What is dopamine fasting?

If the hustle and bustle of daily life is burning you out, perhaps it’s time to adopt the latest lifestyle fad taking hold of Silicon Valley - “dopamine fasting”.

Listen to "#144 Dopamine fasting, AI interviews and old tunes" on Spreaker.

Dopamine “is the neurotransmitter in our brains that’s responsible for motivation and reward”, explains San Francisco-based professor of psychiatry Cameron Sepah in an article on LinkedIn. “It’s an important brain chemical, and people who are low in it (whether naturally or by taking antipsychotic medications) can be lethargic and anhedonic (taking little interest of pleasure in things),” he adds.

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However, Sepah believes that “we may be getting too much of a good thing”.

The Telegraph reports that the professor, “who claims to count a number of technology executives in Silicon Valley among his clients”, says that human dependence on dopamine release is “wreaking havoc on his patients’ attention spans”. His solution is the dopamine fast - a behavioral psychology technique that involves limiting the time spent engaging in what are perceived to be addictive behaviours.

“You can’t abstain from technology altogether, but this provides a structure to limit or compartmentalise in a way that allows your brain to reset a bit,” Sepah told Business Insider.

The trend appears to be entering the mainstream, with the top dopamine fasting how-to-video getting more than 1.6 million views, reports tech and culture news site Inverse. However, some people are taking the practice to the extreme, cutting out all normal human activity for periods of 24 hours or longer - triggering both concern and ridicule.

So what is the science behind a dopamine fast, and does it really work?

What is dopamine?

Dopamine is a naturally occurring neurotransmitter - “one of those chemicals that is responsible for transmitting signals between the nerve cells (neurons) of the brain”, explains Psychology Today.

As the magazine notes, “very few neurons actually make dopamine”, and those that do serve a variety of different functions. For example, those found in a part of the brain called the substantia nigra are the cells that die during Parkinson’s disease, causing significant damage to motor functions.

However, in the context of psychology, references to dopamine generally relate to a version located in a part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Although the function of dopamine neurons in the VTA is not well understood by scientists, it is thought to play a key role in understanding reward and the feelings of pleasure derived from it.

“VTA dopamine neurons become activated when something good happens unexpectedly, such as the sudden availability of food,” says Psychology Today. “Most abused drugs cause the release of dopamine and this is thought to contribute to their addictive properties.”

So what are the benefits of “fasting”?

Professor Sepah suggests that a fast might involve abstaining from activities linked to excessive dopamine release for one-to-four hours at the end of each day; for a whole day each weekend; for an entire weekend every three months; and/or for one week per year. Activities to cut out could include pleasure eating, using the internet and apps, shopping, gambling and looking at pornography - though what should be avoided and for how long will vary for each person.

Scientific research has found some evidence linking dopamine to addictive behaviours, and many experts believe humans can “overstimulate” themselves through use of social media and other feel-good activities.

As science news site Futurism notes, the average American “spends most of their waking life watching TV, infinitely scrolling through their Instagram feeds, or mindlessly staring at their work computer”, and this may cause a form of mental burnout.

Sepah believes that hours spent scrolling on Instagram or reading through Reddit and the like can “actually rewire our brains, interfering with our attention spans, ability to regulate our emotions, and how we enjoy simple tasks”, reports Business Insider.

In his LinkedIn article, he argues that overexposure may result in desensitisation to dopamine over time, which “results in using more and more of a stimulant to get the same effects, enabling the cycle of addiction”.

Dopamine fasting is an “antidote to our overstimulated age”, Sepah writes, and provides “a structure to limit or compartmentalise in a way that allows your brain to reset a bit”.

“It’s not a biohack, it’s what healthy people do: turning your computer off at night, taking time off on weekends, taking vacations,” he adds. “To decide what to fast from, simply regard whether it’s highly pleasurable or problematic for you, and thus you may need a break from.”

So why the criticism?

According to Sepah, “taking a break from behaviors that trigger strong amounts of dopamine release (especially in a repeated fashion) allows our brain to recover and restore itself”.

“Most importantly, dopamine fasting is training yourself to have more control and flexibility over whether or not you engage in a behavior when you need to (e.g. choosing not to procrastinate when you have a deadline),” he continues.

The jury is out on the science behind those claims. “There is little research on whether the rewards we get from apps actually impact the dopamine system in the brain in the same way as dopamine drugs might, for example,” says The Telegraph.

Indeed, “Sepah gladly admits that the term covers a concept that has more to do with setting boundaries than managing brain-chemical levels,” the newspaper adds. And experts agree that such strategies to improve self-control can provide health benefits.

However, most critics of the practice are more concerned with the extremes to which some adherents are going, with some refusing to even converse with other people.

Many people were introduced to dopamine fasting via a viral tweet this week in which California-based Twitter user Janey Munoz wrote: “Today was my first day in SF since moving here, and I ran into someone from my YC batch who told me he was on a ‘dopamine fast’ and thus had to cut our convo short (lest he acquire too much dopamine).”

Sepah says that these sort of excessive measures are a “misuse” of his idea.

“There was a chance that people would take it to an extreme,” he warns. “Silicon Valley likes to do that.”