Cognitive fog – however mild – may include difficulty thinking or concentrating, multi-tasking, forgetting words in the middle of conversations or starting a sentence and trailing off mid-way. If you or someone close to you is experiencing brain fog, speak to your GP (general practitioner) as soon as possible.
People may experience such things as forgetfulness, trouble concentrating, and confusion. Brain fog is also referred to as “brain haze” or “cog fog” — short for cognitive fog.
Although generally mild in most people with MS, brain fog symptoms can fluctuate. For example, brain fog has been found to worsen or improve depending on factors like a person's exhaustion levels, medications, and stress.
Does brain fog in MS go away? No, MS brain fog does not go away. It often stays the same or may worsen over time. However, it may come and go, and there are things people with MS can do to improve brain function or prevent it from getting worse.
What Does MS Feels Like? A lack of feeling or a pins-and-needles sensation can be the first sign of nerve damage from MS. It usually happens in your face, arms, or legs, and on one side of your body. It tends to go away on its own.
A common type of discomfort in MS is unpleasant, unusual sensations that appear to be in your skin, like numbness and tingling. They're caused by damage to nerves.
Cranial nerve damage or inflammation could contribute to a feeling of pressure in your head. The optic nerve relays visual messages to the CNS so inflammation or damage to or near it can cause blurred vision, double vision, loss of vision, and pain.
Brain fog is characterized by confusion, forgetfulness, and a lack of focus and mental clarity. This can be caused by overworking, lack of sleep, stress, and spending too much time on the computer.
Some examples of things a person might do because of brain fog include: forgetting about a task they had to complete. taking much longer than usual to complete simple tasks. feeling frequently distracted.
My brain goes fuzzy, I can't think clearly, my speech slurs and my eyesight goes. Swallowing becomes more difficult, my balance gets worse and my legs feel heavy and clumsy. Unlike the limits of normal, everyday tiredness, which may give a little when pushed against, MS fatigue can feel like a barrier.
How common are memory and thinking problems with MS? Somewhere between 4 and 7 in every 10 people with MS will experience some kind of changes in memory or thinking. Mostly, these changes are mild to moderate rather than severe. And not everyone with MS will experience cognitive difficulties.
Dextroamphetamine and amphetamine is a central nervous system stimulant. It is used off-label in MS for fatigue or to improve mental alertness for those with slowed processing, sometimes referred to as “cognitive fog.” Click here to read more about dextroamphetamine and amphetamine.
Exercise Your Body and Brain
One study found that 30 minutes of a heart-pumping activity three times a week leads to brain changes that may boost memory for people with the disease. But rest when you feel tired. Fatigue means more brain fog and can make other symptoms worse, too.
Some of the most common causes of brain fog include fibromyalgia, diabetes, depression, hypothyroidism, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer's disease.
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.
Vitamin B12
This results in poor oxygen flow to your body's organs and tissues, leading to brain fog-related symptoms like weakness and fatigue, along with much more serious neurological problems. Even if you don't develop anemia, B12 deficiency can cause confusion, memory troubles and depression.
It could feel like a dull head pain, with pressure or tenderness in and around the forehead. Unlike migraines, tension headaches generally don't cause nausea or vomiting. Milder tension headaches are more common in people who have had multiple sclerosis for many years.
MS dizziness and vertigo is likely to make you feel nauseous. Many people with MS experience symptoms related to digestion, including dyspepsia, which causes an uncomfortable feeling of fullness and bloating along with pain. Digestive problems can also lead to nausea. MS bowel problems can leave you feeling queasy.
Numbness of the face, body or extremities (arms and legs) is one of the most common symptoms of MS. It may be the first MS symptom you experienced.
These include fibromyalgia and vitamin B12 deficiency, muscular dystrophy (MD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), migraine, hypo-thyroidism, hypertension, Beçhets, Arnold-Chiari deformity, and mitochondrial disorders, although your neurologist can usually rule them out quite easily.
Some of the most common early signs are: fatigue (a kind of exhaustion which is out of all proportion to the task undertaken) stumbling more than before. unusual feelings in the skin (such as pins and needles or numbness)