How to Increase Dopamine Breakdown
Dopamine is produced by your body to transmit signals between your nerve cells in your brain and helps to control the movements of your body. If your body doesn't get the dopamine it needs, this can lead to Parkinson's disease, where you cannot perform controlled movements.
Dopamine is central to your reward system. It is associated with the pleasure system of your brain, and provides feelings of enjoyment and reinforcement to motivate you to perform certain activities. There are medications that increase the dopamine breakdown and availability in your body.
Instructions
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Increase Dopamine Breakdown in Your Body
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Ask your doctor if you need to take medication to increase the amount of dopamine in your system. This could be the case if you have Parkinson's disease. A drug called L-DOPA (levodopa) can be given to supplement low dopamine levels in the brain of Parkinson's patients. Parkinson's disease causes people to lose neurons that contain dopamine; and as a result their body produces more dopamine receptors on other neurons. L-DOPA stimulates dopamine receptors and breakdown even when the dopamine neurons are lacking.
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Ask your doctor if you should take prescription amphetamines. They increase the concentration of dopamine and breakdown of dopamine in your system. Amphetamines are similar in structure to dopamine.
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Drink caffeine; it stimulates the production of dopamine in your body. Caffeine increases the production of dopamine in the brain's pleasure circuits.
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Ask your doctor if you can have a glass of wine every evening. Alcohol also helps to increase the breakdown of dopamine, by a process that involves curtailing the activity of the enzyme that breaks dopamine down.
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Don't start smoking if you are a non-smoker. But if you quit, you will reduce the effect of dopamine in your system. A substance in tobacco smoke, not yet clearly identified, inhibits monoamine oxydase B (MAO B), an enzyme that breaks down dopamine. The result is a higher concentration of dopamine in pleasure center of your body. This contributes to a smoker's dependency.
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