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Dopamine Fasting: A Maladaptive Fad (2020)
- emerged 5y agoIf you take any given drug which periodically spikes dopamine or serotonin or GABA or generally any neurotransmitter, your body adapts by lowering the baseline. Isn’t the point of fasting to allow the body to upregulate, thereby increasing your baseline? It sure sounds like a good thing to me.
- oblak 5y agoI know about serotonin releasing drugs but dopamine? All I can think of is gambling and having your HN comments upvoted
- emerged 5y agoCocaine? Often drugs don’t directly produce the neurotransmitter, they inhibit reuptake or otherwise have an indirect effect.
- krageon 5y agoThere are some dopamine reuptake inhibitors you can take. IIRC the amphetamine class of drugs also stimulates release when some is already released due to environmental factors.
- falcolas 5y agoConsidering that insufficient dopamine is one of the main mechanisms behind ADHD - no, you do not want to literally fast from dopamine.
- coldtea 5y agoWell, you don't fast from dopamine in that sense even following the "fad". So the article (or at least it's title) is misingenuous - you fast from BS, stressful, and psychologically addictive input...
- VortexDream 5y agoNo, you're right. The whole article misses the forest for the trees. The term "dopamine fast" doesn't literally mean fasting from dopamine. It's about fasting from easy "dopamine hits" from media designed to exploit the way our rewards circuitry works.
- darkerside 5y agoSeems almost purposefully dense in that way. I'd consider flagging it except, ironically, the headline itself was more informative to me than the article.
- patmorgan23 5y agoExactly, it's like the author has never hear of the hedonic treadmill. Something I a 24 year old who has taken exactly one psychology course knows about.
- bildung 5y agoThis has nothing to do with the hedonic treadmill. The treadmill model describes changed on much larger timeframes and of much larger impact, i.e. how your model of the world changes if you lose both legs, or become a parent, or become rich etc. Dopamine fasting is a mechanistic model trying to explain unhealthy behaviour patterns that can occur dozens of times a day.
- bildung 5y agoI think this criticism is itself missing the forest for the trees. The idea behind dopamine fasting is, (possibly unfairly) reduced to the minimum, that doing less of a harmful behaviour for a while will cure us of our problematic behaviour. In other words, we actually are addicted to dopamine itself, instead of having built up maladaptive cognitions. This is what (I think) the article tried to refute. Even with the little we know about the inner workings of our brains, this doesn't appear to be true: We have to actively build up alternative behaviour and critically inspect/change the cognitions that actually promote the problematic behaviour. So if a person has unhealthy bevaviour patterns regarding social media consumption, just doing less of that without also actively changing the cognitions that lead to the unhealthy behaviour in the first place won't help much. We do these things because we have a mostly subconsious theory that doing this is good for us. If this actually isn't, than that assumption has to be challenged, and healthy alternatives have to be built up. Just not doing the thing for a while won't replace the assumption, unless one is abstinent for a really long time (think years).
- ravenstine 5y agoThat's an oversimplification of ADHD. The "insufficient" dopamine is extremely contextual; more accurately, dopamine is dysregulated. By suggesting that dopamine itself is a cause, which I think you are suggesting, then that's like saying the a cause of ADHD is a lack of attention. The question for ADHD should be whether abstaining from dopamine-stimulating activities does anything to correct that dysregulation and, barring some evidence I've yet to research, I don't think the answer is obvious or self-evident. Besides that potentially fallacious point I made, I don't think the ADHD brain is really relevant to whether dopamine fasting is beneficial for other brains than those with ADHD.
- p2p_astroturf 5y agoThis has to be the stupidest sentiment I've seen other than the dopamine meme itself where laypeople online use the word to back up reactionary politics.
- greenhatman 5y agoIs it insufficient dopamine or dopamine insensitivity?
- throwuxiytayq 5y ago> While dopamine does rise in response to rewards or pleasurable activities, it doesn’t actually decrease when you avoid overstimulating activities, so a dopamine “fast” doesn’t actually lower your dopamine levels. I'm having a genuinely hard time understanding the logic of this statement.
- weird-eye-issue 5y agoProbably it's referring to your baseline dopamine levels not decreasing
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- chrisseaton 5y ago> I'm having a genuinely hard time understanding the logic of this statement. Doesn't lower your level from a baseline.
- throwuxiytayq 5y agoYes, but the other activities increase it from the baseline. I'm still struggling to figure out what's useful about the statement.
- montroser 5y agoI think it's saying there's a relatively constant nonzero floor, and that your behavior really make it peak, but can't actually lower the floor.
- gameswithgo 5y agowhat about the state or number of receptors that it binds to?
- wpietri 5y agoI would love more detail, but I think the point is solid. When I get too caught up in something with negative side-effects, I'll definitely take a break from it. E.g., I'll get compulsive about certain kinds of video game, so I'll take steps to set it aside for a while. (E.g., remove the game from my Switch, discharge the Switch's battery, and then put it in some hard-to-reach place, all so that gratification wouldn't be instant.) So that made me think the dopamine addiction/dopamine fasting people had a point. But it sounds like some people over-interpret the theory and under-invest in verifying their interpretations through rigorous testing. That's unfortunate, but it's a behavior you see all the time with self-improvement fads. E.g., I think the paleo people had a point with moving away from foods engineered to maximize repeat purchasing. And in the saner parts of that world you'd see people recommending a framework of responsible self-experimentation, where you try things out and look for health improvements. But then there's also the whole "paleo brownies" crowd, where people ate just as poorly but with nominally different ingredients so they could feel virtuous without any actual improvement.
- FearlessNebula 5y agoJust a heads up, it’s very bad for the battery to keep it in a discharged state for any longer than absolutely necessary. Batteries are best stored at about 50%
- wpietri 5y agoGet thee behind me, Satan. The machine is there for me; I am not there for the machine. If tending to my productivity and mental health means replacing a battery every second year instead of every third, then I'm going to pick me over a $35 battery.
- imwillofficial 5y agoWhat a weird offensively worded reply.
- wpietri 5y ago
- ziml77 5y agoIsn't this author interpreting "dopamine fast" too literally? Obviously you can't bring your dopamine levels to zero. But that's not what people are attempting to do. They're avoiding easy dopamine hits. We probably need some studies to know if avoiding them for a period of time has actual benefits, but it doesn't make sense to completely dismiss the idea.
- RNCTX 5y agoSeems like a roundabout way of saying "there never should have been such a thing as a computer-phone."
- quadrifoliate 5y ago> However, people are adopting ever more extreme, ascetic, and unhealthy versions of this fasting, based on misconceptions about how dopamine works in our brains. They are not eating, exercising, listening to music, socializing, talking more than necessary, and not allowing themselves to be photographed if there’s a flash (not sure if this applies to selfies). Just one of the wild, reference-free claims [1] the article makes. Who are these legions of people? The few articles I have been able to find about it [2][3] indicate that it's Silicon Valley "trying things out" as usual, and assorted media loudly claiming that it doesn't work. As such, the backlash against this is the most interesting part to me. Is dopamine fasting enough of a blow to the business model of traditional media outlets that they have decided to snowball it with a series of strawman attacks just in case anyone takes it seriously and decides to try it out? It seems like a harmless form of standard Buddhist-style meditation practices to me, that seek to minimize desire. ---------------------------------------- [1] I wonder how much of a "pass" an article unnecessarily gets on basic things like data and references just because it happens to on a Harvard Medical School domain. [2] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/11/13/20959424/dopamine-fasting-silicon-valley-trend-neuroscience https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/11/13/20959424/dopam... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/style/dopamine-fasting.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/style/dopamine-fasting.ht...
- emodendroket 5y agoI read the article and I really have no idea where you’re drawing such invidious conclusions, especially when the concept of “dopamine fasting” seems to extend far beyond social media.
- mgraczyk 5y agoGiven the structure of the article, and the fact that its only two outbound links are shilling for a particular kind of dopamine fast, I'd say this article is just PR for the therapist they are "interviewing".
- akeck 5y agoNot sure if it applies in this case, but marketers and influencers have discovered that if they sign up for Harvard extension classes, they can publish blog articles and do email with the harvard.edu domain. I think WBUR did an article on the issue.
- DerekBickerton 5y agoMany people overlook the term 'breakfast'. It's a combination of the words 'breaking your fast'. Dopamine starving happens during deep sleep, so we do it anyway just as we starve ourselves of food whilst sleeping, so I don't see the point of doing dopamine fasts outside of sleep.
- krrrh 5y agoThere are health benefits to periodically fasting from food for longer than the 8 hours spent sleeping. Many Jewish people who practice Shabbat extol the modern benefits of staying offline for 36 hours every week. Why assume that a daily 8 hour sleep window is The optimal break for everything?
- majou 5y agoFinding dopamine offline probably has more immediate benefits than "fasting" dopamine. Maybe they're just different versions of the same thing: finding more elusive dopamine rewards. I do agree that disconnecting from technology is a good practice.
- selfhifive 5y agoThat is the whole point of it. To fight against the dopamine saturation to enjoy everyday pleasures.
- ravenstine 5y agoI don't buy it. Am I the only one who appreciates things more after being away from them for a long time? Or is that more than dopamine? I thought dopamine was involved with motivation and would at least in large part explain why I might get tired of playing a video game but then suddenly get way more enjoyment out of it if I play it again 6 months later. Perhaps I'm from another planet. It just seems like for anything I find to be helpful there's some academic article discrediting it. > Misunderstanding science can create maladaptive behaviors Given that it seems pretty unlikely that someone could become addicted to dopamine fasting, it's really up to the individual and not science as to whether their behavior is maladaptive. It doesn't really matter whether non-academics understand dopamine if they still find benefit in the process.
- rsync 5y agoI believe you are correct. A much better term for this practice is “hedonic fast”.
- Zababa 5y agoI like the term "hedonic fast", but I would interpret it as the opposite of what it would be, as I already know "water fast", a fast where you only consume water. Perhaps "stimuli abstinence"? Abstinence is defined as "a self-enforced restraint from indulging in bodily activities that are widely experienced as giving pleasure". "stimuli" would ensure that people don't think directly about sexual abstinence.
- imwillofficial 5y agoNo, “water fast” is wrong, so your application of a wrong word association should not further corrupt other correctly worded descriptions.
- Zababa 5y agoHow is "water fast" wrong?
- smitty1e 5y ago> Taking time out for mental rejuvenation is never a bad thing, but it’s nothing new Also not new: marketing, and blowback against marketing.
- gcp123 5y agoThis article is garbage.
- selfhifive 5y agoDopamine fasting is not for hitting a dopamine zero. It is just to reset the system to its natural state so that it reacts to normal levels of dopamine.
- Spinnaker_ 5y agoThe author is attacking a position that doesn't really exist. You obviously don't fast from dopamine in general. You fast from dopamine peaks. Continuous spiking of dopamine causes your baseline levels to drop, and you feel shitty and unmotivated. A dopamine fast (of the spikes) is intended to let the levels rise back. If you have 2 hours there is no better guide than Andrew Huberman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> Continuous spiking of dopamine causes your baseline levels to drop, and you feel shitty and unmotivated. Spiking dopamine levels with pharmaceutical drugs can do this in animal studies, but watching a show on Netflix or eating a donut is not the same thing. The simpler explanation is that people who spend all of their time passively consuming rewarding activities (junk food, TV shows, Twitter, Reddit, porn) are getting terrible nutrition, very little physical activity, and no real social exposure. They're also piping a constant stream of negative news and unhealthy debates into their eyes and ears. Going outside and going for a run is also rewarding and can also be shown to elevate dopamine levels, but nobody is going to argue that it makes you "feel shitty and unmotivated". You can't reduce everything down to one, singular chemical in the brain. Human psychology and motivations are complex and not a function of singular chemical "levels" in the brain. Reward is also a complex topic that involves multiple systems across the brain, especially opioidergic pathways that moderate much of the sensation of reward. Dopamine is also used for functions like movement (think Parkinson's) and even encoding negative stimuli that you dislike. This pseudoscience idea that "dopamine equals motivation" or that you can modulate your entire motivation/reward circuitry by playing games to modulate dopamine is an egregious abuse of the science.
- mf_tomb 5y agoThe referenced Huberman podcast is pretty thorough (from my lay-perspective) and covers most of the nuance that you mention.
- Spinnaker_ 5y agoI think you're also attacking a position no one really holds. Of course it's incredibly complicated. But we do know quite a bit about tonic and phasic release of dopamine as well as the effects of dopamine depletion. The video is by a professor of Neurobiology at Stanford. It's not pseudoscience.
- im3w1l 5y agoWhile I can understand that it must be frustrating to see people misunderstand the science and do stupid things, I don't think this article is very helpful for the "dopamine fasters". Thing is, these are troubled people going to a lot of effort to improve their lives, and they are doing almost but not quite the right thing. What they need is a huge helping of encouragement and just a small amount of course correction. If he sincerely wants to engage with the proponents, he needs to drop the smug.
- sytelus 5y agoTalk about sensational title with zero information. And is there banner ad on .edu website of institute with multi billion dollar endowment? I had hoped to see citations and list of things that is wrong but instead came out with two statements which said there is nothing new, it’s all ok and the only bad thing was some people depriving them of human contact.
- vjancik 5y agoIt's like the author heard about this practice briefly and jumped straight to "Wait, this doesn't make any sense!" and spun his lack of understanding in the most extreme way. Instead of asking what's driving people to this practice and whether the practice produced noticeable mental health benefits in the participants. "It can't work how I understand it", doesn't mean it actually can't work, only that you've failed to understand.
- xdavidliu 5y agoI think the author took the phrase "dopamine fast" literally and spent a good deal of his article trying to show that dopamine fasts don't reduce dopamine, which is sort of missing the point.
- mattkrause 5y ago"Work" has two overloaded meanings here. It might `work` in the sense that it causes the practitioners feel better, without the biochemistry `working` as hypothesized. Indeed, the author points out that many of the practices are pretty close to more traditional mindfulness/sleep hygiene recommendations anyway.
- simple10 5y agoHas anyone here tried 24 hours isolation [1] to reset perception of time? It's related to dopamine fasts but reportedly more profound. Andrew Huberman from Stanford has an excellent podcast [2] on dopamine. He goes in depth on the importance of using dopamine in the pursuit of goals with a caution around the come down period after achieving goals. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/24/wilderness-solo-splendid-isolation-stopped-time-sitting-in-a-forest-24-hours https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/24/wilderness-solo... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU
- didibus 5y agoMaybe it's just me, but are all the assumptions made here true? Does liking a video, watching a TikTok, reading a blog post, catching up with my Instagram feed, etc. really does anything to my dopamine levels? Have any of these activities really been shown to be bad for my physical or mental well being? Naively speaking, I personally don't like wasting my time with them, because they don't make me feel accomplished, and because there are other things I actually want to do and often don't do in favor of the ease of wasting time of my phone instead. But none of that implies those activities are bad for me. People claim there's an addiction to these things, is that true? Is it really that you're addicted to them? Would you suffer real withdrawal were the internet to be out of order for a few weeks?
- throwuxiytayq 5y ago> Is it really that you're addicted to them? Would you suffer real withdrawal were the internet to be out of order for a few weeks? There's various types of withdrawal. Your life wouldn't be at genuine risk compared to the withdrawal you get from various drugs. But yeah, it's entirely possible that you'd feel horrible for a while. True for me, at least. I suggest you try it to find out (never rely on your ability to perceive your own addiction! check and see what actually happens).
- peter303 5y agoWould this be something like going offgrid and into nature for four hour hike up to a multiweek road trip? That clears your senses.
- blindmute 5y agoHow can the author claim in the same sentence, "While dopamine does rise in response to rewards or pleasurable activities," and "it doesn’t actually decrease when you avoid overstimulating activities". So what, it just rises forever from the time we're born until death? Obviously not; something decreases it. What fad fasting doesn't take into account is that it takes many weeks, up to many months, to downregulate the dopamine receptors. Dopamine fasting one day per week or a few hours per day is literally doing nothing for your dopamine. In this regard, the author is correct. But if you actually dopamine fast for months in by avoiding highly dopaminergistic activities, your brain will really undergo meaningful changes.