Hacking Dopamine Naturally: Pain, Focus, and Performance : 1320

Hacking Dopamine Naturally: Pain, Focus, and Performance : 1320

Your dopamine system is being hijacked every day, and the way to reclaim it might surprise you. This episode reveals how pain, pleasure, and addiction are wired in your brain, and how to use that knowledge for real brain optimization, resilience, and longevity. You’ll discover why your dopamine levels control motivation, focus, mood, and even cravings—and the science-backed strategies that reset your neuroplasticity, metabolism, and reward system.


Watch this episode on YouTube for the full video experience:

https://www.youtube.com/@DaveAspreyBPR


Host Dave Asprey sits down with Dr. Anna Lembke, Stanford psychiatrist and bestselling author of Dopamine Nation. She is one of the world’s leading experts on addiction, compulsive behavior, and the neuroscience of reward pathways. With decades of clinical work and groundbreaking research, she explains why dopamine has become the modern lens for understanding desire, distraction, and dysfunction—and how we can hack it to upgrade human performance.


They break down how dopamine drives addiction, why pain can reset your reward system, and how simple practices like fasting, cold therapy, and supplements affect your brain chemistry. You’ll learn how nicotine, GLP-1 drugs, and even nootropics alter dopamine sensitivity, and why overstimulation from social media, pornography, and ultra-processed food is creating an epidemic of anhedonia. The conversation also covers how functional medicine and biohacking can protect your mitochondria, restore your natural dopamine balance, and make your brain more resilient.


You’ll Learn:

• Why dopamine itself is not addictive—and what really drives addiction

• How pain, hormesis, and “dopamine fasting” can reset your reward system

• Why social media and digital overstimulation create chronic dopamine deficit states

• The role of GLP-1 drugs, nicotine, psychedelics, and other substances in rewiring dopamine

• How functional medicine and supplements help restore dopamine balance

• The connection between dopamine, mitochondria, fasting, cold therapy, and longevity

• Why radical honesty and self-binding are powerful anti-addiction hacks


This is essential listening for anyone serious about hacking dopamine for better focus, sleep optimization, metabolism, and long-term brain health. Whether you’re curious about the link between dopamine and neuroplasticity, looking to upgrade human performance with smarter not harder tools, or just want to know how to stop dopamine hijacks from ruling your life, this episode gives you the science and strategies you need.


Dave Asprey is a four-time New York Times bestselling author, founder of Bulletproof Coffee, and the father of biohacking. With over 1,000 interviews and 1 million monthly listeners, The Human Upgrade is the top podcast for people who want to take control of their biology, extend their longevity, and optimize every system in the body and mind. Each episode features cutting-edge insights in health, performance, neuroscience, supplements, nutrition, hacking, emotional intelligence, and conscious living.


Episodes are released every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday (audio-only) where Dave asks the questions no one else dares, and brings you real tools to become more resilient, aware, and high performing.


Keywords: dopamine fasting, pleasure-pain balance, dopamine deficit state, addiction neurobiology, anhedonia treatment, dopamine receptors, neuroadaptation gremlins, endogenous opioids, cold plunge dopamine, hormesis neuroscience, nucleus accumbens dopamine, L-Dopa addiction, GLP-1 and dopamine, social media addiction neuroscience, dopamine reward pathway, compulsive behavior psychiatry, dopamine and neuroplasticity, anhedonia supplements, functional medicine addiction, dopamine repair party


Thank you to our sponsors!

Resources:

• Anna’s Website: https://www.annalembke.com/

• Danger Coffee: https://dangercoffee.com/DAVE15

• Dave Asprey’s BEYOND Conference: https://beyondconference.com

• Dave Asprey’s New Book – Heavily Meditated: https://daveasprey.com/heavily-meditated

• Upgrade Collective: https://www.ourupgradecollective.com

• Upgrade Labs: https://upgradelabs.com

• 40 Years of Zen: https://40yearsofzen.com


Timestamps:

0:00 — Trailer

1:10 — Introduction

5:47 — Pleasure–Pain Balance

6:45 — Homeostasis & Adaptation

8:22 — Addiction & Dopamine Deficit

10:14 — BICEP: Conscious Pain Exposure

14:26 — Adapting to Pleasure & Pain

20:20 — GLP-1s and Joy

21:39 — Modern Anhedonia

34:32 — Resilience in Young People

42:00 — Social Media & Mental Health

44:46 — Control & Addiction

55:14 — Dopamine Fasting

1:03:18 — Self-Binding Tools

1:07:56 — Psychedelics & Addiction

1:12:25 — Parenting in the Digital Age

1:14:39 — Progress & Outlook

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Avsnitt(1380)

Bonus: Client Review with Jonathan Kos

Bonus: Client Review with Jonathan Kos

Jonathan Kos is an IT professional and a recent follower of the Bulletproof Diet.  He is a 44 year old IT professional . At 6' 3" and a former college athlete that played football, competitive ice hockey up until the age of 25 he was an extremely fit 220 lbs and my coaches wanted me up to 275 or so to play the defensive line so I was eating literally non stop to put weight on. After college he dropped down to around 200 lbs and eventually settled at for me was a healthy 235.  As he got older and more settled in his job, his weight climbed and he couldn’t keep his weight in check with exercise alone and he started to have to diet he was up to 300 lbs and was exercising more that ever but the weight didn’t come off. After he met his wife, exercise was out the window, a carb heavy diet was in, and his weight ballooned up to 365lbs. He was about to give up until he heard Tait Fletcher on Joe Rogan's podcast mentioning Bulletproof ® Coffee and he gave it a shot. He lost 45lbs in 45 days, and is here to share his experience with you.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

3 Juni 201311min

#44: Salt and self-experimentation with Greg Pomerantz

#44: Salt and self-experimentation with Greg Pomerantz

For Greg Pomerantz everything is a science experiment. He takes citizen science to a personal level by biohacking his blood pressure and detailing his data. He blogged about his self-experiment research on salt clarifying some concerns he had about salt’s effect on the body. He determined what his salt type is, either one is salt sensitive, or one that isn’t affected much by increases in salt. He discusses how to do that in today’s podcast. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

3 Juni 201337min

#43: Kelly Starrett, Mobility and Performance

#43: Kelly Starrett, Mobility and Performance

Coach Kelly Starrett received his Doctor of Physical Therapy in 2007 from Samuel Merritt College in Oakland, California. He currently runs his own physical therapy practice at San Francisco CrossFit—one of the first 50 CrossFit affiliates—and focuses on performance-based Orthopedic Sports Medicine with an emphasis on returning athletes to elite level sport and performance. His clients see exceptional results from his progressive blend of manual physical therapy and strength training. Since 2009, Kelly has been traveling the country teaching his "Movement, Mobility & Maintenance Course" in an effort to spread his message that good mobility and proper movement are the keys to good performance and that all humans should be able to perform this basic maintenance on themselves. Kelly's clients have included Olympic gold-medalists, Tour de France cyclists, world-class extreme skiers and X-Games medalists, dancers with Smuin, San Francisco, and Sacramento Ballet Companies, military personnel, and competitive age-division athletes. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

6 Maj 201350min

#42: Alderspring's Glenn Elzinga, Grass-Fed Beef and a Bulletproof Protein

#42: Alderspring's Glenn Elzinga, Grass-Fed Beef and a Bulletproof Protein

With training in forestry and forest ecology, Glenn Elzinga began his forestry career in Maine. In the mid 1980s, he moved to Salmon, Idaho where he worked as District Forester for the Salmon BLM for over a decade. As his family began to grow, he realized he wanted a better way to raise kids than leaving them for work all day. So began his current career in ranching. After ranching for 17 years, Glenn's cattle herd has grown from 7 head to over 600. He keeps his hand in forestry by working with his wife, Caryl, on consulting projects and by horse-logging occasionally with his two Belgian mares, Pet and Pat. He hopes to train his new draft Suffolk geldings, Red and Snap, to log as well. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

2 Maj 201350min

#41: Jason Nunnelley, Self Tracking

#41: Jason Nunnelley, Self Tracking

Jason Nunnelley’s work is focused on application and systems development. After his first company sold in 2000, he spent his time helping small business capitalize on Internet technologies. He is presently dedicated to dosIQ, Inc., a Wellness Journal and set of apps designed to make self-tracking and health monitoring simple for anyone. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

22 Apr 201358min

#40: Dan John, Brains & Brawn

#40: Dan John, Brains & Brawn

Dan John has spent his life with one foot in the world of lifting and throwing, and the other foot in academia. An All-American discus thrower, Dan has also competed at the highest levels of Olympic lifting, Highland Games and the Weight Pentathlon, an event in which he holds the American record. Dan spends his work life blending weekly workshops and lectures with full-time writing, and is also an online religious studies instructor for Columbia College of Missouri. As a Fulbright Scholar, he toured the Middle East exploring the foundations of religious education systems. His books, on weightlifting, include Intervention, Never Let Go, Mass Made Simple and Easy Strength, written with Pavel Tsatsouline as well as From Dad, To Grad. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

27 Mars 201358min

#39: Hormone Alchemy (+ Why Hard Data is HOT)... How to Amplify the Positive Neuro-hormonal Dashboard with Dr. Sara Gottfried MD

#39: Hormone Alchemy (+ Why Hard Data is HOT)... How to Amplify the Positive Neuro-hormonal Dashboard with Dr. Sara Gottfried MD

Dr. Sara Gottfried is a Harvard doc, biohacker, and yoga-powered champion of your health, happiness and hormonal equilibrium. She’s also seen 20,000 patients in the past 20 years and applied her training as a MIT bioengineer to how women and men can leverage the upstream and downstream mediators to create natural hormone balance with next gen medicine, and wrote a book about it, called The Hormone Cure: Reclaim Balance, Sleep, Sex Drive, and Vitality Naturally with The Gottfried Protocol (Simon & Schuster, 3/12/13) She biohacked her own happy hormones and happy brain chemicals as a 30-something stress case battling McMedicine, PMS, and low sex drive. She was offered Prozac and a birth control pill for her misery by her primary care physician, and that was a defining moment that allowed her to step from her darkest hour into the grace of biohacking bliss. The main culprit: CORTISOL. It took her 4 weeks to get her crazy-high cortisol down to the Goldilocks position of not too high and not too low, and she applied that learning and refined her protocol on her next 10,000 patients over the next 10 years. Results were staggering: Dr. Sara could neutralize cortisol, what she calls the “bad-boyfriend” hormone in 1 minute. She reversed insulin resistance in 48 hours. She got estrogen back into it’s rightful place, and thyroid, inside of 2 weeks. She believes knowledge is power, science is sexy... and, oh yes, actionable needle-moving solutions are hot. Listen in for our dialogue about cutting-edge science, and crazy-lovin’ solutions -- for men and women. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

11 Mars 20131h 4min

#38: Mark Divine, Bulletproof Warrior and SEALFIT's founder

#38: Mark Divine, Bulletproof Warrior and SEALFIT's founder

Mark Divine is from upstate New York and did his formal undergraduate education at Colgate University. His years at Colgate University were focused on the athletic endeavors of competitive swimming, rowing and triathlon racing. Mark pursued a Ph.D. in Leadership at the University of San Diego and served as an Adjunct Professor of Leadership in their undergraduate school. The Doctorate was interrupted by a one-year recall to active duty for Operation Iraqi Freedom. The recall took him to Baghdad in 2004 with SEAL Team One to conduct a special project studying the future role of the USMC in the Special Operations Command. Upon his return home he left USD to focus on developing SEALFIT and put his Unbeatable Mind training philosophy to work on a new generation of Special Ops candidates. You will learn all about this amazing program and more in this exclusive interview! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

8 Mars 201355min

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