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I prepared a summary to introduce you to this topic:
The crucial brain reward neurotransmitter activated by addictive drugs is dopamine, specifically in the “second-stage” ventral tegmental area to nucleus accumbens link in the brain’s reward circuitry. This has been learned over many decades of research, and is based upon many congruent findings.
When we crave something, it signals our brain’s demand for a substance or action linked to pleasure or alleviation of discomfort. This demand triggers the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine, which stimulates the brain’s reward pathways, creating a compelling urge for the craved item or activity.
Animal studies have shown that when cortisol is released with chronic stress, changes in the brain’s response can lead to lower dopamine levels and increased cravings. Stress has also been associated with increased levels of the hormone ghrelin, again causing stronger cravings.
Today, Crystal methreleases more dopamine in the brain compared to any other drug. Dopamine is a brain neurotransmitter that serves a number of functions, including the feeling of pleasure. When crystal meth leads to a powerful surge of dopamine in the brain, people feel motivated to seek it out again and again.
Additionally, the intensified dopamine response in the brain that mood-altering drugs produce does not naturally stop once the behaviour is initiated or completed (as is the case with natural reward behaviours such as eating or having sex); as a result, cravings for the rewards associated with the drug continue to occur.
Dopamine affects movement, emotion, learning, reward, and executive functions.High levels may result in impulsiveness and aggression, while low levels may lead to tiredness and a lack of motivation.
High dopamine symptoms include anxiety, excessive energy, insomnia, and hallucinations. Low dopamine levels are associated with brain fog, mood swings, and muscle spasms.
When we constantly overstimulate ourselves with things like excessive screen time, gaming, and unhealthy eating, it can lead to issues like addiction and poor mental health. During a dopamine detox, you have to avoid activities like social media, gaming, junk food, and even work.
Engage in Natural Dopamine-Boosting Activities: Physical exercise, meditation, exposure to sunlight, engaging in hobbies, and listening to music can naturally increase dopamine levels. These activities not only help in elevating mood but also in reducing cravings.
Dr. Andrew Huberman discusses the science of addiction, focusing on the role of dopamine to understand why quick rewards make addiction so hard to combat. Dr. Andrew Huberman is a tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine and host of the Huberman Lab podcast.
2 Nov 2023
Dr. Andrew Huberman discusses the dopamine-driven cycle of craving and motivation.
* dedicated to our dearest Li, who is an expert professional on the treatment of addictions 🙂
I prepared this summary to introduce you to the topic:
Addiction, or substance use disorder, is a primary and chronic disease of the brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. This is characterized by compulsive drug craving, seeking and use that persist even in the face of extremely negative consequences.
The term reward system describes a group of structures that are activated by rewarding or reinforcing stimuli, such as addictive drugs or alcohol. When the brain is exposed to a rewarding stimulus, it reacts by increasing levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine.
Instead of a simple, pleasurable surge of dopamine, many drugs of abuse—such as opioids, cocaine, or nicotine—cause dopamine to flood the reward pathway, 10 times more than a natural reward. The brain remembers this surge and associates it with the addictive substance.
When rewarding stimuli are experienced, the dopaminergic mesolimbic system is activated which causes the release of dopamine to the targeted nuclei (Small et al. 2003; Cameron et al. 2014). The ventral striatum, including the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), is a major substrate involved in reward.
Dopamine (DA)is the neurotransmitter that has been classically associated with the reinforcing effects of drugs of abuse and may have a key role in triggering the neurobiological changes associated with addiction.
Research has shown that the drugs most commonly abused by humans (including opiates, alcohol, nicotine, amphetamines, and cocaine) create a neurochemical reaction that significantly increases the amount of dopamine that is released by neurons in the brain’s reward centre.
Midbrain dopamine neurons are well known for their strong responses to rewards and their critical role in positive motivation. It has become increasingly clear, however, that dopamine neurons also transmit signals related to salient but non-rewarding experiences such as aversive and alerting events.
Addiction is now understood to be a brain disease. Whether it’s alcohol, prescription pain pills, nicotine, gambling, or something else, overcoming an addiction isn’t as simple as just stopping or exercising greater control over impulses. That’s because addiction develops when the pleasure circuits in the brain get overwhelmed, in a way that can become chronic and sometimes even permanent. This is what’s at play when you hear about reward “systems” or “pathways” and the role of dopamine when it comes to addiction.
But what does any of that really mean?
One of the most primitive parts of the brain, the reward system, developed as a way to reinforce behaviours we need to survive—such as eating. When we eat foods, the reward pathways activate a chemical called dopamine, which, in turn, releases a jolt of satisfaction. This encourages you to eat again in the future. When a person develops an addiction to a substance, it’s because the brain has started to change. This happens because addictive substances trigger an outsized response when they reach the brain. Instead of a simple, pleasurable surge of dopamine, many drugs of abuse—such as opioids, cocaine, or nicotine—cause dopamine to flood the reward pathway, 10 times more than a natural reward.
The brain remembers this surge and associates it with the addictive substance. However, with chronic use of the substance, over time the brain’s circuits adapt and become less sensitive to dopamine. Achieving that pleasurable sensation becomes increasingly important, but at the same time, you build tolerance and need more and more of that substance to generate the level of high you crave.
Addiction can also cause problems with focus, memory, and learning, not to mention decision-making and judgement. Seeking drugs, therefore, is driven by habit—and not conscious, rational decisions. Unfortunately, the belief that people with addictions are simply making bad choices pervades. Furthermore, the use of stigmatizing language, such as “junkie” and “addict” and getting “clean,” often creates barriers when it comes to accessing treatment. There’s also stigma that surrounds treatment methods, creating additional challenges.
Though treatment modalities differ based on an individual’s history and the particular addiction he or she has developed, medications can make all the difference. “A lot of people think that the goal of treatment for opioid use disorder, for example, is not taking any medication at all,” says David A. Fiellin, MD, a Yale Medicine primary care and addiction medicine specialist.
“Research shows that medication-based treatments are the most effective treatment. Opioid use disorder is a medical condition just like depression, diabetes or hypertension, and as with those conditions, it is most effectively treated with a combination of medication and counselling.”
For many people, depression turns out to be one of the most disabling illnesses that we have in society. Despite the treatments that we have available, many people are not responding that well. It’s a disorder that can be very disabling in society. It’s also a disorder that has medical consequences. By understand the neurobiology of depression we hope to be able more to find the right treatment for the patient suffering from this disease.
The current standard of care for the treatment of depression is based on what we call the monoamine deficiency hypothesis. Essentially, presuming that one of three neurotransmitters in the brain is deficient or underactive. But the reality is, there are more than 100 neurotransmitters in the brain. And billions of connections between neurons. So we know that that’s a limited hypothesis.
Neurotransmitters can be thought of as the chemical messengers within the brain, it’s what helps one cell in the brain communicate with another, to pass that message along from one brain region to another. For decades, we thought that the primary pathology, the primary cause of depression was some abnormality in these neurotransmitters, specifically serotonin or norepinephrine. However, norepinephrine and serotonin did not seem to be able to account for this cause, or to cause the symptoms of depression in people who had major depression. Instead, the chemical messengers between the nerve cells in the higher centres of the brain, which include glutamate and GABA, were possibilities as alternative causes for the symptoms of depression.
When you’re exposed to severe and chronic stress like people experience when they have depression, you lose some of the connections between the nerve cells. The communication in these circuits becomes inefficient and noisy, we think that the loss of these synaptic connections contributes to the biology of depression.
There are clear differences between a healthy brain and a depressed brain. And the exciting thing is, when you treat that depression effectively, the brain goes back to looking like a healthy brain, both at the cellular level and at a global scale. It’s critical to understand the neurobiology of depression and how the brain plays a role in that for two main reasons. One, it helps us understand how the disease develops and progresses, and we can start to target treatments based on that.
We are in a new era of psychiatry. This is a paradigm shift, away from a model of monoaminergic deficiency to a fuller understanding of the brain as a complex neurochemical organ. All of the research is driven by the imperative to alleviate human suffering. Depression is one of the most substantial contributors to human suffering. The opportunity to make even a tiny dent in that is an incredible opportunity.
Plato famously described the human psyche as two horses and a charioteer: One horse represented instincts, the other represented emotions, and the charioteer was the rational mind that controlled them. Astronomer Carl Sagan continued this idea of a three-layer, “triune brain” in his 1977 book The Dragons of Eden.
But leading neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett challenges this idea of the brain evolving in three layers, instead revealing a common brain plan shared by all mammals and vertebrates. The development of sensory systems led to the emergence of the brain, and hunting and predation may have initiated an arms race to become more efficient and powerful predators.
Despite advances in neuroscience and genetics, the question of why the brain evolved remains elusive. But Feldman Barrett’s fascinating exploration of the brain’s evolution offers insights into the most important functions of this complex organ, and invites us to think more deeply about the origins of our own intelligence.
0:00 What a brain costs 0:21 The triune brain (aka lizard brain) theory 1:24 Plato, Carl Sagan, and the making of the myth 2:35 Debunking the ‘lizard brain’ theory 3:39 How the first brain evolved 5:49 The brain’s ultimate job
29 May 2023
With the growth of self-help books and the fight to destigmatise therapy, people today are perhaps more unafraid than ever to talk about their emotions. But this has led to some common myths about emotions, and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett wants to debunk them.
Barrett argues that emotions are not hardwired into the brain from birth, but rather stem from events that the brain creates based on past experiences and predictions of what’s going to happen. Contrary to popular understanding, emotions are not just reactive events that happen to us — we play an active role in creating them.
By learning new things, watching movies, or even acting in a play to get outside of the normal range of what the brain predicts, Barrett argues that it’s possible to change those predictive patterns, and by doing so, to become the architects of our future selves. Understanding how our brain creates emotions can help us manage them — freeing us from repeated patterns of behaviour and empowering us to control our emotions and heal ourselves.
50% of men who commit suicide have no history of mental illness but they try to connect with others and get rejected !
There is a social crisis with men, men are told they are toxic and violent
Men wind up with addictions, substances or behaviours used as an antidote to pain
What Is The Remedy For Men’s Mental Health & Suicide Issues
7 Mar 2024
Dr Alok Kanojia (HealthyGamerGG) is a psychiatrist and co-founder of the mental health coaching company ‘Healthy Gamer’, which aims to help with modern stressors, such as social media, video games, and online dating.
00:00 Intro 02:43 Achieve Whatever You Want 03:16 External Success Won’t Fix You Inside 04:49 This Won’t Lead To Happiness 07:25 I Had A Gaming Addiction 09:20 How To Identify Real Needs From Desires? 12:45 What Sort Of People Have You Worked With? 13:25 What Does It Mean To Be A Man? 21:04 What Is The Remedy For Men’s Mental Health & Suicide Issues? 24:57 Men Get Upset Based On Their Insecurities 27:22 Men Need Self-Expression 28:20 What Are Your Thoughts On Andrew Tate? 32:08 How To Stop People From Following Toxic Masculinity? 36:01 Do Men Need More Positive Role Models? 38:59 Why Are Women’s Suicide Rates Increasing? 41:11 The Role Of Social Media In Our Mental Health 47:53 Should Yoga Be Taught At School? 51:44 What Is Meditation And The Biggest Misunderstanding? 54:53 The Important Impact Of Meditation On Our Lives? 56:06 What Stops People From Meditating? 01:01:06 How Does Meditation Help With Addiction? 01:04:00 Our Biggest Addiction Is Success 01:07:09 Dissatisfaction Leads To Watching Pornography 01:07:41 How To Help People With Addiction? 01:08:43 Does Addiction Create Shame? 01:10:20 Case Study: How Any Transformation Is Possible? 01:11:09 Having The First Conversation With An Addict 01:12:41 Do We Need To Hit Rock Bottom To Realise How Bad It Is? 01:13:42 Don’t Protect People; Let Them Accept Their Responsibilities. 01:17:43 Motivational Interviewing 01:18:37 The 25% Rule To Achieve Your Goals 01:22:57 Last Guest Question
Stress is contagious, leaks through your skin and generates belly fat
Addressing mental and emotional peace to heal the physical body
How neuroplasticity works
Linguistics (language) affects your brain (thoughts)
How to prevent Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s
25 Sept 2023
0:00 Dr Tara Swart – Neuroscientist on how your brain influences your health, relationships and well-being. 02:06 💼 How to improve my brain health? 13:04 🩸 How to lose stomach fat 16:03 👥 The affect stress has on women 24:00 🛌 How to improve memory 25:52 🧠 How to prevent Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s 30:28 👩❤️👨 Key things for a better relationship 38:04 🧠 How does intuition works & why you should always follow it 44:11 🧠 How did the pandemic affect our stress levels & mental health? 46:32 🌿 Why nature is really important for your health 47:13 🤝 How to find your purpose & why its vital for your mental health 01:00:01 🧠 What is neuroplasticity & why you should learn everything about it 01:07:04 🧠 How to stop my bad habits 01:10:11 🧬 How do I cope with trauma? 01:16:02 🤰 Can stress affect pregnancy? 01:23:45 🧠 How does neuroplasticity works? 01:27:12 🏋️♂️ How do I improve my memory? 01:30:01 🍇 What is the best diet? 01:30:55 🧠 What is the importance of neuroplasticity? 01:34:15 💬 How does what I say affect my brain? 01:39:12 👫 Qualities to look for in a partner 01:44:23 🧠 How is ADHD and autism diagnosed? 01:53:20 🗣️ How does what I say affect my behaviour? 01:58:32 🙏 How does visualisation work?
In LatinX culture, the term ‘Machismo’ describes a strong or exaggerated sense of manliness; an assumptive attitude that virility, courage, strength, and entitlement to dominate are attributes or concomitants of masculinity.1
Stemming from the Spanish word “macho,”2Machismo is a social construction of masculinity across Latin American and Spanish culture that maps out how men should engage with their gender based on virility, courage, strength, and power.
The assumptive nature of Machismo is traditionally ingrained in men throughout LatinX cultures and impacts how they behave, speak and interact with others and their role in their household and society.
Machismo describes a way of being in which being “macho” rules. The biggest, greatest, and most prideful men are to be respected by those around them by all.
Machismo Characteristics
Machismo encompasses positive and negative aspects of masculinity including bravery, honor, dominance, aggression, sexism, sexual prowess, and reserved emotions.2
Positives
Bravery
Honor
Sexual prowess
Negatives
Reserved emotions
Sexism
Dominance
Aggression
History of Machismo
It’s believed that these strict gender roles, like marianismo (the opposite of machismo and directs how women should behave) are a result of Christian influence during the colonization of Latin America2
The word itself has only been in popular use since the early 20th century.3
How Machismo Presents Itself in Society and Relationships
Machismo culture is multidimensional. At its worst and most collectively understood, Machismo enforces toxic masculinity.
Machismo Enforces Toxic Masculinity
When Machismo is adhered to, men’s worthiness is attributed to a traditional narrative of a kind of hyper-masculinity that is authoritarian and emotionally restrictive.
Dominance Is Seen as a Admirable Trait
Men are taught that they need to exercise their power through dominance because they are men. They can work hard and provide monetarily for their family, and as a result of fulfilling this role as a breadwinner, can treat their spouses however they wish.
Machismo Fosters the Idea That Men Are Superior to Women
By doing so, men do not need to feel or learn how to control or express their emotions. To embrace the toxic value of misogyny within Machismo is to respond to the world (and most importantly, women) as a “Machista,” a male chauvinist. In other words, someone who believes that they are better than women just because they are men.
Bravery Is a Positive Attribute—Until It’s Not
Machismo culture is most widely understood as a ‘culture of toxicity,’ but not every originating value of Machismo is inherently inexcusable. To be brave is not an inherently harmful virtue. Brave people are often looked upon with reverence across societies, stories, and traditions.
What, unfortunately, makes bravery toxic in this context is when it is mixed with the other trademarks of Machismo like sexism, dominance, and aggression. To be Machismo is to be a practitioner of that mix.
How Machismo Contributes to a Violent Society
Machismo at its worst assumes that violence toward women and LGBTQIA+ people is excusable. It’s widely documented that Machismo contributes to femicide (the murder of women because they are women), homophobia, and domestic violence, issues that are pervasive across Latin America and traditional LatinX communities.
The Murder of Women
High Rates of Femicide
Reported cases of femicides have surged across Latin America in the last 20 years. In 2020, Brazil “registered a total of 1,738 murder cases that were classified as femicides” the highest number of gender-based violent deaths in the region. In Mexico (in the same year), 948 women were killed in a case of femicide.4
In separate data released by the Mexican government and reported by The Institute for Economics and Peace, in Mexico, “the incidence of femicide, or the murder of a woman for gender-based reasons, has risen significantly in recent years, from 427 reported victims in 2015 to 1,004 in 2021, marking a 135 percent increase.”5
Femicide is not exclusive just to Brazil and Mexico. It can be seen across Latin American countries, with more than 30 countries implementing laws against domestic violence.6According to the United Nations, the region houses 14 of the 25 countries with the highest rate of femicide in the world.7
Discrimination and Violence Against the LGBTQIA+ Community
Machismo does not just perpetuate femicide, it also leads to documented prejudice against LGBTQIA+ individuals.
Since Machismo provides an outline of hyper-masculine character traits (which traditionally perpetuates the homophobic narrative that heterosexual marriage is the only form of marriage), Machismo men are not likely to engage with, respect, or entertain LGBTQIA+ identities.8
LGBTQIA+ Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: Statistics
According to a 2019 study by the Regional Information Network on Violence against LGBTQIA+ People in Latin America and the Caribbean:9
4 LGBTQIA+ people are murdered every day in Latin America and the Caribbean
Most of these deaths take place in the home
In the five years leading up to 2019:9
Over 1,300 LGBTQIA+ people were murdered
Of those cases, almost 12% were committed by people that knew the victims
Aggressive Behavior
Aggression, as a trademark of Machismo, can be deadly for anyone who is not a cis-hetero male in Latin American countries and even in some Latinx communities in the United States if and where Machismo is upheld.
LGBT National Hotline
If you are seeking support for issues with coming out, relationships, bullying, self-harm, and more, contact the LGBT National Hotline at 1-888-843-4564 for one-to-one peer support.
Machismo and Its Opposite—Marianismo
Where Machismo encompasses various aspects of masculinity and assigns a constructed view of how men should act, it also upholds attitudinal beliefs about the role of women.
In traditional Machismo culture, women are seen as homemakers. They are to be wives and mothers who cook, clean the house, and take care of the children.
Machismo and Marianismo Create Strict LatinX Gender Roles
Machismo’s existence is symbiotic with Marianismo.10The two are co-existing social constructs about gender roles, with Marianismo perpetuating the idea of a woman as a homemaker, mother and caretaker of the family.
Marianismo Characterizes the Woman’s Role
In a typical Machismo family setting, the man would encompass the traits of the construct that would subsequently inform the role of the wife as Marianismo. Similarly, Marianismo suggests that women be virtuous, modest, and abstinent until marriage.10 This is enforced often by the presence of the Catholic Church in Latin America.
How Machismo Impacts Mental Health
Machismo has been found to be related to increased levels of depression and stress among men. With restrictive emotionality acting as a key characteristic of Machismo, men are not taught that their emotions are real, valid, or worthy of being expressed.
They are taught to not engage with their emotions unless it’s pride or anger.11
Machismo Perpetuates Mental Health Stigma in LatinX Culture
The perpetuation of Machismo contributes to the prevailing stigma against seeking therapy or mental health services in the Latinx community. Machismo, although multidimensional in nature, historically creates a toxic environment for all, including those looking to grow up in a more progressive, mentally healthy household.
A Word From Verywell
It’s important to note that not all those of LatinX origin perpetuate the toxic aspects of machismo culture. However, if you find that you’re struggling with depression or another mental health issue, it’s OK to open up and be vulnerable and ask for help.
You can rely on a support system that you trust or speak with a mental health professional who is culturally sensitive and understands how LatinX culture impacts the perception of mental health.
LatinX Therapy has an extensive directory of LatinX therapists. The directory includes Spanish-speaking therapists of varying genders and nationalities so there’s a good chance you’ll find someone who you will feel comfortable with.
For the first time in history, mental illness and suicide have become one of the greatest threats to school-aged children. Many parents still view dangers as primarily physical and external, but they’re missing the real danger: kids spending more time online and less time engaging in real life, free play, and autonomy. What are the effects on the next generation’s mental, physical, and spiritual health? Childhood was more or less unchanged for millennia, but this is CHILDHOOD 2.0.
For more resources and to download a community discussion guide and share with your community, please visit: https://bit.ly/32voKpY.
NOTE: Bark is proud to sponsor the free release of this film because we believe every family should have access to such a crucial, powerful resource.
Run Time: 88 Minutes
A Film by: Jamin Winans, Robert Muratore, and Kiowa Winans Music by: Jamin Winans
Dr. Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with a Masters and Ph.D. in Communication Pathology and a BSc Logopaedics, specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. Since the early 1980s, she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change (neuroplasticity) with directed mind input.
During her years in clinical practice and her work with thousands of underprivileged teachers and students in her home country of South Africa and in the USA, she developed her theory (called the Geodesic Information Processing Theory) of how we think, build memory, and learn into tools and processes that have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), learning disabilities (ADD, ADHD), autism, dementia and mental ill-health issues like anxiety and depression. She has helped hundreds of thousands of students and adults learn how to use their minds to detox and grow their brains to succeed in every area of their lives, including school, university, and the workplace.
Dr. Leaf is also the bestselling author of Switch on Your Brain, Think Learn Succeed, Think and Eat Yourself Smart, and many more. works She teaches at academic, medical, and neuroscience conferences, churches, and to various audiences around the world. Dr. Leaf is also involved in the global ECHO movement, which trains physicians worldwide on the mind-brain-body connection, mental health, and how to avoid physician burnout.
Dr. Leaf is currently conducting clinical trials using the 5-step program she developed while in private practice to further demonstrate the effectiveness of mind-directed techniques to help relieve mental ill-health problems such as anxiety, depression, and intrusive thoughts. The primary aim of these trials is to make mental health care more affordable, applicable, and accessible worldwide, and to reduce the stigma around mental health. It was truly an honor to have her on The School of Greatness podcast!
Deep breathing is an easy relaxation technique that can be practiced anywhere by anyone. Benefits include improved mental health, lung function, and blood pressure. Watch this video as Drs. Neda Gould and Dana DiRenzo walk you through this useful exercise.
31 Jan 2018
Guided Imagery is a helpful tool for relaxation and can be performed in a seated position or lying down. Benefits of performing guided imagery on a routine basis include stress reduction, lowered blood pressure, and improved pain. Drs. Neda Gould and Dana DiRenzo will demonstrate.
Reduce Stress through Progressive Muscle Relaxation
7 Feb 2018
Progressive Muscle Relaxation is a deep relaxation technique that can be performed in many different settings. Practicing progressive muscle relaxtion several times per week has been shown to improve stress, anxiety, sleep, and pain. Follow along as Drs. Neda Gould and Dana DiRenzo demonstrate.
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brain-perks 