The human brain is as complex as it is powerful. We aren’t given a user’s manual when we’re born, after all.

See, our brains have been tuned over thousands of years to try and reach homeostasis by balancing pleasure and pain.

And the major tool that it uses to bring our brains into homeostasis is dopamine.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that your brain creates to help you feel good. It’s your brain's reward system that helps you navigate the world and was essential for survival for thousands of years.

Imagine early humans. What motivated them to go out and hunt, to develop language, to have sex, or to create art?

Yep - it was a desire born from dopamine - or a lack of it.

Let’s take food, for example.

From the day you were born, your brain has been creating a connection between eating food and getting dopamine. So when you’re hungry, your brain tells your body that it needs food by signaling that you have a lack of dopamine.

In response, if you were an early human, you’d go running around looking for food, whether it be hunting or searching for edible plants.

And when you finally find that fruit tree and take a bite of a ripe peach…

…the dopamine floodgates open and you feel ecstasy!

This is why they say “hunger is the best spice” - that spice is dopamine!

As a result, your brain has successfully balanced itself out. You no longer feel hungry, and for the moment you are happy, satisfied, and alive.

This dopamine dance in our brains has persisted for thousands of years. But recently, scientists are finding that many of the problems that modern humans have stem from this very same process that we depended on for survival.

Because as technology has made leaps and bounds in just the last 20 years…

…it’s been throwing our dopamine all out of balance.

Did you know that about 50 years ago they started studying the happiness rates of the people in different countries all around the world?

And as you might have guessed, it was the richest countries - the “first-world” countries - that had the highest rates of happiness.

Year after year they did these studies and everything remained about the same…

…until about 20 years ago.

That’s around the time that smartphones, social media, and online shopping began to go mainstream.

It was around that time that the studies started to show a decline in the happiness rates of the richest countries.

Why? Doesn’t technology make everyone’s lives easier, leading to more happiness?

Well, yes and no.

See, dopamine used to be difficult to come by. You had to strain and struggle to get it.

But now dopamine is just a few taps away on a smartphone, a couple of clicks on a computer, and comes with free 2-day shipping.

Yes, technology - specifically the internet - has made it easy to overindulge in dopamine, throwing a new twist into the dopamine balance.

Our brains still want to reach homeostasis. But when we have an overabundance of dopamine, that means that we need pain to balance out all this pleasure.

The result is a “drugification” of your favorite dopamine activity.

Whether it’s scrolling through social media, reading a book, watching a show, playing a game, shopping, eating a snack, or any other activity, technology has made it so accessible that we are accidentally over-indulging and creating what doctors call…

…a dopamine dependence.

Let’s use eating a meal as an example so I can explain this a little more in-depth.

Just like for early humans, your brain uses dopamine to tell you that you’re hungry.

But instead of running around hunting or scavenging for food…

…you can have a burger, fries, and a soda delivered right to your door.

The food tastes great, because the bun was made with highly-processed sugary dough. The fries have been soaked in grease and are topped with salt. The soda is ice cold and full of sugary flavor.

You may not realize it, but this meal has been designed by the fast food industry to release as much dopamine as possible in order to get you to come b ack again and again!

So you eat your meal and now you have a high amount of dopamine running through your system. This is much more dopamine than you need to fulfill your hunger!

And now your brain is out of homeostasis. It’s over-saturated with dopamine!

So, in response, it does something to try and even things out.

It creates a dopamine deficiency.

This is the “come down,” the “hangover,” and the “sugar crash” that happens after we flood ourselves with too much dopamine.

Our brains inflict pain on ourselves to try and reach that homeostasis again.

And the more we do this, the more resistant we become to the initial dopamine hit.

Suddenly, that burger, fries and soda don’t give you the same satisfaction that it used to. That’s because your brain has created a bigger deficiency than before because it’s anticipating a huge dopamine hit.

So you need to supersize your order with a bigger burger, more fries, and that extra large drink to get the same satisfaction.

Do you see the problem here?

Soon, you don’t even derive pleasure from eating this food anymore. Your brain has created such a deficit that you need to eat a supersized meal and a cookie just to come back up to homeostasis.

This is how something as simple as eating a meal becomes drugified. Excessive dopamine can turn anything into a drug.

You’d be surprised how easy it is for anyone to get hooked on their dopamine drug of choice. In fact, if you feel like you might suffer from depression or anxiety, it could be that you simply are addicted to something that’s oversaturating your brain with dopamine.

So, what can you do about it?

Again - there are so many things that can lead to excessive dopamine - even healthy habits can turn sour if you do them excessively.

After you find the dopamine habit, here are some ways you can try to temper it:

1. Try a dopamine fast.
   
   Don’t engage in that activity for one month and see what happens. If you feel better than you did before stopping that activity, then you likely had a dopamine dependence.
   
   
2. Schedule specific times that you can engage in the activity.
   
   This will limit you doing the activity excessively. For example, if reading is your dopamine activity, schedule one hour a day where you can allow yourself to read. This will prevent reading from negatively affecting the rest of your life while allowing your dopamine levels to return to normal.
   
   
3. Take steps to remove the activity from your grasp.
   
   This could mean getting rid of all the alcohol in the house or all the candy. It could mean canceling your online shopping account or deleting your social media account so that you won’t be tempted to go back.
   
   
4. Exercise.
   
   When you exercise, you create your own dopamine deficit which helps your brain regulate your dopamine levels without relying on withdrawals to create that deficit instead.
   
   
5. Meditate.
   
   Meditation (especially with Holosync) is a game changer when it comes to breaking free from dopamine dependence by solidifying your willpower. It also helps you become aware of your unhealthy habits or excessive dopamine activities.
   
   

No matter what activity you’ve become dependent on, there are tools out there that can help you break free.

I recommend Breaking the Cycle - a Holosync collection designed to help break dopamine-dependent habits and addictions.

I used Breaking the Cycle myself when I quit nicotine - and it really made a difference.

Check it out today and start taking back control over your brain.

No one is immune from bad habits and addiction.

As a matter of fact, every addiction started out as “just a bad habit.”

That’s why we created the first ever Holosync collection that is designed specifically to tackle addictive behaviors before they spin out of control.

It’s an investment that the whole family will benefit from for years to come.