The Neurochemistry of Cold: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin: Full Transcript

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Dopamine has been one of the most important desires throughout our whole human evolution. As a man and woman in a tribe, you would have got your dopamine from making the fires, chasing down the meat, and that was such a pivotal thing that we needed. The absence of dopamine is the presence of addiction. And when dopamine was absent, they were driven to dopamine

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are going to love this guy's mission. So, welcome to the podcast, TJ. Thanks for having me, Gary. Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you. You know, um, first of all, I love the fact that you have an English accent and your wife has an Australian accent. Um, so like your kids are going to have the blend of like the best accent ever. Yeah, I'm kind of wanting it to lean towards Australian. I almost think the

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used to have a saying in the mortality space, the absence of dopamine is the presence of addiction. And okay, people got very um addicted. There was a lot of research centered around how you know when dopamine was absent or people had difficulty methylating this neurotransmitter dopamine, they were driven to dopamine seeking behavior. Yeah.

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pretty like a daredevil type kid. And when I became like a teenager and discovered like cigarettes and alcohol and partying and pornography, I just got like lost in that world. That world to me was just like really fun, really exciting. It felt like cool to me to go down that dopamine path. At about 22, I'd been studying in psychology and neuroscience to become lecturing in this

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Because you know in a world where we were exposed to nature. We were really exposed to sunlight. We we spent a lot more time connected with other human beings. Yeah. Um I believe our senses were probably a lot more acute back then. Yeah. and now connection. You know, I talk about this a lot with the blue zones. When you look at the big data on blue zones, um no continuity between diets.

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evenings? No. Like dopamine. Like I'm super into like, dude, I'm already mortified. This is horrible. I watch like a lot of YouTube. Like I like that world. The evening comes and it's like okay so you finish work for the day and it's like what am I going to do for the next like four hours or so until I like go to sleep. And in that time we started obviously walking for longer

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determined by the depth of your relationships. Cool. And and when we say terms like depth of your relationships, you know, what does that really mean to you? Is that how neurochemically we are connected? that we're actually getting a reward like oxytocin reward or a serotonin uplift or dopamine hit from our relationships and and why is society

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had this last year, we were getting pretty into reading Twitter last year, last summer. For some reason, like we got really hooked into Twitter. We'd get into bed and we were reading it on the iPad and like for a while like it was nice that we were like finding different like stories that were taking place last summer quite like fascinating to follow. We were enjoying that journey, but then it reached a point where I was like

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know, dopamine, which I I often refer to as the main driver of behavior. Yeah. uh versus serotonin which is a main driver of mood. Imbalances in these different neurotransmitters are linked to all kinds of psychiatric definitions, mood disorders, mental illnesses. I hate these categorical terms because we don't ever talk about the fact that you have an imbalance in these neurotransmitters

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to 20 minute climb to experience like a nice feeling of reward. And dopamine is designed to slowly elevate over time. We've got this beautiful area of our brain called the vententral tegmental area, the VTA. This is like the dopamine factory where we're generating this dopamine. Then we have this area called the nucleus encumbent, our reward center. And in that scenario where you're going

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what's in Cupid's arrow. You know, I've just heard that very, you know, reference. I don't know what's in his arrow, but they say it's they call it the love hormone. And um and that's what Cupid, you know, shoots it with. Um but, you know, I know it's involved in the psychosmatic response. it's involved in, you know, arousal, libido, um, you know, all of the, uh, the sort of hell yeah, I won the lottery

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back in with the family and until they pass and they really honor their elders. Like the the elderly are held in very high esteem. They're looked as you know looked at as having wisdom and something to be honored and gratified. And I think you know very often now when you know our our loved ones age to the point where we find them no longer relevant or no longer useful and it creates distance. You know that has to that must

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better fires, better spears, better buildings like shelters that they could survive in. And that was programmed into us by nature so that we would evolve. And now we live in this crazy world because of that incessant need for progress driven by dopamine. But it would never feel like enough. only what would feel like enough to them is lying by the campfire and like giving love to people. And that's like why like our

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as a couple, where we are as parents, um where we are in our careers. And I couldn't think of a thing that I wanted other than to be present in that moment. And that happened so rarely for me in the first 45 years of my life. Wow. I always delayed my happiness. I was like, as soon as this happens, that's gonna be amazing. I'm, you know, as soon

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should do that gratitude thing. people I still think people continue to not really immerse themselves in it, not like frequently discuss it with their partners, not spend time like deep in these maybe like breath work states in the silence like in those breath holds you sometimes can get like a real powerful emotion come through to you. And I think the interesting thing you see with all this like anxiety we have

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our physio neurochemistry, we realize, wow, there's actually an increased uh rate of suicidal ideiation and and crushing depression. But when we talk about serotonin, how what bucket do you put serotonin in? Its influence on mood and emotional state. Where does serotonin fit in? You know, I'm all about optimizing performance and lately I've been using the ion weighted vest during my workouts and it's been a

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Yeah. One of the scientists I love in Japan, I wrote a lot about in the book, is Dr. Key Lang, and he's done a lot of research into nature. And Japan has had significant challenges with mental health in the cities. They actually termed this uh specific word karashi, which meant like kind of burnt out, overwork, too much time on technology, an individual that began to suffer quite significantly with their

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were getting prescribed sort of four or five hours a week to like really transform mental health and I know New Zealand has also adopted this now with these green prescriptions where they're having a similar treatment protocol for mental health. Fantastic for individuals that are struggling with many of the things that you would utilize like serotonin based medications to that could also accompany it like they could

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words. I would wake up in the morning. Um I would have coffee. I would put on a a rock sack, like a little weighted ion vest, and I would just go for this three, three and a half mile walk in the woods, okay? And I would come back and sometimes I would post about I would go, I feel amazing, and like I don't want to throw myself under the bus cuz I advocate all

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and there's this funny little place we call the phone booth, which is where it's an intersection of four dirt roads. Yeah. Okay. And it just happens to be where they cross. If you stand right there where they cross, you actually have can get cell signal. It must like be where the tower comes. So we you actually drive up there and you can be on the phone in this one

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now. I feel the best I've ever felt, you know? And I'm sure our ancestors got back from their walks, jumped in the river. Like you're just living. They probably did. They probably were goldplunging for, you know, 600 years and just I think I'm the one that invented it. Um but uh so talk a little bit about enderfin's role in this whole dose

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the sofa like that might be our like stress coping and I did that like for a decade like drunk my glass of red wine and like tried to kind of get rid of my stress using those tools but evolutionarily stress literally needs to be physically released from us because that's how our brain evolved and if you can start having a framework where you think [__] like I've had a stressful

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you're here wouldn't it be great if it was a good time seems pretty simple yeah seems like a great idea seems important and I think for a lot of people it's not a a great time. I think it's very stressful. I think they're very addicted to things. They're shackled to their phone and sugar and booze and I think they're struggling with their mood, their mental health, depression. And I that pains my heart.

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I thought it was really interesting. You had scales for different uh um neurotransmitters and then you actually had solutions for how to return these baselines to normal and some of them were force bathing. Um that's one of them very cold water makes it cold water deep breathing does. Um so is the idea to first make people aware of what these neurotransmitters do in the body?

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their flow state in their social media feed because it's actually quite interesting because as humans now, we've actually got into this almost like sedentary passive state where rather than doing the thing we're really good at, we're watching someone else do it for us on our social media feed. And if you think like what is my thing like what what would be my flow state? If you look at your social media feed, there'll

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create changes in that motivation and that attention fast if you live in alignment to what your dopamine desires. When it comes to snacking, Masa is flipping the script on what real food should look like. Masa chips are crafted with grass-fed beef tallow, one of the healthiest fats on the planet. These chips are packed with essential vitamins like vitamin A, D, E, and vitamin K2. All of which play a role in keeping your

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we would all sit down at the table and that was like our hour or 90 minutes and parents would ask me all kinds of questions. I felt very connected to them during that time. I desperately try to do that with even with my adult children now. Um, you know, we try to once a week get the whole family together and you know, they when when they leave the house and I'm going to bed that night, I just feel this deep sense of

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going through this exercise of the dose effect um what is the end end result that most of the folks clients that are coming to see you what drives them to see you what's the result that they're seeking? Yeah to to share some of those points there. One of the points when we're talking about these young people and their mental health Scandinavian countries seem to be doing a lot better

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fasting. I think it's really integral and we can have these longer fasts from the phone and that's cool when it happens but we also need like a consistent regime that's happening day in day out on our phone fasting as the intermittent fasting has offered for the food fasting world and we will effectively get them to embed this idea of how do I reach a point where I can go for 30 minutes when

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a little bit of WhatsApp, a little bit of Instagram, quick check, bit of email, just a peek. I'm just going to peek and doesn't matter. It's only I promise I'm going to put it down. It's only a few minutes. Yeah. Your brain is then primed as like, "All right, this is my source. This is where I'll get my dopamine from the day. What's the point in the pursuit of anything else?" And then all day you

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the afternoon you might notice this like sudden plummet in how you feel a few hours later as the alcohol detoxifies through your body and the dop dopamine baseline crashes, then your body starts going, well, the only way back up is the alcohol. And we've got that exact scenario taking place with the phone all day, every day for all of us where we're plummeting it and then we just live in this wave of addiction.

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something when you're doing tasks, when you're working, when you're scrolling your phone. For us right now, like our executive network will be active. It's a specific collection of areas within the brain that enable you to focus on something. A very useful machine. We then have the default mode network which is very different. It will activate when we're bored, when we're daydreaming, when we're in deep states

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do nothing for 10 minutes? Like low stem is where you're going to find the answer to getting to your towards your dreams. And we need that. Yeah. I've heard you talk about that and it makes so much sense. TJ, you're amazing. Amaz amazing, man. I mean, this is awesome. I think this is a conversation the world really needs to hear. Where can my audience um find out more about you,

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really powerful legacy if you did that. That would be fun. Yeah. What a great conversation about connection, man. I'm so thankful that you came on the podcast today. I hope my audience looks you up. We're going to continue to follow your work. I hope I can have you back again in the future to check in and see how this is going as you get more and more data. I think this is going to be more and more