"The Intricate idea of Joy and Happiness" by Claire B

 

Happiness is one of the most common abstract ideas people think about when they are asked. But what about happiness and joy and why are they so complex? They both are very similar ideas, but are still different to our bodies. Joy is the inner feeling felt and is the true feeling of great pleasure While happiness is said to be the outward expression you show and how you respond to the good things that happen. None of this feeling of joy or happiness would happen though and the question of the complexity of these things without the neurotransmitters of dopamine or serotonin which makes both these feelings happen.

            Dopamine acts on all areas of your brain to give you the feelings of pleasure, satisfaction and highs of motivation. With the release of dopamine this can help greatly with control on memory, sleep, mood, learning, concentration, movement and other functions that occur in the body. All these things add up to be what makes you happy and feel joy. Similarly with serotonin, it works with dopamine as a chemical used to control your mood. It also coordinates different functions and processes like our emotions, metabolism, sleep and growth. How these chemical signals work though is very interesting. SIgnals are sent from the brain, more technically  through a neurotransmitter, to go to different neurons that are called the presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons. Then those neurons signal the dopamine and serotonin receptors that then signal G-proteins. The G-proteins are a group of proteins that are used to receive signals from the outside of a cell and project into its interior. These G-proteins that signal inside of the cell are what make the secondary messengers give results through proteins, sometimes called PKA or PKC that produce a number of physiological functions in the cell which also show the happiness and joy we feel.

            Even though how the neurotransmitters work is confusing and very complex, it is easy to trigger them and help your body produce them a little easier. Things like exercise, nature, nutrition, memories and so much more are shown to assist the production of these chemical signals. And even if the feeling of happiness and joy seems so easy to achieve and not hard at all, because you can do different things like go for a walk or eat better or even look back on old pictures, it is still so intricate and works differently for different people who produces different levels of these chemical signals for the different things they do. If there are different levels of these chemical signals though it can affect the body in so many different ways. Not only will it cause opposite effects like depression, fatigue, lack of stress and so many other symptoms if the levels are shown to be low. On the other hand if the levels are too high then even worse symptoms can happen to the body. It can cause restlessness, nervousness, insomnia tremors and other bad things to be happy to the body and how it functions. This being said, how happiness and joy work inside and outside the body is so intricate and complex but is such an interesting idea as a whole.