[HN Gopher] Dopamine Fasting: A Maladaptive Fad (2020)
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Dopamine Fasting: A Maladaptive Fad (2020)
Author : _ttg
Score : 112 points
Date : 2021-11-21 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.health.harvard.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.health.harvard.edu)
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Probably it's referring to your baseline dopamine levels not
| decreasing
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > I'm having a genuinely hard time understanding the logic of
| this statement.
|
| Doesn't lower your level from a baseline.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| The others being a bit too literally/missing th obvious that
| your baseline levels of dopamine are lower than when your
| engaging in the activities listed in the article and that's
| what people are referring to when they say a 'dopamine fast'.
| Not literally removing all dopamine from your body, but
| reducing your overall levels/staying at the baseline more.
|
| I haven't gotten through the entire article but I'm surprised
| no one's brought up the natural down regulation your body/brain
| does in reaction to elevated levels of any hormone. This
| tolerance the body builds up is one of the forces that cause
| people to become addicted to things because then they have not
| only the positive reinforcement but the negative reinforcement
| of needing the thing just to feel normal. Its the hedonic
| treadmill.
| bildung wrote:
| _> Not literally removing all dopamine from your body, but
| reducing your overall levels /staying at the baseline more._
|
| To my knowledge there is no evidence that more dopamine gets
| created when practicing unhealthy behaviour.
| Neurotransmitters are much more complex than the simplistic
| fasting model describes. If you don't have severe malnutrion
| (e.g. not enough tyrosine etc.) or Parkinson or ADHS or
| similar, the dopamine is just there in your brain, waiting to
| be released as needed. We don't create more of it just
| because we look at insta 50 times a day. And we can't use it
| all up through behavior alone (but things like amphetamines
| do, of course).
|
| The metaphor of dopamine levels working like battery levels
| is simply wrong. High levels of dopamine correlate with good
| mood, but also schizophrenia. ADHS patients' symptoms can
| both get better and worse when consuming dopamin produgs.
| montroser wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| what about the state or number of receptors that it binds to?
| wpietri wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Just 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 wrote:
| Get 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 wrote:
| What a weird offensively worded reply.
| wpietri wrote:
| It's a literary reference about rebuking a tempter, one
| famous enough to have its own Wikipedia page:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_behind_me,_Satan
|
| If someone is trying to get away from something with
| addictive characteristics, the last thing they need is
| somebody coming by to make that harder. The presumption
| that I don't know anything about batteries is bad enough.
| Disregarding what I'm up to is worse. It's like somebody
| talking about how they're quitting drinking and popping
| up to say, "But studies show health benefits to
| drinking!" While true, it's well known and incredibly
| unhelpful.
|
| And as the replies show, his unhelpful intervention could
| well be wrong to boot.
| colechristensen wrote:
| This depends entirely on battery chemistry and is different
| for each one.
|
| Lithium ion batteries want to be stored at low charge and
| cold. As long as they don't self discharge below a certain
| minimum (at which point they are dead forever) you minimize
| degradation by keeping charge as low as possible. No need to
| be obsessive about it because the difference between 5% and
| 50% isn't much.
|
| Other lithium chemistries want to be stored completely
| charged, NiCd wants to be about half. Temperature is usually
| worse than charge state anyway.
| VygmraMGVl wrote:
| This is true for NiCd batteries, not for Li-ion. In general,
| LiIon degrades at a rate roughly linear to state of charge
| when not in use.
| Shog9 wrote:
| IIRC, the danger with storing lithium batteries at a low
| SoC is that they do have some small amount of self-
| discharge and can eventually drop to levels that cause
| severe degradation - and potentially catastrophic failure
| when next charged.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > So that made me think the dopamine addiction/dopamine fasting
| people had a point.
|
| The term is nebulous, but I think you're mixing concepts.
|
| Taking a break from video games to do other things is a great
| idea.
|
| But the "dopamine fasting" people have evolved the idea to the
| point that you would have to take a break from _everything_
| enjoyable during the down time. That is, no socialization, no
| music, no enjoyable foods, and nothing that might make you
| happy.
|
| And that's the misconception: You don't have to be miserable to
| restore the enjoyment of one specific thing. You just have to
| take a break and do something else.
|
| These people would be far happier if they took a break from
| their easy rewarding activities (Twitter, Netflix, whatever)
| and simply got up and did anything else, like going outside,
| going for a walk, socializing with friends, cooking an
| elaborate meal and inviting some guests over. You don't have to
| become miserable _in general_. Diversity of experiences and
| moderation of the easy rewards is key.
| smitty1e wrote:
| > Taking time out for mental rejuvenation is never a bad thing,
| but it's nothing new
|
| Also not new: marketing, and blowback against marketing.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Isn'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.
| im3w1l wrote:
| While 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.
| peter303 wrote:
| Would this be something like going offgrid and into nature for
| four hour hike up to a multiweek road trip? That clears your
| senses.
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| Many 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 wrote:
| There 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 wrote:
| Finding 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 wrote:
| That is the whole point of it. To fight against the
| dopamine saturation to enjoy everyday pleasures.
| falcolas wrote:
| Considering that insufficient dopamine is one of the main
| mechanisms behind ADHD - no, you do not want to literally fast
| from dopamine.
| p2p_astroturf wrote:
| This 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.
| ravenstine wrote:
| That'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.
| coldtea wrote:
| Well, 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 wrote:
| No, 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.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Exactly, 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 wrote:
| This 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.
| darkerside wrote:
| Seems almost purposefully dense in that way. I'd consider
| flagging it except, ironically, the headline itself was
| more informative to me than the article.
| bildung wrote:
| I 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).
| coldtea wrote:
| > _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._
|
| It's not about replacing the assumption. I don't even
| think there's much of an assumption (that it's good for
| us), it's rather the opposite: people actually hate
| themselves for spending so much time on social media,
| youtube, etc.
|
| So, it's more about kicking a bad habit, than about
| trying to change some non-existing assumption that it's a
| good thing.
| greenhatman wrote:
| Is it insufficient dopamine or dopamine insensitivity?
| gcp123 wrote:
| This article is garbage.
| selfhifive wrote:
| Dopamine 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_ wrote:
| The 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
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > 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.
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| I 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.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I suggest you listen to the Huberman episode. Of course, he
| never claims something as simplistic as "dopamine _equals_
| motivation", but there's wealth of evidence that he cites in
| the episode that the two are intimately related. The second
| part of your sentence is actually pretty close to the truth
| rather than an egregious abuse of the science, though it
| depends on what you mean by "playing games to modulate
| dopamine". The entire episode is about the topic, and I
| strongly recommend it.
|
| > 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.
|
| I'm pretty sure you won't find any instance in the episode
| where Huberman claims to reduce everything down to dopamine.
| mf_tomb wrote:
| The referenced Huberman podcast is pretty thorough (from my
| lay-perspective) and covers most of the nuance that you
| mention.
| emerged wrote:
| If 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 wrote:
| I know about serotonin releasing drugs but dopamine? All I can
| think of is gambling and having your HN comments upvoted
| emerged wrote:
| Cocaine? Often drugs don't directly produce the
| neurotransmitter, they inhibit reuptake or otherwise have an
| indirect effect.
| sytelus wrote:
| Talk 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 wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| I 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.
| RNCTX wrote:
| Seems like a roundabout way of saying "there never should have
| been such a thing as a computer-phone."
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| > 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/dopam...
|
| [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/style/dopamine-
| fasting.ht...
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Given 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".
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| > 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
|
| This is the standard asceticism routine that _every_ human
| religion in history followed. (And follows.)
|
| I'll trust the weight of centuries of experience over some
| random internet source.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| It's neat that so many of these traditions align with
| neuroscience. My naive expectation would be skepticism of
| anything that's mysticism adjacent. Many spiritual practices
| are being laid bare by science, and found to be effective in
| modulating neurochemistry, or directly manipulating
| parasympathetic immune responses, or a myriad other effects
| that can improve a person's well-being.
|
| There are human superpowers, like increasing or decreasing
| your core temperature, consciously resisting infections,
| deliberately triggering the placebo effect, feats of memory,
| endurance, or cognition. Science is making inroads to the
| mechanics of many of these feats.
|
| Asceticism seems like a clear cut system for improving
| cognition by letting the baselines of dopaminergic activity
| settle down. I can see the potential for negative effects of
| overstimulation, but where there's atrope, there's usually a
| kernel of truth to be found. Intellectuals and scholars are
| known to retreat from the world to silence and study for
| extended periods. Removing external stimulation is about as
| obvious as it gets when you want to focus on something.
| However, sensory deprivation- the extreme end of the axis -
| is known to have extremely negative effects, sometimes within
| a couple days. There's clearly a minimum threshold of
| stimulation needed to retain your sanity.
|
| Running studies on cognitive performance through the use of
| deprivation tanks, silent retreats, minimal stimulation
| lifestyles, and other methodologies would be interesting. If
| a once weekly tank session provides as much benefit as daily
| silent retreats, or a month of living in isolation, or
| something like that, it would give people reasons to improve
| their well-being. My own suspicion is that infrequent tank
| use is probably as beneficial as more rigorous asceticism,
| but that's just opinion.
|
| With the doors open to psychedelics research, I'd love to see
| the comparative results from ascetic practice with and
| without psychedelics over 6 month periods.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>"I'll trust the weight of centuries of experience"
|
| Why?
|
| Shouldn't any such practice / experience be based on
| _results_ , ideally well controlled, rather than just
| something people did or do?
|
| There's any number of things people in my old neck of the
| woods did for hundreds of years that I'm very happy to have
| escaped the heck away from :-)
| pfortuny wrote:
| What is a "result" when seeking your own happiness?
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Must something be reproducible to be true?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| honestly - I don't feel sentence/question has nearly
| enough detail/context to be answerable comfortable in a
| Yes/No fashion.
|
| But my comment was not even about reproducibility, though
| that is important, but another fundamental question: What
| is the goal?
|
| Yes, many people over hundreds of years have behaved a
| certain way. But putting aside burden of
| evidence/reproducibility, whether I want to behave a
| certain way / same way, to me, hinges on a) What's my
| goal and b) Have those people obtained that goal?
|
| Random trivial examples: IF my goal is to have a happy
| family life with a partner and bunch of kids; following
| people who practiced isolation and asceticism will
| probably not satisfy that goal, no matter how many of
| them did it over however many hundreds of years. Insert
| any number of other trivial or complex goals (leading
| people, developing a rich and meaningful social life,
| sending a rocket to the moon, experiencing a lot of
| different experiences, travelling, seeing the world -
| _whatever_ ). I find the whole "lots of people did this,
| so I'll trust their experience" pretty meaningless
| without stating "what is your goal? What do you consider
| good? What do you desire?" and then "did those people
| reach that goal? And what are the aspects of their life
| that contributed to it?"
|
| (FWIW, I find that is frequently the case on internet
| forums; with my friends, explicitly or implicitly I
| understand their perspective/context/goals, so we can
| discuss politics or history or morals knowing each others
| assumptions or goals. On the internet, a LOOOOT of
| discussion is pretty circular because nobody stated their
| goals; so how can we discuss whether something is
| good/productive/leading to desired state; or bad/counter-
| productive/leading to negative state; etc. But that's a
| much broader concern than what we have here:).
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| yes, at least if you want to say in the scientific way(is
| big chunk of the method), religion and philosophy isn't
| science.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| A thing can be irreproducible and still true, in
| scientific terms. Everyone here knows how the scientific
| method works.
| judahmeek wrote:
| But you would never be able to prove it
| djenendik wrote:
| But few understand probability.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Scientifically yes. Logically no. Relativistically it
| depends.
|
| That is to say that there are meaningful answers to that
| question that go either way. Not to mention Tarski's
| undefinability theorem.
| [deleted]
| pawelmurias wrote:
| Did in result in anything of particular worth?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| religions have also practiced the punishment of homosexuals
| and atheists for thousands of years, and doctors have
| practiced bloodletting for ages. A lot of the standard stuff
| we've been doing for thousands of years turns out to be
| pretty terrible
|
| the random internet source in this case happens to be harvard
| medical laying out basic facts about how dopamine works in
| the human brain and why you can't actually 'fast' it.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Bloodletting has been shown to be effective treatment for
| some disorders (phlebotomy), even leeches are still used in
| modern times.
| wincy wrote:
| Harvard Medical also extols the virtues of a low fat diet,
| and managing your cholesterol with statins, both of which
| aren't particularly helpful at reducing your mortality.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| yes, sometimes established medicine gets things wrong.
| But we do agree that if you experience chest pain
| tomorrow you consult the harvard trained cardiologist and
| not a witch doctor, priest or traditional chinese
| medicine, correct?
|
| General point being, if you weigh "weights of centuries"
| higher than modern expertise, you would still believe
| that night air is dangerous and your four humors are out
| of balance instead of believing in germs. The chance that
| anyone who posts on HN actually treats their illnesses
| with ancient religious practice is, I'd wager, very low.
| And that tells you all there is to it.
| [deleted]
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >>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
|
| >Who are these legions of people?
|
| parents of new born twins.
| touisteur wrote:
| Oh. Those first 6 months were brutal AF indeed. Thank god for
| breastfeeding and sleep-deprivation resilience...
| novok wrote:
| > Just one of the wild, reference-free claims [1] the article
| makes. Who are these legions of people?
|
| Mental health professionals might have started encountering
| this kind of person at the end of their attempts of acting this
| way, and then started talking about it with each other. Other
| patients are probably reference the misconstrued influencer
| articles about "dopamine fasting" in therapy sessions. They
| can't really tell you real numbers because it would break
| mental health privacy laws. Hell they might of wrote this
| mostly to show patients as a reference material.
|
| Also the article doesn't make any assertions about the amount
| of people doing it (your "legions"), just that some people are.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| A phrase that I heard once has stuck with me:
|
| "Metacognition is the key to self-mastery. The limbic system is
| how those who perceive themselves to be our betters attempt to
| gain control over us."
|
| With this in mind, I agree fully with your statement on the
| backlash.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > 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.
|
| It's not legions of people, but "dopamine fasting" was
| (briefly) popular in certain social media and tech circles.
|
| It started out as a "put down your phone and go outside" kind
| of trend with a pseudoscientific tie-in to dopamine (or at
| least the popular misconceptions about dopamine). Aside from
| egregiously abusing neuroscience terms, it was actually a
| decent idea to encourage people to take a break from the easy
| rewards like social media, video games, and TV. Probably feels
| like a revelation to people who were chronically online and
| forgot that there was an alternative way to live.
|
| But then it spiraled into a fad where social media
| personalities tried to one-up each other or rush to add their
| own pseudoscientific twists in an attempt to have something new
| and unique to share. And it evolved into this silly idea that
| you shouldn't do _anything_ enjoyable during your off time, or
| even that you had to specifically become uncomfortable or
| miserable.
|
| Outside of those circles, everyone else is just rolling their
| eyes. But get caught in one of these bubbles and you'll hear a
| lot of one-upmanship about dopamine fasting and humble brags
| about _not_ doing certain things.
|
| At least until it becomes uncool again, at which point everyone
| will pretend it never happened.
|
| This article probably sounds like nonsense if you haven't been
| in one of these circles, but it's actually a great resource to
| give to someone before they go down the "dopamine fasting"
| rabbit hole. Debunk early and save them the trouble.
|
| Moderation is good. Putting down your phone and going outside
| is good. Having self-discipline is good. But turning it into a
| status-signaling social media game and applying a
| pseudoscientific name is a good way to completely miss the
| point. Just go outside and enjoy yourself.
| throwaway2331 wrote:
| I remember first seeing it a long time ago on a 4chan
| thread.[0]
|
| For what it's worth, it's been pretty useful for treating
| maladaptive ADHD habits/hyperfocusing on the wrong things. It
| has been pretty useful for tweaking my habits, and making me
| aware that I'm able to actually change them (rather than fall
| into learned helplessness).
|
| I think most people forget that you have to break a fast, at
| the end of it. Hopefully this time slowly easing into a new,
| healthier diet regimen.
|
| [0]https://test.desu-
| usergeneratedcontent.xyz/fit/image/1519/35...
| emodendroket wrote:
| I 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.
| akeck wrote:
| Not 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.
| emodendroket wrote:
| The author appears to be a doctor whose primary area of
| interest is addiction, including behavioral addiction:
| https://www.health.harvard.edu/author/peter-grinspoon-md
| mattkrause wrote:
| A doctor _at Mass General_ , which is one of Harvard's
| teaching hospitals. He's also an instructor at Harvard Med,
| so his claim to a Harvard affiliation seems about as solid
| as can be.
| HuShifang wrote:
| And, as an aside, brother to the planetary scientist
| David Grinspoon.[0]
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Grinspoon
|
| EDIT: Peter has his own Wikipedia page too:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Grinspoon
| simple10 wrote:
| Has 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...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU
| didibus wrote:
| Maybe 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?
| ravenstine wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I believe you are correct.
|
| A much better term for this practice is "hedonic fast".
| Zababa wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| No, "water fast" is wrong, so your application of a wrong
| word association should not further corrupt other correctly
| worded descriptions.
| Zababa wrote:
| How is "water fast" wrong?
| calebm wrote:
| > It just seems like for anything I find to be helpful there's
| some academic article discrediting it.
|
| I've noticed the same thing.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The general idea is real: Abstaining from an activity for a
| while can make it more enjoyable.
|
| But the "dopamine fasting" trend has evolved into a weird
| extremist version of this where people try to avoid
| _everything_ that might be enjoyable for a while.
|
| The catch, of course, is that you don't have to avoid
| _everything_ enjoyable to rekindle that feeling of enjoyment
| for returning to _specific_ things.
|
| These people would be far happier if they simply used their
| downtime to go exercise, or go for a walk, or socialize, or
| volunteer, or call up old friends. You don't have to be
| miserable to restore the enjoyment of something. Just do
| _something else_ for a while instead of being chronically
| online all day every day.
| campbel wrote:
| Ironically, extreme anti-dopamine fasting could be releasing
| dopamine if you feel that you are succeeding at it.
| Zababa wrote:
| I don't know much about how the brain works, but I know that I
| appreaciate more the chocolate in a vanilla ice cream with
| small bits of chocolate than in a chocolate ice cream. I know
| that I appreciate water more after not drinking it for some
| time and being thirsty. I appreciate more my parents since I
| moved out and see them not every day but around once a week. On
| the other hand, after having spent too much time playing a game
| (ever over a period of years), I start to not feel any pleasure
| when playing it.
|
| Given all of that, the ideas behind dopamine fasting make sense
| to me. I won't claim that it does for everyone of course, but
| if someone tells me that it doesn't make sense because this or
| that in the brain, I would tell them that it doesn't match my
| experience of other things. Maybe dopamine shouldn't be in the
| name, maybe it shouldn't call fasting, but I feel like the
| article is attacking the content and not just the name.
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