Illustration: Matija Medved

Optimize Me

Everyone is Wrong About Dopamine Fasting

Avoiding pleasurable activities to reset the brain’s ‘reward chemical’ sounds great. Too bad that’s not how dopamine works.

Elemental
Published in
4 min readDec 3, 2019

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Welcome to Optimize Me, a new Elemental column exploring (and fact-checking) the weirdest self-improvement trends.

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Dana G Smith
Elemental

Health and science writer • PhD in 🧠 • Words in Scientific American, STAT, The Atlantic, The Guardian • Award-winning Covid-19 coverage for Elemental