Chronic adversity dampens dopamine production

Interesting finding, but the headline doesn’t quite match the study. They didn’t find that chronic adversity dampens dopamine production in general, nor did they find that the stressed individuals had less dopamine than their unstressed peers per se. They only discovered that dopamine production differed between the two groups in response to a specific stressful task.<p>In other words, the chronically stressed individuals had a different response to stress, which involved less dopamine production than that of their less stressed peers. It’s not clear how much of this is actually a negative adaption, as opposed to just being a different way of responding.<p>It’s also important to consider the context provided by the researchers in the article:<p><pre><code> “This study can’t prove that chronic psychosocial stress causes mental illness or substance abuse later in life by lowering dopamine levels,” Dr Bloomfield cautions. “But we have provided a plausible mechanism for how chronic stress may increase the risk of mental illnesses by altering the brain’s dopamine system.” </code></pre> With studies like this, it’s important to avoid the knee-jerk reaction that you might need “more dopamine”. More is not always better, and we have decades of research demonstrating that dopaminergic drugs are not great antidepressants. When considering your own treatment programs, it’s important to focus on evidence-based medicine and proven, sustainable treatments and therapies.

The College Board recently added an &quot;adversity score&quot; to the SAT that &quot;will reportedly reflect students&#x27; family income, environment and educational differences&quot; and hence help level the playing field. Maybe all of that could be replaced by a measure of dopamine production. Rather than measuring external correlates of adversity it could be an objective measure of the actual internal experience.<p>I wonder how people would game that in order to increase their chances of admission.<p>The concept of intersectionality seems to be an attempt to measure chronic adversity using oppressed identities as a proxy. It could theoretically be replaced by a more direct, objective measure like this.

On the subject of dopamine, we’ve all heard new colloquialisms that speak of dopamine hits from webpages updating, notifications of likes. But has anyone done research into it? To formulate some sort of biochemical model of internet addiction?

I can attest to this. ADHD (low dopamine) caused by chronic stress. On Adderall XR 10mg to counteract it.<p>Symptoms that suck which adderall doesn’t fix is OCD (brain looping on stuff), amphetamine caused anxiety (rarely but it sucks), and depression.<p>Steam room at my gym and hard exercise helps a lot. Need 8 hours of sleep. Intermittent fasting in the AM. Caffeine is a hard dial to set right.

Prolonged stress exposure dampens response to stress?

&quot;The researchers found that other physiological responses to stress were also dampened in this group. For example, their blood pressure and cortisol levels did not increase as much as in the low-adversity group in response to stress.&quot;<p>Focusing on dopamine to try to predict negative outcomes seems weird here. Sounds like a just as viable title could be &quot;people who have been through real adversity don&#x27;t get stressed in trivial situations where someone calls them names&quot;

Farewell but I can cope in other ways like: smoking. Point invalid

&quot;Chronic adversity&quot; is how I would describe a couple of the workplaces I&#x27;ve been in

It&#x27;s always interesting when things are upvoted to the front page but no comments. It makes to you think that this kind of article is resonating with people who are fearful of commenting because the conclusions would contradict a really powerful dogma in the community.

all I am hearing about this week is dopamine. We did brain scan A on population B (kids on screens, alcoholics, schizophrenics, ADHDs, you name it) and saw their DOPAMINE WENT TO C!! It just seems quite odd that we can reduce the well-being of the human spirit to just one single neurotransmitter. This week I&#x27;m feeling like &quot;we did an fMRI &#x2F; PET scan on population X&quot; is like the new phrenology since I don&#x27;t get the impression the structure of the brain is so well understood that these scans point to some irrefutable facts about the subjects being scanned.