Please Stop Talking About Dopamine Like It’s Just a Buzz
For people living with Parkinson’s, dopamine isn’t a wellness trend, a social-media hack or shorthand for having a good time. It is part of the biology behind something as fundamental as being able to move.
There are certain words that suddenly seem to appear everywhere.
At the moment, one of them is dopamine.
Scroll through social media and you’ll encounter phrases like:
- “Get your dopamine hit.”
- “This gives me a dopamine rush.”
- “I’m doing a dopamine detox.”
- “Stop chasing cheap dopamine.”
- “Here’s how to reset your dopamine.”
The word has become shorthand for almost anything pleasurable, exciting or habit-forming.
A notification.
Chocolate.
Shopping.
Gaming.
Scrolling through social media.
Winning something.
Buying something.
Even somebody enjoying their morning coffee can apparently be described as “chasing dopamine”.
For many people, it’s harmless internet language.
But if Parkinson’s is part of your life, hearing dopamine discussed this way can sound very different.
Because dopamine isn’t simply the chemical responsible for making somebody feel good.
And for somebody with Parkinson’s, its loss has consequences considerably more serious than whether they can resist checking their phone.
Dopamine Isn’t Just the “Pleasure Chemical”
Popular explanations of neuroscience have a habit of turning complicated biology into catchy labels.
Serotonin becomes the “happiness chemical”.
Cortisol becomes the “stress hormone”.
Dopamine becomes the “pleasure chemical”.
The problem is that biology rarely fits neatly into a social-media caption.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter — a chemical messenger used by the nervous system — with several important functions.
It is involved in motivation, learning and reward processing.
But it is also critically involved in movement.
That last part matters enormously when we’re talking about Parkinson’s.
What Dopamine Means in Parkinson’s
Deep within the brain is an area called the substantia nigra.
It contains neurons that produce dopamine and communicate with brain circuits involved in controlling movement.
In Parkinson’s, these dopamine-producing neurons progressively deteriorate.
As dopamine signalling in the relevant movement circuits becomes impaired, the brain finds it increasingly difficult to regulate movement normally.
That contributes to some of the characteristic movement problems associated with Parkinson’s.
- Movements can become slower.
- Muscles can become rigid.
- Starting a movement can become difficult.
- Automatic movements can change.
- Walking can become more complicated.
This isn’t somebody failing to generate enough excitement.
It isn’t something that can be corrected by avoiding Instagram for the weekend.
It is neurodegenerative disease.
This Isn’t the Same as an Adrenaline Rush
This may be where some of the everyday language becomes particularly misleading.
We’re accustomed to talking about an adrenaline rush.
And that description makes intuitive sense.
Something frightening or exciting happens.
Your body’s fight-or-flight response activates.
Your heart races.
You feel alert.
The immediate event passes and that acute physiological response subsides.
So when people started talking about a “dopamine rush” or “dopamine hit”, dopamine began acquiring a similar cultural meaning.
A quick blast of something that feels good.
But dopamine’s biology is considerably more complicated.
There can indeed be rapid changes in dopamine signalling associated with learning, motivation and reward prediction.
There are also more sustained aspects of dopamine signalling, and different dopamine pathways perform different functions.
So the problem isn’t that dopamine has nothing whatsoever to do with rewarding experiences.
It does.
The problem is pretending that’s all dopamine is.
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