastest sugar spike) then you will also have tryptophan in the blood. Tryptophan is an amino acid that also happens to be a building block of the neurotransmitter ‘serotonin’. Because tryptophan can cross the brain barrier and because it gets left behind by the insulin response, this then leads to a sudden spike in serotonin in the brain and you feel very good.

 

This is why you feel in a good mood after you’ve eaten! 

 

What’s more, is that serotonin eventually converts into melatonin, the sleep hormone. That’s why everyone always falls asleep after Christmas dinner!

 

What Happens When You Get Hungry

 

But let’s say you haven’t eaten for a while. What happens then? 

 

Well, you now have very low levels of tryptophan in your brain and this in turn increases cortisol, there is no way to impact a single neurotransmitter in isolation; levels of one will always impact on levels of the other.

 

Cortisol then replaces serotonin and this increases the production of ghrelin, the hunger hormone. That’s what makes your stomach start to rumble. It also increases stress and triggers anxious thoughts. This is why we get ‘hangry’ and why you’re ‘not you when you’re hungry’.

 

Other Things That Impact on Your Mood

 

There are plenty of other ways we can impact on our levels of neurotransmitters and hormones too though. 

 

For example, when you wake up first thing in the morning you will have been fasting all through the night. At this point your serotonin levels are incredibly low and you have high cortisol making you stressed. At the same time, the light from the sun also increases the release of cortisol which wakes you up (stress hormones are stimulatory whereas relaxation hormones tend to be sedative). Cortisol removes melatonin from the brain and also widens the veins via nitric oxide.

 

Then there are other things you can do: exercise for instance is well known to increase serotonin and other endorphins and boost the mood. It’s time to stop thinking of your brain as an isolated thing!

 

The Basics of CBT for Eliminating Stress

Whether you have normal levels of moderate anxiety, or you experience large amounts of stress leading to panic attacks and health problems, CBT is the number one tool for dealing with it. CBT stands for ‘cognitive behavioral therapy’ and is the preferred tool for therapists trying to deal with all manner of different psychological disorders.

 

This is partly because CBT has a huge amount of evidence supporting its effectiveness. But what also makes CBT so useful is the fact that it is portable and affordable. CBT involves teaching techniques which can be learned even remotely over the internet. This means you can teach yourself the techniques and be incredibly effective at controlling your emotions and your stress responses.

 

How it Works

 

The basic idea behind CBT is that we ‘think ourselves’ into our mental states. Associations and conditioning partly affect our emotional response to stimuli but so too does what we think.

 

For example, when you’re afraid of talking in public, it’s probably because you are thinking of all the things that could go wrong. You maybe think ‘people will laugh at me’, or ‘what if I stutter’ or ‘what if I faint?’. Thinking these things, and visualizing them as we tend to do, can be enough to trigger the release of hormones or other hormones and this then makes us panic and possibly even causes us to make those mistakes!

The trick then is to change those thoughts so that you no longer believe those things will happen. And if you can do that, then you can completely remove the fear and the response. 

 

Cognitive Restructuring

 

The way you are taught to do this in CBT is through something called ‘cognitive restructuring’. This is a set of tools that you can utilize in order to ‘reprogram’ your thoughts and change your beliefs.

 

One example of this is something called ‘thought challenging’. Here, you simply challenge the negative thoughts that are causing you to be stressed or afraid by looking at how realistic they are. Would people really laugh at you if you stuttered? In all likelihood no, they would be sympathetic. Are you really likely to faint? Probably not.

 

Another very useful tool is something called ‘hypothesis testing’. Here you don’t just convince yourself that your fear is unlikely, you actually prove it to yourself to make sure you really believe it.

 

So how might you do that? One example is that you might put yourself in the situation you are afraid of and see what happens. So in this case, that might mean giving a speech in front of people and then purposefully stuttering to see if people react badly. Just remind yourself: it really doesn’t matter what they think. Now let yourself stand there and try to reduce stress. When you see that there is no negative outcome, you’ll remove the stress entirely.

 

Finally, CBT also incorporates meditation, exposure therapy and other known techniques to give you a powerful tool set for overcoming stress, phobias and more.