Dopamine Fasting: A Maladaptive Fad (2020)

119 点作者 _ttg超过 3 年前

19 条评论

Spinnaker_超过 3 年前

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: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU</a>

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ravenstine超过 3 年前

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 behaviorsGiven 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.

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quadrifoliate超过 3 年前

> 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] <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/11/13/20959424/dopamine-fasting-silicon-valley-trend-neuroscience" rel="nofollow">https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/11/13/20959424/dopam...</a>[3] <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/style/dopamine-fasting.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/style/dopamine-fasting.ht...</a>

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ziml77超过 3 年前

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.

wpietri超过 3 年前

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.

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didibus超过 3 年前

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?

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throwuxiytayq超过 3 年前

> 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.

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vjancik超过 3 年前

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.

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DerekBickerton超过 3 年前

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.

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simple10超过 3 年前

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] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/24/wilderness-solo-splendid-isolation-stopped-time-sitting-in-a-forest-24-hours" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/24/wilderness-solo...</a>[2] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU</a>

blindmute超过 3 年前

How can the author claim in the same sentence, "While dopamine does rise in response to rewards or pleasurable activities," and "it doesn’t actually decrease when you avoid overstimulating activities". So what, it just rises forever from the time we're born until death? Obviously not; something decreases it.What fad fasting doesn't take into account is that it takes many weeks, up to many months, to downregulate the dopamine receptors. Dopamine fasting one day per week or a few hours per day is literally doing nothing for your dopamine. In this regard, the author is correct. But if you actually dopamine fast for months in by avoiding highly dopaminergistic activities, your brain will really undergo meaningful changes.

im3w1l超过 3 年前

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.

selfhifive超过 3 年前

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.

falcolas超过 3 年前

Considering that insufficient dopamine is one of the main mechanisms behind ADHD - no, you do not want to literally fast from dopamine.

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sytelus超过 3 年前

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.

peter303超过 3 年前

Would this be something like going offgrid and into nature for four hour hike up to a multiweek road trip? That clears your senses.

smitty1e超过 3 年前

> Taking time out for mental rejuvenation is never a bad thing, but it’s nothing newAlso not new: marketing, and blowback against marketing.

RNCTX超过 3 年前

Seems like a roundabout way of saying "there never should have been such a thing as a computer-phone."

emerged超过 3 年前

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.

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