They are calling it a ‘dopamine fast’.
In our hyper-connected world, experts are telling us we’re becoming overstimulated. And it’s bad for our health.
As humans become increasingly subjected to endless choices, whether they be for food, romantic partners, or content, some people believe we run the risk of becoming overstimulated – which, in turn, could make it difficult to regulate emotions.
According to Dr Cameron Sepah, a psychologist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who published an article on the topic on LinkedIn, this overstimulation eventually makes us less sensitive to dopamine – a neurotransmitter in our brains that plays a role in how we feel pleasure and motivation.
“We may be getting too much of a good thing,” he explained.
Source: Independent
What are they doing to solve that problem of being overstimulated?
This video gives a pretty good — if a little cheezy — explanation of both the what and why of those who do it.
To counteract this state of being, Dr Sepah suggests dopamine fasting 2.0 – a concept that sees people limit behaviours that “trigger strong amounts of dopamine release” to allow “our brain to recover and restore itself”.
However, because excess is a theme in today’s world, people have begun implementing dopamine fasts to the extreme – by temporarily cutting themselves off from anything that may produce the chemical for up to 24 hours at a time.
For three millennial founders of a sleep analysis start-up called SleepWell, who are based in Silicon Valley, California, a dopamine fast means a fast of “everything” because they believe they’ve become “addicted” to the chemical.
…To break the addiction, the men refrain from eating, using technology, listening to music, exercising, having sex or touching another’s body for any other reason, working, making eye contact and talking.
Source: Independent
It looks like kind of a hybrid between two ordinary religious practices that Christians and Jews would know well.
Fasting and keeping the Sabbath.
Almost makes you wonder what their next ‘breakthrough’ might be, doesn’t it? And how long the rest of humanity has already known about it.
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