What’s Behind Your Brain Fog? 5 Causes You May Need to Consider.
Address your brain fog to start feeling mentally clear and energized.
Does your brain fog make you feel tired and cloudy all the time, but you're not sure why? You sleep 8 hours a night, eat relatively well, and your annual physicals show no sign of disease. But you have a gut feeling that you should be feeling more mentally clear and energized.
Brain fog results from a few different underlying conditions that may not show up on a traditional lab panel. So if you're feeling sluggish, don't give up – there could be a simple solution to your brain fog.
What is Brain Fog?
You're exhausted when your head hits the pillow at night. You fall asleep fast and sleep through the night, expecting to wake up refreshed. But when your alarm goes off, your eyelids feel like weights on your eyes.
You drag yourself out of bed and immediately head to the coffee machine for your morning cup. The caffeine gives you a jolt of energy for a few hours. But by 2 pm, you're crashing, and your brain fog is back.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
Brain fog refers to symptoms like tiredness and lack of mental clarity. It's the feeling when your brain gets cloudy, and it's difficult to focus on tasks. While it's not technically a medical condition, the feeling of brain fog is very common today.
Brain fog symptoms include...
Mental cloudiness
Memory loss
Dizziness
Fatigue
There’s no specific brain fog test because various environmental and internal factors can cause it. Nutritional, metabolic, hormonal, or chemical imbalances can lead to the condition. You may need to test for each of these imbalances separately. Uncovering these imbalances can help you understand where your tiredness stems from. (1)
5 Causes of Brain Fog and How to Address Them
Brain fog has to do with your inputs into your body – the food you consume, products in your environment, and how you live. So, your brain fog is more in your control than you may think.
These are a few potential causes of brain fog that you can address.
Environmental Toxins. While your body can detoxify a small number of chemicals, it’s not equipped to handle the large number of chemicals you’re exposed to these days. Toxins that enter your body do not have an additive effect, but a compounded effect! Toxins are hiding in your shampoo, cleaning supplies, candles, and more.
What to Do: Be conscious of the ingredients in the everyday household products you buy and avoid products with added fragrances and parabens. For a full list of the toxins that are bad for you, check out this article.Mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are sneaky toxins that can hide in crops, your home, or your place of work. They can end up in the food you eat and the air you breathe. Certain fungi (i.e. molds) are mycotoxins that can cause serious health effects. (2)
What to Do: Work with a doctor specializing in functional lab testing. Get tested for mycotoxins if you suffer from any chronic conditions or severe brain fog.Gluten. Feeling sluggish after you eat? The gluten you’re eating could damage your gut and lead to fatigue. There’s a reason gluten sensitivity is so popular today. The grain we eat is hybridized and packed with gluten, so it's harder for your body to digest. This sticky substance creates issues in your gut and brain.
What to Do: Try cutting gluten out completely from your diet for two months and examine how your body feels afterward. One of the first benefits you may notice is your eyelids feeling lighter, and your brain is clearer. Be careful not to “just” replace these foods with “gluten-free options” as they are not always healthy.Caffeine. Coffee actually affects your brain and natural baseline energy levels. Along with tea, it is one of the crops sprayed most heavily with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and chemical fertilizers. Plus, if you’re drinking it in the afternoon, it could be affecting your sleep.
What to Do: Don’t worry. You don’t need to quit your morning cup of joe entirely. Buy organic coffee. Reduce your coffee intake and take a few days off each week. This trains your body to create energy naturally. A good replacement is Matcha, which has 1/4 of the caffeine and contains L-theanine, a calming substance found in green teas.
Nutrient Deficiencies. Processed foods with little nutrients are increasingly common. And modern farming practices have decreased the natural nutrients in the soil. So even if you're consuming veggies regularly, you may not be getting the nutrients your body needs. Nutrient deficiencies are increasingly common.
What to Do: Visit a functional medicine doctor to get a full nutrient panel run. This identifies any nutrients you’re lacking. From there, they can give you a nutritional plan and holistic treatments that may help.Not Eating Enough. When your body needs fuel, your prefrontal cortex is the first to be affected. A lack of enough food can cause brain fog and even take power away from your thinking and decision-making ability.
What to Do: Make sure you’re eating the proper amount of food each day that your body needs. Listen to your body’s cues when it’s hungry and a snack only if you need to.Medications like Hormonal Birth Control. Many women report fatigue and brain fog while on hormonal birth control. This could be because of the fluctuation of hormones that influence your brain function.
What to do: Even if you’re not positive that birth control causes your brain fog, it’s worth exploring non-hormonal birth control options.
As you can see, there are tons of underlying causes of fatigue and brain fog. But many of these root causes won’t show up in conventional blood work. So visiting your primary care doctor may not give you the answers you're looking for.
If you're experiencing brain fog and fatigue, we urge you to continue exploring your condition to achieve a better quality of life. Try making adjustments to your lifestyle based on some of our suggestions above to see how you feel. It’s possible to reduce your brain fog and have more energy than ever before.
Brain Fog Treatment
Imagine how it would feel to wake up energized and fully rested, prepared for the day ahead. You wouldn't have to rely on caffeine for your morning and afternoon boost. With sustained mental clarity and energy, you'd be able to get so much done in a day – and enjoy the process of doing so.
To start your journey to optimal health, book a consultation with Denver Sports and Holistic Medicine. We'll get to know your health history, your goals and determine the right path for you. We can perform functional lab testing to uncover the cause of your brain fog. From there, we put together an action plan including nutrition, exercise, lifestyle, and environmental factors.
Resources: