Brain Fog is definitely a thing. Not a thing we want, like, enjoy or get used to. It sucks: BIGTIME.
There can be many causes. Brain Fog can be a symptom of menopause. It can be simply a sign of aging. It can be a side effect of medications. It can be due to lack of adequate nutrition. It also seems to go hand-in-hand with many medical conditions, including autoimmune conditions and chemotherapy.
Before we can deal with brain fog in our day-to-day lives, we have to actually come to grips with the fact it is a thing. That’s tough. I had a memory like an elephant – once upon a time. At first you think maybe you are going nuts: at one stage I asked my GP if I could be tested for early onset dementia, I found it so scary, so “un-me”. It gets less scary as you develop strategies for dealing with it.
Check With Your Doctor
If you feel you are being affected, the first thing to do is check with your doctor (or doctors as the case may be). If you are female and of the right age, it may be menopause related and you may be able to consider Hormone Replacement Therapy which may solve the problem. If it might be a side effect of your medications, there may be alternative medications that may reduce the problem. Don’t just suffer in silence without finding out if there could be a different cause or a possible solution.
My personal example is around sense of direction. I would be driving in the right direction to get from point A to point B but my emotions would be telling me I was driving the wrong way. It wasn’t just driving. I’d park in the supermarket car park and when I came out I’d have no idea how to get back to my car. Admittedly, that was in a complex of shocking design, but it was distressing. I was almost thinking maybe I was going to have to give up driving, it was so bad. My daughter drove me to a medical appointment and I was convinced she was going the wrong way. It was stressful.
For completely unrelated reasons (several side effects I won’t list) I discussed a change of medication with the appropriate specialist. Within five days of ceasing the drug my sense of direction was back. I was ecstatic! Now, I can’t prove my sense of direction issue was due to the medication in question, however the co-incidence suggests it may have been. No, correlation does not equal causation, but in this particular case I’m fairly convinced.
Write Everything Down
Makes sense, doesn’t it? Write EVERY appointment or thing you have to do down. No, it doesn’t have to be on a piece of paper in a diary. I have calendar apps on my smartphone that will display several calendars at once, in different colours. This highlights any clashes between different aspects of my life. I have my office calendar, my Limberation calendar and my personal calendar.
Flag emails for follow-up! You’ll forget you said you’d respond tomorrow!
However you choose to do it, do it religiously! Unfortunately, this alone does not solve the problem.
Look at Your Calendar
Make it a religious part of your daily routine to look at the calendar. Allow me to illustrate. Last week I had a major change to my routine. While usually I work three days a week in an office, Wednesday to Friday, Last week I changed to working Monday, Wednesday, Friday because on Tuesdays and Thursdays I am going to Pain Management School (my name for it, not theirs). This change is temporary, but it is a disruption foggy brains find …… challenging.
I had an appointment on Thursday morning. As I lay snuggled under the doona I ran my day through my head. No, I convinced myself, I have this morning free. I made plans to have a late-ish breakfast and then wash and curl my hair. I was sitting waiting for the heated rollers to cool when my allied health professional rang and asked was I all right. “I’m fine”, I replied, thinking isn’t this a truly lovely gesture on her part.
“Well, I wanted to make sure because you are always so prompt.”
O.M.G I was SO SO SO embarrassed. I’ve always been the punctuality police. Being LATE gives me the horrors. Missing an appointment altogether because I FORGOT? O.M.G.
So make checking the calendar a part of your daily routine NO MATTER WHAT your foggy brain may suggest to you. Also check for flagged emails at the same time!
Medications Too!
Medications to be taken every morning or every night may not be so bad: I find that becomes just part of my normal brush-the-teeth-comb-the-hair routine. Anything that is not daily? Make an appointment in that calendar. The Repeat function in your calendar is great for that (see picture above). The classic example (sorry guys, this is a female example) is Hormone Replacement Therapy patches. Change twice a week, Wednesday morning and Saturday evening. If my phone doesn’t beep at me, it will be Friday morning before I think to myself “Did I?”
Even this morning (another Thursday, must be something about Thursdays) I again had a late breakfast (but DID check my calendar) then took a phone call, then sat on the edge of the bed to check social media and then thought “Have I taken my medication?” I decided I was pretty sure I hadn’t, so I took it. But the change in routine nearly bit me again.
Yes, the pill organisers from the pharmacy can certainly help because you can look and see if Thursday’s pills are gone.
Don’t Feel Guilty
This is about taking care of yourself. If you stuff up, as I did last Thursday, accept this is now part of life. You will forget things. All feeling guilty will do is add stress to your day and we’ve already talked about stress. Most of your medical team will understand if you miss an appointment – they’ve seen it many times before. WE each think we are the only one, but we aren’t. Friends and family should care enough about you to understand. Work, I agree, is slightly different. If employed, we are getting paid to do a job and we should do our utmost to not forget, but if it happens, it happens. Apologise, reschedule, move on.
Shopping Lists
I’d happily been through my whole life rarely if ever writing a shopping list. Now? I write shopping lists. I can’t stand getting home from the grocery shopping to find the one thing I REALLY REALLY needed is not in that pile of shopping bags.
Variations on the Theme
Brain fog is a thing. It can also be different for different people. One thing I haven’t yet found a solution for is retention of new information. For example, I’ll read something on a web site, let’s say a price of an item. As soon as I’ve gone from that page, I can’t remember the price. While studying I found rote learning of anatomy hard to retain – I still struggle with the names of some of the muscle origin and insertion points, although I know where they are! Concentration may suffer, your mind will wander during conversations. The brain may “freeze” – finding a perfectly common word just escapes you (very difficult in business meetings, also very menopause-typical that one).
Some days, the brain just doesn’t want to be taxed.
Sleep, Exercise and Nutrition
Poor sleep, inadequate exercise and less than optimal nutrition can all contribute to brain fog, over and above any medical issues. Do the best you can to ensure you keep these aspects of your life in tip-top shape.
I’m relatively lucky. I’m not suffering from brain fog much at all and I have strategies to mitigate the difficulties. The first step was accepting there was a change and I had to manage it. The second step was learning to work with it, rather than fighting it. Fighting it is stressful and then we get back on the wheel of exacerbating our condition by fighting the condition. Completely self-defeating.
What are your experiences of brain fog? What are your managing tips? Please share!
Limberation 