University of Minnesota - (CEMBA) UMN Executive Leadership Insights
The DOSE Effect
Book

The DOSE Effect

Optimize Your Brain and Body by Boosting Your Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphins

Tj Power
Dey Street, 2025
Buy the book

Read, Listen, or Discuss

Amazon Kindle  Discuss
  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×

Editorial Rating

7

getAbstract Rating

  • Overview
  • Concrete Examples
  • For Beginners

Recommendation

Stress, lack of sleep, and distractions disrupt the balance of neurotransmitters that regulate motivation, mood, and confidence. Neuroscientist and Neurify co-founder Tj Power explains how you can rewire these systems to work in your favor. Power breaks down the science behind dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins and offers practical strategies for strengthening and leveraging these natural health boosters. Learn how effortful activities build motivation, meaningful connections boost confidence, a healthy gut and time in nature stabilize your mood, and exercise and stretching reduce stress.

Summary

Eating sugary foods, consuming too much alcohol, and spending time on addictive online platforms create low dopamine levels.

Dopamine is a brain chemical that drives you to take on effortful tasks and rewards you when you succeed. It operates on a “pleasure-pain balance”: Effortful or uncomfortable activities, like exercising or working hard, tip the balance toward pain first, then swing back to pleasure once completed. Originally, this system made essential survival tasks rewarding. But in modern life, you can trigger dopamine instantly with things like online shopping, junk food, alcohol, or social media. These shortcuts bypass effort, tipping the balance in the opposite direction and leaving you with discomfort or low mood afterward.

Quick, effortless dopamine hits create sharp spikes, followed by crashes that sap you of motivation, like revving a car engine without ever driving it. Over time, chasing these highs narrows the range of activities that bring you pleasure, fueling addictive cycles and feelings of demotivation.

A healthy dopamine system thrives on effortful, natural activities. Building real social connections, moving your body, eating nourishing...

About the Author

Tj Power is a renowned international speaker and the lead neuroscientist and founder of DOSE Lab.

Comment on this summary