Dr. Andrew Belaveshkin

Dopamine, melatonin and sleep. Or why to take a counsel of a pillow, and why a donut is tastier and the series are more interesting in the evening than in the afternoon?  When I was young and naive, I seriously thought that it was enough to tell the people in the right way about the importance of sleep and biorhythms to make them impressed and improve their regime. But later I understood why this was not working. People disturb sleep regime because it carves, increases dopamine release and causes addiction.  Dopamine, melatonin and sleep. Lack of sleep acts like a drug and causes addiction. Sounds weird? I’m going to explain in detail. The fact is that dopamine and the sleep hormone melatonin are opposite in phase. Melatonin inhibits the activity of dopamine neurons. But if we limit the work of melatonin (stay up late in the electric light), the melatonin-dopamine balance will move towards dopamine (Zisapel, N (2001). "Melatonin-dopamine interactions: from ba...

Mackerel for breakfast and not only for it, measured in numbers. The most common fish in our diet is mackerel (whole and deep frozen). The reasons for this are that it is a Norwegian wild-caught fish delivered in good condition to a relatively small number of bones (children eat it with them while herring, for comparison, has a lot of small bones).  Usually, I eat a medium mackerel at a time (350 grams), equal to a portion of boiled mackerel of 250 grams. What does this mean in numbers? So, one mackerel is 550 kcal, 50 grams of high-quality protein , and 36 grams of excellent fat.  It is also 129 micrograms of selenium ( more than 200% of the daily requirement) and 135 micrograms of iodine (almost complete daily requirement).  If to talk about omega-3 fatty acids, one fish contains 3.6 grams of omega-3 fatty acids. As you can see, there is no need to take additional supplements if even you consume only 2-3 portions of fish per week. Fish...