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.

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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