Dopamine’s importance to motor circuits has been reported for every animal phylum in which it has been investigated. The nematode C. elegans, a worm and one of the simplest laboratory animals, releases dopamine in response to environmental stimuli signaling the local abundance of food. Dopamine’s ancient role in physical movement relates to its role in motivation: To obtain the object of our desire, we need to go get it.

Of course today’s easy-access dopamine doesn’t require us to get off the couch. According to survey reports, the typical American today spends half their waking hours sitting, 50 percent more than fifty years ago. Data from other rich nations around the globe are comparable. When you consider that we evolved to traverse tens of kilometers daily to compete for a limited supply of food, the adverse effects of our modern sedentary lifestyle are devastating.

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A key to well-being is for us to get off the couch and move our real bodies, not our virtual ones. As I tell my patients, just walking in your neighborhood for thirty minutes a day can make a difference. That’s because the evidence is indisputable: Exercise has a more profound and sustained positive effect on mood, anxiety, cognition, energy, and sleep than any pill I can prescribe.

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But pursuing pain is harder than pursuing pleasure. It goes against our innate reflex to avoid pain and pursue pleasure. It adds to our cognitive load: We have to remember that we will feel pleasure after pain, and we’re remarkably amnestic about this sort of thing. I know I have to relearn the lessons of pain every morning as I force myself to get out of bed and go exercise.

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While truth-telling promotes human attachment, compulsive overconsumption of high-dopamine goods is the antithesis of human attachment. Consuming leads to isolation and indifference, as the drug comes to replace the reward obtained from being in relationship with others.

Experiments show that a free rat will instinctively work to free another rat trapped inside a plastic bottle. But once that free rat has been allowed to self-administer heroin, it is no longer interested in helping out the caged rat, presumably too caught up in an opioid haze to care about a fellow member of its species

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Dopamine overload impairs our ability to delay gratification.

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Use CRAP to Boost you Critical Thinking 💩

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