Dr. Nicole Cain explains how dopamine affects mood, energy, and libido, and why gut health matters for it. If your gut is inflamed from rushed eating or food sensitivities, you can't regulate dopamine properly, even if you're reaching for the right foods.
Chapters
All right, so the next one is dopamine. You guys know about dopamine, right? That's the feel good neurotransmitter. A neurotransmitter is a cell in your brain that communicates information that can impact how you feel. Dopamine is a companion neurotransmitter to serotonin. Okay, so dopamine is interesting because it has a really intimate relationship with your gut. In fact, a lot of people who feel a low libido, who feel sad, who feel anxious, can have low dopamine. And so the urge of those people is to eat dopamine containing foods. And that can help increase their energy, increase their mood, and increase their libido. But the interesting thing is that your gut regulates your dopamine levels. And it can be counterproductive to eat more of those dopamine producing foods if the problem is in the health of the gut itself. So, for example, you can have somebody who is eating really quickly, driving and eating. I do that all the time. So this is a good reminder for me. Right? So we all do these things. So eating in a rush, driving and eating, running around and eating, eating things that may be not as good for us, pro inflammatory foods, foods that we may be allergic or sensitive to, all of that is going to impact the health of your gut and therefore impact your dopamine levels.
