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Happy Hormones to you: 4 chemicals in the brain that govern your mood, energy level, love life

All of us have some very crucial chemicals coursing through our bodies. More than saying we are what we eat, we should be saying I am what my hormones dictate. The chemicals secreted by different glands travel through the bloodstream, acting as messengers and playing a part in many bodily processes. Which hormones affect your mood directly and how to obtain them through food and activity?

Kirti Pandey

Updated Mar 16, 2022, 21:23 IST

Happiness stems from within and our hormones help us enjoy small acts and extract great joy out of them.

Photo : iStock

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

Hormones are chemicals produced by different glands across your body.
One of these important functions is to help regulate your mood.
Which are the hormones that help promote positive feelings like happiness and pleasure?

When you are amongst friends or colleagues, you might find that the mention of the word "hormones" makes everyone assume that it is about women’s health matters or a teenager whose chemicals in the brain are in the overdrive - making him or her lovesick and impossible to manage.

But wait.! The fact is hormones do play an important role NOT JUST in women’s menstrual cycles and overall reproductive health but guide a range of processes in both men’s and women’s bodies: from skin changes and weight gain to hunger and sexual interest. Even how much calcium your body should retain and how much to throw out. How you sleep and how your heart beats or flutters.

Stephanie Watson, Executive Editor, Harvard Women's Health Watch writes that hormones are your body’s chemical messengers that once released by glands into your bloodstream, act on various organs and tissues to control everything from the way your body functions to how you feel.

Why is one group of hormones nicknamed the "feel-good hormones"?

When your body and mind experience a sense of happiness, almost akin to euphoria, due to a certain set of hormones being released into your blood, that set of hormones is called the "Happy Hormones". They're also considered neurotransmitters, which means they carry messages across the spaces between nerve cells.

Meet the 4 feel-good hormones:

Dopamine
Serotonin
Endorphins
Oxytocin

Dopamine: This is an important player in your brain’s reward system and is associated with pleasurable sensations, along with learning, memory, motor system function, and more. There is also some evidence that the brain releases more dopamine when we meditate. The change in consciousness that occurs during meditation may trigger its release.
Serotonin: This hormone (and neurotransmitter) helps regulate your mood as well as your sleep, appetite, digestion, learning ability, and memory. Exposure to either the sun or to the bright light meant to replicate it is another way to naturally increase serotonin levels. Light therapy is one of the main treatments for the seasonal affective disorder (SAD), the winter blues that may be triggered by a drop in serotonin levels, suggests Harvard Health.
Oxytocin: This hormone is the one that gets a mother to care for the newborn, protect it, spread calmness and cheer around the baby. But, incidentally, it is also the same hormone that is secreted when you fall in love, hug someone, and therefore gets called the “love hormone”. It is this hormone that allows people to develop trust, empathy, and bonding in relationships, and oxytocin levels generally increase with physical affection like kissing, cuddling, and sex. But remember, oxytocin is essential for childbirth, breastfeeding, and strong parent-child bonding.
Endorphins: Crazy, isn't it, that the hormone secreted when you workout in a gym is the same hormone that aids a sexual activity or a marathon run or just eating? Endorphins are your body’s natural pain reliever, which your body produces in response to stress or discomfort. Endorphin levels also tend to increase when you engage in reward-producing activities, such as eating, working out, or having sex. The neurotransmitters at work ensure that people get that feeling of euphoria known as a "runner’s high" after an intense workout.

Food sources for happy hormones:

Chicken and other types of poultry
Dairy foods such as milk, cheese, and yoghurt
Avocadoes
Bananas
Pumpkin and sesame seeds
Soy
Complex carbohydrate sources, such as vegetables, fruits, legumes, and whole grains. Ingesting these carbs makes our body produce insulin, which helps our muscles pull in more amino acids, giving tryptophan a better chance at reaching our brains.

A secret tip: Apart from all the food, supplements, and activity sessions, one thing that can do wonders for your state of mind is a burst of carefree belly laughter. Along with releasing endorphins, laughter alters levels of serotonin and dopamine. Meditation helps cheer up the person too. Breathing deeply and focusing your brain calms your mind and eases pain. So does playing music. When you sing, dance, or bang on a drum, you also release a rush of endorphins, which research suggests might increase tolerance to pain.

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