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What is dopamine?

Dopamine is a type of monoamine neurotransmitter. It’s made in your brain and acts as a chemical messenger, communicating messages between nerve cells in your brain and your brain and the rest of your body.

Dopamine also acts as a hormone. Dopamine, epinephrine and norepinephrine are the main catecholamines (a label based on having part of the same molecular structure). These hormones are made by your adrenal gland, a small hat-shaped gland located on top of each of your kidneys. Dopamine is also a neurohormone released by the hypothalamus in your brain.

What’s the role of dopamine in my body?

Dopamine plays a role in many body functions.

As a neurotransmitter, dopamine is involved in:

• Movement.
• Memory.
• Pleasurable reward and motivation.
• Behavior and cognition.
• Attention.
• Sleep and arousal.
• Mood.
• Learning.
• Lactation.

As a hormone, dopamine is released into your bloodstream. It plays a small role in the “fight-or-flight” syndrome. The fight-or-flight response refers to your body’s response to a perceived or real stressful situation, such as needing to escape danger.

Dopamine also:

• Causes blood vessels to relax (at low doses, it acts as a vasodilator) or constrict (at high doses, it acts as a vasoconstrictor).
• Increases sodium (salt) and urine removal from your body.
• Reduces insulin production in your pancreas.
• Slows gastrointestinal (GI) (gut) content movement and protects your GI lining.
• Reduces lymphocyte activity in your immune system.

How does dopamine make someone feel happy?

Dopamine is known as the “feel-good” hormone. It gives you a sense of pleasure. It also gives you the motivation to do something when you’re feeling pleasure.

Dopamine is part of your reward system. This system is designed, from an evolutionary standpoint, to reward you when you’re doing the things you need to do to survive — eat, drink, compete to survive and reproduce. As humans, our brains are hard-wired to seek out behaviors that release dopamine in our reward system. When you’re doing something pleasurable, your brain releases a large amount of dopamine. You feel good and you seek more of that feeling.

This is why junk food and sugar are so addictive. They trigger the release of a large amount of dopamine into your brain, which gives you the feeling that you’re on top of the world and you want to repeat that experience.

How might I feel if I have the right amount of dopamine?

If you have the right balance of dopamine, you feel:

• Happy.
• Motivated.
• Alert.
• Focused.

How might I feel if I have a low dopamine level?

If you have a low dopamine level, you might feel:

• Tired.
• Unmotivated.
• Unhappy.

You may also have:

• Memory loss.
• Mood swings.
• Sleep problems.
• Concentration problems.
• A low sex drive.

How might I feel if I have a high dopamine level?

If you have a high dopamine level, you might feel:

• Euphoric.
• Energized.
• A high sex drive.

The negative side of having high levels of dopamine include:

• Having trouble sleeping.
• Having poor impulse control.
• Being more aggressive.

What health conditions are associated with high or low dopamine levels?

Many diseases are associated with high or low levels of dopamine. There’s still much to be learned. For example, does a high or low level of dopamine cause disease or does disease cause a change in the dopamine level? Can the answer be both? Adding to the confusion is that the function of a single neurotransmitter like dopamine can’t be viewed in isolation of other neurotransmitters or other chemicals in your brain or body. Many interact with each other. There’s a lot going on.

All that being said, there are still diseases in which the dopamine levels are high or low.

Diseases associated with low levels of dopamine:

• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
• Parkinson’s disease.
• Restless legs syndrome.

Diseases associated with high levels of dopamine:

• Mania.
• Obesity.
• Addiction.

Diseases associated with both high and low levels of dopamine:

• Schizophrenia. Some symptoms of schizophrenia can possibly be caused by having too much dopamine in certain areas of your brain — delusions and hallucinations. Other symptoms are possibly caused by not having enough dopamine in another part of your brain — lack of motivation.

What are dopamine agonists?

Dopamine agonists are drugs that mimic the natural neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine agonists bind to and activate the dopamine receptors on nerve cells in your brain, causing nerve cells to react in the same way as they would to natural dopamine.

Dopamine agonists are used to treat Parkinson’s disease, depression, restless legs syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, low sex drive and hyperprolactinemia.

Examples of these dopamine agonist medications include:

• For Parkinson’s disease: pramipexole (Mirapex®), ropinirole (Requip®), rotigotine (Neupro®), apomorphine HCl (KYNMOBI®).
• For depression: pramipexole (Mirapex).
• For low sex drive: pramipexole (Mirapex).
• For hyperprolactininemia (excess hormone that makes breast milk): bromocriptine (Parlodel®), cabergoline (Dostinex®).