The Science of Spring Fever

Which leaves us to the most fascinating lesson of them all…

LESSON #6:

All of this light, warmth, energy, frantic teenage-esque hormones, newly awakened senses and sudden overdose of stimulants triggers my favorite hormone of them all – dopamine. This ‘love it or hate it’ is a chemical messenger involved in motivation, pleasure, movement and learning, which is all great stuff but boy can it cause some mayhem.

During the early warm spring days when you’re bombarded by pleasant, exciting, novel stimuli (sunlight! shorts! blue skies! barbeques!) dopamine’s role is to help you sort through all this stuff and help you pay attention to what is critical to survival (food, sex, shelter etc), all the while keeping you motivated to learn and move through the world. As dopamine is an integral part of our brain’s reward system it is meant to give you a high-five and reinforce all those things that feel good and help you survive (unfortunately this life-enhancing mechanism of dopamine can also backfire on us, as it plays an important role in the neurochemistry of addiction). So when you have this good stuff flowing in your system you feel motivated, optimistic, energized and euphoric.

But, and this is a big juicy but, dopamine is responsible for us ‘wanting’ pleasure (i.e. the motivation to seek out, go after and desire a reward), while the actual experience of ‘liking’ pleasure involves a whole other set of hormones. This is a very subtle, but ultimately very significant difference. That feeling when you’re dreaming about your upcoming vacation? Dopamine. Thoughts of winning the lottery? Dopamine. Reaching out for a so-bad-yet-so-good slice of gooey chocolate cake? Yup, dopamine. Actually eating the chocolate cake?

Think of it this way, your ability to want something, or one, is almost endless. But your ability to like something, or one, has its limits. Ever witnessed a child get sick from eating too much chocolate? I rest my case.