What is Brain Fog?
If brain fog is not a medical condition, then what is it? Defining this phenomenon will help the medical community understand how to treat patients who complain about it, but even agreeing to a single definition, can be challenging.
So far, brain fog is considered to be a combination of various symptoms that include:
· Confusion
· Failure to organize or sustain a line of thought
· Difficulty focusing
· A general lack of ability to put thoughts into words
· Memory availability issues
As you can see, these symptoms are too broad.
What Causes Brain Fog?
There are a variety of medical conditions and diseases that can result in any of the symptoms above. The following conditions can cause what patients describe as brain fog:
· Trauma – If you hit your head, you might experience some of these symptoms
· Stress
· Hormonal changes
· Pregnancy – Pregnancy brain or mommy brain, generally involving difficulty focusing
· Menopause
· Multiple sclerosis
· Cancer treatment – Even cancer itself
· Chronic Fatigue Syndrome –CFS
· Depression
· Sleep deprivation
· Dietary issues
· Lupus
Covid Brain Fog
One of the diseases that is conspicuously absent from the list above is Covid-19. Long covid, or prolonged symptoms from the disease, include brain fog. This particular symptom is the reason interest in the term brain fog has increased significantly since April/May 2020.
The fight against covid brain fog is critical for those who are recovering from the disease and are eager to go back to work but cannot do so because brain fog impairs them.
Understanding What Causes Brain Fog in Each Case
Given that brain fog is such a difficult condition to define because it has so many symptoms in common with other medical conditions, and it is the result of a wide variety of different ailments, it is important to understand what caused it in order to combat it.
Researchers are still studying covid brain fog in patients who have had the disease and are now facing long-term consequences. To date, there has not been a significant breakthrough in this area.
In other cases, such as CFS, there seems to be no solution. Yet in other cases, like stress for example, there are a variety of actions a doctor and a patient can take to ameliorate the issue.
If you Have Brain Fog you Do Not Necessarily Have Covid
Stress is a particularly interesting point to analyze brain fog from. Due to the health crisis, many people have gotten long covid, but many others are particularly stressed due to a variety of factors:
· They fear the virus and suffer from anxiety
· Lockdowns and other measures have taken a toll on their finances
· Those same measures have hampered the social and family lives of many as well
These stressful conditions might cause brain fog. Arguably, people who suffer from stress-induced brain fog could even blame the virus, because the pandemic puts stress on us all. Therefore, people can get one of those long covid symptoms without contracting the virus, but still due to the pandemic.
Coping with Brain Fog
In any case, if you suffer from any of those brain fog symptoms – even if you are pregnant and consider the symptoms to be normal –you should consult with your doctor.
Covid or not, treat your brain fog as a symptom of an underlying condition which you do not necessarily know about. Allow the medical professionals to recommend the kind of tests you should run to find out why your brain is foggy and if there is a way to cope with it.
Finding the underlying condition is key in understanding how you can cope with brain fog and which kind of help you need to do so. Hopefully, your doctor will be able to help you cope with your brain fog after finding the underlying condition that is causing it, with prescription medicine, support groups, or even referring you to a psychologist or psychiatrist.
Our staff here at Antidote.ai will be more than pleased to help you with brain fog, no matter what has caused it.
