Brain fog can be debilitating, but there currently are no treatment options that are approved for the condition.
Occasional brain fog is normal, especially when a person can identify a clear cause, such as being tired, having a cold, or family stress. However, people should see a doctor if: Brain fog regularly interferes with a person's ability to complete daily tasks.
Brain fog is a symptom that can be caused by stress, sleep changes, medications, and other factors. It can cause confusion, memory issues, and a lack of focus.
Getting adequate sleep can go a long way towards curing many cases of brain fog. There are several ways you can improve your sleep: Reduce your caffeine intake. We all seem to run on caffeine, and even though it wakes us up, it could contribute to insomnia, stress, anxiety, and even full-blown panic attacks.
When anxiety monopolizes the brain, other tasks suffer—including processing information, concentration, paying attention, and remembering. The result can feel like brain fog, a state that causes people to act spaced-out, distracted, or forgetful.
Brain fog in itself is not a mental health issue. However, it is very closely related to mental health as it can be both a symptom of common mental health conditions such as depression or stress, and a cause for others such as anxiety.
The good news is that the vast majority of patients with post-COVID-19 brain fog recover completely over the course of 6 to 9 months. There is a small segment of patients of all ages that experience brain fog persistently for up to 2 years (as of the time of blog post).
Because brain fog is a common symptom of anxiety and chronic stress, it needn't be a cause for concern. It will subside when the body's stress has returned to a healthy level.
Sixty-eight percent said they had headaches, and more than half said they had problems with loss of taste and smell, numbness or tingling, and muscle pain. Most were women, with an average age of 43. Less common symptoms included dizziness, blurred vision and tinnitus (ringing in the ears).
Dr. Hafeez explains that brain fog symptoms can include feeling tired, disoriented or distracted; forgetting about a task at hand; taking longer than usual to complete a task; and experiencing headaches, memory problems, and lack of mental clarity.
While spacing out can simply be a sign that you are sleep deprived, stressed, or distracted, it can also be due to a transient ischemic attack, seizure, hypotension, hypoglycemia, migraine, transient global amnesia, fatigue, narcolepsy, or drug misuse.
Brain fog can be a symptom of a nutrient deficiency, sleep disorder, bacterial overgrowth from overconsumption of sugar, depression, or even a thyroid condition. Other common brain fog causes include eating too much and too often, inactivity, not getting enough sleep, chronic stress, and a poor diet.
Sitting in front of a computer screen or looking at any other type of screen for extended periods of time can ultimately cause brain fog and vision problems, among other health issues because it changes the brain, both behaviorally and structurally.
Common causes of dizziness
migraine – dizziness may come on before or after the headache, or even without the headache. stress or anxiety – particularly if you tend to hyperventilate (breathe abnormally quickly when resting) low blood sugar level (hypoglycaemia) – which is usually seen in people with diabetes.
Sometimes brain fog is related to vestibular problems, such as dizziness and vertigo.
Overthinking is not a recognized mental disorder all by itself. However, research has found it's often associated with other mental health conditions, including: Depression. Anxiety disorders.
Overthinking is commonly associated with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), says Duke. GAD is characterized by the tendency to worry excessively about several things. “Someone can develop GAD due to their genes.
Overthinking is also often associated with mental health issues like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and borderline personality disorder. To break the habit, Carroll says a good first step is to take note of what triggers your overthinking.
In addition, medications originally designed for depression, the SSRIs (Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Lexapro, Effexor, Cymbalta, and others), are also capable of lowering the underlying level of anxiety which takes a lot of steam out of this phenomenon.
Are you always waiting for disaster to strike or excessively worried about things such as health, money, family, work, or school? If so, you may have a type of anxiety disorder called generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). GAD can make daily life feel like a constant state of worry, fear, and dread.
Spiraling negative thoughts can be a result of overthinking. This tends to happen when we have few distractions – which is why lying awake at night churning things over in our mind is a familiar feeling to many. At the time, negative thoughts may seem completely rational and logical. So we believe them to be true.
People who overthink tend to score high in the neurotic department. Neuroticism is one of the five big personality traits, along with openness, conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness. It's linked to anxiety, fear, moodiness, worry, envy and frustration.