22/02/2022
The pursuit of happiness is a never-ending journey of peaks, valleys, and everything in-between. While most of our content focuses on this concept from a psychological perspective, acknowledging the neurochemistry behind our hormonal processes is central in understanding happiness and how it is achieved.
The best thing about hormones is that they are easily influenced by what we do. The key is learning about which activities boost your body’s natural “happy hormones” to integrate them more often into our daily life.
So, let’s break down the four main hormones to explain how they can contribute to our happiness and well-being:
1. Serotonin: Serotonin is most commonly known as the natural mood-stabilizing hormone, which acts to reduce depressive symptoms, regulate feelings of anxiety, and generally influences our mood and even sleep patterns (Lacasse & Leo, 2005). Maintaining normal serotonin levels will make you feel happier, calmer, and more emotionally stable.
2. Oxytocin: Oxytocin is the love hormone for a reason. Not only is oxytocin boosted by intimacy, but high levels of oxytocin can also positively influence interpersonal relationships. These relationship-enhancing effects include an increase in trust, empathy, and fidelity (Wudarczyk, 2003).
3. Dopamine: Dopamine consists of a cycle of motivation, reward, and reinforcement. It is released whenever your brain expects some reward, whether it is food, money, or anything else that you enjoy. Beyond the genuinely “good” feeling of dopamine (i.e., the excitement), it is also involved in our blood flow, stress response, and pain processing (Arnsten et al., 2015).
4. Endorphin: While research on endorphins is still ongoing, studies suggest that they play an integral role in pain management and stress relief. They can even give a brief feeling of euphoria, which definitely explains why dark chocolate has been proven to boost endorphins (Nehlig, 2013).
Now that we have looked into why these hormones should be optimized and provided several ways to boost them, we would love to hear which method you will be trying first! We know which one we will be trying 🍫
