Human Revitalizing Design

We are now at a critical time when an effective solutions are needed to prevent and control human brains from dopamine overdosing in the upcoming decades.

The Problem

Evidence has shown that, human brains constantly secrete more and more dopamine than ever, which could easily damage our dopamine receptors and could lead to chronic brain damages.

The Causes

The main cause for this is that when we can so easily access sugar, caffeine, social medias, pornography, and video games, and as human nature wants to be happy every day and ideally all the time, there is very minimal control on overdosing caffeine, sugar, and contents. Moreover, the core demands for consuming these factors could come from the growing stress and anxiety within the society.

Furthermore, as your brain senses that your fragile dopamine receptors’ damaged, a process known as downregulation occurs to protect your dopamine receptors. Dopamine receptors will then become less responsive or even totally shut down, which means you will need more and more of your addictive behavior or substance to reach a similar state, so the vicious cycle continues.

The Damages

Internet addiction (IA) is by far the purest source of dopamine that can be examined and analyzed, with the least uncontrollable variables in experiments. Current researches have concluded multiple unhealthy effects caused by dopamine overdose during IA, including

“lower gray matter density in the left anterior cingulate cortex, left posterior cingulate cortex, left insula, and left lingual gyrus.”

“atrophy in the right orbitofrontal cortex, bilateral insula, and right supplementary motor area.”

“Decreased thickness in lateral orbitofrontal cortex.”

The above biological effects could each directly lead to chronic dysfunctions and diseases including unstable emotions, society anxiety, decreasing cognitive performance, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Alzheimer’s, autism, ADHD, anxiety disorder, visual snow syndrome, aphasia, and Parkinson’s. Altogether with other factors causing dopamine overdose such as sugar consumption considered, dopamine overdose is a contemporary, complex, and critical health issue for many modern citizens.

Major Difficulties

Aside from the natural desire of pleasure, the capitalist world today seems to feed on dopamine, with consumptions driven by biological and psychological satisfaction. Businesses design these addictive behaviors for their users to stay and rely on them.

In the tech industry, grabbing and holding onto the users and making them stay in their domains are one of the primary goals of apps. For example, Facebook/Instagram came out with this Infinite Scroll UX design which the users will never reach an end while scrolling through contents.

In the food industry, the trend of smaller packages and sugar substitutes meet people’s contemporary demand which lead to more frequent consumption. Generating more dopamine was and probably still is a popular mean to maintain the loyalty of users.

Is There a Test for Dopamine OD?

Nope. So far there is no reliable, scientific way to measure dopamine overdose.

Current Non-medical Solutions

Studies prove that there are 2 effective ways to reduce the and repair the damage caused by dopamine overdose:

Dopamine fasting is the most straightforward way to solve dopamine overdose, which is also a trending but controversial method for stress/anxiety relief and mental wellness in the Silicon Valley. It is however, the most painful and the least sustainable solution. By cutting off of sources of addiction, many withdrawal symptoms will appear instantly, such as anxiety attack, insomnia, and unable to concentrate. In the long term, it is not very unrealistic to let people not use any of the social medias or not consume sugar and caffeine. So, Dr. Cameron Sepah from UCSF came up with a more reasonable guideline to dopamine fasting 2.0 which I found it quite interesting.

Dopamine receptor training is another way out. If dopamine fasting is asceticism, this training is like a physical therapy. Activities such as cold showering and hiking could boost up your maximum capacity/tolerance of your dopamine receptors.

Design for Dopamine OD

It is unquestionable that boosting dopamine level of the users is still a trending strategy in product design. But if corporations and designers were to be more foresighted and socially responsible, it is not difficult to understand that the civilization is enjoying and immersing in the contemporary contents with great costs. A systematic design solution/theory, which either reduces dopamine OD or counters the effects caused by dopamine OD without sacrificing the opportunity made by dopamine, is in urgent need. And effective solutions are yet to emerge.

Other than dopamine, endorphins also being one of the sources of “pleasure”, does not have overdosing problem. It is not an alternative way in pursuing happiness, but its nature is worth studying.