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Silicon Valley is known for its wellness trends and fads. From CBD oil to intermittent fasting and microdosing to chronotype scheduling, the competitive world of tech start-ups has built an entire subculture of cutting-edge methods to optimize performance and gain an advantage over competition. Some methods have been proven by science while some remain uncertain and controversial. That considered, let’s take a look into Silicon Valley’s newest trend: Dopamine Fasting. Dopamine Fasting is based on the simple theory that if you starve your body of its unhealthy dopamine triggers, you can retrain yourself to release dopamine during more productive tasks. Dopamine is a hormone in your brain that also functions as a neurotransmitter and is responsible for your motivation and reward system. It plays a major role in how we perceive pleasure.
The simplest way to describe one of the most significant effects dopamine has on our bodies is to think of it as a feel-good trigger. For example, if you really enjoy ice cream, that good feeling of enjoyment when you’re eating ice cream comes from a spike in your dopamine levels. However, even though dopamine feels good, it can have adverse effects on our long-term goals. Every time we indulge in certain habits like scrolling through social media, over-eating, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes or participating in any behaviour that feels good, we are experiencing stimulation in our dopamine. However, our over reliance on cheap dopamine shots can direct us away from our ambitions. For example, you might want to gain more muscle. To do so, you have to increase your protein intake, lower your fat intake and spend many hours at the gym weight training. For most people, that doesn’t feel very good.
What does feel good is eating Flaming Hot Cheetos while binge watching The Mandalorian. That feels great! But your long-term goal of building more muscle will never happen this way. Enter the theory of Dopamine Fasting created by San Francisco psychologist, Dr. Cameron Sepah. He believes that by abstaining from unhealthy dopamine triggers, people can reduce their dopamine, thereby reducing their desires and cravings for such unwanted behaviours. The practice is simple: Take 24 hours and remove as many reward triggers as you can. That means no cell phone, no internet, no television, no bad foods, no sex, no smoking, no alcohol, etc. Some Dopamine Fasters take this practice to the extreme and consume no food, refuse to speak or make eye contact for the period of their fast. However, unless you’re a Buddhist monk, who has taken a vow of silence, such extreme measures are unnecessary.
Anecdotally, what people have found is that once they had intentionally removed all of those distracting elements, they ended up filling their time with more productive activities like cleaning, exercising, working on projects, meditating and being more mindful. When the fast is over, the claim is that you’ve now “reset” your brain to have less dopamine flowing through it, but that’s not exactly what’s happening. First of all, even if we could do so by just cutting out certain daily activities for a relatively short amount of time, you do not want to lower your dopamine. It plays an important role in many different functions, and dopamine deficiencies are linked to serious conditions like Parkinson’s and schizophrenia. What is more likely happening during a dopamine fast is the reduction of dopamine stimulation. You are removing both the activity and the cues that stimulate dopamine during a fast.
For example, maybe you have an overdependence on cell phone use but it’s not necessarily using the cell phone that is triggering a dopamine response, it’s the sound of a text alert that gives you that reward feeling. With less stimulation of dopamine from these types of triggers, you now have the space to indulge in healthier behaviours. Regardless of the science, Dopamine Fasting can be an amazing way to intentionally remove an overdependence on unhealthy behaviours and get more focused on your long-term goals. Just having the intention of living differently followed with the action of doing differently can play a major role in your success journey. It should be noted that if you’re dealing with severe adverse behaviours such as addiction, you will want to consult a professional before embarking on this experiment.
