Optimize & Control Your Brain Chemistry to Improve Health & Performance

Sunlight exposure can actually increase the amount of so-called DRD4. This is a particular type of dopamine receptor... The genes for dopamine receptor 4 are actually under photic control. So, if you get sunlight exposure to your eyes... in the early part of the day, you increase the amount of dopamine receptor that you have, which allows whatever circulating dopamine happens to be there to have a greater effect...

Phenylethylamine increases dopamine and some metabolites related to dopamine in ways that really increase energy and feelings of well-being and motivation. And again, it's fast-acting. So, my particular protocol, the one I use is: I'll take phenylethylamine at dosages of about 300-600 mg along with some l-tyrosine...

I've been taking 900 mg of myo-inositol every third night or so as a test of its ability to improve sleep, and I have to say, the depth and quality of sleep that I've been obtaining on myo-inositol is pretty remarkable.

Getting into much colder water of say 50 degrees or 55 degrees or even 45 degrees Fahrenheit can potently increase dopamine... Perhaps even as short as 1 minute or even 30 seconds exposure to really cold water can lead to these potent, long-lasting increases in dopamine.

It turns out that B vitamins—in particular, B6, or vitamin B6—can potently reduce prolactin levels. And again, prolactin and dopamine tend to work in a kind of push-pull fashion.

The other way to ensure that dopamine levels stay high—or, put differently, that you don't quash whatever dopamine you have in your system—is to really avoid bright light exposure to your eyes between the hours of 10 PM & 4 AM.

I will often take 300 mg of Alpha GPC prior to workouts or prior to cognitive work bouts. But when I say often, I tend to do this anywhere from 3-4 times a week, typically, not every day.

The other way to increase dopamine and to make sure that your baseline levels of dopamine are high enough is to make sure that you're eating sufficient numbers of tyrosine-rich foods.

I don't recommend mucuna pruriens. I'm not saying that no one should take it, but I don't take it, and I don't recommend it, because it tends to so potently and acutely increase dopamine that there's a substantial crash afterwards.

Now, there are supplements that can increase tryptophan—and can do so quite potently. One of the ones that has received increasing attention as of lately is cissus quadrangularis... When taken in dosages of about 300-600 mg, [it] can pretty dramatically increase serotonin levels. In fact, anywhere from 30% to 39% increases in circulating serotonin.

They found that sleep states regulate more than 50%, half, of all the metabolites features detected in human breath. What does that mean? Well, it turns out that you can figure out what humans are metabolizing in particular—more lipids or more carbohydrate, whether or not they're relying more on glucose metabolism—based on the contents of their breath.

...Sleep and experiencing the different states of sleep... is extremely important for optimizing metabolic circuits for human performance and health. In other words, by not getting sufficient duration sleep, you're not allowing your body and brain to transition through all the different aspects of fuel utilization, and you're not teaching your brain and body how to use similar types of fuels during wakefulness.

From 0 to 9 hours after waking, that is from the time you wake up until about 9 hours later, the neuromodulators dopamine and epinephrine tend to be at their highest levels that they will be at any point in the 24-hour period.

Testosterone tends to collaborate with and increase the action of dopamine. That's not always the case, but in general, when testosterone goes up, dopamine goes up.

But again, in general, testosterone and dopamine tend to collaborate in the same direction; cortisol and epinephrine tend to collaborate in the same direction; oxytocin and prolactin, which are hormones, and serotonin tend to collaborate in the same direction.

Dopamine, when elevated above baseline, tends to increase states of motivation, both mental and physical motivation, drive, and, to some extent, focus.

It turns out that regular ingestion of caffeine at safe and appropriate levels, about 100-250 mg, is going to increase the number of D2 and D3 dopamine receptors.

Any physical activity—any physical activity: walking, running, weight lifting, swimming, even talking for that matter—is going to increase levels of epinephrine.

It turns out that ingestion of 600 mg of allicin alongside or even just same day as Alpha GPC can really clamp those TMAO levels that would otherwise increase if you're taking Alpha GPC.

At any given moment, whether or not you're asleep or awake, whether or not it's morning or afternoon or night, you have some amount of dopamine being released in your brain and body, some amount of serotonin, some amount of epinephrine, and some amount of acetylcholine.

When hormones like oxytocin or prolactin are increased, levels of serotonin go up.