The Four Happy Hormones
- Jul 15
- 3 min read
Written by Shaun Sargent, Co-Founder STAIT
That we age is a given, how we age is a choice. STAIT – Unapologetically Strong. A first-class academic, award-winning professional, and global CEO, he is dedicated to continuous growth and inspiring others along the way.
Physical exercise is inherently linked to your mental health, which is why exercising can have a significant impact on your mood. When you exercise, you produce a range of hormones that make you feel happy, including serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins.
That’s why it’s so important to maintain your mental and physical health. By neglecting one, the other suffers too. So, next time you’re working out, here’s a little information about the hormones that are at work in the background.
How do happy hormones work?
1. Serotonin
The chemical serotonin is a messenger between the gut and the brain, and it is one of the hormones that makes us feel happy. When we engage in physical activity, we release serotonin, especially when we do aerobic exercise such as swimming, biking, running, and walking.
On top of making us feel happy, it also helps regulate bowel movements, stimulate libido, and reduce anxiety. Plus, it supports healthy sleeping patterns, aids recovery, and boosts your energy levels.
Up to 95% of serotonin is produced in your gut, meaning that poor gut health can lead to a serotonin deficiency, making you feel less happy from day to day. A lack of sufficient serotonin can increase your risk of depression and anxiety, so by exercising regularly, you are more likely to feel calm and emotionally stable.
2. Dopamine
Dopamine is another hormone that’s produced when you engage in physical activity. It’s produced during many different types of exercise, whether you’re on your morning run or practising meditation.
It plays a major role in improving your memory function, maintaining bodily movement, and producing feelings of pleasure, motivation, and joy. Dopamine is known for giving you the ‘drive’ that motivates you throughout the day.
It can also be released when you eat good food, win a game, or have sex. It’s linked to reward motivated behaviour. A lack of dopamine can mean that your sex drive diminishes, you feel less motivated and focused, and you have trouble sleeping.
This important chemical keeps our bodies and minds stable, so it’s important to do everything you can to keep your dopamine levels balanced.
What’s extremely interesting regarding dopamine is the research that Dr Andrew Huberman has been sharing. He highlights the importance of intermittent reward timing to ensure that our dopamine baseline, and the dopamine we experience from reaching milestones, do not start to diminish over time, resulting in less satisfaction from everything.
The key takeaway we learnt is to celebrate our wins, but not every win. More importantly, we should associate “winning” with the effort involved in the process itself.
3. Endorphins
Have you ever heard of a ‘runner’s high’? This is actually a real sensation caused by a rush of endorphins released through exercise.
When the body feels pain, endorphins are produced to block the nerve cells that receive pain signals. Endorphins help relieve pain, reduce stress, and increase feelings of euphoria. As well as being produced during physical activity, they can also be released during sex or when we laugh.
So, in effect, we can produce our own happiness by exercising. This explains why exercise is directly linked to reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.
Exercising doesn’t have to mean running a marathon or breaking your body in the gym. It can take any shape or form that feels right for you, whether that’s a morning walk, a swim in the surf, HIIT workouts, or something else entirely.
4. Oxytocin
Oxytocin is commonly referred to as the “love hormone.” It produces feelings of love, pleasure, and closeness. Oxytocin can help you relax by reducing your blood pressure and cortisol levels. We produce oxytocin when we cuddle, hug someone, or even have an orgasm.
But you may be surprised to discover that we also produce oxytocin when we exercise. This makes it another great hormone for relieving stress and anxiety through exercise. So, if you crave that daily dose of love and pleasure, maybe you should get yourself to the gym?
So, in a nutshell, that’s how happy hormones work. That’s why it’s so important to exercise, as it can have such a significant impact on your mood.
If you struggle to make time for physical activity, you may find it useful to learn strategies for prioritising it.
Read more from Shaun Sargent
Shaun Sargent, Co-Founder STAIT
As a co-founder of STAIT, my personal search for health and personal development is relentless. I seek out the best of the best to learn from and share with. To be the best you can be on a daily basis is the key to human growth.
