Built for Love

Who would be interested in something that increases your impulse control and ability to sleep restfully while decreasing your perception of pain? And oh, by the way, it slows down the aging process too.

How much would you pay for an over-the-counter product that promised such benefits?  

I’m happy to tell you, this drug is free!  And all the side effects are good. It’s dopamine, and your body produces it all on its own. 

“Increase in impulse control” sounds very abstract and clinical, but let’s make it real. 

You know when you come home after a long day and somehow between dinner and bedtime, a box of Cheese-Its or a pint of Ben and Jerry’s has mysteriously disappeared from the kitchen?  And you have a bloated feeling of disgust?  That’s where impulse control comes in. 

All the times you have regretted eating something that you totally didn’t intend to eat, and you marvel at how your hands and mouth can be so completely disconnected to your mind and heart?  Impulse control. 

Wouldn’t a little shot of dopamine come in handy for those times?

Dr. Vincent Fortanesce is Clinical Professor of Neurology at USC, with several decades of experience in neurological disease, addictions, and most recently, Alzheimer’s prevention.  He appears regularly in the news as a spokesman for the medical profession on these issues. 

From his research, we know that diet and exercise do all these wondrous things for our body and mind, make us feel younger, more energetic and happier.   The trouble is, if you’re stuck in a cycle of overeating and underexercising, the prescription of “diet and exercise” taunts you like a shiny toy held just out of your reach.

So let’s get there by a different route: prayer.  Dr. Fortanesce has found in his research that when you pray, it stimulates the parts of the brain (infrafrontal and singulate gyrus, if you must know) that cause an increase in dopamine.  Prayer also causes a decrease in cortisol, the stress hormone. 

Prayer can decrease our pain perception and increase our ability to stay in control.  Don’t you want some of that?

You may think, “I can’t pray just because it helps me bypass the refrigerator!  That is insulting.” 

It’s not, really.  We are built in a particular way, and the fact that we function best when we pray is a built-in design characteristic, like a homing device.  It only makes sense that if we were made by Love, then we would function less well apart from that Love, and best when we are strongly connected.

It’s like sending your first child off to college.  You miss him terribly, while he is off discovering the great wide world.  He comes home for a visit after a month, but it’s mostly to see his hometown girlfriend and go to a football game.  But do you care?  No! You’re just overjoyed to see him!  It doesn’t matter why he came home; just that he did is enough.  That’s love for you.

It’s the same with prayer.  No matter why you undertake it, even if it’s only a quest for dopamine at first, it’s the seed of a stronger connection with Love.  Love doesn’t measure why we came; Love is just happy that we did.