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Just as many of us are headed out for a weekend full of holiday gift-buying, scientists are quantifying what serious shoppers have known all along: Shopping makes you feel so good.

Researchers say shopping activates key areas of the brain, boosts our mood and makes us feel better. No kidding.

Window shopping and finding needed (or wanted) items, appears to tap the brain's reward center and trigger a brain-chemical release that stimulates a "shopping high," health writer Tara Parker-Pope said in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal.

The research is proving that "retail therapy" — shopping to elevate the mood when feeling down or to alleviate stress — has a scientific explanation (as though we needed one).

It's not the tinsel, toys and trees that bring holiday shopping euphoria — it's chemistry. Specifically, the brain chemical dopamine.

Dopamine, which has a leading role in mental and physical health, is a feel-good brain chemical associated with pleasure and satisfaction. It's released when we experience something new, exciting or challenging, according to Parker-Pope's story.

Shopping can be a pleasurable experience, but at the end of the day when your feet are sore and the dopamine level drops, pleasure can be replaced with buyer's blues, an overdrawn checkbook, maxed-out credit cards and the inevitable question: "Why did I buy this?"

With a little dab of dopamine, it's easy to make bad decisions. For example, dopamine may help explain why someone buys shoes he or she never wears, said Gregory Berns, an Emory University neuroscientist and author of "Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment."

"You see the shoes and get this burst of dopamine," said Berns, which then "motivates you to seal the deal and buy them. It's like a fuel injector for action, but once they're bought, it's almost a let down."

Shopping can be rewarding and pleasurable, but before you call the credit card company and try the "dopamine made me do it" excuse, remember that the feel-good effects wane and you're stuck with the bills.

Before you head out to the mall, fall into a dopamine-induced high and overspend, use the knowledge to your advantage. Some of the steps suggested by The Wall Street Journal and other financial sources include:

Santa is not the only person who should be making a list and checking it twice. Avoid impulse buying by making a list of items and the stores at which you want to buy those items — and stick to it.

OK, you see you something you want to buy that's not on your list. Before you submit to the impulse — just walk away. If you want the item later, then buy it. A super-duper doorbuster deal isn't such a good deal if you really don't want/like/need the item when you get home. Shop when stores are least busy and you won't get caught up in the buying frenzy.

Shopping when visiting friends or relatives can be risky — dopamine shifts into high gear when you experience the added novelty of shopping in a new place. You become more vulnerable to buying something you don't need.

Here's another sage tip: Be a cash-only — or debit-card — user as often as possible. This imposes a financial limit since you can't spend what you don't have. It also spares you the nightmare of a huge credit-card bill in January. If you do need to use a credit card, try to use only one that has a low limit.

Even though the joy of shopping is rooted in the brain's chemistry, so, too, is reason, which should take the upper hand.

— A.B