Dopamine – the Feel Good Hormone – is produced by your brain, from the amino acids tyrosine and phenylalanine. It is closely linked with the role that pleasure plays in our life – attention, focus, planning, learning and finding things interesting – with enthusiasm!
It’s involved in a whole host of processes including your heart rate, how smoothly you move (the brain producing too little dopamine is a big factor in Parkinson’s Disease), how well you sleep and your mood.
Phenylalanine is also important for supporting your stress response. And from my osteopathic perspective of working with my stressed patients, dopamine is involved in how our bodies process and manage pain – have you noticed how being distracted by say, watching a comedy, can reduce your awareness of pain? That’s dopamine at work.
On a personal note, my father had Parkinson’s Disease, a cruel cruel affliction for someone who had once been so active and debonair. It behoves me to guard against that as much as I can.
So how can we ensure we make enough?
A diet rich in tyrosine and phenylalanine will help. Tom Kerridge’s Dopamine Diet has some great recipes, and a lovely readable style – I love cookbooks that are more than just a series of recipes, where reading them you get a flavour of the writer as well 😊
When people get anxious or depressed, their diet can become more restricted, they will tend to reach for the same foods in the supermarket, use the same recipes again and again.
Variety is indeed the spice of life, and of your shopping trolley. See what unfamiliar foods might be available for you to try.
Eat right to reduce your pain, what a wonderful thought 😊
For a healthy dopamine response, it’s very important to get enough protein from a wide range of food sources, and organic where possible:
Animal Proteins:
- Lean meat –turkey, beef, chicken, venison, pork
- Tuna, salmon and cod
- Eggs
- Dairy – milk, yoghurt and cheese
Plant foods rich in phenylalanine include:
- Soya beans and tofu, also peanuts, lentils and butter [lima], borlotti [pinto], haricot [navy] and aduki beans.
- Nuts and Seeds – especially pumpkin, hemp, sunflower, almonds, chia.
- Grains – quinoa, oats, brown rice.
- Vegetables – sweet potatoes, peas, spinach, sweetcorn, broccoli.
As I often say to my patients, aim for a “rainbow of colours“ in your diet 😊
And Dopamine loves variety, it loves to be stimulated by the new – a new taste, a new seasoning, a new recipe. Mm, looking at that list of foods is getting my brain whirring as to new combinations to try out!
And the header photo I found on Pixabay by Wow Phochiangrak of a quinoa and sweet potato salad with grilled meat definitely looks like something to try out and adapt.
As I like to do…