Social
Quality of life is easily increased by spending time with friends and family. It is also an effective
tool in ensuring we are maximising our recovery outside of training. Sounds strange doesn’t it.
Going outside the obvious rewards we receive when we spend time with friends is the
perspective taken when looking at the chemistry associated with human interaction.
When we spend time with others we release Oxytocin in our system. Oxytocin supports our
Serrotonin which helps us to feel content to a degree removing the need to find external sources
of stimulation and/or reward commonly associated with Dopamine.
Dopamine is not a bad thing
either, but when we cross the reward and external source association over each other we will
face cravings that will drive ourselves crazy for things we may not usually need or want.
To better understand this we can look at a person who stays in on the weekend and eats a
block of chocolate after dinner. They didn’t need to eat the chocolate, but they did need to feel a
certain way at that point of time. Even if they feel bad post chocolate dopamine will fuel the
cravings in anticipation that will support their serotonin driving them to carry out the chain of
events.
Obviously if that same person has others around them they will be less likely to search for the
feeling of content the chocolate is assumed to bring. If you have ever began to date someone
and you notice you do not eat as much early on in the dating phase this is literally what is
happening within your system from as neuro chemical perspective