By: Elizabeth Tang Grade 6
On a hot summer afternoon, you walk down the street eating your favorite ice cream. As you take a big bite of your favorite chocolate ice cream, a wave of cool, sugary delight sweeps through you. Does it sound good? This is because dopamine creates happiness in your brain.
What is dopamine? Dopamine is a kind of hormone that is released when you trigger a reward in your body, such as eating or social contact. Your body repeats profitable activities to create dopamine.
Dopamine is a very important hormone. It motivates you to study and exercise hard to get fulfillment. That is why success brings happiness. Dopamine is also responsible for adjusting feelings. This is not just about allowing people to seek positive actions; it also helps us to reduce pressure and cut down the risk of depression. Dopamine can even have a big influence on our bodies.
Without dopamine, our cognition would be lost. Our motor skills would be deficient. The disappearance of dopamine means the complete collapse of the reward mechanism; we would lose the desire to work. But the most dangerous thing is that we cannot regulate our emotions without the help of dopamine. In due course, we will be controlled by extreme feelings and become unconcerned about others’ feelings. We might even get very dangerous illnesses like schizophrenia. Dopamine is a very important hormone; we cannot live without it.
But too much dopamine can cause big problems, too—nothing should be done in excess. As I said, eating and playing can bring us dopamine. If too much dopamine is released, it can become an addiction. We will forget about working.
We should always remember: recreation is not a permanent channel for getting happiness. Only self-improvement can give us a better life, using dopamine to feel the world. The most rewarding dopamine is the kind we earn through self— improvement and learning.
