Everyone spaces out from time to time. 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.
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 is the term used to describe the effects on the brain and nervous system that can occur with long COVID. Brain fog can last for weeks, months or longer after a person recovers from COVID-19 illness. It can linger when other symptoms have stopped.
This can be caused by overworking, lack of sleep, stress, and spending too much time on the computer. On a cellular level, brain fog is believed to be caused by high levels inflammation and changes to hormones that determine your mood, energy and focus.
While recovering from coronavirus (COVID-19), some people experience brain fog symptoms for a short time while others may experience brain fog for several months or longer. Speak to your GP if you're worried about your symptoms. Symptoms may vary and change over time.
Depending on your age, brain fog could be an early sign of Alzheimer's disease or dementia. It's important to remember that “brain fog” isn't a medical condition in itself. Rather, it refers to a set of symptoms that affect your ability to think, negatively affecting your work performance.
The feeling of your mind going blank under stress happens when hormones, such as cortisol, flood our systems. These hormones “invade the brain's pre-frontal cortex and the hippocampus, disrupting neuronal activity and our normal brain patterns”, explain olwcation.com.
Empty Feeling, feeling like your thoughts and emotions are empty and lifeless, is a common symptom of anxiety disorder, including anxiety and panic attacks, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Causes of balance problems include medications, ear infection, a head injury, or anything else that affects the inner ear or brain. Low blood pressure can lead to dizziness when you stand up too quickly.
The most common causes of imbalance without dizziness are related to dysfunction of the muscles, joints and peripheral nerves (proprioceptive system), or the central nervous system (brain). People with bilateral vestibulopathy have balance issues but no dizziness if the damage affects both ears at the same time.
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.
Bananas are a great source of potassium, manganese, vitamin C and fibre, but did you know they can also enhance memory? Studies show eating bananas help students learn more efficiently and improve exam scores.
Eggs are loaded with choline, a type of B-vitamin that can enhance memory and cognition. It's a component of phosphatidylcholine, a critical part of cell membranes, especially brain cells. To incorporate eggs into your meals, try deviled eggs, but mash the yolks with avocado instead of mayonnaise.
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.
Some common mental symptoms of anxiety include:
Having a sense of impending danger, panic or doom. Trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry. Having difficulty controlling worry. Having the urge to avoid things that trigger anxiety.
Brain fog can be a symptom of many illnesses, such as COVID-19 and autoimmune diseases like celiac disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and multiple sclerosis. However, it also occurs due to lifestyle factors, such as stress, burnout, lack of sleep, and hormonal changes during pregnancy and menopause.
Memory and other thinking problems have many possible causes, including depression, an infection, or medication side effects. Sometimes, the problem can be treated, and cognition improves. Other times, the problem is a brain disorder, such as Alzheimer's disease, which cannot be reversed.