# Dopamine

Category: Hormones

Dopamine is not a simple stimulant but is integrated with inhibiting systems, acting as an activator that feeds back into neural inhibition, and its function is best understood through its antagonistic relationship with serotonin. Peat argued that the entire mechanistic theory…

10 passages · 3 authors · 2017–2023 · Most-cited: [Ray Peat](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/voices/ray-peat/index.md)

Canonical page: https://bioenergeticoracle.com/concepts/dopamine

## Synthesis

**Dopamine** is not a simple stimulant but is integrated with inhibiting systems, acting as an activator that feeds back into neural inhibition, and its function is best understood through its antagonistic relationship with **serotonin**. [Source 1, 3] Peat argued that the entire mechanistic theory of what L-dopa and dopamine are doing in conditions like Parkinson's disease is mistaken, noting that the balance between serotonin and dopamine is central to the pathology. [Source 1, 3, 4] Serotonin increases *CRH* and **prolactin**, while dopamine tends to inhibit them, and factors like nitric oxide, endotoxin, and serotonin all shift the body toward stress. [Source 1, 4, 5] Progesterone and its brain derivatives like **allopregnanolone** are important for keeping this balance directed toward dopamine, while estrogen increases serotonin. [Source 1, 5]

The dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia, which claims the condition is caused by excessive dopamine, has been described by Georgi Dinkov as a fraudulent foundation of psychiatry. [Source 8] He points to evidence that carcinoid tumors producing large amounts of serotonin cause psychotic symptoms identical to schizophrenia, and that effective antipsychotic drugs like haloperidol are actually potent *serotonin antagonists*. [Source 8] A newer drug, brilaroxazine, which is a **dopamine agonist** and serotonin antagonist, has shown effectiveness in Phase III trials, further undermining the dopamine excess theory. [Source 8] Dinkov has also written that dopamine is crucial for good vision, and that insufficient bright light exposure on the retina leads to inadequate dopamine production, driving the modern myopia epidemic. [Source 10]

Rather than being a primary driver, dopamine is more accurately a sign of things going well metabolically. [Source 9] Dinkov notes that the enzymes tryptophan hydroxylase and **tyrosine hydroxylase** compete for vitamin B6, and that iron overload inhibits tyrosine hydroxylase while enabling tryptophan hydroxylase, making sufficient dopamine a symptom of proper energy balance. [Source 9] Peat cautioned against trying to directly push the dopamine system, as this tends to increase oxidative damage; instead, he recommended correcting the underlying stress state safely with **pregnenolone**, progesterone, or testosterone, while keeping toxic fats down and blood sugar stable. [Source 5] The euphoria of a high metabolic rate, characterized by adequate carbon dioxide and glucose oxidation, is described as a 24-hour background feeling that life feels good, an experience Peat likened to the feeling that "thyroid is love." [Source 2]

Behaviorally, dopamine enables a person not only to see rewards but to take action to move toward them, and its lack is implicated in addiction and learned helplessness. [Source 1, 4, 6] Peat suggested that overcoming learned helplessness involves behavioral novelty—going to new places, meeting new people, and doing things you have never done before—while simultaneously working to correct suppressed energy processes and ensure good thyroid function. [Source 3] Dinkov has extended this to sexual function, explaining that dopamine rises when metabolism works well and sexual contact is perceived as a pleasant challenge rather than a burden, a state maintained into extreme old age in populations with unsuppressed hormonal balance. [Source 7] The *serotonin to dopamine ratio* in specific brain areas is considered critical, and androgens like dihydrotestosterone are known to suppress serotonin synthesis directly by inhibiting tryptophan hydroxylase. [Source 9]

## People also ask

### How does dopamine relate to serotonin in the body?

Peat argued that dopamine and serotonin have an antagonistic relationship, where serotonin increases stress-related factors like CRH and prolactin while dopamine tends to inhibit them, making their balance central to conditions like Parkinson's disease.

### Why is the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia considered flawed?

The corpus describes evidence that serotonin-producing tumors cause schizophrenia-like psychosis and that effective antipsychotics are actually serotonin antagonists, while a dopamine agonist drug has shown effectiveness in trials, undermining the excess dopamine theory.

### What did Peat recommend instead of directly boosting dopamine?

Peat cautioned against directly pushing the dopamine system due to oxidative damage risks and instead recommended correcting the underlying stress state with pregnenolone, progesterone, or testosterone while keeping toxic fats down and blood sugar stable.

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## Cited passages

Passage numbers match the `[Source N]` markers in the synthesis above.

### Source 1 — Endocrinology Part 3 — KMUD, 2017

Ray Peat · Interview · 2017

> **Andrew Murray:** Ok, so stocking your liver with plenty of sugar, not being aerobic about your approach to exercise, and ideally a physical type of work if you are possibly able to. So moving onto to dopamine, I wanted to ask you a little bit - I know we have mentioned the discussion related to Parkinson’s and Parkinsonism’s; and we’ve said that this dopamine in itself inhibits prolactin release and helps regulate emotional responses. And the reward and pleasure response is something I wanted to ask you about. This enables a person not only to see the rewards but to take action to move towards them. And lack of dopamine’s been cited and implicated in the propensity to addiction. If you want to feel better, then mood enhancing drugs are a route to this. Does this imply that many addicts have naturally low levels of dopamine, and may develop Parkinson’s type symptoms in future? And would dopamine supplementation be useful to wean addicts, or prevent addictive behaviours from developing?
>
> **Ray Peat:** I think that even in Parkinson’s disease, I think the studies are moving towards thinking of a balance between serotonin and dopamine and the other symptoms.

### Source 2 — #47: The Power Elite  |  Vaccines  |  Hair Loss  |  UFOs  |  Surviving The Great Reset with Ray Peat, PhD

Ray Peat · Interview · Jan 23, 2021

> ## The Euphoria of Metabolism
>
> **Danny Roddy:** Tim asks about a comment you made previously: "If you're not in the euphoric state, then there's something wrong with you." Can you expand on that?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Things like carbon dioxide and adequate oxidation of glucose should give you a 24-hour-a-day euphoria. Anything that interferes with this highly efficient energy production is amplifying damage.
>
> **Danny Roddy:** How do you define euphoria?
>
> **Ray Peat:** That life feels good. Feeling your breathing, feeling your heartbeat, and feeling the blood circulate through your tissues—all of that is background. All of it feels good. It gives a general tone to everything you're thinking and doing. Doctors have been thinking of euphoria as something dangerous. If thyroid leads to euphoria, they'll tell you to stop taking it because they think of those good feelings as not quite compatible with life. If you ask a person to pay attention to their heart beating, they often get nervous. But a typical response to the exactly right dose of thyroid is, "Thyroid is love." A feeling that radiates out of the chest. If you're low in thyroid, those same areas of your body report anxiety. The experience of love is probably the best description of what the euphoria of metabolism is doing.

### Source 3 — So I just did this, would appreciate it someone would check, I couldn't identify one or two words.

Ray Peat · Interview · Mar 17, 2017 · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJHU730SYHg

> **Andrew Murray:** [talks about dopamine and says it’s not a stimulant.]
>
> **Ray Peat:** It’s integrated with the inhibiting systems, so –
>
> **Sarah Murray:** More of a relaxant.
>
> **Ray Peat:** Yeah. In itself it is an activator, but it runs into nerves that feed back with an inhibition.
>
> **Andrew Murray:** [talks about long term effects of l-dopa being bradykinesia, involuntary movements, like in a fine resting tremor, leaving patients worse off.]
>
> **Ray Peat:** I think the problem is that the whole theory of what l-dopa and dopamine are doing is mechanistic and mistaken.
>
> **Sarah Murray:** [talks about patchy approach to treatment.]
>
> **Ray Peat:** The other drug that is approved for use in Parkinson’s is amantadine or memantine more recently. And in the 19th Century they were already using belladonna and hyoscyamine anti-cholinergics to treat the tremors and they were pretty effective and didn’t have the bad side effects of increasing rigidity and so on that l-dopa does. And it turns out that these – amantadine and memantine – have the anti-cholinergic anti-excitatory effects but they are also anti-excitatory in the glutamate-ergic system. The glutamate and cholinergic systems are both very powerful excitatory and the glutamate system ends up producing nitric oxide and the amantadine and anti-cholinergics, memantine, are not only stopping the excitation that is part of the tremor, but they end up lowering the exposure to nitric oxide, and nitric oxide is a chronic stress induced factor in suppressing mitochondrial respiration and energy production and accelerating aging of the brain. So using these approved drugs, it actually is giving insight into what’s going on, into a much more global organismic process rather than just restoring lost so called dopamine regulatory system. It’s restoring energy processes, reducing the effects of stress in the system in a big way.

### Source 4 — Herb Doctors - Endocrincology Part 3

Ray Peat · Interview · May 19, 2017 · http://www.l-i-g-h-t.com/files/herb-doctor-endocrinology-part-3.mp4

> **Ray Peat:** Yeah, muscles' contraction activates the synthesis locally in the muscle of testosterone and decreases the cortisol activity. So, good physical work is probably the central thing to keeping your testosterone up. It shouldn't be episodic, intense, stressful work. That is known to lower your testosterone and increase cortisol. And at the same time, keeping your metabolic rate up so that you can do more intense activity without it being stressful. Having your liver very healthy is essential for keeping your testosterone up, because otherwise the episodes of falling blood sugar activate cortisol, estrogen, all of the other stress hormones.
>
> **Andrew Murray:** Okay, so stocking your liver with plenty of sugar, not being aerobic about your approach to exercise, and ideally having more of a kind of work approach that is a physical type of work, if you're possibly able, okay. So, (clears throat) excuse me, moving on to dopamine. I wanted to ask you a little bit. I know we've mentioned the discussion related to Parkinson's and Parkinsonisms. We said that this dopamine itself inhibits prolactin release and helps regulate emotional responses, and the reward and pleasure response is something I wanted to ask you about. This enables a person not only to see the rewards but to take action to move towards them, and lack of dopamine has been cited and implicated in the propensity to addiction. If you want to feel better, and mood enhancing drugs are a route to this, does this imply that many addicts have naturally low levels of dopamine and may develop Parkinson's type symptoms in future? And, would dopamine supplementation be useful to ween addicts, or prevent addictive behaviors from developing?

### Source 5 — Herb Doctors - Endocrincology Part 3

Ray Peat · Interview · May 19, 2017 · http://www.l-i-g-h-t.com/files/herb-doctor-endocrinology-part-3.mp4

> **Ray Peat:** I think that, even in Parkinson's disease, I think the studies are moving towards thinking of a balance between serotonin and dopamine and the other symptoms--
>
> **Andrew Murray:** So, you're thinking that serotonin excess might exacerbate--
>
> **Ray Peat:** Yeah.
>
> **Andrew Murray:** Yeah.
>
> **Ray Peat:** They are somewhat antagonistic. For example, serotonin increases as the CRH, and prolactin, dopamine tends to inhibit them.
>
> **Andrew Murray:** So bad bowels, or bad bowel function, or poor elimination, would certainly speed that serotonin excess up.
>
> **Ray Peat:** Yes, nitric oxide, endotoxin, and serotonin all shift your body towards distress. And progesterone and its derivatives in the brain, allopregnanolone, for example, are important for keeping the balance in the right direction. Estrogen increases serotonin, and stress progesterone tends to reverse that and increase the balance towards dopamine.
>
> **Andrew Murray:** So, do you think, though, that this would be any reason or cause for Parkinson's down the road, though, perhaps if people have addictive natures if it is at all connected with lack of dopamine?

### Source 6 — A Gentle Introduction to Dr. Ray Peat, w/@dannyroddy

Danny Roddy · Interview · Aug 25, 2022 · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEUwUP69pGc

> **Russell Walter:** what's his name that christopher walker dude who i think he does like these popular video essays which are very much inspired by ray p and he had one on serotonin and um basically what he was saying is if you look at um people on ssris right it's kind of a difficult thing to say because if you're on an ssri presumably it's because you're depressed and if you're depressed you're more likely to commit suicide but what they're saying is even among there can be depressed people who have never exhibited any suicidal tendencies and if you look at like suicide rates among people who take ssris they're really really high so um basically his claim was that like you know like the rat in water it makes people more likely to just uh yeah throw in the towel if you will um so yeah i think that's pretty interesting and another thing so we have this so cortisol and thyroid there's this seesaw relationship when one goes up the other goes down and it seems like that's the same with serotonin and dopamine so maybe you could speak a bit about uh dopamine i mean like why is it important and and why does it go up when the other goes down
>
> **Danny Roddy:** This is actually one of the areas I'm the most under-read on. Georgi Dinkov, my co-host, could probably speak about it pretty intelligently because I know how complex it is, so I don't want to goof anything up. But yeah, novelty-seeking versus contentment or low metabolism versus high metabolism, like the MO of a child is... speaking novelty whereas the mo of the adult is um just staying at home or not not doing things exciting but um yeah i couldn't speak too articulately about it

### Source 7 — Episode 15: Georgi Dinkov on Alcohol, Smoking, Sex, and Music

Georgi Dinkov · Interview · Jun 4, 2021 · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxwm6rfy3Y4

> **Georgi Dinkov:** And generally, dopamine rises, but even it is a result of metabolism working well; this thing is perceived as a pleasant challenge that leads to dopamine rising, but the whole idea is that you have the energy resources for sexual contact to be a pleasant experience and challenge for you, not the next burden that I have to endure. Which if you talk with older people and bring up the topic of sex, most of them will tell you, enough, do not talk to me about that, that is for young people. It is not for young people, it is for unsuppressed, healthy people, but age has almost no significance. It is just that things have happened that way, because of the foods we eat and the society in which we live, and the way of life we live, older people have lost that function and they think it is because of age. But if you remember the article I did for you maybe eight years ago about the Bolivian Indians in the Andes, in them, even in extremely elderly people over 90 years of age, absolutely no decline is observed in the levels of testosterone, pregnenolone, DHEA. And in one of my discussions with Ray Peat, he told me that he knows some archaeologist or anthropologist who went to study these Indians. And on the very first day some grandfathers chased her and started undressing her. And she thought this was simply some ritual. It turned out it was not a ritual at all. They walk around half naked all the time, and she realized it was not a ritual because she saw such a physiological reaction in them that cannot be mistaken. And these are people, she wrote in her memoirs that these are people whose average age there among the men who chased her was over 80 years old. Subsequently other studies came out which... she is in the 90s, this happens sometime in the 70s of the last century, but this woman is roughly the age of Ray Peat, who is 85-86 years old. But subsequently other studies came out showing that these people maintain the hormonal balance of a young man.

### Source 8 — Dopaminergic/antiserotonin drug treats schizophrenia – psychiatry is a giant FRAUD!

Georgi Dinkov · Article · Oct 31, 2023 · https://haidut.me/?p=2383

> Some people make take issue with the title and claim that it is too dramatic. In this case, at least, the title may even be an understatement in regards to evidence of just how utterly FRAUDULENT psychiatry is and has been for decades. Speaking of the latter, psychiatry has claimed for decades that psychotic diseases, and especially schizophrenia, are caused by excessive dopamine signalling/levels. As such, psychiatry has been treating patients with “antipsychotic” drugs that are potent dopamine antagonists. The drug haloperidol, is perhaps the most widely used “typical” antipsychotic for the treatment of schizophrenia, as well as most other psychotic states. It is a potent dopamine antagonist and while it does seem to alleviate psychotic symptoms, it has terrible side effects including depression, infertility, suicide, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, etc. Over the last several years, additional studies into the drug’s mechanism of action uncovered that the drug is also a potent serotonin (5-HT) antagonist, as even its Wikipedia page (above link) readily admits. Of course, those studies never saw any publicity and if you ask any psychiatrist about haloperidol, he/she will invariably still claim that the drug’s mechanism is its dopamine antagonism. Other studies (going back almost a century) with carcinoid tumors, which produce a lot of 5-HT, have demonstrated that such patients often have mental/mood symptoms identical to schizophrenia – i.e. they are highly psychotic, and the severity of their psychosis closely matches how advanced their carcinoid tumor is, which translates into how much 5-HT that tumor produces. In other words, there has been indirect evidence for decades that it is 5-HT excess, and not dopamine excess, that causes schizophrenia. Yet, psychiatry kept doubling-down on its fraudulent dopamine hypothesis. In the last decade or so, newer drugs for schizophrenia were developed and were called “atypical” antipsychotics since their mechanism of action could not be explained by dopamine antagonism. All such drugs have one thing in common – they are antagonists on one or more 5-HT receptors. However, since many of them also have partial dopamine antagonism effects as well, psychiatry still managed to cling to the dopamine hypothesis. Now, a new drug has shown effectiveness in a Phase III human trial for schizophrenia, and that drug should be the straw that breaks the camel’s back – i.e.

### Source 9 — #68: Nutrition for Thyroid Function | Serotonin and Libido | CO2 and Cancer with Georgi Dinkov

Georgi Dinkov · Interview · Sep 12, 2021 · https://open.spotify.com/episode/6y2xOeFlDqmHlNtrizsFyM

> **Danny Roddy:** I feel like this helps confirm hundreds of anecdotes about using antibiotics or ciproheptadine or bromocriptine and those all having a noticeable effect on the libido. To be honest with you, I have a mysterious place in my brain for where dopamine fits into the whole system. You had a great analogy earlier for parathyroid hormone. How do you think about dopamine and its interaction with everything?

### Source 10 — Lack of light exposure may be the main cause of the myopia boom

Georgi Dinkov · Article · Oct 10, 2019 · https://haidut.me/?p=644

> As the study says, there has been a drastic increase in myopia cases over the last century. Early research pointed at excessive indoor book reading and studying as a cause of the epidemic. Unsurprisingly, these initial claims were quickly drowned by fake research denying that such a link exists. Modern society depends for its survival on the (well-marketed) illusion that decades spent hunched over books will somehow result in a boon for the student, when in fact it mostly benefits society. As usual, the modern explanations offered for the myopia epidemic consist mostly of sentences containing the word “gene” or “genetic”. Yet, no gene can explain the rapid increase in myopia rates. The article below aptly describes the history of the research on this topic and how the pathology actually develops. It is rather simple (as usual), much to the chagrin of your doctor and his Pharma sponsors. Namely, when the retina is not exposed to sufficient amount of bright sunlight, not enough dopamine is produced, and as it turns out dopamine is crucial for good vision. Modern urban dwellers, and especially children, have changed their lifestyle from being primarily outdoor species who only go inside their dwelling at night or during bad weather, to creatures who spend most of their waking time in indoor enclosures that are not only poor in natural light but provide ample exposure to fluorescent light that is highly damaging to vision. If that wasn’t enough, most people in white collar jobs spend 8+ hours daily looking at a computer screen which emits light not much better than the fluorescent demons above. The combination of all these bizarre lifestyle changes has resulted in a situation where the majority of Western adults (and especially children) suffer from chronic dopamine deficiency, and as a result apparently one third of the entire world’s population will be myopic within a decade. You can get an idea of just how bad the situation is simply by looking at the requirements for light exposure in order to maintain good vision – i.e. the study estimates at least 3 hours of outdoor time under bright light (10,000 lux) for children (and adults). Offices and classrooms are woefully inadequate in providing that amount of exposure. Needless to say, with the exception of a few blue collar workers, not many people in the Western world (adults or children) come even close to meeting that requirement.

_Generated 2026-07-20 from the Bioenergetic Oracle corpus._