Increased By
Cold Shower
Not as much as Ice Baths but there still should be an increase.
If you’re up to it, take a 1-3 minute cold shower, as cold as you can safely tolerate, as well; this is known to increase baseline dopamine for hours dramatically. - Andrew-Huberman
Seeing Sunlight in the Morning
Viewing early morning sunlight for 10-30 minutes daily. (Don’t wear sunglasses for this, and don’t stare at the sun; eyeglasses and contacts are acceptable). This causes the release of dopamine. If done consistently, it will also increase levels of gene expression for certain dopamine receptors. If you’re up to it, take a 1-3 minute cold shower, as cold as you can safely tolerate, as well; this is known to increase baseline dopamine for hours dramatically. - Andrew-Huberman
Tyrosine Rich Food
- rel.includes (Private):Red Meat
- rel.includes (Private):Nuts
- rel.includes (Private):Hard Fermented Cheese
- rel.includes (Private):Salmon
Eat _.amino-acid.tyrosine (Private)-rich foods such as red meats, nuts or hard fermented cheese. Tyrosine is an amino acid and a building block of dopamine — a diet rich in tyrosine will sustain your body’s natural dopamine production. You’ll need to consider the caloric and other contents of these foods, of course. It’s easy to find plant-based sources too. Simply do a web search for them. -- Andrew-Huberman
Caffeine
Highlights
Dont drink caffeine past lunch time
- Don't drink caffeine after 2-3pm due to it's Half life.
To avoid reductions in total sleep time, coffee (107 mg per 250 mL) should be consumed at least 8.8 h prior to bedtime and a standard serve of pre-workout supplement (217.5 mg) should be consumed at least 13.2 h prior to bedtime. - meta-analysis - PubMed
- Half life: 4-6 hours.
- Max Limit: 400 milligrams a day. (According to FDA and Andrew-Huberman's: article)
- Don't drink caffeine for at least 90 minutes after waking up to allow Adenosine to clear out further.
References
Caffeine primarily works by blocking adenosine receptors.
Adenosine is responsible for making your body sleepy.
The relationship of Caffeine to Adenosine blocking is logarithmic
First 100mg of caffeine is where most of blocking happens, and start to plato after.
Example adenosine block with 2 cups of coffee
Setup
- On the left vertical axis of the graph we will have caffeine level in body. (in pencil).
- On the right vertical axis of the graph we will have receptor occupancy percentage. (in blue).
- Horizontal axis will be time in hours.
Adenosine Receptor blocking (occupancy) in relationship to caffeine is taken from this study.
Example #1 Outlier metabolism (caffeine half life 2 hours)
This will be an outlier in metabolism having half life of 2-hours.
- In this example 1st cup of coffee will be taken at 0 hour mark.
- 2nd cup of coffee will be taken at 8 hours mark.
Shows that there is quite a difference in receptor occupancy (graphed in blue with 2 cups than what it would have been with 1 cup)
Example #2 in range of median half life metabolism of caffeine (caffeine half life 4hours)
In this example we still take first cup at 0 mark and 2nd cup at 8 hour mark. But half life is at 4 hours.
Looking at daily area under the curve of adenosine blocking 1 cup does look similar to 2 cups. However, if we were to extend the graph we end up seeing that with 2 cups in this hypothetical example we are blocking Adenosine during our sleep, starting our sleep with about 30% adenosine receptor blockade.
Relationships
Ingest caffeine (approximately 100-400mg) in the form of coffee, tea or whatever form you prefer. This will cause a mild increase in dopamine but also increases the availability of dopamine receptors, so your body is more sensitive to circulating dopamine. Don’t do this too close to sleep. I avoid caffeine after 2 p.m., with rare exceptions. - Article: How to manage dopamine to improve motivation and drive.
Ice Baths
Children
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