Increase Dopamine Naturally With These 7 Mood-Boosting Foods

If you’ve ever lacked motivation or excitement around a particular project or event only to feel totally different a few days later when, suddenly, your enthusiasm returned and you were back on top of the world, that’s dopamine at the wheel (1).

Dopamine can be a double-edged sword. Just as it links pleasure to positive actions that help us survive, achieve and advance—the effects of dopamine can also lead you astray when we draw similar connections to less productive sources of so-called pleasure that feel good in the short term, but don’t serve us in the long run (2).

If you’ve experienced highs and lows like this, then like most people, you’ve ridden the dopamine rollercoaster. Luckily, there are natural ways to increase and balance dopamine levels through healthy foods and lifestyle factors. Read on to better understand what dopamine is, how it works, and ways to support steady, long-lasting dopamine levels.

What Is Dopamine?

Dopamine is both a hormone and neurotransmitter that sends signals to the nerve cells in your brain and throughout your body, to influence a number of important actions, like reward and pleasure. However, it’s also involved with movement, memory, behavior, sleep, and arousal.

As human beings, we’re wired to survive, therefore our brains are designed to release dopamine to drive motivation and acknowledge reward any time we do something that advances our survival, i.e. eating, completing a task, or winning a competition.

But dopamine doesn’t discern between what’s necessary and unnecessary, which is why so many people get hooked on the dopamine release they get from unhealthy “quick fixes” like junk food, alcohol, sex, nicotine, and drugs.

The brain associates those pleasurable vices with reward and sometimes can create a pattern (3) where we crave more and more until it becomes an addiction.

The body is fairly efficient at managing dopamine levels but in some cases, it may produce too little, leading to a lack of motivation and feelings of lethargy, depression, and listlessness. In severe cases, dopamine deficiencies can lead to conditions like ADHD and Parkinson’s disease.

On the flip side, your body can also produce too much dopamine, leading to insomnia and reactive and aggressive behavior. In severe cases, heightened levels of dopamine can also lead to Schizophrenia. (4,5)

How Does Dopamine Work?

In order to stay energized, content, and motivated, dopamine needs to be well balanced. But how does it work and how can we healthily produce more if we’re deficient?

As a recap, dopamine is a monoamine neurotransmitter, which means it relies on an amino acid to be made—or synthesized. The amino acid required to make dopamine is tyrosine, which we can get in two different ways.

1. Eat protein-rich foods. Beef, chicken, and cheese all contain high amounts of tyrosine.
2. Eat foods rich in phenylalanine, another amino acid, which converts to tyrosine in the body. (6,7)

Simple enough, eat more foods high in amino acids tyrosine and phenylalanine and you may increase dopamine levels in the brain (8,9). See which foods rank the highest for both below.