Dopamine, Prolactin and Sex

[Nelson Vergel]

This a very good read:

"Dopamine. It's at the core of our sexual drives and survival needs, and it motivates us to do just about everything. This mechanism within the reward center of the primitive brain has been around for millions of years and has not changed. Rats, humans indeed, all mammals are very similar in this respect.

Dopamine is behind a lot of the desire we associate with eating and sexual intercourse. Similarly, all addictive drugs trigger dopamine (the "craving neurochemical") to stimulate the pleasure/reward center. So do gambling, shopping, overeating and other, seemingly unrelated, activities. Go shopping: dopamine. Smoke a cigarette: dopamine. Computer games: dopamine. Heroin: dopamine. Orgasm: dopamine. They all work somewhat differently on the brain, but all raise your dopamine.

Dopamine plummets and prolactin soars. Dopamine is "go get it!" and prolactin is "whoa!" This mechanism shifts your attention elsewhere: to hunting and gathering, taking care of babies, building shelters, and so forth. Without this natural, protective shutdown, you would pursue sex to the exclusion of all other activities. When rats were wired so that they could push a lever in their cages to stimulate the nerve cells on which dopamine acts, they just kept hitting the lever until they dropped not even pausing to eat or investigate potential mates. Dopamine is highly addictive; the rise in prolactin puts the brakes on."

http://psyed.org/r/ns/nsd/neuro_sex.html

 

[Nelson Vergel]

Testosterone and dopamine are intimately connected in a bidirectional relationship. Testosterone regulates dopamine and dopamine testosterone. Because many of the men that show up to my site are low testostosterone, I want to start with the research that shows that testosterone profoundly affects brain dopamine levels.

Testosterone and Dopamine

 

[DHM]

Thank you Nelson for getting the ball rolling in this topic. I think this is at the root of secondary hypo and why we don't see therapeutic responses with Clomid. I suspect dysfunction upstream in the Hypo-Pitu area that SERMs do not address in their mechanism even though my numbers on paper look great.