Dr Rupy: TJ, so, so good to have you here, man. I really want to dive into the dose effect and everything that you do on your social media that I'm a massive, massive fan of. But I think what would be good is to sort of introduce you to our audience and tell us a bit about how you started and how you fell into neuroscience and your journey to what you do today.
TJ Power: Amazing. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. And I would say I first got interested in the world of psychology when I was pretty young. I played high-performance golf when I was a kid from like seven till 14, and golf's a pretty stressful sport, and I came across psychology and psychologists when I was pretty young. And then I chose to study psychology at college and university. And when I was young, between the ages of 16 and 21, I had a bit of a chaotic period in my life with a lot of people passing away. And during that period of time, like lots of young people, I got pretty hooked on the world of alcohol and partying and my phone and porn and whatever it might be, anything that could kind of give me really quick periods of pleasure in my brain. And during that time, I was in this ironic period of kind of like studying how the brain worked and then also damaging my brain. And then when I first came across the world of dopamine, specifically that chemical, it just provided so many answers to the challenges I was facing in my life. So much of the mental difficulty I was experiencing of like low mood or inattentiveness or restlessness, I was like, wow, this is because of some kind of like dopamine deficiency as a result of my lifestyle. And then as soon as I found that, it's just sort of been full steam ahead since then, really studying these neurotransmitters, changing my life, my own lifestyle up, and then others as a result.
Dr Rupy: It's interesting that you make that connection, right? Because I just sort of parallel that with my experience as a medical doctor. We know the damaging effects of things like alcohol and partying. We might not be able to explain it through the perspective of the brain and dopamine, but despite that knowledge, there is a tendency for people in high-stress positions and in medicine to sort of continue with those unhealthy lifestyles, those unhealthy practices. And it's interesting that you made the decision in the knowledge of dopamine. I wonder if you could talk to us a bit about how you you actually were able to to reconcile with that.
TJ Power: Yeah, it was an interesting experience because I for a long time didn't want to acknowledge that these things were necessarily having an impact on me. Like, I loved my phone. I loved scrolling social media. I loved drinking with my friends. I liked smoking cigarettes back then. And I was like, there was a big part of me that just wanted to like leave the door shut that this could be creating some of the challenges I was facing. And because I'd been through like some grief in my life and various challenges, I attributed all the mental pain I was having to those challenges and not necessarily any kind of behavioral lifestyle habits could have been having an impact. And then I reached this point in my life where I just like getting this message, this like instinctive message that I really needed to go for long walks in the quiet without my phone. And I loved my phone. So I was like, and I also hated the quiet. And I was like, okay, I'm just going to go out there. And I started going on these long walks in nature without my phone. A lot of it was actually quite an uncomfortable experience because I had all these messages coming up. But in those quiet walks, I just got this very clear message that you've got to like let go of the booze as much as I'm drinking and change up my food and my relationship with the phone and stop watching porn at the time. I grew up as a teenager who watched loads of porn, like basically every teenager I know. And I would attribute like the big shift, not just to the knowledge of how these chemicals worked, but just spending more time one-on-one with myself in the quiet, basically.
Dr Rupy: That's amazing. So like the the intuitive side of your brain just really came out when you allowed everything else to just quieten down and that you found that in in nature and just going on long walks. So you were essentially like listening more to your body signals and that's how you came up with the answer.
TJ Power: Yeah, I would say like the more I've come to understand these chemicals, the more I really understand that they're guiding all of us. Like all of these chemicals are talking to us. They're like our friends trying to guide us towards the healthiest, most optimal life we can have as a human being. And for the hunter-gatherers, which is what we did for 99% of human history, they were guiding us to find the food, connect with our group, contribute to the group, sleep well, eat the healthy food, and so on. And for a lot of us in the modern world, we're so in the distraction of all of our work and then all of the quick dopamine that we access outside of our working moments that we never actually hear the message that these chemicals are sending us. And if they are sending us uncomfortable messages saying I'm low in dopamine, so I'm going to make you depressed, or I'm low in serotonin, so I'm going to make you anxious, we typically try and silence that noise with our phone or with food or with booze or whatever it may be. And I was on these walks and the start of the walks would always be like wrestling with random stuff that was just in my head that I was stressed about. But then I'd walk for quite a while because I could feel instinctively there was something out there in the quiet for me. I didn't know it was going to be the dose effect, but there was something out there for me. And gradually, like, I just found like I literally could hear my body and brain talking to me, saying like, shift this up, try this, shift that up. And then I started aligning to the guidance that was instinctively coming from within, and it really changed my life. And I really believe all humans have that guidance coming from within. They just need to take some time to hear it.
Dr Rupy: In it's interesting, you know, and I know in the book, you use the lens of hunter-gatherers and how we've evolved for 99% of our of our time. In terms of the the last few decades, if we look at the big shifts in our lifestyle, shelter, the food we eat, the screens that we're across, where do you think the biggest shift has occurred? What is the the sort of like the biggest one factor you think is that's having the most detrimental impact on the neurochemicals that we'll go into in a bit more detail?
TJ Power: Yeah, so the reason I believe that the hunter-gatherer lens is so significant is just these chemicals obviously didn't just appear 50 years ago and we found out what they were. They've been in us for 300,000 years, and that's homo sapiens, but then long before that, we had different versions of humans for like millions of years. And they are completely designed to help us be like motivated to hunt, to connect in a small group, to make the fire, to do the hard stuff, and so on. And when you look at our modern life, it's literally polar opposite. We've like completely flipped existence on its head. And when I think about the number one thing that's having the impact, I really do believe it's the phone. I think food and like alcohol and sedentary lifestyles, I think these are really significant factors and definitely if we can optimize them, it's like phenomenal to do. But I think if you look at mental health as a society, I think the phone coming in is the thing that's massively disrupted things. Not meaning like a Nokia phone, I don't think that was doing any damage. But you can see like even if you look at mental health in the world since COVID, COVID really changed society's relationship with a phone. Partly because we just lived at home for a long time, but TikTok was invented and then all the social media companies copied TikTok. And TikTok invented the fastest way for humans to access dopamine ever. Like you can open an app, boom, dopamine's coming in. And that concept of like novel changing videos at speed is so addictive. That's why like even when you go on YouTube now and you go there for a quick second, it's hard to even bother to pick a video. It's just like, I'll just click shorts and just be entertained. That's because dopamine is coming faster to your brain. And I do believe that addiction to the phone that we've all developed is like the number one factor to work on.
Dr Rupy: Gosh, I mean, I'm thinking about this through the lens of a parent. My kid's only 12 weeks old, so we're not going to give him a phone anytime soon. But perhaps for for people who are listening to this who have maybe not just teenagers, but you know, kids in their 20s or maybe themselves as well, they notice that they they fall into these big black holes of social media where you just can't stop doom scrolling. What are the kind of ring fences or sort of guide rails that we should be introducing now to to prevent sort of the detrimental impacts on our neurochemicals?
TJ Power: Yeah, so I would say step one is just like becoming more in tune with how the phone is actually impacting you in your day-to-day life. And what I would say is after long periods of time on your phone, just for like a minute or so, observe how you feel after. And you might notice that you feel kind of flat. Some people go in the lane of feeling kind of like flat, low mood, depressed type vibe if they're on the phone too long. And for other people, it kind of like actually heightens up their energy system and they feel kind of like anxious and stressed out after being on a phone. But I think change is only going to come if you become really in tune with the feeling it's actually creating within you. And then I've spent like five years really studying how do I break a phone addiction for myself, but then for all the people we train. And I've tried every app in the world trying to like block the apps and stuff. And what I've discovered is it's actually so much more simple than you think. It's literally just create physical separation from the device as often as you possibly can. Meaning you don't charge the phone in the bedroom, so you don't go on it as soon as you wake up. And we can go in depth on how that works. But you don't cook with it right next to you. You don't watch TV with it right next to you. You don't work with it right next to you. You don't socialize with it right next to you. And then very quickly, like that quick dopaminergic urge to pick it up begins to dissipate because it's not right there. And the phone is a different addiction to all other things like alcohol and cigarettes and stuff because you can if you're really addicted to those things, just quit them. It's hard to do, but you can quit them. Whereas the phone, obviously, we can't just quit unless you want to just like leave modern society. So you have to develop a different framework of how you're going to manage the addiction. And all the people that are coming through our training, they're just learning this idea of physical separation from the device. And the speed that the screen time drops is out of this world.
Dr Rupy: So for for yourself, how do you personally remove yourself from that? Because you're you're on social media, it's part of your job. You're out there educating people as well as doing the live events and the books and and all that kind of stuff. How do you actually do this every day? And I'm actually asking for me.
TJ Power: The social media thing is interesting because that is when you're a creator on social media, like a whole another lens of dopamine addiction of like how is your content doing and checking your DMs and seeing if you're helping people is quite like a dopamine feeling as well. And one of the things that I found really useful is like Instagram primarily for me, except this week whilst I'm with the book, I'm having to really be on it more. But primarily it's something I now only use from my computer. And I found that to be a really significant difference. The same with my email, the same with WhatsApp, I try and primarily only use it from my computer because the computer doesn't have that same like addictive feeling of it and you don't like change around apps so frequently. So if ever I'm doing DMs on Instagram or replying to comments, I'm doing all of it from a computer. I'll obviously go on via the phone when I'm posting. But that's been a really significant difference. And then for me, I've created these windows of times where I'm allowed on Instagram. So I let myself go on Instagram at 10:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. I have my girlfriend's a really keep me accountable to this idea. Sometimes of course I slip out of it, but having a framework whereby I'm not allowed to just go on it any time I want seems to be extremely beneficial.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, that's a really good point. I'm definitely going to borrow some of those techniques.
TJ Power: And it's hard to do, but if you honestly, if you just like tomorrow, just only think about tomorrow and just say to yourself, like after you've had your final check tonight, which is 8:00 p.m., you say to yourself, I'm not going on here till 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. If you had to go on because there's some kind of emergency, which there isn't, then you go on on via a computer. But if not, 10:00 a.m. tomorrow is when you have your first check. And we chatted earlier about how when you had your fast from coffee, you felt really good when you had that coffee. The great thing about this method is when you have your social media check, it's actually a really enjoyable experience because you've actually waited for it. You may have only waited like five hours, which doesn't seem like a very long fast. But five hours now is ages to not go on social media for because most of us go on it like 100 times a day without even realizing. So I would say like building like some kind of structure into your life can really help.
Dr Rupy: What do you make of those apps actually that actually block the use of your apps? Like I forget the name of it, but I was actually at an event earlier this week and someone I was with was going to show me something on Instagram and it was grayed out. I can't show you because my app is blocked until 8:00 a.m. the following day. Do those work?
TJ Power: I yeah, I think they can work. I do think they are a good concept. I think I use one called one sec and it makes like the app take 10 seconds to open. So you don't just get like the quick check thing. And it also tells you when you last opened. So then like I'll see like, oh yeah, it actually has been five hours, which is good. Um, so I think they're good and I think for a lot of us, like managing the dopamine drawer of the phone is so hard. So if you need to put some kind of parameter in place, that's amazing. But I still stand by the idea that just making sure it's not near you is a more useful process. Like even the idea of say you were going for a coffee with your wife on a Saturday, you could technically not take your phone with you, which is like a ridiculous thought now. It's like, what, not take my phone with me? And I understand if you're on your own or if like maybe you're a woman, you would be slightly more conscious about wanting your phone for safety, which is totally fair. But if you're going with someone for a coffee, you could leave them at home. And you'll be so surprised the impact that kind of decision has because you'll go for a coffee, you'll really connect because like you'll actually only talk to each other and there'll be no moments of distraction. And then you also have moments where say your partner goes to the bathroom for a second and you're in the coffee shop. In that moment, you would always open your phone. You would never just sit there. And you find yourself just sitting there and it's actually good for our brain to have these moments where it just does nothing. Like we very rarely give our brain the opportunity to just rest. And in these moments of rest, it really restores dopamine because we're not getting like overstimulated for a period of time. So I think there's just like a framework around the phone that society could create that's just like a different idea of it's okay to not always have it.
Dr Rupy: Totally, yeah. I we had um, Johan Harry on the podcast about a year and a half ago and he wrote that book Stolen Focus. And that was sort of one of the moments where I realized like, I'm really addicted to my phone. But I also started to appreciate boredom as something that we have intuitively and you know, as part of our evolution have actually learned to to live with and it's actually got some health benefits. And I know from some of your social media posts where you talk about the mundane tasks that you have to do, like I take the bins out every week and all this kind of stuff. And how that's actually good for us. So I wonder if you could unpack that a bit because the thought of going to a coffee store and just having a coffee without your laptop, without your phone might seem quite intimidating for for people, but we actually need to embrace boredom a bit more.
TJ Power: Yeah, there's there's two elements there. The boredom element is so good because it's just letting your brain rest. With what I shared earlier, it also means that some messages can come through to you if you sit in the boredom. And as much as it might be annoying to get a message saying like, oh, why are you drinking so much alcohol whilst you're sitting in the quiet in your coffee shop waiting for your partner to come back if you were getting that message. But your brain's only sending that message because it's trying to help you to feel better. And it could be a message on anything. It also might send you some really positive messages. Like I sometimes find in the boredom, I'll actually go through like some kind of like, oh, what could I think about right now that would make me feel like really grateful and happy? And then you start listing positive things out in your brain. So like the boredom is just like an opportunity to create within your mind, which is magic. With those mundane tasks, the big thing to understand is that our brain evolved to love effort. Like we had to do so much ridiculous hard stuff to survive to get to this point as a species. Like if you actually imagine just right now like walking into the forest and then trying to live there for a month with nothing but yourself, like that would be so hard to survive, to find the food, to keep warm, to build the shelter. And they'd have to survive winters and all that kind of stuff. And dopamine was this genius chemical that evolved in the brain to make us want to do the hard stuff and then to make us feel good when we did the hard stuff so we kept doing it so we survived. And when you take things around the house like having to change and wash your bedding, like the most annoying task in the world, unbuttoning it all and washing it all and drying it all, you find yourself eventually getting into your freshly washed bed and you're buzzing that you washed it. You're not like, oh, I really regret the fact I bothered to wash my bedding. And that's because the dopamine is such a clever chemical and it's rewarding you for the effortful action you put in so that you keep doing the task so that you also have a clean bed. And all the tasks around the house, emptying dishwashers, taking the bins out, it's all so good for just effortful action that builds the chemical. And it's actually changed my whole relationship with all the annoying stuff I have to do around my house. Like I hate taking the bin out and I always will let it get way too full. But I'll know when I take it out, it's like, yes, that's quite satisfying that I've done that. Now I don't have to do that for like two weeks and let it get really full again. But if you start to build a relationship with effort where it's like, this isn't just annoying that I have to do it. There's actually a benefit to my brain. It sort of changes it up for you.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, it's like reframing the story that you tell yourself through the lens of, you know, neurochemicals and actually why this is a good thing for you. And and I guess like on that subject of like daily routines and things, I thought we could frame our conversation today through the lens of a day through the dose effect, a week through the dose effect. Like for someone who is commuting or, you know, is doing the school run or is like working from home, like what does a a morning, a mid-morning, a lunch look like through the lens of the dose effect? Does that sound cool?
TJ Power: Let's do it. 100%. I think if we start with the morning, and regardless of whether you're taking your kids to school, you're going to work, or you're working from home, there would be some steps right at the start of your day that I think would be really good to consider. The first one is the hardest thing to sell, which is the idea of not going straight into the phone. And like in our data at the dose lab, we see about 70% of people go straight into the phone. And those are people that are actually coming to dose training. So that might be less for the mass. And I really relate to the idea of wanting to go on the phone. Every single morning, I wake up desperate to go on my phone. And our brain is craving dopamine when we wake up. So the hunter-gatherers, they then had this craving to go and do hard stuff, effectively. But now we have this instant access to it via the phone. But changing that relationship first thing in the morning and beating the phone addiction first thing, then begins to change your whole relationship with the phone because it's like the hardest moment when you're the most desperate for it, you manage to not do it. It activates this area of your brain called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, which is like your willpower center. And if you get yourself to not do something that you wanted to do, it gets stronger and stronger every single day and it gets easier and easier to resist. With that whole idea in mind, there's then like kind of the barriers to it, which is my phone is my alarm, which is fair, so we can go through that. And also you want your phone at nighttime to entertain you because lying in bed in silence is horrible because we're all scared of the messages our brain chemicals are sending us. With that idea, I really believe in a tablet being better in the bedroom than a phone, like an iPad of some kind. Which is like, could be seen as like, how come? And of course, if you can like be a monk and like just get in bed and like take deep breaths and go to sleep, that's 100% the best thing to do. Keep doing that if that is what you're doing. But if you're needing technology stimulation at nighttime, if you get an iPad and you, it's like an ad for an iPad. But if you have an iPad, if you were to lie in bed and watch like some Netflix or listen to this amazing podcast or listen to an audio book or watch some like longer form YouTube content, that sort of stuff is not like rapid dopamine. So it's actually going to lead to you going to sleep faster at nighttime because you're not doing this like very quick novel experience like being on the phone. Like you don't you don't interact with an iPad in the same way. In the morning, you're very unlikely to then wake up and pick up an iPad and start scrolling. That would be a very unusual thing to do. And you can use the iPad as your alarm. So you've kind of then like that beats the whole I need my phone thing. So that would be step one is waking up, not going in the phone and not having it therefore charging right by your bed because then you're just not going to be able to resist.
Dr Rupy: Some people who are like purists, let's say, would say you don't need any of that technology, you should just have an alarm clock. An analog alarm clock is even better. What what do you say to that? Do you think that's just too far a leap for certain people to to make?
TJ Power: I think that's heaven. I think that's the best thing you could do for your dose. I think if that is on the cards, then like definitely, definitely do that. I always with dose am trying to share the most realistic idea. And I don't think it's awful for you to like watch a podcast while you are chilling in bed. I don't think that's the worst thing. I think the blue light thing is interesting. I think if you have your iPad on really low brightness, I think your brain will be okay and it will be able to sleep. I think we are building some kind of tolerance to it. Many people in our research that interact with tech at nighttime on low brightness still seem to fall asleep quite quickly and sleep quite well. So I think it's okay. It's doable. Again, optimal is definitely no tech. But for the mass, moving towards the tablet on some kind of chilled podcast or Netflix content, I would say would be the best.
Dr Rupy: Okay, great. And and just as we're not to take us completely off off track, but what do you make of the blue light thing? Because there are some people who I think like Matthew Walker who who say, you know, the blue light, that's affecting your melatonin levels, that's going to keep you awake at night and it's going to at least affect the quality of your sleep. Some people are like, well, it's not so much about the blue light, it's about the quality of the content. Like if you're reading the news before you go to bed, that's probably the worst thing you can do because that's just going to conjure up a lot of negativity and again, that's going to affect your sleep quality. What what do you make of those two arguments?
TJ Power: I would say the news thing would probably be the worst thing just because the news can also get your adrenaline system going. And news is also quite addictive. It gets your dopamine because like dopamine really interconnects with novelty. For our hunter-gatherers, our former hunter-gatherers, novelty meant like, oh my god, there's some fruit in that tree and it would spike dopamine to make us move towards the tree. Like dopamine directed us or towards the deer or whatever it might be. And there's a lot of novelty in the news. And you know in COVID like how hooked we got on the news and it was because it was so novel that we got hooked. Like there were so many new things every single day. Oh my god, that's happening. Oh my god, that's happening. And we were all completely hooked on those apps. So and then you have the adrenaline component of that, so it's waking you. So I would say that would be the worst thing possible would be news at nighttime. In terms of the blue light, like I definitely think the science is very strong on that like blue light will affect your melatonin system and reduce your quality of sleep. I think if you have your brightness really, really low on the device and you've had dim lighting throughout the evening in your house, I think you are still going to be able to sleep. I think we are building some kind of tolerance to it. Many people in our research that interact with tech at nighttime on low brightness still seem to fall asleep quite quickly and sleep quite well. So I think it's okay, it's doable. Again, optimal is definitely no tech. But for the mass, moving towards the iPad on some kind of chilled podcast or Netflix content, I would say would be the best.
Dr Rupy: Okay, great. And I'm a big Brian Johnson fan. I think he gets a lot of stick, particularly from the medical community because the way he's doing research on himself is obviously not according to evidence-based medicine. It's N of one. But and this is going to sound un-PC, we kind of need freaks out there. We need N of one studies. We need people like him actually just putting the messaging out that these are things that could potentially help you. I mean, no one's going to go through his entire supplement list and try and copy it because he's very upfront with the fact that he's doing blood work that uh personalizes his choices to him. Now, do I believe everything he's doing is beneficial? Absolutely not. I think the low calorie diet he was on and the low protein diet he was on before is completely antithetical to what we know about longevity and diets and all the rest of it. But for someone who is actually being data driven and you know, experimenting on themselves, I think it's actually quite positive. So yeah, I'm glad you said that about Brian Johnson because he gets a lot of stick.
TJ Power: I think he's got a more profound idea around this don't die thing around society and AI and like how humans are approaching like building community and loving one another and not just damaging ourselves all the time. And he kind of, a lot of people say, well, you must be so unhappy because you're living such a disciplined life. Like you're not having all the luxuries of being a modern human. But he says he's happier than ever. And through the dose lens, like I appreciate the desire for all this stuff more than anyone. Like I was awful with all this stuff. But I have found that the more you pursue a really healthy lifestyle, the happier you become. And like from the brain chemistry idea, that's because the brain chemicals are going to go, oh my god, they're thriving. Reward this behavior, reward it with happiness. So when he says like, I'm feeling so good mentally as a result of the lifestyle, I think that's true. Like and you can see it in his energy. So I think it's cool.
Dr Rupy: And I think like it ties in with uh one of the points that we'll come to in your book around pursuit. Like his big pursuit is changing the way we think about aging and actually challenging this notion that we have to die, which you know, sounds completely wacky and out there. But you know, I appreciate that because you know, that's just his mission. It's kind of like Elon Mars and going to Mars and Elon Mars. You call him Elon Mars. They'll probably call him Elon Mars one day. Yeah, but I think you know, there's a big grand vision and stuff. It ties in with pursuit and
TJ Power: And one day humans might figure out how to not die and like it might take a thousand years, who knows? But it's cool to be one of the people that pushes the lever.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely. So I'm I'm derailing us. So yeah, so we're just beating phone addiction. That's the first thing that we want to do.
TJ Power: And then instead of that, so you wake up in the morning and your brain is going to go, oh my god, I need the phone because it's had it for 10 years every day. So it's going to crave it hard. And what I really guide in dose, we have these laws of each chemical. And for the dopamine law, we call it take action as soon as you wake.
Dr Rupy: Take action as soon as you wake.
TJ Power: And it basically means do something as soon as you wake up in the morning. And what I would suggest doing is waking up and just if you really struggle with snoozing as step one, I would just like sit on the side of your bed as soon as you wake up. So just like get your legs out of the bed and just like sit on the side. My girlfriend has to watch this every morning thinking, who am I going out with? But I sit there because I would just go back to sleep if I didn't take action as soon as I wake. So I sit there and then I walk to the bathroom and I immediately start brushing my teeth. And then you're building dopamine because you're doing effortful, boring, mundane stuff. After that, you might go to the bathroom. If you normally would go on your phone when you're going to the bathroom, you can have a book there. That's like my I read like one or two pages each day. So then you're building a little bit more dopamine. Then I splash cold water on my face, a bit more dopamine. And then like depending on how much time you've got, if you had time, going for a walk would be phenomenal for your brain. You'd get a variety of these chemicals going for a walk. If you don't have time, then showering and getting ready and just trying to start your day before you go into the phone is the most optimal thing you can do.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, you got this amazing quote. I don't know if it's you or something you've seen before about, uh, is it I have to see sunlight before I see social media?
TJ Power: Yeah, I like to coin that one as mine. You heard it here. It's TJ's. I did make it. Someone might have said it, but I did think of it once on a walk. Um, but yeah, I think that's such a good rule to go by. It's like the idea of like, yeah, you have to have gone outside before you can go on a phone. And I also with that social media one, I count WhatsApp and email as social media. Like I think it's all dopamine. And like email is very dopamine as well because it's almost like a slot machine of am I going to get good news or bad news based on all your working life. So there's like a slot machine type element of email, which is very dopaminergic. WhatsApp can have these components as well. So the idea would be you have to have gone outside before you see social media. And everyone in the UK thinking there's no sunlight at all. Any daylight is great for your system, your dopamine and your serotonin. The uh current winter situation we're in where it's actually dark in the morning, I would really opt for, like I'm currently waking up and it's dark, so I'm not going for a walk when I wake up. And I'll wake up and I do this meditation thing, so that kind of like prolongs a bit of time. I'll get ready, I'll have my shower. And then I'll go straight for the computer before I go to the phone. And then I'll go into the computer and I will go into like WhatsApp and email and so on, but I won't go onto the like the phone because the phone is what like really takes you into like loads of different worlds, YouTube, and you just like end up in a whole dopamine loop. Whereas like if you just head towards the computer once you've done your morning routine, that's a really cool way to start.
Dr Rupy: With your meditation routine, what does that look like? Is that a mixture of breath work? Is it guided? Is it
TJ Power: Mine's really simple. It's just 15 minutes silent meditation where I attempt to focus on my breath and don't succeed. I just sit there struggling to do it. But I know it's so beneficial for me if I sit there. And it's something I did for a number of years. During the period where I was really trying to get out of the addictive lifestyle I was in, it was actually when I started doing a mindfulness module at university and I had to sit in the quiet in that, I was like so shocked at just how loud my brain was. And uh, yeah, I find I just use like that insight timer app. I use it from the iPad so I don't have to go on the phone. There's a theme. And uh, with me with that, I just try and do it at the moment, I do it as soon as I wake up in the morning because if I don't do it straight away, it's just never happening because I don't enjoy the experience of it. It's a it's a really annoying task in my life, but I know it's worth the annoyance.
Dr Rupy: I like that. So you're doing a hard thing in the morning, which you know, hard for certain people and certainly for yourself.
TJ Power: And sometimes I'll be like, oh, I was kind of chilled in that meditation, but I would say 90% of the time, horrible.
Dr Rupy: And do you ever use any of those um, sort of light uh uh, I don't know what you call them, like a panel sort of thing.
TJ Power: Yeah, I use, so I use one of those sunrise alarm clocks. I think those are incredible. I think they really have a significant impact on your ability to wake in the morning. Waking in the pitch black is just so against our evolution. That just doesn't really make sense. If we were waking in the pitch black, we would have been in significant danger, effectively. It's quite stressful to wake to an alarm in the pitch black. And those wake you up over 30 minutes, so your like body eases into it. Like today we had to be up at like 5:00 a.m. to get to London. If I'd woken up in the pitch black at 5:00 a.m., I would have had a heart attack. So like because now I've chilled out my morning routine, that would have been a lot to manage. And uh, then I have one of those panels. It's like a vitamin D panel. And in the morning for like an hour, I leave that on and I kind of it's like facing me whilst I work and it kind of simulates the kind of light that we get from the outdoors. And they're really good in winter. I think they're a valuable idea.
Dr Rupy: Okay, great. Um, all right, so this is the morning. This is uh, it sounds like I'm getting like more of a dopamine theme over here.
TJ Power: Yeah, I would say in the morning you are wanting to charge the dopamine because dopamine is this motivational chemical that gives us the ability to do the hard stuff we don't necessarily want to do. And a lot of our day is effort and it's designed to be effort. So it's like taking your kids to school or cooking them breakfast or going to work, getting on the train, whatever it might be, you want a load of dopamine in your brain so that you do these things. And whenever you're doing something hard and you have low dopamine levels, it's absolutely horrible. That's why like if you had a big project tomorrow and one of you have like writing your book, say for example, and you had to sit down for two hours. If I told you tonight you have to drink two bottles of red wine, you know how hard it would be to write that book tomorrow morning because your dopamine would be so low. And if in the morning with some simple actions we can take, we get the dopamine system a little bit elevated, it means it's actually going to feel easier to do the effortful things.
Dr Rupy: Right, right. And you mentioned something earlier, um, which I I find fascinating around uh the ACC, so the anterior mid-cingulate cortex. And how by doing what is perceived as a hard thing repeatedly, so like pushing through the hardness, actually makes it easier.
TJ Power: Yeah, it's fascinating this because this is like an actual area of your brain. It's about this big and it can literally grow and shrink depending on your lifestyle. And when you look at studies of super agers, like centenarians that live past 100, or really high-performing athletes or business professionals, they all have enlarged ACCs. And the way in which the ACC activates is if you say yes to something you don't want to do, or no to something you do want to do. So say for example, like you wake up in the morning and you want to go on the phone, if you say no to it, your ACC activates with that moment of I'm not going to allow myself this thing. And on the other side, if you think, oh, I should go for a walk this morning because that neuroscientist said it on Rupy's show, and then you go, I can't really be bothered. But you make yourself do it. Again, it activates. So it can either be denial of something that would be like quick pleasure, or it could be making yourself do something that's challenging. And we all have met those people in life that are just like so disciplined, so good with their food and exercise and work and everything. And it almost looks easy to them. You think, how the hell are you so disciplined? The reason it's easy to them is they have said yes to the hard stuff so often that this area of their brain has become so big and so active that it's actually easy for them to say yes to doing the exercise and so on. And you will have experienced this myself. Like you're a very healthy person. I'm sure your decision around am I going to bother to cook a healthy meal is quite like an easy decision. But that's after many years of saying yes to I'm going to put effort in and I'm going to cook a healthy meal. And I've actually found that in my head, if I actually think about that, like I'm working and I'm like, oh, I really want to go on the phone. I'll actually think, oh, if I don't, I'm going to activate my ACC. And it's like a cool way to just like frame it in my mind. I think, oh, that's like one rep of my ACC getting stronger like a muscle.
Dr Rupy: I love that. So I I love this idea of reframing the hard things because you could see it in one of two ways. You can see it as like punishment. Like if you want to go to the gym or you want to do like cold water therapy in the morning, you want to jump in your ice bath or turn your shower on cold. Like that's a hard thing to do. You're punishing yourself. The other way to think about that is, no, this is actually activating my ACC. This is going to make other hard things easier because I'm enlarging literally a part of my brain.
TJ Power: Yeah, and the cold water immersion is like right the cream of the crop of this idea because it's like the last thing you want to do is go in a freezing cold ice bath. And it's so interesting when people start doing the cold water immersion thing because so quickly lots of aspects of their life start changing. They start being like, I want to be really disciplined with my exercise and food and sleep and phone and all this stuff. And it's because this area is getting really, really strong in that scenario.
Dr Rupy: Phenomenal. Yeah. Okay, so we're in flow state. Uh, it's mid-morning, lunchtime's kicking around. What what are the what are the key dose uh things that we've got around this time of day?
TJ Power: Yeah, so I would say this is where like a good period of time away from any work messages would be cool. Like I think having work messages, just like a 30-minute break or a 45-minute break or so could be really good at lunchtime. I know at lunchtime we can get like a lot of pleasure from wanting to like watch some YouTube or a podcast or something. And whilst I think it'd be great if you sat and ate your lunch in silence for sure and like looked at the wall and became a monk. That's again, number one. But I think it's okay to like consume some content if it's long form at lunchtime. But I think the best thing you could do at lunch is just like step away from any kind of communication with your colleagues for a little period of time and tell them you're having lunch if they need to know. But I think this like constant, constant communication is very overstimulating for our brain. It never lets it rest. And if you want to have a really productive afternoon, it would be so much better if you rested at lunchtime anyway. You're going to perform at a higher level if you do so. And then for me, the big thing about lunch is just trying to eat like the best meal I possibly could. And for me, I really believe in like eating single ingredient foods. I think the more you can orient towards like a really good high protein, single ingredient meal of like, it might be oats, it might be eggs, it might be Greek yogurt. It could be like a steak if I'm in a really excited mood. And uh, sometimes steak and eggs if you want to have like some kind of like power up, basically. And uh, yeah, I think for me it's just like a really clean lunch away from the notifications. If it was possible to go outside for a little bit of time, that'd be magic.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, let let's talk a bit more about what we're eating actually for for lunch and and let's say dinner later on because this is where we get into the subject matter of not only dopamine but but serotonin as well, right?
TJ Power: Yeah, so 90% of the serotonin is being manufactured in your gut. So when the nutrients from food come into your gut, it's like, okay, here we go. We can build serotonin. And it's really tricky because we obviously have so many ultra-processed foods that are in like everything we eat now. And when those come into the body, whilst they're really stimulating for dopamine, we get like quick pleasure from them. In the gut, they are not a useful thing. They're not like a useful resource for building the serotonin chemical. And when the single ingredient foods come in, it's like, yeah, look at that. We can work with that. So, yeah, I'll really think through the idea of asking myself the question, could the hunter-gatherers have found this meal? I basically will look at the plate and think, could they have come across the foods that I'm eating right now? And like, if they could, I think that's going to be quite a healthy meal. And if it doesn't look like human, if it doesn't look like we could have found that out in the jungle or the sea or something, then I try and orient away from it.
Dr Rupy: Do you do you tend to have carb sources in your diet at all?
TJ Power: Yeah, recently, about three weeks ago, I added oats back in for the first time in about a year. So I was on very much just sort of like meat, eggs, cheese, yogurt, that sort of animal-based almost type diet. Recently, I added oats back in. That's been quite cool. So I've had some carbs, but they're obviously like lower GI, so they kind of like process fairly well. But my main goal will be around the protein. I'll be thinking like mainly protein and then what else could fill me up. But that's the focus.
Dr Rupy: And what what kind of protein levels do you tend to go for for yourself? Have you found a level that works for you or
TJ Power: If I was like my fitness pal-ing it, which I'm not, I would say it's like, I used to my fitness pal and I was like 20 and wanting to be a bodybuilder, which I never failed at. And uh, I would say I'm probably eating maybe like 110 grams a day of protein, something like that, which like would be a little, I know some people say like you should have like a gram per pound you weigh. Like I think that's amazing if you're like really trying to build muscle. I would say it's quite hard to eat that much protein. I'll eat like four eggs, that sort of thing at my main breakfast meal. And then I'll have like definitely steak or chicken or fish in the evening. And in the evening, like a good amount of that steak or something like that. For some reason, I feel like I'm not allowed steak at lunchtime, so it has to be in the evening. I don't even know why that's my mentality, but ideally, I'd have steak and eggs at lunchtime.
Dr Rupy: Okay. I I I obviously I'm a big fan of healthy high protein. And I think, you know, ensuring that we're getting as a minimum 1.2, but if you're active, it should be like 1.4, 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight. And you know, if you wanted some extra gains, particularly if you are trying to bodybuild, then it's like, you know, two, 2.2 grams. Yeah, I'm probably around the 1.6 per kg. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it's, you know, it's a good sort of rule of thumb to have like 20 to 30 grams of protein at each meal because you want to distribute that protein across the 24 hours. Um, because it, you know, helps with satiation, it reduces hunger, reduces your cravings, all that kind of stuff. Um, and varying your sources of protein as well. So sometimes, you know, from plants, sometimes from lean meats, sometimes steak, sometimes eggs, like I think just variety is incredible. And I, you know, we're talking a bit about the amino acids that are, you know, every, people like to think of protein is just protein, but protein is, you know, when we consume it, we digest it, it gets broken down by various processes in our digestive system all the way from our mouths to our stomachs, to our intestines into those like building blocks of amino acids. And then they are reconfigured into things like serotonin, things like dopamine, you know, talk talk us through a little bit about like how proteins can actually help with some of those neurochemicals.
TJ Power: Yeah, so when we're eating food from like a dose point of view, you've got two amino acids that can occur. You've got tyrosine that can occur from protein, and you've got tryptophan that can occur from more like carbohydrate type sources. And it's very interesting because obviously we're low in dopamine as a society. We've almost got like low dopamine disorder, to be honest. And uh, if we can up the protein in our diet, we're definitely going to provide like a more foundational ground to build dopamine molecules from. It's not like the protein will just increase dopamine, but it just like provides resources so that when we're in flow state, there's more of a resource to build the dopamine in that moment. That would come from like your protein rich foods. And then something like sweet potato, for example, is a really good example of tryptophan, which would be a good food for serotonin production. And that's why I really try and eat like those more carbohydrate things at nighttime because serotonin is like a mood, energy, calming chemical. So I think if I'd have if I have like sweet potato in the evening, it's going to like chill my body out. It's going to build serotonin, help me move towards sleep. And then if I have like really good protein like eggs, for example, at lunchtime, it's going to be building tyrosine, which is going to help with the dopamine.
Dr Rupy: Nice. And let's say I'm at work and I'm in front of my desk the whole day. You know, I'm in my flow state, you know, I'm doing my articles, scripting, whatever it might be. Um, are there other activities that can help with the the dose chemicals? I know you've talked a bit about stretching and and how you want, you know, want to make sure that you're moving around. But what are those kind of things?
TJ Power: I'm a big believer in randomly doing press-ups. I like I have like a press-up addiction and I think it's so good for you. I think like just randomly doing press-ups is ridiculously good for you. My uh girlfriend would laugh because she has to watch this all the time. But our bodies obviously were moving all day. Like I watched this show all about the Hadza, which is this tribe in uh Central Africa. And they move on average for nine hours a day. And I was watching this hunt they were doing and this this guy who was with them had done like 32,000 steps and it was like 2:00 p.m. So like our bodies are designed for a hell of a lot of movement. Now obviously we just sit like this all day tapping away, tapping away. And I think just like randomly doing five or 10 press-ups or 20 press-ups, however many you've got in you, is like a really good way to just keep your body active. I also do the same with squats. I quite like handstands as well, so I'll do some handstands. I don't think that's a requirement for your dose. But any kind of physical hard activation is going to get your endorphin system going. And endorphins are magic. They evolved to really help us cope with physical and mental stress. And for our former hunter-gatherer selves, we weren't like stressed by like what's happening politically or how does our bank account look or all these like modern stress, what's going on with our kids, like in terms of their school or something like that. We were stressed by are we going to starve to death or be killed? Like those are the two things that were really stressing us out as a species. And the one thing that's really in common with those two scenarios is physical action. Like you'd either have to fight for your life or you'd have to try and find food, which again would require physical action. And our brain evolved in a way whereby if we were in stressful situations, our body would move and endorphins would come in and they would remove the stress from our brain so that we were more likely to survive that scenario. So when the bear was chasing you, you weren't like, oh my god, a bear. You were just like running as fast as you can to try and get away from the bear. And in our day-to-day life, obviously we're not running from bears, but we are getting stressed out a lot. And anytime you physically activate the body, so you like do some random press-ups or you stretch your body a bit, or you go for a walk, or if you can, like do some more exercise than that, then you're activating endorphins and they're taking stress from your mind. They're literally just de-stressing your brain and body, which is really useful because like I'm someone that gets pretty stressed out. Like I've got very high standards for myself. I'm like, what's this? What's that? And if I just know like physically activating my body as often as I can, it's going to help.
Dr Rupy: So any moment, I'm just trying to think about this through the perspective of someone who has a day peppered with stress, whether that is, you know, uh a gnarly email you get from work, or whether it's, you know, uh an issue that you've got with your kids' school or whatever it might be. The sort of antidote to that, or one of them is to get your body moving, whether it's randomly doing press-ups, if you can do a handstand, great, but going for a walk.
TJ Power: Definitely the handstand is not like a recommendation. That's like a fun thing.
Dr Rupy: Sure. But like, you know, moving your body in a way, that's going to suck up the the stress via
TJ Power: If you think about stress, you'll notice that when you feel stressed, you literally feel like a tightness within your body. You feel like a almost like a frustration. A lot of people find that stress is also accompanied with like almost anger. Like you almost feel like annoyed at whatever that piece of information was. And we then like whenever we were stressed, like we would physically like release it from our body by running or whatever it might be. Whereas now we just like consume the stress, swallow it, and our adrenal system just has to swallow all of that annoyance. And then we want to turn off the stress, so then we head for the quick dopamine. And then it's like, oh okay, now I'm scrolling. I don't feel stressed at all because I'm like watching random shit on Tik Tok. And it's like, but all that stress just like stayed all stagnant in our body. And if we can try and have the concept of like, I need to release this. And you see this like big time in kids. Like when kids get stressed out, they literally like physically act out. And that's because their body instinctively knows it needs to move. It needs to like, if you get really annoyed, you literally like want to punch a wall. And it's like our body accompanied that feeling with hard physical action for hundreds of thousands of years. And now it's like we're getting so much stress into our mind and then we're just like taking it in. So having the idea of like, I need to get this out of me is a really good framework. And if something really stressful happened, like going for a walk and getting outside or like it can be movement in your home. And then if you had the opportunity to do a workout, like for me, I typically will do my workouts later in the day because I know like work will be stressful. And if I can try and get rid of it in the evening and like get it out of me. Like I literally imagine it's like stuck inside of me and I need the endorphins to like come in and be like, oh, let's get rid of this. Then I think that's super powerful.
Dr Rupy: I find that myself, you know, I'm very, I'm I'm conscious not to miss anything on email. So I'll casually just flick through Gmail and then just, you know, check on work emails and stuff. And if there's something that draws my attention, I'll start doing it on my phone. And you know, just having this conversation now and after reading the book, I've realized that I I 100% need physical separation from my phone to prevent my my mind from being sucked into into that activity. And I just want to clarify because you mentioned oxytocin. A lot of people might be listening to this and be like, okay, oxytocin, I've heard about that, you know, with babies bonding to mothers and that produces oxytocin. What what is oxytocin? What where is it produced? What what's the what's that that neurochemical about?
TJ Power: Yeah, so it's produced most predominantly in the brain. They've actually found a recent study we saw came out at the end of last year, there's a little bit of oxytocin coming from the gut as well, which is cool. So there's some love in our gut, which you can feel as a human. So the science is catching up. And predominantly it does release when you're born to your mom and you get a huge surge of it. And then as you go through life, it gives you the desire to build the relationships with your siblings and then your friends at school and then eventually like romantic connection and so on. And anytime you're having a deep bonding moment with a human being, oxytocin is increasing. And obviously things like the phone are like really disrupting the capacity to experience oxytocin because you and I right now, like this will have been good for our oxytocin. We've like looked each other in the eye and we've had like a really good discussion. If we had been on the phones and stuff, the quality of the connection would have been massively disrupted. And when you look at the home and in the evening, whether it's the relationship between like partners that are together or partners and their kids or whatever it might be, there is a real lack of oxytocin in the society we're currently living in because we're living in a dopamine dominant world where the pursuit in the evening is how do I pleasure my brain to the max with the meals I'm eating and what I'm going to watch and how much phone I'm going to have and then the porn you might watch in the evening, whatever it might be. And it's so dopamine dominant. And if the evening could be considered as a little bit more of an oxytocin priority of how am I going to really connect with my wife or maybe if you live alone, you might be face-timing someone you want to chat to. It could be that you like get oxytocin yourself by these grateful thoughts or these celebration of achievements. But if you can kind of create like a more loving experience in the evening and a more dopamine working experience in the day, it's going to be much better for your brain.
Dr Rupy: I love that. Okay, so you've got nature. What are the other, what's the other dose practice for the week, do you think?
TJ Power: I would say the concept of pursuit would probably be like the final idea that we haven't really gone too deep into, which would be how clear are you on the goal that you're in the pursuit of in your life and like how much progress do you feel like you're making towards it? And there's this brilliant scientist that made one of the biggest discoveries in dopamine history called Schultz at Cambridge University. And Schultz basically discovered that dopamine is actually at its highest level, not when we attain the thing that we're chasing, but just before we attain it. It's a really interesting graph where, say for example, you were hunting for a deer, that's what the ancestors did. You'd be dopamine, dopamine, dopamine the whole pursuit. And then you would actually peak at dopamine, let's say 300 meters before the deer. And then when you get the deer, your dopamine would be back down here. So it'd be like all the way up and then it would dip a bit and you'd attain the task. And in our life, we think our happiness is when we attain all the things we're wanting, whether it's like stuff with our kids or money or homes or career success or followers or anything you want. It's like we all think our happiness is just in the moment we attain the thing. But it's clear from the science that happiness is actually right at the peak of when you're in the pursuit of the goal itself. And it makes sense from a dopamine point of view because you don't need tons of dopamine once you've got the thing. You need it to be really high when you're just about to get the thing to motivate you over the line. And that's why like in a marathon, when people run a marathon, sometimes people can be like really thriving at like 20 miles to 23, 24 miles. And then when they get really close to the end, they start to find it really hard. And it's because they've had this like acknowledgement in their brain of they are going to make it. They now know, especially on your first marathon, it's like, okay, I've got to 24 miles. I know I'm getting over the line. But for a lot of the journey, it was like, I don't even know if I'm getting to that 26 miles or whatever. So it's rising and rising and rising and then it dips just before the end and it becomes very hard to get over the line. And in your day-to-day life, I think considering how clear you are on what you're in the pursuit of is a really important practice.
Dr Rupy: There's there's a lot of um famous examples of sports people who have like attained the biggest successes possible, you know, fighters, um cyclists, and then when they achieve the championship or the gold medals, they get depressed. Yeah. Is is this what's potentially going going on?
TJ Power: 100%. Like depression is very interconnected with dopamine. And we know that because when you're in depression, it is so hard to do anything. Like to make yourself have your shower, cook your food, go to the supermarket, make your bed, it's all horrible when you have depression. And your dopamine is so low that it's very hard to make yourself do hard stuff. And that's like a clear indicator of how interconnected dopamine is with the experience of depression. But for them, their whole life, you take like a gold medalist like athlete at the Olympics, they've been on that dopamine journey. I'm going to go, I'm going to go, keep climbing, keep climbing, keep climbing. Then they've attained it and then their dopamine starts to dip. And like if they were doing their first ever Olympics and they had another one, they wouldn't get depression because it's like I'm in the pursuit of what's coming in four years time. So they could then climb it back up. But if you knew you'd attained the thing you were always seeking for, then it's going to drop hard. And you see this with musicians as well, like they reach the absolute pinnacle, the same with actors, the same with people where when people win the lottery and they suddenly get like a few million in the bank, you think happiness follows all these things, but really it doesn't. Like the opposite can actually occur. And our brain had to be so deeply hardwired to never stop chasing because we never could experience like these concepts that we're talking about now, like winning the lottery or whatever it may be when we were hunter-gatherers. And no matter how much food we managed to get, our brain was wired that it wouldn't go, okay, we've got enough. It would just keep chasing, keep chasing, keep. And if I turned up to a hunter-gatherer tribe now, like one in Africa, and I gave them all the food and resources they could ever want. I gave them all the shelter, everything they could need. In the moment, they would get dopamine. They think, oh my god, like this is amazing. If I turned up there 60 days later, they'd all have depression because they wouldn't have kept being in the pursuit of challenging hard activities that were making their dopamine build. And in our day-to-day life, like it's really easy to get into quite like aimless loops where you're kind of just like ticking along with your work, but you're not necessarily like really in the pursuit of making progress with it or with your health or with your relationships. It's like it's very easy to coast now because that's just the society we've set up. And the other massive thing that happened for me is if you're someone that leans towards all the addictive stuff, the phone, sugar, porn, alcohol, whatever it might be, I personally found that the only way I was willing to really sacrifice these things is if I was sacrificing them in order to attain something else. And like, say for example, the porn thing, like no one talks about porn. Porn is just like a secret thing that like vast majority of the world interacts with, particularly men, but women too. And when I started like really looking at the porn thing, I was like, okay, so I know I get a lot of pleasure if I watch porn. When I was a teenager, I discovered it and I was like, okay, that's entertaining to watch. Like I wanted to have sex as a teenager and this was an alternative version. But then even into my 20s, even if I had like been in a relationship, it was still something I wanted just because it provided a load of dopamine. It wasn't like some big thing I loved. It was just like, whoa, I know I get immediate dopamine from this experience. And then I started like really thinking, okay, like I need to try and come off porn. Like I really wanted to authentically share this message, so I wanted to come off these dopamine things. I didn't want to like sit here saying this is how you solve dopamine and then go back and watch some porn. And I started like really observing how is porn affecting my dopamine, meaning how is it affecting my ability to take action when I wake? Because that would be a good indicator that your dopamine is high. If you wake up and you can do hard stuff, your dopamine is healthy. And I started really observing like, if I watch porn, how do I feel when I wake and how productive is that start to my day versus how is it not? And I really began to see like a clear parallel. Like it was like more effort was needed to try and get myself going. And then the then there was like a change in my mindset around porn because my motive to come off it was that it was interfering with my capacity to get the career that I wanted to attain. So then because I had such a clear pursuit, I was willing to sacrifice that addiction. The same then began to happen with like booze for me. Like I was definitely drinking way too much booze because I just got like way too much dopamine that I wanted to consume loads of it. But then when I paired booze to how is booze impacting my ability to attain what I want, or how is the phone impacting it, then I began to make the sacrifice. But if there wasn't something to sacrifice for, I'd be like, what's the point? I'll just keep with all of it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm glad you're talking about porn and alcohol and all these things that are, you know, especially porn, which is very taboo to even talk about, even though it's watched by the vast majority of, you know, mainly men, but like you said, females as well. Um, because I don't think the connection is being made by to as to how that impacts your motivation, how that impacts your energy, the pursuit of your dreams, making achievements as much as it should be doing. It's almost something that no one really wants to talk about, even though it's obviously happening at a massive scale.
TJ Power: I think porn is like really, really underestimated. Like as a human being, sex and like reproduction and relationships is like really at the core of what you're seeking for. And I have this theory that I say to my friends, which is kind of a ridiculous theory because it's not scientific. But I believe the more virtual naked humans you see, the less real life naked humans you will see. And what I mean by that is, say you're in a relationship, if you start watching porn a lot, I think your likelihood of having a lot of sex in that relationship is going to reduce rapidly. Partly because it's going to interfere with the relationship, but also because your brain is going to be moderately satisfied for its pursuit of sex. So you're not going to bother trying to have sex because you're going to be watching it there. On the other side, if you were single, if you didn't have any access to porn, your desire to pursue going and finding a partner is going to be much higher because all humans like want to have sexual connection. And if you couldn't access like a reduced version of it with porn, then you would have more of a motive to go out and date and meet people and interconnect with them and so on. But because we have this like ability to like moderately satisfy that deep sexual urge within us, we're all like for many of us really reducing the amount of inter like sexual relationships we have with people. So I do think it's powerful for relationships. I then think it's got this huge component for your motivation, which is really underestimated. And I've had friends where I've said like, can you just try and do seven days without watching it? And I don't have a single friend that doesn't watch it. Not one. I haven't like got a single person that doesn't. And again, like I said earlier, there is no judgment for these things. Like it's really tempting to watch. Like it makes you feel good when you watch it. And it's just like what's being presented to us. We didn't all invent porn. It's just an option to uh engage with it. And the speed that your motivation changes, I think particularly as a man, where you stop watching it. And you can still interact with that behavior, you just don't do the porn at the same time. You just use your imagination and stuff like that. It's a very significant difference from a dopamine point of view.
Dr Rupy: You know, as someone who who's got a book out and you're pursuing lots of things in your career. I mean, you're so young as well. You're 20 27. 27. Yeah. How are you sort of in the awareness of that particular dopamine drop if you achieve things? How are you ensuring that a, you're getting enough from your life and everything, but you're still pursuing dreams? How are you still ensuring that you're keeping that dopamine train moving in the right direction?
TJ Power: Yeah, this is interesting because I'm really conscious. Like I think about my whole life through dose because like it just seems to be like really easy pillars for me to follow and obviously I like understand the chemicals nicely. And a week like this, I was actually saying this to my girlfriend yesterday. Like a week like this, I've got the book coming out this week and we've had some really great moments, people sharing about the book and like lots of people getting the book and the launch event. And I know that's then taking my dopamine really high. And I'm loving the experience of it, but I also know on the other side of that, there is a period where I'm going to dip. And for me, like I am vulnerable to like a slightly like depressed brain. I think people can either lean towards like an anxious brain or a depressed brain. And for me, I'll more get like depressed. I just feel like sad for no reason. And even though this week is magical, I kind of know that like potentially next week or something, I might have a period where I dip. The big thing there in the like awareness of this is that if I dip next week, I'll be worrying about something because I'll be in a dip. But if I acknowledge, oh, I'm in the dip because I went high on dopamine last week, it then takes the pain away because I'm like, oh, it's okay. I'm just like not feeling as good because I went high on dopamine last week. So that then helps. The other thing that's huge is there's this journal called Nature, which is like one of the best scientific journals. Getting a paper in there is super hard. And a paper came out two weeks ago about dopamine and serotonin. And this is like a revolutionary concept, which is the idea that they're working on an accelerator and a brake mechanism with one another. Meaning that when you're pressing the accelerator on dopamine, a brake is being pressed on serotonin, the production of it. So if you're in like your weekday and you're like chasing loads of success and hard work, or you're getting loads and loads of pleasure because you're on your phone loads, not only are you like hammering down the dopamine lane, a pause is being effectively put on serotonin. And serotonin is this beautiful chemical that like lifts our mood and calms us and just makes us feel like present and content and happy. That with that in mind, I was thinking about this through like my last break from work through Christmas and stuff like that. And I was thinking, if I really press this serotonin accelerator, a brake will also be put on dopamine. And for me as like a massive dopamine addict, that's super useful because like if I pursue tons of nature and healthy food and naps and rest and breathing and like that's all the serotonin world, all this like natural human, not doing anything for the sake of attaining something, just doing it because it feels good. Like a nap, you don't do it because you're trying to like get to a goal. It's like I just want to nap. It feels good. The same with the healthy food, the same with the walk, the same with like all these aspects, being out in sunlight, calm breathing, meditation. And now I've started like trying to frame my lifestyle as dopamine week and serotonin weekend. So it's like I'm going to be like hard at work in the week. I'm also going to want to like, for me, social media pleasure is Twitter, like X. I like find it interesting to scroll X. I've got loads of like scientists I scroll on there and I love seeing their point of view. So I'll do that like a fair bit in the week. It's like dopamine week. And then on the weekend, it's like, how can I just absolutely hammer this serotonin accelerator, pause the dopamine. And then I know that's going to help me with my like slight vulnerability to a more depressed brain.
Dr Rupy: I love that. I I love this idea of, you know, the stressed brain and what your propensity is. Is it more anxious? And actually, if you can figure out which chemical you're probably in excess of or in uh in deficit of, maybe you can sort of utilize some of the the the points in your book, some of those activities to sort of readdress the balance. Because I guess what we're trying to do is get balance across the milieu of different neurochemicals. And we're only talking about four here. There's so many others. But, you know, that that idea of balance and actually ensuring that you are as calm as as possible. Like that that's I guess the the ultimate goal, right?
TJ Power: Yeah, they're like an orchestra. They just want to be like perfectly in harmony together. And if you took a hunter-gatherer's lifestyle, they would be. Like they would be doing loads of dopamine from the hard work, but they were super connected to their group because you had to be to survive. And then the serotonin was completely taken care of because of all the sunlight, nature, sleep, healthy food. And then endorphins was physical activity. So they were just in this perfect dose bliss. And when you uh look at the Hadza, there's this guy who went there, there's a show on uh Disney Plus called Primal Survivor. And he attempts to describe depression and anxiety, inattention. And they can't even comprehend it. Like because they're not getting that message because they're not living in a way that's unnatural to their brain chemistry. And if you took these people to a lab and measured these chemicals, they would be absolutely thriving on all of them for sure. Unless they'd like just gone through grief, then they'd have an oxytocin dip, for example. But in their day-to-day life, it would be super optimized. And we're like super dopamine dominant, then like crashing the dopamine and we're low in oxytocin, low in serotonin, low in endorphins. And like our brain chemistry is off. And this is like a beautiful answer to like how am I going to get these back into symphony like an orchestra?
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I love that. Um, we're going to do a quick fire round right at the end to to sort of wrap up this conversation. I could talk to you about dose and all the other stuff for for another hour. But um, number one, do you think we should ban social media for under 16s? It's a hot topic right now.
TJ Power: Yeah, overall, like depending on how deep you want to go on that conversation, but I would say yes, if it was a yes or no answer.
Dr Rupy: Okay, fine. And what you can you can go, you can elaborate a little bit. What why I mean, we probably know why.
TJ Power: I just think it's like super hard to manage dopamine in general and social media is just like so entertaining. And I think if if if young people could be allowed WhatsApp and that is their, like I don't think Snapchat should be a thing. Like I'm on Snapchat because I'm trying to understand the kids and it's just like dopamine chaos in there with the streaks and the videos and the porn in there is huge for young people to see. And I think my number one key, my number one goal with all the teenagers we train is just get them into parks and socializing. Like just do exactly what all the teenagers did before them that weren't anxious and depressed, which is hang out in parks after school and play sport and like see each other, go to each other's houses. And I think social media is moderately satisfying their desire for social connection, so they're not bothering. And I think if you pulled the social media out, they'd want to go and see their friends.
Dr Rupy: For for parents, I I feel like they're in a bit of a rock and a hard place because it's a similar issue with ultra-processed foods, right? Because their kids love that stuff and they can't get them onto healthier food. And it's cheap. Yeah, and and it's cheap. The kids love their their phones and social media and they can't get them off. Like how do how does a parent create a healthy boundary without being, you know, authoritarian or, you know, literally taking their phones away?
TJ Power: They need an activity that's going to provide them with as much pleasure as the phone. Like it can't just be like, right, tonight, two hours off your phone, sit on the sofa and meditate because they're going to hate that. And their dopamine is going to go so low that they're going to get like angry and frustrated at that. They're going to experience like drug withdrawal, effectively. Like that's what kids have when they come off the phone. It's like like if you're an alcoholic and you come off booze, you feel horrible, or the same with caffeine withdrawal. And uh, so they need to find an activity that's going to give them the same level of like dopamine, but actually in a much healthier way. The way to find the activity is to if they'll let you scroll their social media social media feed with them, do it with them. If they want to do it on their own, they can do it on their own. But you get them to try and identify what's the most frequently occurring video in their feed. The reason that's the most frequently occurring video is because they're instinctively actually probably good at that thing and that's why they're interested in it, but they're not actually engaging with it themselves. And we ask this to kids, like kids will be like, I absolutely love cooking videos. I watch them chop it up, make it, do everything. And then you ask them if they do any cooking and they do none. And what I really believe is we're actually vicariously watching other people in their flow states on social media rather than getting our own flow state. And I had this, like I would love watching all these hiking nature videos and I was like, I literally never go hiking or go into nature. So if they identify like, what is the thing they really love? Like is it sport? Is it music? Is it cooking? Is it art? Whatever it might be. Is it comedy? And then try and get them to actually like engage with that activity more frequently. And rather than shaping the whole thing as this is to solve your phone addiction, this is just to help them find a passion that they love. And as a byproduct, their phone screen time is just going to reduce. But the kids with low screen times are the one with a hobby and a passion. And the way to identify the passion is in the social media feed.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I love that. I think that's such a good point. I've never heard it explained like that before. Um, what are your thoughts on cold therapy and sauna?
TJ Power: I think uh, yeah, those are two good ones. So I think cold therapy is absolute magic if you're in a life where you're not taking much action. Like if you're in a life where you need motivation, potentially like a depression type thing or just like low mood or unmotivated, those kind of like scales of how low that can get. I think in that world, cold water immersion is beautiful because it's going to really jack up the dopamine and it's going to get you into momentum. Literally, it feels like it's giving you momentum when you have it. I think if you're in a life where you're working very, very hard and you might be like overly stressed or easing towards burnout, I actually don't think cold therapy is the answer in that scenario because I think you'll just further over-energize the system. So I'd say great if you're not taking action. If you're someone that's absolutely smashing it and taking loads of action, that's when I'd actually orient towards the heat therapy because heat therapy is so good for the endorphins. It physically activates the body. Like you know when you're in there, it's actually hard to stay in there once you get past about 10 minutes. So I think if you're easing towards burnout, over-exertion, heat therapy is going to chill you back out. And if you're under-exerted, cold's going to warm you back in, basically.
Dr Rupy: Okay, fine. Um, and the last thing is about being data-driven about this whole thing. So, you know, I was telling you about the smart ring that I wear and you've got some tracking devices. Do you think there's a a future where we actually get to measure or have proxy measures of our dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin?
TJ Power: I hope so. I hope the dose lab is going to one day have that product. That's definitely. I've got some very like clear ideas as to how that could be possible. I don't think it's soon. I think it's at least a decade before we have a real-time measure of these chemicals. I think you're going to have to get inside the brain, so that's like a very complicated other conversation of would we ever put something in our brain? Um, you can do things like blood plasma and you can do urine and you can do saliva, but they're not real time. So they're not that useful. They're good for helping us understand the chemical as a whole, but it's not like getting HRV or like a heart rate or a sleep metric because that's like real time and you can take action upon the data. So in time, yes, I hope one day you're going to have some kind of software that says DOSE and then you'll see exactly which chemical you're low on and it'll give you the immediate action to take. I think that'll be a great concept. But I think for now, the best thing you could possibly do is get very familiar with the symptoms if you're low on the chemical. And just to remind you, like if you're low in dopamine, you're in a very inactive, can't be bothered, low mood state. So that means you just need hard things to warm you back in. The most simple one would be cleaning your home environment because it's like something that will get you going. Oxytocin would be like lonely and unconfident, not feeling lots of love in your brain and body. And that means you need connection with human beings or connection with yourself. Serotonin would be more that you're actually like kind of like anxious, you're in like a worried, overthinking type state, your brain feels really rapid, and it means you need those natural experiences. And then endorphins would be like a stressed, angry feeling and then you need physical action. And those symptoms are such a beautiful framework because then you can start thinking, okay, rather than just I feel bad, so I'm going to have some alcohol, then some chocolate, then social media, and then porn, like an evening routine like that. It's going to be like, I feel this way, so I need like something to boost my dopamine or something to connect me or lift my serotonin and so on.
Dr Rupy: Okay. Last question. Hit me. Alcohol, yes or no?
TJ Power: For me, no, but not necessarily for the whole of society. Like I really overconsumed alcohol and quite enjoyed doing it, to be honest. But then eventually, I knew that like a magical life was not the other side of me consuming lots of alcohol. And I then really reduced it and I could like force myself to like go and just have like one pint with my friends or two pints. But it would activate this dopamine within me that would really want more. But I reached a point where I could stop myself having more, but I would just sit there like talking to myself about how I'm not allowed it, basically, because I'd be like, no, you're not, you shouldn't have like if you have three pints, you're going to screw up your work tomorrow and stuff. So then I would just have this like conversation during my whole social evening with my friends of me trying to stop myself drinking too much alcohol. And that was just annoying. So for me, it was more useful just to be like, okay, I'm just not going to have alcohol. I think if you can have a glass of like red wine on a Friday night and that's chill and you're like, cool, I'm happy with my glass of red wine. That's beautiful. And I'm honestly very envious of that experience. But I think if if you have alcohol and then a voice starts in your head saying, give me more, give me more, then I think it's a good idea that a period of time away from the booze, like it could be really great for you.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. TJ, you are awesome, man. Honestly, you're so, so good. I love the book. Like I said, I got you to sign this because I'm giving gifting it to one of my best friends. Um, I love the every chapter. You can see I've peppered it with like, you know, all the stuff. And yeah, it's like been thoroughly read. But um, this I think is going to help so many people. The just a framework for thinking about why they're stressed or what they can do if they feel anxious or what they can do outside of pharmaceuticals and stuff that, you know, obviously I believe in as a as a medical professional. But there's just so many other lifestyle practices and the way you've explained it through the lens of brain chemicals is brilliant. Um, so I think it's going to be game-changing.
TJ Power: Thanks so much for having me on, man. I've absolutely loved this episode.
Dr Rupy: You've got to come back. You've got to come back.
TJ Power: Let's do it.
Dr Rupy: We're going to have loads of follow-up questions for sure.
