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It Starts With Attraction
How Can I Get Rid of Brain Fog?
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Is Brain Fog Real? How to Beat It & Get Your Mental Clarity Back! Ever felt like you're walking through a mental fog? Forgetful, unfocused, and struggling to concentrate? You're not alone! Today, we're diving deep into the world of brain fog with the incredible Kimberly Beam Holmes.
In this episode, we'll uncover:
• What is brain fog? We'll break down the science, symptoms, and real-life experiences.
• Why is brain fog on the rise? We'll explore the surprising link between COVID-19 and brain fog, plus other potential triggers.
• How to kick brain fog to the curb! Discover the four powerful strategies you can use to reclaim your mental clarity: sleep, healthy diet, exercise, and mental breaks.
We'll even reveal some bonus tips, including the potential benefits of Wellbutrin and the power of drinking water.
Don't let brain fog hold you back from living your best life! Join us on this journey to understand and overcome this common struggle. Hit that subscribe button for more life-changing conversations on mental health, relationships, and personal growth. Turn on notifications so you never miss an episode! Share the love! If this video resonated with you, share it with a friend who might be struggling with brain fog.
Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 500,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
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Brain fog. What is it? Is it real? And if we are struggling with it, how can we move forward? That's the topic of today's conversation. We are really going to dive into a lot about brain fog. We're going to look into some of the research. We're going to look into a lot of things and I'm excited to dive in. Jason, you're joining us again today. I am Glad to have you. Thank you, glad to be here, jason, you're joining us again today.
Speaker 2:I am glad to have you. Thank you, glad to be here. Have you ever had brain fog? Uh, I don't know. I don't think so.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I honestly couldn't say yes or no, cause I don't really know what it is, but I'm sure you're about to tell us. I'm about to tell you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, about to tell everyone. So what is brain fog and what is the history of brain fog? This has definitely become more of a trending topic ever since 2020. It seems like COVID put brain fog more on the map. Before COVID-19, brain fog was most often associated with chronic fatigue syndrome or with fibromyalgia, so you would hear a lot of people who dealt with chronic pain more or less talk about the inability to really think clearly. But here's what we need to know about brain fog.
Speaker 1:According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, brain fog is a range of neurocognitive symptoms that can include several different things, such as forgetfulness, problems focusing, concentrating and paying attention. The important thing that needs to be said on the front end of this episode is that brain fog is a non-clinical diagnosis. It's kind of like a catch-all phrase for a bunch of different symptoms. So brain fog in and of itself isn't real, and I know a lot of people are going to say I've had brain fog. I think I've had quote unquote brain fog too. But brain fog, just as a term that means something specific, isn't really what we're looking at here. Brain fog as a way to describe a myriad of neurocognitive issues that a person might encounter is a better way to think about it, but it includes several different things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I still don't.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've experienced brain fog, like I still don't think I've had it, unless you're currently having it.
Speaker 2:I was going to say maybe I'm currently having it and I'm just forgetting.
Speaker 1:You don't know it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's right. Interestingly, here's a fun little note One of the first mentions of brain fog actually happened in 1850 by a British physician named James Tunstall, who described it as a type of mental exhaustion experienced by lawyers, writers, teachers, students and other brain workers as a consequence of overworking the mental facilities without sufficient bodily fatigue. I actually think that's one of the best definitions of brain fog.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say, now that we've read that, I definitely think I've experienced that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, definitely, have had it. I think a lot of people have experienced parts of brain fog. Here's the symptoms that really a lot of people report when they talk about having brain fog. So there was one study that was done this one is very comprehensive, but it was done in 2022.
Speaker 1:And it was actually titled Comprehensive Clinical Characterization of Brain Fog in Adults Reporting Long COVID Symptoms, and so it gave participants I mean probably off 30, maybe 35 different symptoms, such as have you been having fatigue, fever, weight loss, insomnia, dizziness, word finding difficulties, memory impairment, visual issues, chest pain, chest tightness, cough I mean just a ton of different things loss of appetite.
Speaker 1:And then it also measured the participant's chronic fatigue. It measured depression, ptsd, and it also gave them reaction time, two different reaction time assessments, as well as a neuro cardiovascular assessment and strength assessments. So this was a very comprehensive, as the title said, very comprehensive test that they were giving to people who reported having brain fog. And here was the results that the study found that 65% of the of the participants reported having brain fog and that 97% reported fatigue as one of the symptoms of brain fog. About 50% said that they had difficulty finding words. This I highlighted in my own notes because after I had COVID, which I just had like a couple of months ago, I went almost four years without ever having COVID and I remember in the weeks after I could not think of words.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:Yes, Every so often, like when there was one word, I was like and you know how you get that sense that the word was on your tip of your tongue. Yeah, I didn't even have that. It was like. I know there's a word out there for that, but I don't know what it is right now.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was kind of scary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I bet, I bet.
Speaker 1:But that was really the only, and so because I had heard that and I knew, that other people. I wasn't freaked out by it, because typically I would be, but I was like this must be the brain fog that people talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Could not think of a word multiple times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's scary.
Speaker 1:Another interesting part of this study was that participants with brain fog had lower max grip strength compared to other participants. Here's why I find this very fascinating. Here's why I find this very fascinating. Grip strength is one of the top two physical indicators of longevity. The better a person's grip strength is, the longer life they are predicted to lead. The same is true of maximum leg strength. Those are the top two indicators, and so it's very interesting that if someone has brain fog, which is neurochemical or there's a neuro issue happening there, it's somehow affecting their physical strength. I don't understand the correlation.
Speaker 2:And specifically their grip.
Speaker 1:Specifically their grip strength. But that's what they were testing Because, when we look at what they did, they had gait assessments that they completed as well as strength assessments and so but even it said, mean velocities were significantly lower for all three gait assessments. For participants with brain fog, like there was a physical manifestation of the mental fog they were experiencing.
Speaker 2:That's crazy.
Speaker 1:And they had higher, it took them longer to react to things in the reaction assessment. So all of this to say why are we saying this? What is brain fog? While brain fog shows itself in some of these problem-solving inabilities forgetfulness, forgetting words, things like that, words, things like that there can also be a very real physical manifestation of these neurological symptoms that are happening inside of our brains.
Speaker 1:There was another study done in 2022 what is Brain Fog? And there was an analysis of qualitative data describing brain fog. Okay, now, this test is absolutely fascinating because what they did is they took 717 different posts that people had made online where they talked about having brain fog. 141 of the 717 first person descriptions included. These were the kinds of things that they were saying. They were saying that they were suffering from forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating, dissociative phenomena so dissociative phenomena meaning like I felt like I was having an experience that I wasn't fully in my body when I was having it Perceived cognitive slowness and excessive effort. It took them more effort to get things done than it normally did, they were having difficulty communicating and there was a feeling of fuzziness, grogginess or pressure in their head. Now, this post was done on Reddit.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh.
Speaker 1:Reddit is not necessarily a great generalization of the normal population.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. Not at all. It's a scary place.
Speaker 1:It's a scary place to be. So I don't know that we can take the next part of this very real and sophisticated research study that was done in the neural neurosurgical psychiatric journal Like it was done in a reputable source. But the most common causal attributions that they said were associated with brain fog. The first one was long COVID, so this one we are like we've been saying that we understand that one. But the second one was withdrawal from recreational drugs. Now, I don't know that the majority of the general public is going to struggle with withdrawal from recreational drugs, maybe smoking, but other than that like this probably won't be what our listeners are typically doing. But other things like psychiatric disorders, they said was caught, was causally correlated with these feelings of brain fog. Ssris and then performances of self-pleasure let's put it that way were one of the other items that was associated with brain fog. When I went over this with our research assistant, I was like Alina, it makes sense that this is from Reddit. Let's just put it that way. It makes sense that this is from Reddit.
Speaker 1:It totally checks out. Overall, though, the goal was to determine what sort of experiences people were talking about when they said that they were having brain fog forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating, disassociation, communication difficulties, a feeling of fuzziness and feeling slower in your cognitive performance. So if you've been feeling that way, then there is hope. Is there a way to screen for brain fog? Because a specific cause of brain fog is not known. We know that people have had it after COVID, when they're withdrawing from different drugs and things like that. We know that it happens after certain, after people go through certain things, but people don't necessarily have to go through those things in order to experience brain fog. So the actual reason that brain fog happens isn't exactly known and so it's difficult to actually like test for it is the bottom line. So is there an actual test for brain fog? The answer is no.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of different ideas of what could be causing brain fog. One of the ideas is it's because of a post acute infection. So after you have something like COVID, it's the effects of that high amount of inflammation in your body, Also chronic neuroinflammation. So also during COVID, a lot of people were talking about cytokines and like the cytokine storms and different things like that. We do know that cytokines are a way that or cytokines signal that there is leakage into the brain through a damaged blood brain barrier that can activate through the central nervous system and so prolonged or over activation of the immune system like if someone is sick for several weeks with something like the flu or a cold or COVID could activate this part of the brain and release more and more cytokines that lead to this like cytokine storm that people would call it, and that can lead to this brain fog happening, because there's a lot happening in the brain to deal with all of this inflammation. But it can also happen in early brain development because of maternal inflammation. It can also happen from being in the ICU or getting chemotherapy. Those have been known to be associated with brain fog and then chronic stress could also lead to it, because stress suppresses the immune system and can lead to pro-inflammatory changes, glucocorticoids and can damage hippocampal cells.
Speaker 1:All of this to say there's a lot of different things that could cause brain fog and there's only a few ways to screen for it. There's a cognition scale and some different things, but honestly there's not really a lot and there's a brain fog scale that's out there, but it's not really used a lot either. Really, probably the best way to do it is self-reported claims of brain fog. So all of this to say what are the treatment options, what can you do if you feel like you are experiencing brain fog?
Speaker 1:There's not one proven way to treat brain fog because, as we said before, brain fog is a term that can encompass many different types of symptoms and things that could be happening in a person, and the reasons that they might be experiencing brain fog can all be very different. But there are four key strategies that we can use if we feel like we're suffering from brain fog in order to think clearly again, and those four things that we will break down further are as follows sleep, healthy diet, exercise and taking mental breaks. So, really, all of this to say everything that we typically talk about on the it Starts With Attraction podcast is a great answer to heal from brain fog.
Speaker 2:I feel like everything always goes back to sleep it always goes back to sleep.
Speaker 1:It's the key to everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and suddenly the feeling of guilt rushes all over me yeah, guilty, how's your sleep doing Jason? Oh, last night it was really bad, why? Well, at the time of recording it is March Madness. Uh-huh. There was a game last night that went into overtime, uh-huh, and I got very into it, uh-huh.
Speaker 1:You got riled up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I might have had some caffeine to try and stay awake to finish watching the game.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, uh, that's why.
Speaker 1:That's why.
Speaker 2:So I'm running on four hours right now oh my gosh, according to my whoop and like two hours of actual, like good sleep.
Speaker 1:That is akin to being drunk. I just want to put that out there for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am, I think I am. Now that we're talking about all this stuff, I do think I might be experiencing a little bit of brain fog right now.
Speaker 1:You know, now that we talk about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, I am drinking coffee.
Speaker 1:That's what this is, and it is 3 pm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's 3 pm.
Speaker 1:Sleep Improved sleep helps brain fog. Healthy diet, exercise and taking mental breaks. So let's talk about mental breaks. So mental breaks can help improve cognition. There was a study done in 2016 titled A Walk Down the Lane Gives Wings to your Brain.
Speaker 2:What a name.
Speaker 1:This is when researchers try and get really cute with their study names, because it's their only outlet to creativity. Is what they name their studies.
Speaker 2:It's like a poem.
Speaker 1:It is Restorative Benefits of Rest Breaks on Cognition and Self-Control. 68 participants were in this study, had an average age of 21, and the study aimed to determine does rest improve performance and is active rest, such as walking, better than passive rest, such as watching a video? What do you think, Jason?
Speaker 2:I'm going to take a guess and say that active rest is probably better.
Speaker 1:It's probably better. So participants were asked to indicate whether the answer to a math problem was correct or not via a test on a computer and they completed what's called the Dundee Stress State Questionnaire, which assesses engagement, distress and worry. So participants were divided into two groups. One was a continuous work group, so this group was required to work through the entire test. They were given 900 trials of a test without being given a break. That's a lot. The other group was the rest break group, so this group was given the opportunity to take a three-minute break after 300 and 600 trials. The break was either active so this was kind of broken into two more groups from there. It was either active, where they did a three-minute walk, or it was passive, where they watched a three-minute educational video. Half of this group had a walk and then watched the video on breaks one and two. The other half started with a video for break one and walked for break two.
Speaker 1:So here's what the results found the response time increased for the rest break group. So of the participants that were given a break throughout their 900 trials, their response time increased. In their trials the benefit of rest was more pronounced for hard arithmetic than for easy arithmetic. So the people who were even given harder questions, harder math questions, their rest time showed even better effect, even with the hard questions, than the people who just had easy questions, and even furthermore, the combined effects of rest time and time at work are more pronounced for high versus low workload. So here's what that means the more your workload is, the more important it is for you to actually have rest in your work time, because it leads to better outcomes. Now, interestingly, the results were similar for either kind of rest.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 1:I don't like that result. I would continue to research that one because it seems to me that taking the walk break would be so much better than just sitting and watching an educational video after doing 300 trialed math questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like if you gave me an educational video to watch after that, I feel like it would just make me sleepy.
Speaker 1:But you know what I think? That's the thing. I think that I don't think that any participant concentrated, but you know what I think? That's the thing I don't think that any participant concentrated.
Speaker 1:I don't think the goal was to watch the educational video and retain the thing. Most people want to just push through, push through for an hour, two hours maybe, till the end of the day, have the mindset of like I'll sleep when I'm dead, I'll play when I'm done. But it's so much better for cognition, for mental clarity, to actually take some of those breaks.
Speaker 2:Well, and if you go for the active rest option, you're killing two birds with one stone. That's right, because you're getting your exercise, that's right, and you're taking a mental break, and if you go outside for it, oh my gosh, you're getting sunlight. You could just do all of them.
Speaker 1:You'll be a new person. You'll come back like Superman. Another point is that the antidepressant Welbutrin could also possibly relieve symptoms of brain fog and, of course, not a prescribing doctor, so you would need to talk with your healthcare provider about that. But there does seem to be from a 2023 study asking if Welbutrin or Bupropion which is the generic name for it, which is the generic name for it looking at if it can help treat COVID-19-induced brain fog, and it looks like there is some positive benefit there that one patient who was given 150 milligrams of extended release Wellbutrin once daily had a rapidly improved mood, attention, mental energy and focus, and that continued to improve even as the dose was increased. So and then there was another case of a 25-year-old African-American female who also had symptoms of depression with an inability to focus, who felt easily distracted, poor short-term memory, who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 three months earlier, was put on Welbutrin 150 milligrams once daily and after one month said all of her cognitive symptoms had completely resolved. So if you feel like you're really struggling with brain fog, then that may be something that you want to go and speak with one of your healthcare providers about.
Speaker 1:Another thing when we talk about diet and the things that we eat. That might help us to be able to think more clearly. There's actually a flavonoid called luteolin I think that's how we're going to pronounce it and it's a flavonoid that exists in fruits, vegetables and medicinal herbs. It's been looked at for potential for cancer prevention and therapy. It's been used historically in Chinese medicine but this was looking at a 2008 study in the current cancer drug targets journal that was looking at this and it has been found to have anti-inflammatory, anti-allergy and anti-cancer properties. This flavonoid, latilin, is found in celery, parsley, broccoli, onion leaves which I've never eaten, but hey, they're there carrots, peppers, cabbage, apple skins and chrysanthemum flowers, which I didn't know you could eat, but apparently you can. And so this flavonoid another study was done on it in 2021, looking at long COVID brain fog and chemo fog, what they were calling it and the review of the literature on these two different flavonoids found that both flavonoids latilin and quercetin, have broad antiviral properties that inhibit entry of a virus into host cell, into host cells, inhibit neuroinflammation and reduce cognitive decline. Furthermore, latilin better penetrates into the brain, inhibits both micro microglia and mast cells and has been reported to reduce neuroinflammation and cognitive dysfunction, including Alzheimer's disease, in humans and in animal models.
Speaker 1:However, one should be aware of the fact that luteolin is now present in numerous dietary supplements with misleading names like luteolin complex, and widely varies in the source content and purity varies in the source content and purity. So here would be my key takeaway on this I am always wary of supplements, because supplements are types of drugs, even though you might not have to have a prescription for them. There are many supplements that affect many different areas of our body. I mean even something like melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone and even though you can buy it over the counter in America, you can't buy it over the counter in many other countries. But even though you can buy it over the counter in America, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea to take it, because it's a hormone and you are messing with a hormonal cycle when you add in melatonin. So that is an example.
Speaker 1:So with this the flavonoid latilin I always go first to getting as much as you can from maximizing including these items in your diet. So if you're struggling with brain fog, eat more celery, more broccoli. You can eat more parsley if you want. I absolutely despise parsley, I can't stand it. But if you love it. You go for that. But celery, broccoli, carrots, peppers, cabbages, eat fruits and vegetables, apples with the skin on them. These are the things that can help to naturally bring this into your diet and hopefully help you with symptoms of brain fog. So what is something else that can improve brain fog? Water consumption I love, I love drinking more water, definitely a fan of being well hydrated, and we actually have an episode coming up on a future it starts with attraction show where we talk about hydration, electrolytes and caffeine, so be on the lookout for that.
Speaker 1:But there was a study done in 2022 looking at brain fog and 15 participants that actually also had confirmed neuropathic POTS. So POTS is postural tachycardia syndrome or tachycardia syndrome that can be associated from not getting enough water, and a lot of teenagers and adolescents have actually been diagnosed with POTS after getting COVID, and so this was a really interesting study. I actually have a good friend who has a granddaughter who was diagnosed with POTS after having COVID, so this one hit very close to home. Here's what participants did in this study there were 15 participants that had confirmed diagnoses of POTS, and then there were 15 healthy control subjects that were in this study. This was a pretty comprehensive study that these 30 total people went through. They were given a depression inventory, a sleep quality index, a short-form health survey. They gave their heart rate and their blood pressure. Those items were recorded.
Speaker 1:They had an electrocardiogram taken of them and then they completed cognitive tests, and these tests were 15 minutes in duration. They required maintaining attention on a very mentally demanding activity for a sustained period of time, and it was testing their working memory as well as their selective attention and sustained attention. And so there were four stimuli that were present on a monitor color, shape, size and filling. And a target stimulus occurs whenever it matches the preceding stimulus in either color or shape. So these things were changing on the screen all of the time and the person had to pay attention and then say what it was that was on the screen.
Speaker 1:After they did this, the participants plasma levels were taken so that they could measure norepinephrine and epinephrine, and participants completed the first round of testing while they were laying down in a supine position. They were given a five-minute break and then they repeated the rest upright, so they had like these mixtures of whether they were laying down or standing up and then they were given five minutes to recover and then they were given mineral water. This is a very comprehensive test that these people were given. Sometimes I just look at these and think how did the researchers come up with how they did all of this? And then they repeated doing this, whether in a supine or upright position. So ultimately, here's what they ended up finding out, and the reason they were probably doing this supine and upright is because when someone has POTS, being upright and having high levels of stress puts stress on their heart and can lead to fainting.
Speaker 1:It can lead to heart issues and things like that.
Speaker 1:So here's what they found. The results found that patients with POTS experienced more symptoms of orthostatic intolerance and more difficulty concentrating than the healthy subjects, and after the water intake patients had significantly less symptoms overall and specifically less difficulty concentrating than during having their head up, than before they drank the water. Norepinephrine increased during the head up tilt, where they were upright, in patients with pots and healthy subjects before and after the water intake. So it was more noticeable, and it was more noticeable with the patients who had pots, and only those who had pots had lower norepinephrine concentration during the head up tilt after water intake compared to before the water intake. So what does all of this mean? It looks like water and in this study they were specifically using mineral water was helpful in balancing what was going on inside the body and inside the brain, to where people were having less symptoms of stress, less symptoms of mental difficulty, less heart symptoms that were going on, because the water was able to help kind of even out what was going on. All that to say, drink water.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am terrible at this, I can't tell you. The last time I had like a glass or a bottle of water.
Speaker 1:You know, my mom called me last night, two nights ago. She called me Saturday night and she said Kimberly, I am feeling really clammy and I feel like my vision's getting blurry, and this was like six o'clock at night.
Speaker 1:She was like I don't know what's going on, but I have not had the first drink of water yet today. And I said, okay, let's start there. What I want you to do is take a 16 ounce glass of water and just drink it over the next 10 minutes. And she said, well, can I just gulp it down? I was like, sure, gulp it down, Like just drink some water. And she'd only had coffee. She said, but I've had two cups of coffee all day.
Speaker 1:Like this is all you've had, all you've had. No wonder you're feeling clammy and like, feel like you can't and feel like you have blurry vision. Now come to find out she like took her glasses off and she's like well, my vision may be blurry because my glasses are dirty. Ok, let's just. Let's just chill for a minute. You're probably highly anxious because all you've had is coffee and no, not any water. So within 15 minutes she's like oh, I feel so much better, I'm gonna keep drinking water.
Speaker 2:Oh, miss alice, it's like a wonder drug. Yeah, water yeah it can solve so many things yeah, I mean I'm sure I guess one way to look at it is it almost like flushes out a lot of things? Um, and so I I get that it makes sense that this would help brain fog. Um, I don't know the direct correlation that it has with, like, brain chemicals with drinking water, but obviously there are some correlation that that leads it to, uh, I guess, to work and to help flush some of that stuff out.
Speaker 1:Well, water has pH in it. It has electrolytes in it. You can add electrolytes to it as well, but I mean, our body also runs on water so we, and just normal day-to-day life like you, sweat out or you know excrete water and so it's important to refill. It's like you can live on water longer than you can. You cannot live without water.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You can live longer without food than without water, but it's the one thing that so many people I mean, you're not the only one so many people are like I don't drink enough water.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you're probably habitually slightly dehydrated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how much water would you recommend drinking per day?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm sure we'll talk about this in the hydration episode, but I would recommend drinking. There's there's a formula. I don't know it off the top of my head, but I know for me personally, I I should drink at least 80 ounces a day.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So it has something to do kind of. The one off the top of my head that I've used before is take your weight and divide it in two and then maybe add another 10 ounces.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And then, for every 15 minutes you work out, you should add another four ounces.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So that would be another 16 ounces over an hour of working out.
Speaker 2:That makes sense. Good formula, we'll roll with that.
Speaker 1:We'll roll with that, but this is another reason I don't love the 75 hard because, it, it, they say, to drink a gallon of water every day, which is 126 ounces.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm talking about drinking like 80 ounces, maybe 90 ounces. They're wanting me to drink 130, basically. So like 40, 40 more ounces and you can drink too much to where you'll just start throwing up or have an imbalance in your body of the minerals and and electrolytes. So don't drink too much, but honestly I don't. I think that if you listen to your body, you won't drink too much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, if you're like trying to force that much water down, exactly, exactly. Got it.
Speaker 1:The other thing we've talked about with helping brain fog is exercise. Exercise can enhance cognition. Thing we've talked about with helping brain fog is exercise Exercise can enhance cognition. There was a study done in 2012 in the Journal of Neuroscience that looked at 75 healthy young adults between the ages of 18 and 36 who led a sedentary lifestyle. So this was defined as having not engaged in 20 minutes or more of purposeful physical activity more than two times a month over the previous six months. I would say that's pretty, that's pretty sedentary. So participants visited the lab twice, with four weeks between visit one and visit two. So this happened over one month. They underwent genetic screening, they did saliva samples and then they also completed a physical ability questionnaire that included questions about the participants perceived ability to walk, to jog, to run, how much distance they thought they could cover if they were to do those activities and things like that. They were given a novel object recognition task, so it tested their visual recognition and memory ability. They were given a stated anxiety scale. They did a depression inventory, a perceived stress scale and a positive and negative affect scale called the PANAS. This is very common in a lot of studies. In the first phase, participants passively viewed 50 different images that showed up on a screen. In the second phase, participants completed mental health surveys and questionnaires and then, in the final phase, participants completed the recognition memory task. So that was the three different phases they completed in visit one and in visit two.
Speaker 1:During the four weeks between lab visits, participants were required to go to the gym at least four times a week and walk or jog continuously on a treadmill for a minimum of 30 minutes at a minimum speed of 3.5. That's booking it. I do a treadmill multiple times a week and if I'm doing my like zone two, walking on my incline treadmill, I'm setting the incline at like eight, eight and a half to 10 at times, but I'm doing it like three to 3.2, 3.5. Once you get to four you're jogging. 3.5 is a very. It's a pretty brisk walk so you're doing this.
Speaker 1:For people who've never worked before, this is fascinating. So, uh, they were. They had to go to the gym four times a week and do this Walk pretty briskly 30 minutes four times a week. So here's what ended up happening. One group was required to exercise on the final day of the four-week experiment, at least two weeks, or at least two hours before visiting the lab. And then the other group was not required to exercise on the day of the second visit. So they kind of split. They all did the same thing, but then they were split into groups.
Speaker 1:One group did their final exercise the day they came in, the other group didn't. And then there was an exercise control group. So there was a third group who was instructed to maintain the same level of physical activity they had engaged in for the previous six months, but also to exercise once on the final day of the study. So they weren't exercising much ever, but they exercised that day. And then there was a fourth group, the no exercise control group, who was instructed to not work out, to just maintain the same level of physical activity over the past six months. So here was the to not work out, to just maintain the same level of physical activity over the past six months. So here was the results the group, the no exercise control group, and the group who did not exercise, who had been exercising over the past month but did not exercise the day that they came in to give their results. Their accuracy decreased significantly during the second visit compared to their first visit on their memory test, on their object recognition task test. So the people who did not exercise that day both groups who did not exercise that day performed poorer. The group that exercised, had been exercising over the past four weeks and was the only group that indicated improvement from visit one to visit two.
Speaker 1:When it came to the recognition task, the memory test saw an increase in perceived stress, which is not a good thing. You don't want an increase. Here was the group that did not work out over the past month but worked out that day. They were the only group who saw an increase in perceived stress. And then the group that had been working out over the past four weeks and worked out the day of the test showed a higher difference in their score compared to any of the other groups. So their perceived stress was lower than any of the other groups. Now, jason, why do you think that the only group who saw an increase in perceived stress was the group that worked out just that day?
Speaker 2:Because they hadn't been working out like regularly, right? Right, Like their body had it hasn't been going through the stress of working out. Is that? Is that why?
Speaker 1:I'm asking.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I don't know why I mean I would. I would think that because they're not working out on a like a daily routine, they're only working out that day, that their body is just not used to the stress, and that's the reason for the, the increase in perceived stress that day.
Speaker 1:I have a bias here because it has been a long time yeah. Because it has been a long time yeah, 15 years since I have gone even a few days without working out. So I don't remember what it's like to not work out and then work out on one day Because it would seem like the workout, even if you were new to it, would decrease stress. That's how I would view it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm trying to think of when I've done that and I feel like you're right.
Speaker 1:And I would feel like the person. I would feel like the group of people that should have the biggest increase in perceived stress is the group who didn't work out at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But they aren't the ones who had an increase. They probably just had a stability in their stress levels. They probably had no change from one to the next.
Speaker 2:I wonder if it has anything to do with cause I don't think this is mentioned. How close together the, the acute exercise control group, exercised uh to their visit, so like how long in between? I wonder if they're.
Speaker 1:It was probably two hours before. It was probably similar to the group that was the other group that was instructed to exercise.
Speaker 2:Interesting. I wonder, I don't know. I wonder if, like the, that feeling of accomplishment or however you want to describe it, of working out, if it had diminished after that two hour period maybe, and that's when they started experiencing that perceived stress, whereas if you've been doing it for on a routine, that feeling doesn't really go away, or at least it doesn't turn into perceived stress.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Does that make sense? I don't know.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm these are all the hypotheses, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm just grasping at straws here.
Speaker 1:Well, no, you are taking the mindset of a researcher and thinking through what the possibilities could be. State anxiety was lower. So state anxiety as opposed to trait anxiety. Trait anxiety means, like you tend to have the trait of anxious. This would be me. You tend to be a person who is anxious about many things all the time. That would be trait anxiety versus state anxiety.
Speaker 1:Being on a day-to-day basis, you may not normally be anxious, but on a particular day you are. On. Another day you may not be. So state anxiety was lower on exercise days compared to no exercise days Makes total sense to me. Positive mood was higher and this is overall. Positive mood was higher on exercise days versus no exercise days, which makes total sense to me. And the finding of exercise having a beneficial effect on memory for the group that was working out for four days a week for four weeks and the day of the final test could mean that the effect was due to a single bout of exercise on the testing day. But then there was also the group who didn't work out for the entire month but worked out the day of the test, who also exercised on the final day of the testing, but they did not exhibit significant effects of exercise on recognition memory. So all of this led to the results. The conclusion that exercise is important for cognition, it's important for anxiety, it's important for positive mood and it can help you to remember things overall.
Speaker 2:I think the this is going back to that perceived stress. I think, after reading, the positive mood was higher on exercise days versus no exercise days. Reading that, I think I think what goes back to this perceived stress for that one group is I think it's their body that's being under so much stress because they're not used to it because they're, if they had a positive mood after working out, even though they didn't the previous three or four days, um, and only on the day of the visit it had to be.
Speaker 2:their body is what is under the perceived stress, Surely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I would. I think that's a really good point. I'd want to see the questions of that test, the perceived stress scale. But and you know, part of it could be if they worked out that day, they and they were working out in a gym with other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if they were comparing themselves and were like there's a lot of variables in this. Oh, there's a ton of variables.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very much. A ton of a ton of variables, whereas if you've been doing it for four days up to this point, yeah. Every week that you're kind of just used to it, your body gets used to it, your mind gets used to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's for sure, very true. And you know, a couple of weeks ago, at the gym that I go to the, there was a workout program that day. That was, um, it was a one to 10. So you started with one rep, or no, it was 10 to one. You started with 10 reps of each of the exercise and every round you went down nine, eight, seven and then, and so it was like bike calories, box jumps, med ball slams, uh, walking lunges, like weighted walking lunges, and then at the end of every round was 50 single jump reps. Why am I telling you all this? This exercise, or this, this entire, like this whole workout, was so mentally demanding because of all, like you had to remit, you could not talk to someone.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You could not get out of the zone and it was timed and I saw other people's times on the board and I knew I had to beat them.
Speaker 2:Here we go.
Speaker 1:So I was like okay, and I was like getting the highest box, I was loading up my walking lunge and and so I was just in this zone of like 10, 10, 10, 10, nine, nine, that at the end of the workout I mean I was completely obliterated when it came to like my strength I was done, I was, I had given it all that I had, but my mind I felt like I had just done a 30 minute meditation.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:I kid you not. I was like I was so in the here and now to take a Dr Lieberman term. I was so in the here and now for 30 minutes that I feel amazing in the here and now for 30 minutes that I feel amazing Mentally. I was like the freshest I'd been in months. Wow, I was like I need to do this workout every single week. It was amazing.
Speaker 2:How long? How long did that feeling last?
Speaker 1:Like the day, really yeah.
Speaker 2:Interesting Like the day, really, yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it felt like a 30 minute meditation. Yeah, because it was. It was a 30 minute mindfulness training. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:My mind could not go anywhere, but what I was doing. Yeah, and it sucked, but it was amazing.
Speaker 2:Obviously yeah.
Speaker 1:At the same time, I recommend it. Okay, here's another point. Going back to sleep and why sleep matters. For brain fog. Lack of sleep contributes to difficulty in sustained attention. Are you following along? That's your lack of sleep lead, yeah, yeah. 2019 study titled Sleep Deprivation Increases the Cost of Attentional Effort, performance, preference and Pupil Size. Here we go 26 participants, average age of 22. Two experimental sessions were conducted one week apart. During rested wakefulness, participants came into the lab in the evening and were given nine hours of sleep opportunity.
Speaker 2:That sounds so good right now.
Speaker 1:I bet it does In sleep deprivation. Participants came to the lab and were kept awake all night. I would love to know how they kept these participants awake all night. If I was the tech, the research tech, that was responsible and that was my job, there would be a lot of NSYNC music.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 1:I'd be teaching them bye, bye, bye, we would have a fun time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your definition of fun in mind, completely different.
Speaker 1:Keep them awake.
Speaker 2:I know you just said you'd have a fun time.
Speaker 1:It would be a fun time.
Speaker 2:For you.
Speaker 1:For me it would be so much fun yeah.
Speaker 1:In the sleep deprivation stage, participants performed hourly vigilance tests and sleepiness ratings. If I were the participant in this I would fail horribly. The first test that they were given, or the first task that they were given, was a motivated vigilance test. So they were instructed to find a dot that was on a screen, I believe and respond as quickly as they could to where that dot was. And they had three chances each hour that they were given this and they could earn money for how well they did. So they could earn up to 15 cents, which isn't a ton, but that's because there's not a lot of money in research for each for the highest reward that they could get, and the lowest reward would just be one penny. And pupil size was continuously monitored throughout that task. Then there was a discounting task and participants indicated whether they wanted to do a performance of short duration of a psychomotor vigilance test for a small amount of money or a longer duration for a large amount of money. So they kind of got to pick which they wanted to do for a psychomotor, got to pick which they wanted to do for a psychomotor. So like hands touching things like that. And here's what the results found.
Speaker 1:Poorer performance during sleep deprivation was characterized by more lapses and slower response speeds. So it's not brain science to know that the people who were sleep deprived were going to report were going to perform very poorly. But the reason they performed poorly is because they got answers wrong more often, they lapsed in their judgment and they had slower response speeds. They couldn't find the dot on the screen as quickly as other people. But better performance accompanied higher reward.
Speaker 1:As we know, sleep deprivation effect was more pronounced in low reward runs compared to high reward runs. So they were actually. The way that this happened is they were actually told beforehand. This is like for everyone you get right it's a penny, for everyone you get right is 15 cents. That's what they were told, and they actually did better when the stakes were lower than when the stakes were higher. So in a sleep deprived state, reward motivation can partially alleviate sleep deprived related performance decline by actually oh no, no, no. It's the opposite of that. Sleep deprived effect was more pronounced in lower reward, meaning that the higher the reward was, they did better on it, even when they were sleep deprived. That makes sense, right.
Speaker 2:I think so.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:More motivation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, reward led to improved performance without causing a speed accuracy tradeoff Interesting causing a speed accuracy trade-off Interesting. Performance declined with time on task in all conditions, but the decline was steeper in the sleep deprived group, of course. Compared to the people who were rested, wakefulness and the sleep deprived people, their pupil diameter was modulated in a value-based manner. What does that mean? It suggests that participants could deliberately regulate their arousal levels to meet the task goals because the sleep deprived people had a high variability in pupil diameter over time. This is likely what they. This is likely what happened when the higher reward task was given before them. They likely did this. They likely opened up their eyes bigger so that they could focus more, and there might even be like a neurological like cause they're puke. It wasn't just that they were like opening their eyes more to get more light in, but there might've even been a part in their brain that was like you need to focus on this.
Speaker 2:And you reward, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you don't have the mental facilities to do it. So we're going to open your eyes even more, isn't that fascinating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1:It's really fascinating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the toxic side of me wants to believe that I would be such an outlier in this because you'd perform really well. Yeah, and I would just kill all of this. I mean just I think I would, as I have bags under my eyes right now from four hours of sleep four hours of sleep.
Speaker 1:Last night there was another study that was done which again gave a lot of the vigilance tests, different things like that and ultimately what it found was that significant there was a significant decrease in number of hours slept, with poorer performance on any kind of vigilance test psychomotor vigilance test and those who had the greatest decrease in hours slept also presented poorer performance in attention test. Meaning poor sleep means poor performance. But this is so true. Your whoop tells you this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't defy the laws of the human body by thinking that you can just discipline your body into not sleeping.
Speaker 2:that's not the way that it works yeah, and I love that the whoop gives you the like the almost a sleep tax, almost like the like how much sleep debt? That's what it is, because like maybe okay, one night, whatever, like if I just had four hours of sleep last night and then tonight I got eight hours and then eight hours and then eight hours, I would be fine. But the more that you get like very poor sleep, the worse this is going to be yeah, but you know you can't actually ever pay that debt off.
Speaker 2:What do you mean?
Speaker 1:It's not like you can go monday through friday with crap sleep and then on saturday sleep in and make up all the sleep. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm just saying if you were to do it one day right. Then you could catch up the next day, right. But if you're doing this consistently, you're not going to be able to catch up up. Like you said, on a saturday, just staying in. That's not how it works. You've already done the damage at that point right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's 100 right. So you can't be like, oh, I'm just gonna sleep 12 hours and make up for the fact I haven't gotten, or that I've lost three hours of sleep four nights in a row because you know, the week I would have gotten the same amount of sleep is not how it works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:So sleep is important. So what are the key takeaways? Brain fog is a myriad of symptoms. It can range from forgetfulness to having difficulty finding words, to feeling just foggy, like you can't really focus clearly. There's a lot of different things that it could be. There are some medicines out there, such as Welbutrin, that, if you're really struggling with brain fog, you may want to speak with one of your doctors about and see if that could be a good idea for you. But other than that, there are really four main things that we can do to improve our symptoms if we feel like we're struggling with brain fog. The first one is improved sleep.
Speaker 1:We want to make sure that we are giving ourselves at least seven to nine hours of time in bed, so not just the time that you're asleep, which is important, but also the time that you like. I know that I need eight hours of sleep and therefore I need nine hours in bed to get my eight hours of sleep, because of the time it's going to take me to fall asleep, because of the time it's going to take me in the middle of the night when I wake up and toss and turn. That's what I know I need to do, so a lot of people will say, well, I don't have all that time, I don't have all this time to go and find nine hours to be in bed or eight hours to be in bed, make time. If every other part of your life, every other part your relationships, your work, your physical health, your mental health, if all of the things depend on you getting enough sleep, then this is something you need to make the time for. And you may be saying but I'm a new mom, I understand, and your sleep may not look right now, in this season of your life as a new mom, this may be the one caveat that's out there. It may not be because you have a baby that's waking up and needing feeding and things like that. Throughout the night, you may not be able to get a straight through eight to nine hours of sleep, but it's even more important that you find those times during the day to nap, when the baby naps, because that will allow you to work and function at the highest level that you possibly can.
Speaker 1:Here's what I know to be true. There is a reason. Whether you are a Christian or not, what I'm about to say applies to everyone. As a Christian, in the Bible, one of the things that I see over and over again. I mean from Genesis all the way into the New Testament, especially the book of Hebrews, talking about how we are not made to work like robots or machines. We are meant to rest.
Speaker 1:From the beginning, we were told that we should take a day every week to Sabbath to realize that the work that we do isn't on us and that it is God that allows all good things to happen. And the way that we can recenter ourselves to believe that, to rely less on us and more on God, is through rest, and I fully believe that that includes sleep. That's one of the reasons that we can sleep, that we can turn off the work, that we can turn off all the crazy things happening in our life, that we can give time in the evening to rest and that we can actually get a good night's sleep every night and wake up the next day because we need the rest. It's a gift from God. There's not like, really, if you listen to a lot of sleep experts, many of them will say it doesn't make biological or evolutionary sense for humans to rest, because it is the time at night when we are most at risk of predators, of death, of things happening, because we will not know the the things that are coming for us when we're asleep. Why do we sleep? And there's a lot of great explanations out there for why our bodies need sleep, but no one can explain why we were actually made and designed or, as many people would say, evolved quote unquote to sleep, and I believe it's a gift of God. He has gifted us sleep and it's something that shows us where we don't have to perform and do all of the time, because he is taking care of us.
Speaker 1:Improved sleep One of the first things that you can do to help brain fog. Another one is healthy diet. We talked about even eating certain things like apples and broccoli and celery and parsley, if you like. It can help to overcome brain fog symptoms because of that flavonoid, lutein. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing it right, but that can really help to alleviate symptoms.
Speaker 1:Exercise improves mental and cognitive abilities.
Speaker 1:So being in a habit of exercising, especially in the morning or in the middle of your workday if that's a time that you find it's difficult to concentrate then that is a great time. Exercise is important and then taking mental breaks Maybe you take the premise that you work 50 minutes and then you take a mental break for 10. Do another 50 minute sprint, take a mental break for 10. It doesn't have to be that, but find something that works for you Ultimately.
Speaker 1:If you feel like you're trying to push through something although you can't really focus or concentrate on it, then maybe it's better for you to take a 10 to 15 minute break and come back to it with a fresh set of eyes and then a bonus one, which we didn't talk about too much in depth on this one, but meditation and mindfulness, these could be two premises that you begin to incorporate. That, again, can help rest your mind so that you can come back with fresh eyes and look at something in a different way, or at least in a more productive way, in order to help with brain fog. What are your takeaways, jason?
Speaker 2:Well, I think I'm going to go dump this coffee out.
Speaker 1:Good idea.
Speaker 2:Fill this cup up with water and go take a mental break.
Speaker 1:There you go. Share this episode with someone who could benefit from it. That's a great way to help the show grow and a great way to support the show as well. If you're watching on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button. And if you're listening on podcast, love our podcast listeners. It's my favorite way to consume content as well. Be sure that you're following the show so that you get updates automatically every time we drop a new episode. Until next week, stay strong.
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