How To Increase Dopamine Levels – And Be Naturally Happy!

How To Increase Dopamine Levels – And Be Naturally Happy!

In this article, I will talk about how to increase dopamine levels. Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter that is responsible for happiness, being excited (including sexually excited) and an overall sense of well-being.

Increasing dopamine levels can help with erectile dysfunction as it is associated with sex drive and being sexually excited as well as helping reduce stress and improving sleep quality.

This is great news as poor sleep quality like insomnia and stress alongside low sex drive and desire are causes of erectile dysfunction. Low dopamine levels can be associated with depression.

Lets’ get rockin’ and rollin’ and kick those bad ass blues to the kerb and lets talk about how to increase dopamine levels.

How To Increase Dopamine Levels – Diet You Are What You Eat!

Put the right fuel in and get the best results for your body! There is a direct relationship between those who eat a healthy diet and their overall health and wellness…and I am not just talking about the trouser department here!

It is advisable to have a diet high in tyrosine if your objective is to amp up your dopamine levels. Tyrosine is a non-essential amino acid that synthesises proteins on a cellular level. Our body creates tyrosine from the amino acid phenylalanine.

Tyrosine, in turn, helps to produce dopamine and noradrenaline.

Phenylalanine ==> Tyrosine ==> Dopamine

Foods to get you high on the happy side of life include chicken, turkey, almonds, Bananas, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, avocados, and almonds are all great at increasing your dopamine levels via dietary means. Note how many times the monkey magic food of  bananas

Note how many times the monkey magic food of bananas keeps on coming up on this site. They are great for ED as they contain an ED busting enzyme Bromelain and a heck of a lot of the Testosterone boosting vitamins and minerals too.

Dopamine has the unfortunate characteristic of oxidising rather quickly and easily. Increasing our intake of powerful antioxidants and foods high in antioxidants will help dopamine from oxidising too quickly and becoming damaged by free radicals.

So get plenty of your leafy greens, and foods high in vitamins C and E foods like peppers, oranges, carrots, asparagus, broccoli, beetroot, papaya, green tea, strawberries, spinach, red grapes, cauliflower, watermelon, kale, kiwi, and nuts.

Side Note: these foods are particularly brilliant for erectile dysfunction due to the high nitric content which will enhance the nitric oxide process, which in turn enhances blood flow and help your “soldier” stand to attention! 

Organic raw cacao, which is unprocessed real (and healthy) chocolate before all the sugar is added, is an excellent source of powerful antioxidants and phenylalanine.

It is certainly worth getting a scoop in your smoothie or added to your morning cuppa joe, perhaps even as a night time hot chocolate to help increase your dopamine levels naturally.

Probiotics such as those found in dairy products like yoghurt are good for your dopamine levels due to too many bad bacterias leaving a byproduct that is toxic called lipopolysaccharides which lowers dopamine! so get more good bacterias and less of the bad ones!

Remember not all bacterias are bad!

Hit The Gym!

Regular exercise not only helps to turn your fat ass into a sexy ass, it also helps raise your dopamine, augment testosterone and increase nitric oxide production!

Tap that gym lads, and you might end up “tapping” your girlie with your improved erectile function!

It is well known and accepted medical fact that exercise helps erectile dysfunction.

Great news for increasing your dopamine levels is that you don’t need to “go crazy” in the gym or join a fad fitness program like Zumba* to elevate dopamine, half an hour swimming or an hour running or cycling is enough to get your dopamine levels running high and the endorphins also.

Do this two or three time per week and you will soon enjoy the buzz of the natural high and the see marked improvements in your mood and ED.

Side Note: High Intensity Interval Training (Also known as HIIT for short), if you can do it may well be the most effective for your erectile dysfunction due to this type of training being very effective for increasing testosterone levels and improving Nitric Oxide production as well as increasing dopamine levels.

*Just for the record Zumba, if it takes your fancy would elevate your dopamine levels and perhaps your testosterone also due to its high intensity.

Worthy of noting that shaping up and hitting the gym if you are overweight, be it obesity or just a little podgy and porky – will help your erectile dysfunction a lot as there is a whole love affair going on between your excess body fat and estrogens that are killing your manhood and whooping your T -levels by binding to the free testosterone!

(perhaps that is one of lifes ironies right there.. girls tend to hate fat but their hormones have a whole love affair with the lipids!)

So there is a good reason for shedding the lard right there.. before the girlie hormones take over and you find yourself watching and discussing the latest TV soap operas, whether your carpet matches your curtains and discussing your relationship with your BFF! (Get it sorted before you start reaching for the Jane Austin novels and fantasising about Mr D’arcy! haha)

Say Hello To Mr Sandman!

Getting plenty sleep, 7 to 8 hours nightly of quality shut-eye helps your levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. there is a reason why you can be a grumpy little sh*t when you are tired. Fatigue and low dopamine is not doing you any favours. So after the gym or physical work of any kind get plenty rest!

Interestingly there is a direct relationship between insomnia and testosterone. Poor or low-quality sleep lowers testosterone levels as when we sleep the good old testosterone producing factory kicks in. Also, insomnia is linked to high blood pressure and heart disease.

Do Nothing!

Meditate, daily for just 20 minutes and you may very well experience what is referred to as Piti by Buddhists. Piti is a word from Pali language that describes the joyous feeling of bliss and absolute contentedness and at one with the world and everything when meditating.

Personally, I have experienced this a few times when coming out of (awakening from) a meditative state. I can really only describe it as an amazing shower of unbridled genuine authentic happiness washing over you. It is one of the most amazing experiences. It is that good!

There is no need to meditate for hours to achieve that, 20 mins to half an hour is enough, I do encourage it as often as possible. Why not make time, 20 mins when you arrive home after work or after the gym to relax your mind by meditating.

Meditating can help your sexual dysfunction by lowering stress, helping with your high blood pressure (especially if it is stress related), helping your insomnia and elevating your dopamine levels.

There is also some evidence that suggests meditation increases your testosterone levels and erections, particularly if and when you meditate thinking about your muse, a certain somebody you are highly attracted and drawn to!

Meditation not need be difficult, if you get that mental chatter, simply don’t focus on it and let it be. This video by the guys (and Patchman!) at spirit science explains very well how to meditate in an easy way, It is, in fact the method I use.

Side note: Hobbies that get the creative juices flowing such as playing a musical instrument, drawing, painting, photography, creative writing and even the latest phenomenon colouring in helps to get us into a meditative focused state and get the happy juices flowing.

Get involved with and take up a new hobby as it will help get your creative juices flowing, lower your stress and help lift any depression you may have and above all add a nice new interesting dynamic to your character. 

Music

Listening to your favourite uplifting and inspiring music is very well known to give your feel good neurotransmitters a kick, as is Karaoke! So plug in, crank up the volume and sing along! heck! I’ve been known to do that in my car! a boy it feels good!

In some Asian countries like Japan and Thailand shopping malls often have karaoke booths, for less than a $1 you can go in the booth and, well have nice little sing song before work, during lunch, in fact whenever you need a little boost of the happy juice!

Comedy

Watch a good comedy or head along to your local comedy store and enjoy a live comedian. Studies have shown that a good old giggle not only releases the feel-good chemicals and neurotransmitters but enhances Nitric Oxide Synthase also! and that dare I remind you enhances your circulation and ability to get it up!

Set goals!

Setting goals and accomplishing them helps to increase your dopamine levels naturally. That great feeling you get when you achieved something that you set out to do, like to pass that exam, getting your driving licence, for example, is due to dopamine, which is, of course, part of your brain’s reward system.

So continually set goals and strive to achieve them. Take the route of the Japanese philosophy of continual improvement Kaizen and keep raising the bar by setting new goals in all areas of your life…and feel that rush when you achieve them.

Unhealthy Methods

There exists unhealthy methods to elevate your levels of dopamine, those methods are best avoided as they are, as the name suggests unhealthy and detrimental to your overall well-being, however, moderation is useful. It is by far better to use “clean” methods like I have mentioned in the majority of this article.

Alcohol helps us to increase the happy juice and happy chemicals in our brains but as we are all too aware excess alcohol has some serious health issues. Alcohol contains xenoestrogens which is why I, generally speaking, avoid the stuff and the sugars only have a detrimental aspect on your testosterone levels.

We all know too well about a phenomenon called brewers droop, which is erectile dysfunction caused by alcohol.

Porn, while watching and enjoying re-run of some “nice” movies on red tube or other such places, does actually increase your levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine there is, however, a condition known where watching too many blue movies actually causes impotence, it is known as Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction (or PIED for short), seriously!

perhaps a topic for discussion in a later article.

Sugar is well known to increase our dopamine, however, excess sugar can lead to diabetes and obesity, both of which can cause erectile dysfunction. As mentioned before sugar has a negative effect on testosterone levels.

Do try to ease up on the white stuff! Try replacing the refined cane sugar in your home with organic unrefined coconut sugar, as it is by far healthier type of sugar with 50% of the glycemic index of regular sugar.

If you are a chocolate lover, replace your processed chocolate with the real deal, it’s called raw cacao. I suggest getting it powdered form as it more versatile and can be easily added to coffee, make chocolate drinks, granola bars, your own healthier chocolate bars and even your own healthier version of Nutella!

Go Herbal!

There are some interesting herbs that increase dopamine levels and two very interesting ones are He Shou Wu and Mucuna Pruriens, which work in two very different ways and come from different herbal medicine systems.

And since they are very effective and addressing the underlying causes of erectile dysfunction lets talk about them briefly.

Mucuna Pruriens is a common herb used in the Indian herbal medicine system of Ayurvedic medicine which is like Chinese Traditional Medicine thousands of years old. Mucuna Pruriens has been used for just over half a millennia to cure a number of ailments, including those associated with low dopamine levels and erectile dysfunction

Mucuna Pruriens elevates dopamine with great thanks to the fact that it contains an amino acid that is a precursor to dopamine itself, which is levodopa, levodopa as also known as L-dopa for short and has a direct relationship with dopamine where the greater the amount of levodopa the more of it is converted into dopamine.

The unusually named herb He Shou Wu comes from Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine and like Mucuna Pruriens it has been used for hundreds of years to treat a number of ailments, including known causes of male impotence as well as declining and low levels of dopamine.

He Shou Wu, as previously mentioned functions in a completely different way to Mucuna Pruriens as it does not directly raise dopamine levels in the “route one” direct way in which Mucuna Pruriens does.

It works in a more indirect manner by inhibiting the breakdown of dopamine and thus assisting in maintaining dopamine levels and keeping them higher than they are normally and for longer.

This herb prohibits the Monoamine Oxidase B Enzyme, known as MAO-B as an abbreviation,  which is a naturally occurring enzyme in our bodies that breaks down the neurotransmitter and brain chemical dopamine and phenylalanine almost as soon as they are produced.

He Shou Wu also contains Superoxide Dismutase, or SOD for short, which is a very powerful enzyme and potent antioxidant that helps to reverse the ageing process and protect our internal organs from the effects of ageing.

Both these herbs can be taken together for prolonged and sustained effect, and to enjoy the benefits of increased dopamine levels for a longer period.

There are no contradictions in taking both He Shou Wu and Mucuna Pruriens together.

To get the best effect out of these herbs they are best taken in a fruit smoothie or a juice using the fruits or vegetables mentioned above in the diets paragraph. They can be taken with raw cacao also for additional benefits.

Where To Buy Mucuna Pruriens To Improve Your Erectile Health?

That concludes this article, do you know of additional ways on how to increase dopamine levels or did I miss something out? then share your ideas and knowledge with us by leaving a comment below!

Ciao for now,

Talk soon

Derek.