Dopamine and Waking Up

As I was growing up, the term adrenaline became popular. Or at least I became more aware of it in writings and shows. “When the adrenaline starts kicking in…” was one of the phrase that I remember. Nowadays, there are more variety of hormones that has ‘become’ mainstream. One of it is the dopamine.

Dopamine seems to have a negative connotation. It sounds like ‘dope’, which means drugs, as far as my vocabulary extends. And I usually hear it connected to the state of sloth, or being lazy. Recently however I listened to this podcast, and it says the lack of dopamine is the cause for us being demotivated, and dopamine is something that makes us motivated.

In the podcast, it says we should delay using or releasing the dopamine stored in our brain, collected during sleep. So in the morning, we should disengange or prevent activities that might use up this reserve, such as scrolling social media. This is so that later when we do something hard and worthwhile, this dopamine reserve will be released and we will be happy we accomplished the hard work we have done. If we used the dopamine instead on social media or quick gratifying actions, it will be a double whammy as we will find it hard to start our hard task, and we will not have as much satisfaction when we completed the task.

The podcast recommends waking up in the morning and fasting from looking at the phone. Instead we should wake up, wash our face with cold water, and do our bed. At least 15 minutes avoidance of social media. I didn’t think much when hearing this, but as I woke up this morning, I realised these steps are already ingrained in Islam, as the first thing to do after waking up is to pray, which requires taking wudhu, i.e. splashing your face with cold water.

Interesting to see science does align. Now to go on to listen to the rest of the podcast.

Thank you for reading.