On Endorphins

Quick Facts

-Endorphins work as a “natural morphine,” relieving pain and making you feel good! Producing a healthy level of endorphins is extremely healthy and helpful for our well-being!

-Exercise, sex, dancing, laughing, meditation, and more produce a higher level of endorphins!

Intro

People love to talk about serotonin and dopamine, but endorphins and oxytocin get left behind more often than I like! Since they help us feel good (and give a variety of other benefits) I'll be shedding some light on them today!

What Are Endorphins?

Let's start with the word "endorphin" itself. It comes from putting together the words “endogenous,” meaning from within the body, and “morphine,” which is an opiate pain reliever, together! Since endorphins are the "original morphine" they attach to the opiate receptors, the same receptors that are targeted with opioid drugs. Isn't that interesting? I think it is.

This doesn't mean endorphins are bad for you, quite the contrary. Our bodies wouldn't produce them if they harmed us!

What Purpose Do They Serve?

While we don't understand endorphins as much as we want to, we know they make us feel amazing. They're a reward chemical like dopamine, and feeling a healthy amount of euphoria contributes to alleviated depression, reduced stress and anxiety, a higher level of self-esteem, reducing your weight, and helping you with pregnancy and childbirth.

If we don't have a healthy level of endorphins in our body we can expect the opposite of what I've mentioned above, and we can add impulsive behavior into the mix as well… While the role of the endorphin seems very simple, it's very important, and I recommend producing more of them if you feel down more often then you should.

How Can We Produce More Of Them?

And now for the best part!

Exercise and sex are two big producers of endorphins, I wouldn't be surprised if they're the most effective ways to produce endorphins ever!

Dancing, laughing, and getting a massage is right up there as well, if I didn't laugh as much as I did I'd be a lot less healthy than I am today!

Meditating, creating art, acupuncture, saunas, and aromatherapy do the trick as well, especially if this is what you're into! I can personally say meditation works, especially when combined with the conscious choice to produce more endorphins (repeating "I choose to produce more endorphins" over and over again).

Try eating something spicy, spicy foods can help.

And, you can volunteer. If you try this and it helps you out I recommend being with more people who are of your kind, that will most likely help as well :)

Final Thoughts

While fairly unknown and simple, I feel like endorphins play a critical role in our wellbeing, and that they're right up there with serotonin and dopamine. Perhaps they're psychologically-based like dopamine, perhaps not, but either way, producing more of them on a consistent basis is easy and healthy enough!

I've also been thinking about physical health in relation to mental health, and it seems like some of us think we're mentally unhealthy when our cure can be started at the biological level. Perhaps we're mentally and physically unhealthy, but my thought is that starting from the ground up and producing more serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins first before going to the mental side of things may be a good idea; I almost wish I did that instead of the other way around.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading! I'm glad you're here and learning along with me, I'll see you in the next article :)

Sources

This post was written with some help by:

Healthline