by Bridget Webber

Created on: August 19, 2011   Last Updated: October 27, 2011

You may not be aware of the extent brain chemicals affect your happiness and well-being. Your emotions aren’t simply dependant on your experiences and lot in life; they are closely bound up with the messages and signals travelling in your brain. Receptors in your brain connect, or fail to connect. When they connect successfully brain chemicals can get from one place to another and do their job, although the extent they can do this is also dependent on whether you have enough in the first place, as your body has to manufacture them, or retrieve them via food you consume. To put it more simply, your brain is the most complex machine on Earth, and runs largely on chemicals which affect what you feel, and so how you react.

There are specific brain chemicals which are responsible for how happy or sad you feel. The hormone serotonin is best known as a happy brain chemical as it helps people to feel good and is responsible for nerve impulse transmission. The body manufactures serotonin using tryptophan, which is an amino acid.

Tryptophan is essential for the production of serotonin and melatonin. Melatonin helps lessen feelings of the blues, and so also can have a lot to do with feelings of happiness. If your happiness levels dip and you feel sad during the winter when light levels are low a lack of melatonin may be the cause.

As your body can’t produce tryptophan it has to obtain it via food you eat. Turkey, nuts, and bananas are known to contain tryptophan and consuming them or other foods with tryptophan in can help your body manufacture serotonin.

Like serotonin, dopamine is also a neurotransmitter and helps regulate your moods. Dopamine is linked with your brains pleasure center regarding reward and behavior, and pushes you towards taking actions which result in a positive outcome. If you have low dopamine levels you could be prone to cravings, addiction, and have a low sex drive and difficulty focusing.

Your dopamine levels are affected by your lifestyle and what you eat and drink. For example, drugs, caffeine, sugar and a lack of sleep can negatively alter dopamine levels, leaving them low. It’s possible to take pills to address the balance, but changing your lifestyle and diet may be the answer if you aren’t too adversely affected.

Dopamine is manufactured via an amino acid just like serotonin, only this time the acid is called tyrosine. It’s thought that when under extreme stress your body may not be able to make enough of this amino acid and supplements may be required.

All the information regarding brain chemicals point towards the fact that what you consume and how you conduct your life has a bearing on how happy you are. You can’t entirely control chemical production in your brain in these ways, as sometimes heredity or other factors come into play. However, you can choose to take responsibility for making sure that you give your brain a chance to manufacture the right brain chemicals you need in-order to be happy.

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