Is dopamine fasting a wellness trend actually worth trying?

Feeling nothing for a day in order to feel more later on is the new wellness trend that everyone’s trying, but does it actually work?

Over the last decade, ‘wellness’ has become such a ubiquitous part of mainstream culture that now, it’s pretty hard to imagine life without it. A term coined in the 50s when people started realising that there’s more to health than simply treating illnesses reactively, it’s all about making those conscious choices that’ll supposedly lead to a more fulfilling life.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that some of the trends are actually rather worthwhile – such as mindfulness and meditation – many of them are often just fads with no real proof that they’ll make any difference to our overall wellbeing.

What about that time that Gwyneth Paltrow got sued for selling expensive crystal eggs because she claimed that shoving them up your hoo-ha had the ‘power to cleanse and clear’? Or when juicing had an absolute moment in 2018 for allegedly boosting your immune system when there’s no scientific evidence whatsoever that it’s any healthier than just eating fresh produce whole?

And does anyone remember the explosion of ‘teatoxes’ which promised to help us lose weight and feel less bloated, but in reality did nothing other than force us to rush to the toilet 100 times a day? Thank goodness Instagram rolled out new policies restricting celebs from posting about it is all I can say.

While I understand the importance of feeling good as much as the next person, I do think there needs to be more clarity regarding what works and what doesn’t – particularly from brands and influencers promoting products to susceptible audiences on social media.

It’s for this reason that I’m a bit sceptical about the latest in wellness: dopamine fasting. The happiness hack isn’t a new eating plan, nor is it quite as whack as microdosing LSD to improve productivity, but essentially involves being as miserable as possible for an extended period of time. That’s right, professionals and even some neuroscientists are getting behind a technique which suggests you deprive yourself of all joy so you can reboot your brain and appreciate everyday pleasures more later on.

Tech-entrepreneur and founder of Silicon Valley Wellness Centre James Sinka is a frequent ‘faster’ who supports the trend. ‘We’re addicted to dopamine,’ he told the New York Times. ‘And because we’re getting so much of it all the time, we just end up wanting more and more, so activities that used to be enjoyable now aren’t.’

Sinka also explains that frequent stimulation increases the brain’s baseline until we eventually adapt to extremely high levels of dopamine. ‘This project is meant to reset those receptors, so you’re satiated again,’ he says.

With this in mind, I kinda see where he’s coming from. Dopamine is relatively similar to alcohol really, in the sense that one beer when you first start drinking will get you buzzed but it might take considerably more to feel anything once you’ve developed a tolerance. Apparently, the same reaction takes place with those feel-good neurotransmitters we have in our brains. So, to ‘reset’ them as Sinka puts it, we need to deliberately cut out any activities that can cause a surge in our levels of dopamine.