Brain fog is a huge problem.
Left untreated, it will only get worse.
Your focus will continue to fade.
Exams you want to pass will fail.
Learning that language will be a slog.
And remembering the names of new people and even loved ones will be hard to retrieve.
But here’s the very good news:
You can reduce its impact.
Even better, you can potentially eliminate it entirely. I’ll even share with you exactly how I cured my brain fog in a step-by-step manner.
If you’d like to know how to reduce its impact on your life, keep reading.
We’re taking a deep dive into what brain fog is and how to eliminate it!
What Is Brain Fog?
Brain fog is defined as mental fuzziness. It’s symptoms include:
- Mental exhaustion
- Reduced cognitive ability
- Poor concentration
- Feeling “spaced out”
- Foggy head
Another way to define it comes from the scientist Karan Kverno, who says that it is “the subjective experience of neuroinflammation.”
Just as important as the definition, we have to take note of this condition. For example, mental fog has only gotten worse since the pandemic. Studies show that Long Covid Syndrome (LCS) can create or aggravate it.
People undergoing chemotherapy may also suffer increased incidences of mental fog.
With its ongoing evolution in mind, let’s look deeper at these symptoms.
Symptoms
Mental exhaustion can be defined as everything from lack of motivation to irritability. It can have short-term or long term effects.
Reduced cognitive ability can involve things like struggling to complete tasks that should be deep in your procedural memory.
Poor concentration is not only about focus. It can involve difficulties in sitting still. You might also notice that you lose things more often.
Being spaced out involves mind wandering or feeling disconnected with reality.
And having a foggy head gets that term because you might feel like your mind is cluttered with dense clouds. You may be easily distracted or confused.
Causes
When I was still on the hunt for a brain fog cure, I experienced all of the above symptoms. In my case, each symptom was exaggerated by taking lamotrigine for manic depression.
Fortunately, all of that is over now and I find it easy to concentrate on demand. But it’s clear that a huge driver of the symptoms was the medication.
Other culprits include:
- Lack of exercise
- Poor diet, especially from eating foods that harm the brain
- Dehydration
- Insufficient sleep
- Undiagnosed health issues
- Stress and anxiety
- Depression
- Chronic pain
- Gut health
- Aging (especially when chemotherapy is in use)
- Neuroinflammation
Even air pollution has been studied for how it contributes to brain fog in different parts of the world. So if you can’t find other reasons behind why you keep forgetting things, consider getting air filtration systems where you work and sleep.
Treatments
It can be frustrating looking to doctors and science to cure your brain fog. Often doctors don’t have enough time to go through your entire history and look at all aspects of your lifestyle.
You should still consult them, however. In fact, talk to as many people as you can. As Dr. Raphael Kellman talks about in his Whole Brain Diet book, people need “will” to fix their brain fog issues and the best way to get this is by tapping into the largest community possible.
In addition to consulting medical professionals, you should discuss treatment options with family and friends who can support you.
And the good news is that there are a number of powerful ways to cure your brain fog. Let’s look at each.
Diet
According to Dr. Kellman, a “whole brain diet” should be one’s first line of attack. The core of his idea involves the role of healthy bacteria in your gut. As many people have discussed, your digestive system is like a “second brain” connected via the vagus nerve, so it’s important to feed it correctly.
Sleep
Diet and sleep go together in many ways.
For example, Dr. Kellman shows how preservative dyes can interrupt sleep. Since both the dye and the lack of sleep contribute to brain fog, people who react to the dyes suffer twice as much.
In addition to checking your sleep rituals and making sure you’re getting enough, do a thorough dietary analysis for ingredients that could be robbing you of rest.
Fitness
Physical activity and brain health are well-studied.
The good news is that you don’t need much. Even just a short, brisk walk every day provides tremendous health benefits for both your body and brain.
All of these treatments are preferable to supplements because many issues can arise from mixing off-the-counter substances.
For example, someone might say that Vitamin B12 is the ultimate weapon against brain fog. However, you could easily overdose on it, or interfere with some other absorption process in your body if it’s already adequately covered by your diet.
Always see your doctor and ask for a full blood panel before taking any advice – including the advice on this page.
How to Fix Brain Fog: My Personal Secret Weapons
For me, the solution to my brain fog was not knowledge.
Most of what cures brain fog boils down to common sense.
The problem is in remembering to put the information into action.
To make sure that I reached my life improvement goals, I did a few things. Here are those steps:
One: Make A Goal and Journal About It
First, I used The Freedom Journal to set a 100 day goal. It’s a great tool because it’s big and visually striking. That makes it hard to miss.
For each of the brain fog treatments above, I made a handwritten commitment.
I recommend you do the same. There’s something deeply personal about writing intentions out by hand.
Richard Wiseman collects some of the scientific evidence around why writing by hand works in his book, 59 Seconds: Think A Little, Change A Lot.
Two: Connect With A Larger Vision
Second, I wrote a “Magnetic Vision Statement” around the exact nature of my brain health goals.
This is all part of establishing the mental strength needed to stick with the lifestyle changes – which are admittedly hard to consistently pursue.
One great thing about this activity is that it gets you more into your body and out of your head (where the problem lives).
Here’s a tutorial on creating a vision statement for your memory. In your case, you’ll want to focus specifically on your vision for tackling your cognitive dysfunction.
If you prefer, you can also explore mind mapping as an alternative to writing your vision statement in a journal.
I’ve built a business through many mental challenges even more difficult than brain fog, and keep this business-development mind map in sight all the time so I don’t forget my mission and my goals:
Vision statements and mind maps are not magic bullets.
But the great thing about the mind map technique is that you can do it purely on the basis of images. I don’t have to read anything and am reminded of my goals by engaging images that are easy to understand at a glance.
And because they’re deeply personal and connected to a variety of memories, they quickly inspire me, even on the foggiest of days.
Three: Memorize The Steps You’ve Identified
Everything worth doing involves multiple moving parts.
And anything modular can essentially be memorized as a list.
For example, I was overweight when I first tackled my brain fog in earnest. I got a health coach and a personal fitness coach.
To help me remember the choreography of various stretches at the gym, I used a Memory Palace. I used the same memory techniques to help me deeply internalize information about how to eat better.
Four: Get Plenty of Brain Exercise
People are currently stretching the limits of their minds with more information than ever before.
But constant exposure to the Internet is not necessarily exercising your cognitive functions.
You need real brain exercise, the kind that occurs offline and truly challenges your mind. There are many brain games for adults, but I strongly advise you favor the offline versions for best results.
Personally, I work a lot with playing cards.
You can see one of the challenges I complete in this video if you want to adopt a simple and fun brain-maintenance exercise for yourself:
Five: Take On Meaningful Challenges
As human knowledge grows, meaning diminishes. We now understand so much about how the universe functions that we’re living in an age of anxiety.
Why?
Because no one can agree on the fundamental reasons why anything exists at all.
And as more voices crowd online to argue about how things should be going forward, it can be hard for people to feel like they’re anchored to a solid position that makes sense for them.
The solution?
Create your own meaning.
There are many ways to do this, such as studying:
- Philosophy
- Music
- Art
- Languages
- Culture
I recommend you take on long form learning projects by designing your own 90-day learning missions.
I’ll be sharing how I do this for myself in the upcoming Read with Momentum program.
This form of self-study is powerful for fending off brain fog because it defeats the despair that leads to depression – a common cause of mental fuzziness.
The Future of Curing Brain Fog
Although I haven’t tried any of the following personally, I’m a keen reader of as much memory science as I can find.
Here are some of the more radical and interesting approaches you likely haven’t heard of before:
Transcranial Photobiomodulation
As you can see in this scientific study, researchers are studying various headsets and goggles to help the brain combat neuroinflammation.
The light-based procedure directly stimulates cellular energy production in the brain.
Researchers expect that, upon further validation, the technique will succeed because it can be conducted at home. It should be relatively inexpensive too.
Stimulating Neurogenesis
The death of brain cells could be a major cause of brain fog, along with the struggle to learn new things quickly.
These researchers are identifying various genes to help identify methods that will help the brain create new neural pathways. Although they are currently focused on people with Alzheimer’s disease, the findings could well help others who suffer brain fog for a variety of reasons.
Minimizing Electronic Exposure
Although some people criticize concerns about our constant exposure to computers and cell phones, these researchers have explored the role of electromagnetic pollution.
The major challenge they point out is that proper measurements aren’t always possible.
But the data they have been able to gather suggests that it should be possible to not only reduce the amount of energetic pollution to which we’re all exposed. It should be possible to reduce the energy costs we pay too.
Sound Therapy
I’ve been listening to a lot of singing bowl sound therapy sessions lately. Particularly via a YouTube channel called Mindful Melodies:
As these researchers note, the relaxation benefits are often profound.
Although I can’t find any studies that state directly that singing bowls specifically help with brain fog, this study found many benefits for overall well-being.
And there’s solid scientific evidence that sound therapy helps with other cognitive issues.
My acupuncturist uses sound therapy a lot in her clinic.
But she also told me that she recently bought a CD player so she can listen to music offline.
Sure, there are still electronics involved. But she’s able to use a long headphone cable and reduce the time exposed to any device while still listening to music that could be helping modulate various brain wave patterns.
In all things, the future holds many exciting options, so watch this space for updates as I continue to explore new research as it arises.
How To Fix Brain Fog Permanently
As you can see, there are clear causes and solutions when it comes to brain fog.
But the final bit of common sense we need is this:
Rinse and repeat.
Your brain is a living organ.
You don’t get to stop solving the problem of brain fog.
You need to think and act like a gardener of your mind.
Keep tilling the soil.
Keep planting seeds.
Keep fertilizing, watering and clearing away the weeds.
You’ll be glad you did!
And if you’d like help with remembering everything involved, grab my FREE Memory Improvement Kit now:
It will teach you to use the same Memory Palace technique that helped me remember the self care needed on a daily basis to keep brain fog at bay.
So what do you say?
Are you ready to take care of that brain of yours?
Never forget:
You’re the only one who can!
