- Ever wondered how all your cells
in your body communicate with each other?
We're here to talk about neurotransmitters.
I'm Dr. Carrie Lam.
This is Dr. Michael Lam.
So you have many, many neurotransmitters,
but we'll touch on a few today.
The first one I will talk about is dopamine.
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter
in charge of your reward center.
So any time you feel rewarded,
whether you bite into a dark chocolate,
or you have sex or you did something really good,
the dopamine gets fired and it makes you feel the reward
that comes from the neurotransmitter firing.
- Yeah.
In addition, dopamine also is
a very, very important chemical precursor
to two other substrate.
One is called "norepinephrine" one is called "epinephrine"
In fact the dopamine is so-called the grandmother
because the daughter of dopamine,
chemically, is norepinephrine.
And norepinephrine is a very, very important
neurotransmitter because it really has two functions.
In the brain, when it is first activated,
it is a local messenger,
where it acts as a stimulant to cause anxiety and alertness.
So if you are staying up in the middle of the night
because you have an important project,
it's the norepinephrine that's firing
that keeps you on alert.
Of course we know that street drugs, like amphetamines,
or even some medical medications,
such as Adderall,
are using this principle to keep people on alert,
such as Adderall, as I said.
So norepinephrine has both a neurotransmitter function
to cause the brain alertness,
and of course it also has a hormonal function
in terms of other parts of the body,
which we will not talk about today.
And we talked about the grandmother being dopamine,
the mother being norepinephrine
and the daughter would be epinephrine or adrenaline.
And that is a very important hormone,
as well as causing a systemic
fight or flight response, a chemical messenger.
- So by daughter you mean it doesn't come from the brain,
epinephrine actually comes from the adrenals, right?
- Epinephrine itself comes from the adrenals,
that's why it's actually a hormone.
And it has a very specific pathway
because epinephrine is such an important hormone,
it has its own pathway,
rather than norepinephrine which kind of comes from dopamine.
- Yeah.
And the fight or flight that you were talking about
from epinephrine that is, it makes your heart pound,
it makes you ready to fight (laughs)
and to run away for your life.
- Yeah, so if you have a robber,
if you're in the middle of a car accident,
it's epinephrine that's causing you
to be on alert and then be very super excited.
However, you have to understand
you need all these neurotransmitters.
Why we talk about them is because they are important
in your daily living as well.
Without norepinephrine, for example,
you cannot even stand up.
So the body self balances these dopamine,
norepinephrine, epinephrine, and, of course,
acetylcholine, which is the parasympathetic nervous system.
- Right.
- And then, plus other ones,
is the body's automatic balancing of these systems
and hormones and neurotransmitters
that causes you to be stable.
And if you are off on, for example,
if you have over norepinephrine,
you're going to be anxious and possibly having a heart attack.
If you have over epinephrine,
you're going to have, feel this adrenaline rushes
going through to your body, for example.
So all of these have very specific, clinical ramifications
if it is imbalanced.
- And so talking about the balance
to the sympathetic system,
you have the acetylcholine,
which is with the parasympathetic system,
the rest and the digest,
to balance the fight or the flight.
And the acetylcholine is very important,
also in your gut, like I said,
digest, it helps calm you down
and to help you breathe slowly
and things like that. - Yeah, in fact,
one of our key modulators of our mood,
if it were to calm things down,
is to enhance parasympathetic nervous system
and the ultimate target neurotransmitter response
of this is?
- Serotonin.
- So tell us about serotonin.
- So serotonin, you have a lot of receptors,
or it's made also in the gut, in addition to your brain.
So the serotonin receptors in your gut are so important
because serotonin is your feel good
type of neurotransmitter.
When you have low levels,
it's been shown to kind of be linked to a lesser mood,
a not feeling very happy kind of thing.
And so the serotonin in your gut,
all the serotonin receptors in your gut,
is also very important.
So if you have a imbalanced gut,
your neurotransmitters might also be imbalanced.
- Yeah. - Especially to serotonin.
- So we talked about a lot of technical terms today,
so don't get carried away, you know,
in terms of being hung up on it.
The important thing to understand
is that each one of these have very specific outcomes
if it is not balanced.
And so it's important that the body
do the automatic balancing,
which it has the ability.
It's only when your body is either in adrenal issues
or have other issues that kind of interfere
with this autoregulation,
that's when problems come about.
So when you feel panicky, feeling irritable,
feeling, having a down day, feeling the blues,
You know, don't just rush into saying,
“Oh, you know, this is a normal part of life.”
It's not normal.
The normal person has a well balance of all these things
in such a way that the body goes through
very calm and serene and have the ability
to deal with stress.
If you are missing that connection,
then there's something could be wrong
with your neurotransmitters.
- Right.
So we're here just to give you a brief overview
of what the neurotransmitters are,
and we hope that you enjoy this video.
We're here just to empower you
to take control of your health,
so have a good day.