The ‘dopamine detox’ is having a moment

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How to recalibrate your brain's reward pathways By Haley Weiss Health Reporter Every so often, I'll notice that some activity I’ve been doing a lot has lost its thrill. You probably know the feeling: a TV show or an online game goes from feeling engaging to time-sucking. Dr. Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist who wrote a book about the neurotransmitter dopamine, says that this happens when we’ve become over-reliant on some source that delivers dopamine quickly to our reward pathways. "We need to keep engaging in these behaviors," she says, "not to feel good and happy, but just to feel normal." One way to break this cycle is an exercise called a dopamine detox, which has recently become popular online. The term is a misnomer, since you can’t actually detox from such an important neurochemical, but the idea behind it—cutting out your most addictive stimuli to give your brain a bit of a break—is a good one. As long as you’re honest with yourself about how different activities make you feel, even the shortest breaks from harmful ones can teach you a lot. These two tips can help you design your own digital detox: Remember that there’s no shame in using firm barriers, like software that locks you out of certain websites, to help you through an intentional break. Lembke approves of these tools. Want to be able to cook dinner without the TV on in the background, or to feel calm when you leave the house without your headphones? Try enlisting a friend in your experiment. Any challenge is easier with a buddy. READ MORE Share This Story

What Else to Read To Solve the U.S. Nursing Shortage Crisis, the Country Must Change Its Immigration Policies By Alex M. Azar and Kathleen Sebelius Two former U.S. Secretaries of Health argue that to address the nursing shortage crisis, we need to fix immigration. Read More » Love Languages Actually Do Improve Your Relationship By Angela Haupt Research links relationship satisfaction to whether partners use each other's preferred love language. Read More » Why Rewatching Your Favorite TV Show Is Good for You By Anna Goldfarb Rewatching TV shows helps people unwind and provides a sense of comfort, research finds. Read More » Type 2 Diabetes Remission Is Possible. Here's How to Do It By Michael O. Schroeder Patients with Type 2 diabetes can achieve remission, usually via weight loss. Read More » The 5 Best Ways to Control High Cholesterol, According to People With the Condition By Elizabeth Millard Here's what people with high cholesterol have found works best for them. Read More »

ONE LAST READ What it's like to provide medical care at music festivals Summer means massive music festivals—and the unpredictable medical mishaps that often occur at them, like heat exhaustion and drug misuse. But some emergency medical workers get an adrenaline kick from the thrill of so-called "festival medicine," writes Dawn Fallik in the Washington Post. Read More »

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