Endorphins - Make Yourself Smile
Sometimes even on the most beautiful, sunny days you can find yourself feeling blue. Somehow the hours seem longer, food tastes bland and your favorite song sounds like noise. “Bad days” are hard to avoid. But luckily, there is a science behind feeling sad and there are natural ways to improve your mood!
Two types of chemicals are responsible for making us feel happy:
Endorphins - Endorphins attach to special receptors in the brain and spinal cord to stop pain messages.
Serotonin - Serotonin makes you feel relaxed, less anxious and less stressed. It also reduces pain, improves your mood, calms you down and can even make you sleepy.
To naturally increase the level of endorphins and/or serotonin in your body, try any of the following tips:
Eat Chocolate: Chocolate is by far the most popular endorphin-producing food on Earth; it contains more than 300 different constituent compounds, including anandamide, a chemical that mimics marijuana’s soothing effects on the brain.
Listen to Music: By listening to the types of music we most enjoy, we can enhance endorphin production in our body.
Meditate: In addition to calming the nerves and reducing blood pressure, the regular practice of meditation helps the body produce endorphins for a feeling of well-being.
Eat Carbohydrates: Carbohydrates trigger the release of insulin into the blood stream, which then clears out all of the amino acids except for tryptophan. Tryptophan then floods the brain, where it’s converted to serotonin.
Have Sex: Endorphin production can increase 200% from the beginning to the end of sexual activity. The bonus is that men and women who have sex four to five times a week look more than 10 years younger than the average person, who has sex twice a week.
Exercise: Unlike short-intensity workouts like weightlifting or sprinting, continuous exercise like aerobics, long-distance swimming, running, cycling or skiing appears to contribute to an increased production and release of endorphins.
Eat Chilli Peppers: Chilli peppers provide a stimulating heat and “bite” that increases the body’s production of endorphins. Red peppers are generally more pungent than green ones.
Watch a Comedy: Ribald laughter triggers the release of endorphins, which not only relieves the pain of accident or illness, but can actually enhance the healing process by helping us develop greater optimism and joy.
Other: Several popular healing modalities have been found to stimulate the body’s production of pain-killing endorphins, such as acupuncture, massage, local electrical stimulation, chiropractic and hydrotherapy, alternating hot and cold showers and steam baths. – Michael