Keeping Your Brain Happy: 10 Ways to Improve Your Mood and Think More Clearly
Your brain is central to every part of your life, and keeping it balanced, happy, and healthy is critical to function at your best. But keeping your brain happy doesn’t just mean taking a spa day or “treating yourself.” Here are some practical, daily tips to boost your mental health so you can think more clearly, stabilize your mood, and even help your kids learn to deal with stress more effectively.
The Vital Neurotransmitter for Keeping Your Brain Happy: Dopamine
Dopamine is hitting headlines because of the growing understanding of the ways it transmits feelings of pleasure. However, there are lots of other benefits to dopamine boosts, including:
- Improving focus
- Helping you stay on task for longer
- Increasing feelings of motivation
- Enabling long-term recall
- Stabilizing your mood so you feel better in general
- Improving physical stamina for sports, exercise, and day-to-day life
There are 2 main mechanisms for the way dopamine works in your brain. First, the reward system is where you get a rush of pleasure after achieving something or getting a happy surprise. Second, the control system helps govern forward thinking, problem solving, impulse control, and long-term planning in order to choose the best outcomes.
What Happens When Dopamine is Out of Balance?
Dopamine is something that you definitely need to have—but in balance. Too much dopamine can lead to obsessive behaviors or violence (studies have found that nearly half of murderers act when they have excessively high dopamine due to substance abuse).
But too little dopamine is much more common, and it causes a wide range of symptoms including:
- Depression and anxiety
- Low motivation and apathy
- Fatigue
- Boredom
- Impulsive behavior
- Lack of focus and organization
- ADD or ADHD
If you find yourself or your kids struggling in these areas, supporting dopamine levels may be a tactic for keeping your brain happy and healthy!
Keeping Your Brain Happy by Boosting Dopamine
Here are 10 tips to try to help increase dopamine levels naturally so you can think more clearly and function at your best.
(If you have a distractible child, or one with ADHD especially, trying these tactics may help them get more control of their focus and impulses, too!)
#1: Eat tyrosine-rich foods
Tyrosine is the foundational amino acid that makes up dopamine in your body. If you don’t have it, you can’t make the neurotransmitter efficiently! Tyrosine is in foods like almonds, eggs, bananas, avocados, seafood, poultry, and dark chocolate.
#2: Get outside!
Research shows that sunlight boosts dopamine production. It’s especially helpful to go outside first thing in the morning to help regulate your circadian rhythm and start your day with dopamine-fueled energy and positivity.
#3: Cue the music
Listening to music you like can help calm stress, improve focus, and boost your mood because it raises dopamine levels and induces feelings of pleasure.
#4: Move your body
Being physically active increases dopamine levels, positivity, and productivity in individuals who make it a habit. Plus, physical exercise slows brain cell aging so you can stay sharper for longer!
#5: Focus on protein
Relying on carbs and sugary foods throws off the pleasure center in your brain, tying dopamine to these unhealthy choices and habits instead of on more productive stimuli. However, increasing protein consumption actually makes dopamine more bioavailable in general in your brain. This means that cutting back on sugar and adding more protein into your diet may go a long way towards keeping your brain happy without unhealthy habits that compromise your weight, energy, and overall wellbeing.
#6: Meditation
There is a HUGE body of research pointing to the benefits of meditation or prayer for keeping your brain happy and healthy. One study found that a single hour of meditation raised dopamine levels by 65%! Meditation doesn’t have to be scary or intimidating. There are great apps geared for adults and kids to help you incorporate this practice into daily life.
#7: Talk to your doctor about nutritional supplements
There are lots of herbal supports that may increase dopamine levels and improve overall mood, focus, and brain health. Some of these include ashwagandha, rhodiola, panax ginseng, and curcumin.
#8: Get a massage
Research shows that massage therapy may increase dopamine levels by up to 30%. Massage therapy also decreases your stress hormone cortisol which makes you feel more on edge, distracted, and in “fight or flight” mode.
#9: Make sleep a priority
Lack of quality sleep is one of the primary causes of a lack of dopamine for people of any age. Make quality nighttime rest a priority for your whole family. It will help to optimize your ability to focus, learn, remember, and stay balanced!
#10: Improve your cognitive capacity
Brain training is a great tool to help you feel more in control of your focus, memory, and daily functioning. By optimizing the strength of your cognitive skills, you may feel less overwhelmed and more confident in your ability to focus despite distractions and fatigue.
Past clients with ADHD have seen across-the-board improvements in cognitive skills, including an average gain of 3.2 years in sustained attention skills. Our clients have also reported significant improvements in other areas, including relationships with friends and family, oppositional behavior, and self-esteem – all through the power of LearningRx brain training!
(Results based on studies and surveys of past clients. You or your child may or may not achieve the same results.)
If you’re tired of feeling constantly distracted and unmotivated, or if you have a child struggling with ADD or ADHD, click here to learn more about our approach to helping individuals think, learn, and remember better!
Can the Brain Really Change?
