# 468. The psychology of brain fog

An episode of [The Psychology of your 20s](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1573710078), 12 Oct 2026, 36 min.

Audio: https://pdrl.fm/f842d9/podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/bc44988a-a82a-4291-ab8b-afdd01187fa8/684e8256-e6b3-434b-abf5-b4e1006c3495/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=39e2f432-53df-43b8-a7b9-afdd01187fc4

Brain fog is so much more than just feeling tired. It's that frustrating feeling of knowing what you want to say or do, but your brain simply won't cooperate. And whilst it's incredibly common, we're only just beginning to understand what actually causes it. Watch on Netflix: HERE In today's episode, we're breaking down the fascinating new research behind brain fog, including: • The three main causes of brain fog, from physical depletion to cognitive overload and neurological disruption • Why chronic stress, anxiety and mental load can leave your brain feeling exhausted • The surprising links between brain fog, inflammation, long COVID and gut health • Why women may be more susceptible to brain fog • The science of sleep, nutrition and the brain's natural cleaning system • What actually helps clear brain fog, beyond just drinking more water and getting more rest Extra links: Brain fog and trauma: HERE Brain fog and ADHD: HERE Brain fog and food: HERE The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:05] Speaker 1: Hello everybody, I'm Gemma Spake and welcome back to The
[0:09] Speaker 1: Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through
[0:12] Speaker 1: the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and
[0:17] Speaker 1: what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, welcome back
[0:27] Speaker 1: to the show, welcome back to the podcast. It is
[0:30] Speaker 1: so great to have you here back for another episode
[0:33] Speaker 1: of as we, of course, break down the psychology of
[0:36] Speaker 1: your 20s and beyond. Today, let's turn our research lens
[0:42] Speaker 1: onto brain fog. That's what I want to talk about today.
[0:45] Speaker 1: Brain fog seems like the name does not properly describe
[0:51] Speaker 1: how incredibly debilitating it can be. It is like a
[0:53] Speaker 1: big cloud that goes over your mind. And as much
[0:57] Speaker 1: as you want to be able to concentrate, want to
[1:00] Speaker 1: be able to get stuff done, want to be able
[1:03] Speaker 1: to string an intelligent sentence together, you can't. It can
[1:06] Speaker 1: last a few hours. It can last months, years. And
[1:10] Speaker 1: it is so common. It is a term we have
[1:13] Speaker 1: all heard before. And yet we still know, surprisingly, very
[1:18] Speaker 1: little about what actually causes it. When you actually go
[1:22] Speaker 1: looking through the research, you will notice this very interesting pattern,
[1:26] Speaker 1: which is that for years and years and years, there
[1:28] Speaker 1: was no research on it. And then suddenly there has
[1:31] Speaker 1: been this explosion of research on brain fog and the
[1:35] Speaker 1: link between gut inflammation, neuroinflammation, neurological disruption. Brain fog is
[1:42] Speaker 1: receiving a massive increase in research interest because of COVID
[1:48] Speaker 1: and because of long COVID. And that research has ended
[1:51] Speaker 1: up benefiting all these other people who are experiencing brain
[1:54] Speaker 1: fog for reasons that had nothing to do, nothing to
[1:57] Speaker 1: do with the virus and everything to do with so
[2:00] Speaker 1: many other factors. So today I want to explain those factors,
[2:04] Speaker 1: what actually causes brain fog, as we know of right now,
[2:07] Speaker 1: there is new research developing every single second, the history
[2:12] Speaker 1: of our understanding and knowledge of brain fog, and what
[2:16] Speaker 1: to actually do about it. If you have brain fog,
[2:19] Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard the regular things of exercise, drink
[2:23] Speaker 1: more water, meditate, stop drinking alcohol, we are only just
[2:28] Speaker 1: beginning to see that that is only the beginning. There
[2:29] Speaker 1: is so much more that can be done and so
[2:32] Speaker 1: many more, I guess, interventions that really get to the
[2:37] Speaker 1: root cause of this issue. So I know it is
[2:40] Speaker 1: something that affects a lot of you guys for various
[2:43] Speaker 1: different reasons. I get so many requests to just do
[2:47] Speaker 1: an episode on brain fog. People who say, I've never
[2:50] Speaker 1: experienced this before and suddenly I literally cannot concentrate. It
[2:53] Speaker 1: feels like my brain is mushed. Today we are finally
[2:56] Speaker 1: doing it. Without further ado, let's get into the psychology
[3:00] Speaker 1: of brain fog. So here's the interesting thing about brain fog.
[3:08] Speaker 1: There's many interesting things. Here's the first interesting thing. You
[3:10] Speaker 1: would think, you would, for such a widely used term
[3:15] Speaker 1: and widely experienced symptom that we would have a clear definition.
[3:19] Speaker 1: We do not. It is not a formal medical condition. Instead,
[3:23] Speaker 1: the term is came from people living with chronic fatigue syndrome, CFS,
[3:29] Speaker 1: which has been understudied and under-recognized for decades. And the
[3:34] Speaker 1: only kind of help and support people with CFS or
[3:39] Speaker 1: chronic fatigue syndrome could get was from each other. And
[3:43] Speaker 1: it was this big network of people who were passing
[3:45] Speaker 1: on information, helping one another, and they also created their
[3:48] Speaker 1: own language of terms to kind of validate their experiences
[3:52] Speaker 1: that were being dismissed by medical professionals. one of which
[3:55] Speaker 1: was brain fog. For decades, people thought brain fog was
[4:00] Speaker 1: just psychological. In other words, slash psychological in this situation,
[4:05] Speaker 1: being code for made up. People would say it's just
[4:08] Speaker 1: an excuse for laziness, for poor concentration, for bad diet. However,
[4:13] Speaker 1: modern research, including fMRI scans that can track where the
[4:18] Speaker 1: brain is sending blood has since basically all that proven
[4:23] Speaker 1: that what patients have been saying for decades, that something
[4:25] Speaker 1: weird is happening in my brain. It's not psychological. Even
[4:29] Speaker 1: if you can't see it, something is going on. We
[4:33] Speaker 1: finally realized that there is this physical component. We now
[4:37] Speaker 1: know it's not just associated with chronic fatigue and the
[4:40] Speaker 1: chronic fatigue community. Many people in their lifetime will experience
[4:43] Speaker 1: this weird kind of fog that descends almost very quickly.
[4:47] Speaker 1: And it's very annoying and It's annoying at best, actually.
[4:50] Speaker 1: It's distressing and kind of life-destroying at worst. And it
[4:54] Speaker 1: is so much more than feeling tired. Tiredness is caused
[4:57] Speaker 1: by a lack of energy. Brain fog, we now know,
[5:00] Speaker 1: is caused by a decline in cognitive capacity, which is
[5:03] Speaker 1: why people lose their train of thought halfway through a sentence.
[5:07] Speaker 1: They genuinely cannot pay attention. They feel confused. They feel forgetful.
[5:13] Speaker 1: They struggle to put sentences together, even though you know,
[5:17] Speaker 1: there's this part of us that I know what I
[5:18] Speaker 1: want to say. I know that I, I know how
[5:21] Speaker 1: to think. I know that I want to think my brain,
[5:23] Speaker 1: I just like cannot get it to do its job.
[5:26] Speaker 1: There is, as we would say, a desire, there is
[5:29] Speaker 1: a want to get your brain and your cognition to work.
[5:32] Speaker 1: It just simply won't. So what causes this? This is
[5:36] Speaker 1: the big question. I mentioned its association with chronic fatigue.
[5:41] Speaker 1: I also mentioned its association with long COVID, but There
[5:44] Speaker 1: is a whole list, autoimmune conditions, metabolic conditions, ADHD. That
[5:49] Speaker 1: doesn't really explain what causes it. It just explains that
[5:52] Speaker 1: it makes up a cluster of symptoms. The reason I'm
[5:55] Speaker 1: kind of cagey about this is because researchers have so
[5:58] Speaker 1: many explanations that there is really not one good one.
[6:01] Speaker 1: So I'm just going to talk about them all one
[6:03] Speaker 1: by one, noting that some of these are more like
[6:07] Speaker 1: textbook answers. than others and the research is still developing,
[6:12] Speaker 1: but we can summarize the causes or the contributing factors
[6:17] Speaker 1: of brain fog into three major categories. The first is
[6:22] Speaker 1: physiological depletion due to lifestyle. So your body it's depleted.
[6:28] Speaker 1: There's something that your body isn't getting. Therefore your brain
[6:31] Speaker 1: can't perform optimally. That's a physiological explanation. The second is
[6:35] Speaker 1: the cognitive overload explanation. which is essentially saying too many
[6:38] Speaker 1: mental resources are being used elsewhere. And then the third
[6:43] Speaker 1: I would kind of categorize as like biological, maybe like
[6:46] Speaker 1: disease-based disruption. So there's an illness, an injury, an infection
[6:49] Speaker 1: that has caused some damage to an underlying neurological process.
[6:53] Speaker 1: So those are our three categories. First explanation is probably
[6:58] Speaker 1: the most straightforward and the one you'll hear most regularly.
[7:01] Speaker 1: Sometimes the brain simply does not have the physical resources
[7:07] Speaker 1: it needs to function at its best. And when I
[7:09] Speaker 1: say physical resources, I mean sleep, nutrition, hydration. All of
[7:14] Speaker 1: those play a role in maintaining attention, maintaining your memory,
[7:18] Speaker 1: maintaining executive functioning. Research from MIT, for example, has found
[7:23] Speaker 1: that sleep is one of the most critical things here.
[7:26] Speaker 1: When people are sleep deprived, their lapses in attention control
[7:31] Speaker 1: coincide with physiological changes in the brain including a disruption
[7:36] Speaker 1: to the waves of cerebrospinal fluid that flows through your brain.
[7:40] Speaker 1: So cerebrospinal fluid, it's this clear liquid and it washes
[7:45] Speaker 1: your brain basically during sleep and it cleans out all
[7:48] Speaker 1: the junk and all the worn out proteins and the
[7:51] Speaker 1: byproducts that come about from you thinking and doing and
[7:55] Speaker 1: being alive. If you're not getting enough sleep, the brain
[7:58] Speaker 1: kind of has to make a decision to either delay
[8:00] Speaker 1: sending out that wave of cerebrospinal fluid until you are asleep,
[8:05] Speaker 1: whenever that will be, or to just be like, we
[8:07] Speaker 1: don't have any time, let's send it out while they're awake.
[8:10] Speaker 1: It's kind of like sending in a cleaning crew before
[8:14] Speaker 1: the movie is done to make sure that the cinema
[8:17] Speaker 1: is clean for the next person, but the movie is
[8:19] Speaker 1: still on and it's kind of disruptive. We really want
[8:22] Speaker 1: the cleaning to take place behind the scenes. We want
[8:25] Speaker 1: to wake up with a fresh brain and not really
[8:27] Speaker 1: know what happened to get us there. But sometimes because
[8:31] Speaker 1: we are depriving ourselves of sleep or our environment is
[8:34] Speaker 1: depriving us of sleep, we're not giving our brain that,
[8:38] Speaker 1: I guess, bump in time, that organizational period that it needs.
[8:42] Speaker 1: And so this activity of washing our brain intrudes into
[8:45] Speaker 1: our waking hours and it feels really odd. And that
[8:47] Speaker 1: might be a reason for brain fog. We see something
[8:50] Speaker 1: similar when the body is deprived of adequate food and
[8:53] Speaker 1: adequate water. There is a very famous study. It's called
[8:56] Speaker 1: the Minnesota Starvation Study. And it found that prolonged semi-starvation
[9:04] Speaker 1: was accompanied by these really huge psychological and cognitive changes.
[9:10] Speaker 1: I feel like this is, we kind of know this
[9:12] Speaker 1: if you've skipped a meal by accident, like your memory decision-making,
[9:15] Speaker 1: your concentration, your attitude gets worse. If you're not consuming
[9:19] Speaker 1: enough calories, your brain will experience cognitive decline. Your brain
[9:23] Speaker 1: is the largest energy user in your whole body. What's more,
[9:28] Speaker 1: our entire existence is basically based on how to get
[9:31] Speaker 1: the brain the glucose, fat, and energy that it needs.
[9:35] Speaker 1: That is literally like everything in your body is almost
[9:38] Speaker 1: streamlined to get your brain the energy that it wants.
[9:40] Speaker 1: And so when you're not consuming that energy, things are
[9:44] Speaker 1: going to go wrong. Dehydration combines with that and is
[9:47] Speaker 1: one of the reasons for brain fog on a biological level.
[9:51] Speaker 1: Your brain needs glucose, it needs fat, it needs energy,
[9:53] Speaker 1: we know that. You cannot access those things without water.
[9:58] Speaker 1: And so when your body has less water, just less fluid,
[10:04] Speaker 1: this lowers your blood pressure. It means that your body
[10:07] Speaker 1: can't convert food into energy. It means your brain receives
[10:11] Speaker 1: less blood, less glucose, and your thinking becomes sluggish. And
[10:14] Speaker 1: this can happen really, really quickly. I also read this
[10:18] Speaker 1: really interesting paper from 2014. It was published in the
[10:21] Speaker 1: Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism. There's a journal
[10:24] Speaker 1: for everything these days. And it spoke about how in
[10:28] Speaker 1: this experiment, they dehydrated mice and that reduced the ability
[10:33] Speaker 1: of their neurons to literally transmit electrical impulses. Their brains,
[10:38] Speaker 1: just with a little bit less water, the neurons were
[10:41] Speaker 1: trying to communicate They didn't have the fluid. They didn't
[10:44] Speaker 1: have what they needed. They didn't have the necessary resources
[10:48] Speaker 1: to do so. As I said, this is all about
[10:51] Speaker 1: physiological depletion. If you don't put in your brain what
[10:56] Speaker 1: it needs, your brain can't put out what you want.
[11:00] Speaker 1: And the kind of brain fog that you're going to
[11:01] Speaker 1: experience in these situations is what we would call episodic
[11:05] Speaker 1: rather than chronic. So when you get enough sleep, when
[11:09] Speaker 1: you drink enough water, when you have a really nice meal,
[11:12] Speaker 1: The brain fog will typically disappear in these episodic moments.
[11:16] Speaker 1: The same cannot be said for the cognitive overload theory
[11:21] Speaker 1: of brain fog. So cognitive overload theory actually began as
[11:26] Speaker 1: a theory about memory. And it began as this theory
[11:29] Speaker 1: as to why some people learn things really quickly and
[11:32] Speaker 1: some people have a harder time learning stuff. Learning certain concepts,
[11:36] Speaker 1: learning full stop. It was developed in the 1980s by
[11:39] Speaker 1: a man named John Sweller, who is He's Australian, by
[11:42] Speaker 1: the way, so we get to claim him. And he
[11:45] Speaker 1: has all these brilliant theories. This is the one he
[11:47] Speaker 1: is most well known for. And he essentially conceptualized the
[11:51] Speaker 1: mind as an information processing system that had a limited
[11:57] Speaker 1: working memory or let's say storage card. Basically, we don't
[12:01] Speaker 1: have enough room in the storage space as the things
[12:04] Speaker 1: we want to put in the storage space. Working memory
[12:07] Speaker 1: allows us to temporarily hold information. manipulate information, think about information,
[12:13] Speaker 1: decide whether we want to put it into long-term or
[12:16] Speaker 1: short-term memory before we actually move it into those areas.
[12:21] Speaker 1: It is the thing that is working, right? That holds
[12:25] Speaker 1: things very, not for a long time, but for a
[12:28] Speaker 1: good time. It's like our brain's workspace. If there is
[12:33] Speaker 1: a lot operating in your mind, if you have a
[12:37] Speaker 1: lot that you're trying to pay attention to, even if
[12:39] Speaker 1: you don't realize it, that is going to leave you
[12:42] Speaker 1: with not much storage space left. What could be filling
[12:46] Speaker 1: up that working memory store? So many things. The stress
[12:50] Speaker 1: of work, the stress of your job, the stress of
[12:53] Speaker 1: job hunting, the stress of the future, the stress of
[12:56] Speaker 1: your relationship, like all things that are pretty much constant
[13:00] Speaker 1: in our 20s. Family issues, friendship tension, trauma, just like
[13:05] Speaker 1: the general mental load of being a human is... so
[13:11] Speaker 1: exceedingly demanding and oppressive sometimes that your brain literally, even
[13:19] Speaker 1: if you're not consciously thinking about it, it doesn't have
[13:22] Speaker 1: room for all the other stuff. If you are constantly
[13:25] Speaker 1: in this busy space where you're like, okay, yes, I'm
[13:28] Speaker 1: at work, but after work I need to go to
[13:30] Speaker 1: dinner at 6.15 and if I'm going to be there
[13:32] Speaker 1: at 6.15 I have to leave at 5.45 but I
[13:35] Speaker 1: need to bring something so I need to go to
[13:36] Speaker 1: the grocery store 530. That means that this needs to
[13:39] Speaker 1: be done here. And if I'm going to get there
[13:40] Speaker 1: at 615, I want to leave at nine. And that
[13:43] Speaker 1: means I should actually drive instead of catching the bus
[13:45] Speaker 1: because you see where I'm going with this. That is
[13:48] Speaker 1: the mental or cognitive overload theory. One interesting thing to note,
[13:52] Speaker 1: women are significantly more likely to develop brain fog. Maybe
[13:56] Speaker 1: the cognitive overload theory points to that. There was a
[13:59] Speaker 1: paper published in 2024 in the Journal of Health Psychology.
[14:03] Speaker 1: It said, that's one explanation. And then there's also the
[14:07] Speaker 1: hormonal fluctuations that women are more likely to experience. Women
[14:10] Speaker 1: are more likely to be dismissed or misdiagnosed by doctors,
[14:14] Speaker 1: especially when it comes to other conditions that may trigger
[14:17] Speaker 1: brain fog, like maybe those aren't getting picked up. And
[14:21] Speaker 1: then again, that mental load theory, women just deal with
[14:25] Speaker 1: more of the stress and more of the labor of monitoring, planning,
[14:28] Speaker 1: and regulating the lives and the emotions of those around them.
[14:32] Speaker 1: That means less cognitive space for themselves. I don't think
[14:35] Speaker 1: it's just women, though. I think it appears to be
[14:37] Speaker 1: worse for a certain category of people. Another interesting thing
[14:41] Speaker 1: I found was that city dwellers also experience more brain fog.
[14:45] Speaker 1: There is this paper published in the Harvard Medical Review
[14:48] Speaker 1: called The City and the Brain, and it essentially uncovers
[14:52] Speaker 1: how city life impairs basic mental processes. So your attention,
[14:56] Speaker 1: your memory, even spending simply a few minutes on a
[15:00] Speaker 1: busy street, all of those are affected. Your brain's ability
[15:05] Speaker 1: to focus and to control itself and its memory and
[15:09] Speaker 1: everything and its attention is depleted by living in a city.
[15:14] Speaker 1: So in this study, they had participants in two conditions.
[15:16] Speaker 1: They had some of them like walk through a beautiful
[15:18] Speaker 1: park and kind of stroll. And then they had people
[15:21] Speaker 1: walk or navigate a busy street. And then they took
[15:24] Speaker 1: them out of those conditions and made them do a
[15:25] Speaker 1: bunch of psychological tests. Being in the city environment significantly
[15:30] Speaker 1: increased the cognitive symptoms of brain fog. There's one researcher
[15:34] Speaker 1: on the paper, her name is Dr. Sarah Lazar. She
[15:36] Speaker 1: essentially said that when you're in a city, it's adaptive
[15:40] Speaker 1: to have a shorter attention span. If you are too
[15:43] Speaker 1: fixated on something, if you're too concentrated, you miss a car,
[15:47] Speaker 1: you miss the person walking around the corner, you miss
[15:50] Speaker 1: all the environmental cues you need to be paying attention to.
[15:53] Speaker 1: So you naturally develop a shorter attention span. That lingers though,
[15:59] Speaker 1: that lingers. And so when you need your attention span
[16:01] Speaker 1: for other things, it's not always as long or as,
[16:06] Speaker 1: it's not always as, I guess, strong as it could be.
[16:10] Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean? It can't plan, it
[16:14] Speaker 1: can't execute the same functions after it's been in those
[16:18] Speaker 1: environments for too long. There's one more massive contributor here
[16:22] Speaker 1: that fits into the cognitive load theory, and that is
[16:27] Speaker 1: chronic pain. And I think it's the best example of
[16:29] Speaker 1: why brain fog often accompanies conditions that don't necessarily have
[16:34] Speaker 1: a neurological component, right? It doesn't necessarily need to be
[16:39] Speaker 1: of the brain to create brain fog. There was a
[16:43] Speaker 1: 2018 meta-analysis that found people with fibromyalgia, for example, performed
[16:48] Speaker 1: worse than control groups across several different cognitive domains, including memory,
[16:53] Speaker 1: executive functioning, processing speed. And their explanation was, The persistent
[16:59] Speaker 1: pain that these people are experiencing continuously competes for limited
[17:05] Speaker 1: attentional resources because there is a hierarchy in your brain.
[17:10] Speaker 1: And the first thing your brain is going to want
[17:12] Speaker 1: to pay attention to is pain. That is going to
[17:14] Speaker 1: take up so much of the attentional pie. That is,
[17:18] Speaker 1: there is little room for other things. And so your brain,
[17:22] Speaker 1: if you're experiencing this pain, if you're experiencing these chronic conditions,
[17:27] Speaker 1: is operating at a lower percentage because it's being taken
[17:30] Speaker 1: up by this big alarm that our brain wants to
[17:32] Speaker 1: pay attention to. There was another theory that I read
[17:35] Speaker 1: that was like anxiety might work in a similar way
[17:38] Speaker 1: as well. So if you're constantly in a state of
[17:42] Speaker 1: high alert, you experience brain fog for everything else because
[17:47] Speaker 1: basically half of your brain is offline, looking for threat,
[17:52] Speaker 1: looking for something that could go wrong. And it also...
[17:56] Speaker 1: comes from this hypervigilance that you may be experiencing. The
[18:00] Speaker 1: continual monitoring of threats, the continual sense that things are
[18:04] Speaker 1: going to come crashing down around you means that paying
[18:09] Speaker 1: attention to anything else, wanting your brain to work for
[18:11] Speaker 1: anything else doesn't feel as important. And so our mind
[18:15] Speaker 1: takes resources away from what we are doing in the
[18:20] Speaker 1: present to theorizing and trying to figure out what could
[18:25] Speaker 1: go wrong in the future. So these are the first
[18:30] Speaker 1: two explanations for brain fog. There is the cognitive overload
[18:33] Speaker 1: or cognitive tax explanation. And then there is the physiological explanation.
[18:38] Speaker 1: I want to talk about the final one. And I
[18:40] Speaker 1: think this is the one that most people relate to.
[18:43] Speaker 1: And I also want to talk about why some of
[18:46] Speaker 1: the advice we get about brain fog is helpful, but
[18:49] Speaker 1: it's probably incomplete and what might actually work. And we're
[18:52] Speaker 1: going to talk about it and so much more after
[18:53] Speaker 1: this short break. So the final pathway to brain fog
[19:03] Speaker 1: is what we would call disease-based. And like I said
[19:05] Speaker 1: in the beginning, it is the people who have experienced
[19:08] Speaker 1: this path that we have to really like give credit
[19:11] Speaker 1: to for the term brain fog. The term brain fog
[19:14] Speaker 1: came from them before brain fog, before we had the
[19:19] Speaker 1: word for it. These symptoms that we're explaining of like,
[19:22] Speaker 1: I can't really pay attention. I feel confused. you would
[19:26] Speaker 1: be given the label of delirium. It was really seen
[19:31] Speaker 1: as mental, seen as psychological, seen as a sign that
[19:33] Speaker 1: you were crazy. Now we know that's not the case.
[19:36] Speaker 1: The pandemic and the experiences of long COVID, as I mentioned,
[19:41] Speaker 1: were a big catalyst for this. There is so much
[19:44] Speaker 1: research that has only just taken place in the last
[19:46] Speaker 1: six years because of the pandemic. There was a 2026
[19:50] Speaker 1: systematic review that examined 47 studies involving, I think it
[19:55] Speaker 1: was like 25,000 people with long COVID. Brain fog was the,
[20:00] Speaker 1: I think it was the highest symptom. 30% of people
[20:04] Speaker 1: were like, yeah, I've got that. And I only got
[20:06] Speaker 1: it when I had COVID. That is incredibly high. If
[20:09] Speaker 1: some people are saying, this is something that I'm experiencing
[20:12] Speaker 1: for the first time, people pay attention to it. And
[20:14] Speaker 1: the proposed mechanism or the reason why they think this
[20:17] Speaker 1: is happening is because of something called neuroinflammation. Neuroinflammation. Remember
[20:23] Speaker 1: this term, it's very important. When we get sick, our
[20:27] Speaker 1: body has, you guys know this, but it has a
[20:29] Speaker 1: bunch of tactics to kill whatever is making us sick.
[20:33] Speaker 1: The biggest one is inflammation. basically send everything we have
[20:37] Speaker 1: at the sick, injured, diseased area, specifically send as many
[20:40] Speaker 1: white blood cells as we can to the sick, injured
[20:43] Speaker 1: or diseased area. And we have this little like army
[20:46] Speaker 1: battalion of things that are going to take care of it.
[20:48] Speaker 1: And that is why if you get a splinter, you know,
[20:50] Speaker 1: your finger swells up, you get hot, that's inflammation, that's
[20:54] Speaker 1: your body doing the correct thing. It's saying something's wrong,
[20:56] Speaker 1: we're going to fix that. Now, if that doesn't work,
[20:59] Speaker 1: if the thing is still there, it hasn't been killed
[21:01] Speaker 1: by the inflammation, our body calls in the backup cells
[21:04] Speaker 1: to like, say the special operatives to take care of it,
[21:07] Speaker 1: they're called the glial cells. These are cells that are
[21:10] Speaker 1: found in the central nervous system. So around your spinal
[21:13] Speaker 1: cord and in the brain. When these are activated, this
[21:17] Speaker 1: is neuroinflammation as opposed to basic inflammation, neuro meaning of
[21:21] Speaker 1: the brain and of the spinal cord. This doesn't happen
[21:24] Speaker 1: in all cases of long COVID or any disease or infection,
[21:27] Speaker 1: but if it does, and if neuroinflammation persists, this can
[21:31] Speaker 1: have a significant impact on everything that makes up part
[21:34] Speaker 1: of the system and part of who we are. It
[21:37] Speaker 1: impacts our stomach. That's also linked to the brain. It
[21:40] Speaker 1: impacts motor control and it impacts cognitive processes because basically
[21:45] Speaker 1: the neural highway that your brain uses is there's a
[21:50] Speaker 1: lot of traffic. It's overextended. For example, there was another
[21:54] Speaker 1: pilot study from all of these are pilot studies, basically
[21:57] Speaker 1: I should say, but there was another pilot study from
[21:59] Speaker 1: 2025 that found People with brain fog associated with long COVID,
[22:04] Speaker 1: they actually had lower nerve growth. They had impaired neuroplasticity.
[22:10] Speaker 1: Something was going wrong in how their brain was regenerating
[22:12] Speaker 1: or experiencing new growth or new connections. This also helps
[22:16] Speaker 1: us explain why brain fog is associated with MS. Brain
[22:20] Speaker 1: fog is associated with Parkinson's. Even depression. Depression might belong
[22:25] Speaker 1: in this same category. There was a paper published in
[22:27] Speaker 1: 2019 from researchers in Italy that that identified there is
[22:31] Speaker 1: this big subgroup of people with depression who experience substantial
[22:37] Speaker 1: cognitive impairment and cognitive decline alongside low mood. And a
[22:43] Speaker 1: lot of people were initially saying, well, that's just because
[22:45] Speaker 1: people don't feel motivated. They don't feel like they have meaning.
[22:48] Speaker 1: That's why their cognitive impairment is occurring. Researchers are now
[22:51] Speaker 1: saying this seems to be a neurological decline on a
[22:54] Speaker 1: cellular level. You know, the other thing researchers are now
[22:57] Speaker 1: linking this to is mold, all of which impacts our
[23:01] Speaker 1: neural pathways. There was a massive 2023 study published in
[23:04] Speaker 1: the Journal of Behavioral Brain Research, and it looked at
[23:08] Speaker 1: exposure to toxic versus non-toxic mold on brain inflammation, neuroinflammation,
[23:13] Speaker 1: and cognitive performance. And it found that exposure to something
[23:17] Speaker 1: that we called microtoxins, these things can cross the blood-brain barrier,
[23:23] Speaker 1: literally change how your brain function if you are exposed
[23:25] Speaker 1: to them. Mold and its influence on cognitive performance used
[23:29] Speaker 1: to be a bit conspiratorial. People would be like, you
[23:32] Speaker 1: are being way too dramatic about something that is essentially
[23:34] Speaker 1: nature and it's a plant. And now, just now, are
[23:38] Speaker 1: we really seeing the scientific evidence? We have spent about 70%
[23:42] Speaker 1: of this episode investigating the who, what, where of brain
[23:46] Speaker 1: fog and why it happens. That was deliberate because there
[23:50] Speaker 1: is so much research on this that you probably wouldn't
[23:52] Speaker 1: know if you just Googled it, if you were like,
[23:55] Speaker 1: I have brain fog. you would be like, well, are
[23:57] Speaker 1: you drinking enough water? And that probably doesn't cover why
[24:00] Speaker 1: you have brain fog. There are so many explanations. Now
[24:04] Speaker 1: I want to move into the how, specifically the how
[24:08] Speaker 1: of how we're going to go about fixing it. Let
[24:10] Speaker 1: me give you kind of like a little bullet point
[24:12] Speaker 1: list of things that I would do based on what
[24:14] Speaker 1: I've been reading. The basics are movement, water, water intake,
[24:19] Speaker 1: and rest, I would say. And then the other thing
[24:22] Speaker 1: that I think is important is getting your food intolerance tested.
[24:25] Speaker 1: And I know that's the first time that we've mentioned
[24:27] Speaker 1: the diet pathway, but it could be one of the
[24:29] Speaker 1: easiest things to cut out or change if what's causing
[24:33] Speaker 1: your brain fog is low-grade gut inflammation, specifically from gluten
[24:37] Speaker 1: or dairy. I've read a bunch of papers on this.
[24:39] Speaker 1: We know that 90% of our body's serotonin is produced
[24:43] Speaker 1: in the gut. The gut is the second brain. We
[24:45] Speaker 1: have a whole episode on it. If something is disturbing
[24:48] Speaker 1: that second brain, your actual brain is going to hear
[24:51] Speaker 1: about it and it's going to get foggy. You can
[24:53] Speaker 1: buy food intolerance tests for like 40 bucks, by the way.
[24:56] Speaker 1: Or you can go to your doctor. I know sometimes
[24:58] Speaker 1: like I'm always cagey about doing like giving advice of
[25:02] Speaker 1: like go get your bloods done or go to the
[25:03] Speaker 1: doctor or get a food intolerance test because I know
[25:06] Speaker 1: not everybody has free health care. But that is a
[25:09] Speaker 1: critical starting point. I also think, I know I just
[25:13] Speaker 1: said get your bloods done, but get your bloods done.
[25:16] Speaker 1: Like if your brain fog is debilitating, the more information
[25:19] Speaker 1: that you have about what's internally going on, is so crucial.
[25:23] Speaker 1: If there is just an imbalance of some kind of
[25:25] Speaker 1: vitamin or some kind of nutrient, or there's a deficiency,
[25:28] Speaker 1: that is something you can fix really, really quickly. There
[25:31] Speaker 1: was this fantastic 2026 paper titled The Nutritional Approaches to
[25:35] Speaker 1: Managing Brain Fog, and they emphasized iron, they emphasized B12,
[25:40] Speaker 1: and they also said focus on fiber, omega-3 fatty acids,
[25:44] Speaker 1: and micronutrients to ensure a healthy gut microbiome. What they're
[25:49] Speaker 1: essentially saying is like the new frontier of brain fog
[25:52] Speaker 1: is the gut and is the stomach. Because if we
[25:56] Speaker 1: rule out diseases, we rule out neuroinflammation, if we rule
[25:59] Speaker 1: out sleep or whatever, like that is the next kind
[26:02] Speaker 1: of thing that we're going to have to focus on.
[26:05] Speaker 1: If something is not going right in your stomach, if
[26:08] Speaker 1: you are eating foods that your body is genuinely like,
[26:10] Speaker 1: I don't like this, I don't like this, it is
[26:12] Speaker 1: going to tax you physically. It's going to tax you emotionally. mentally,
[26:16] Speaker 1: and that means that your cognitive performance is also going
[26:19] Speaker 1: to decline. Also, when we think about the chronic pain
[26:23] Speaker 1: point as well, maybe your stomach issues to you might
[26:27] Speaker 1: not meet the criteria for chronic pain, but chronic inflammation
[26:35] Speaker 1: is a chronic distraction for your brain. It's something that
[26:37] Speaker 1: it needs to pay attention to, meaning, again, it pulls
[26:41] Speaker 1: resources away from everything else. Third, This one's easy. Get
[26:47] Speaker 1: mold in your home dealt with. Please get your landlord
[26:49] Speaker 1: to deal with it. You need to deal with it.
[26:51] Speaker 1: That is like the least thing, like we know the
[26:53] Speaker 1: research now. It's not good. Number four, I know I
[26:56] Speaker 1: said rest in that first list. I'm going to double
[26:58] Speaker 1: down on this and I'm going to list sleep as
[27:01] Speaker 1: its own unique point. Protect your sleep like it is
[27:04] Speaker 1: your one and only asset. There is nothing else in
[27:07] Speaker 1: your day that you are disciplined about and you have
[27:10] Speaker 1: brain fog. That's fine as long as you are disciplined
[27:13] Speaker 1: about your sleep. This is advice I actually got from Dr.
[27:16] Speaker 1: Mike Dow's book on brain fog, but it's repeated nearly everywhere.
[27:20] Speaker 1: And it's essentially like, regardless of the causes of your
[27:26] Speaker 1: brain fog, a byproduct of brain fog or any of
[27:30] Speaker 1: these conditions is going to be built up excess brain waste. Now,
[27:35] Speaker 1: is sleep going to improve that alone? Like, is it
[27:38] Speaker 1: going to be the miracle cure for your brain fog? No,
[27:41] Speaker 1: but if you have eight to nine hours, you are
[27:43] Speaker 1: going to activate brain a better what we call glymphatic system.
[27:48] Speaker 1: This is the one that flushes out the leftover proteins
[27:51] Speaker 1: in your brain or the leftover protein casings. You know,
[27:56] Speaker 1: sleep isn't going to leave you any worse off. It's
[27:59] Speaker 1: only going to help. I used to be so ambivalent
[28:02] Speaker 1: about this. I used to literally not care if I
[28:03] Speaker 1: got five, six, nine, ten hours of sleep. I would
[28:06] Speaker 1: just deal with tiredness as a side effect. I think
[28:09] Speaker 1: since getting diagnosed with intracranial hypertension last year, last year,
[28:13] Speaker 1: a year or so back, I got so serious about
[28:16] Speaker 1: my sleep and I just got very serious about it,
[28:20] Speaker 1: about protecting my sleep and seeing that as a pathway
[28:22] Speaker 1: to really helping myself cognitively. Aside from the things that
[28:27] Speaker 1: we all know, which is phone away, no caffeine before bed,
[28:30] Speaker 1: sleep schedule, blah, blah, blah. Some strategies that have worked
[28:33] Speaker 1: for me as I've gotten more serious about it are
[28:36] Speaker 1: magnesium supplements, a lavender spray. I know that sounds silly,
[28:40] Speaker 1: but it does actually work as a cognitive cue. to
[28:44] Speaker 1: put your brain in a, we are going to sleep
[28:47] Speaker 1: now state. And this one's going to sound strange until
[28:52] Speaker 1: I tried it. I didn't think it worked, but I
[28:54] Speaker 1: put my legs up like on my wall for 10
[28:57] Speaker 1: minutes before bed and it has revolutionized my sleep. I'm
[28:59] Speaker 1: going to give my friend Grace full credit for this.
[29:02] Speaker 1: I think there's a name for it. It's called the
[29:04] Speaker 1: Viparita Karani pose in yoga. If you want to look
[29:07] Speaker 1: it up. And when she told me, I was like,
[29:09] Speaker 1: that sounds a bit strange. I tried it. I had
[29:11] Speaker 1: the best night's sleep I've ever had. literally putting my
[29:15] Speaker 1: legs up on the wall for 10 minutes before bed.
[29:17] Speaker 1: So I did some digging. I found some research. Specifically,
[29:20] Speaker 1: I found this article that said this exact pose promotes circulation.
[29:25] Speaker 1: It stimulates the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland, which form
[29:29] Speaker 1: the link between our nervous system and our endocrine system,
[29:33] Speaker 1: so our hormones. And what it does is essentially contribute
[29:38] Speaker 1: to something known as parasympathetic dominance. The parasympathetic nervous system
[29:43] Speaker 1: sits in juxtaposition to the sympathetic nervous system. Sympathetic nervous
[29:48] Speaker 1: system is all about fight, flight. We all know the rest.
[29:52] Speaker 1: The parasympathetic nervous system is about rest, repair, recuperate. We
[29:58] Speaker 1: want more of that system. The more you can put
[30:01] Speaker 1: your brain into a state of rest and repair, the
[30:05] Speaker 1: better you are going to be and the better your
[30:07] Speaker 1: brain symptoms are going to be as well. The thing is,
[30:16] Speaker 1: as I said, you can protect your sleep, you can
[30:18] Speaker 1: drink your water, you can eat your whole foods, you
[30:21] Speaker 1: can really concentrate on nutrition and low alcohol. And you
[30:25] Speaker 1: can still have brain fog and you're probably sick of
[30:27] Speaker 1: people telling you to do those things because it's not
[30:30] Speaker 1: always a lifestyle side effect. It is a genuine medical concern.
[30:35] Speaker 1: So my fifth thing that I think you should do
[30:38] Speaker 1: is just really be so strict with yourself about advocating
[30:42] Speaker 1: for yourself in medical spaces and in your doctor's office. No,
[30:46] Speaker 1: it is not just anxiety. No, it is not just
[30:48] Speaker 1: because you are tired. This is impacting your life. This
[30:51] Speaker 1: is impacting your ability to function. You need to investigate
[30:54] Speaker 1: it further and you need to make sure that you
[30:56] Speaker 1: are strong and really that you impress on any medical
[31:02] Speaker 1: professional that you're sitting in front of that this is
[31:04] Speaker 1: important to me. This is a psychology podcast, so I
[31:07] Speaker 1: can't not mention the psychological impact of feeling ignored in
[31:12] Speaker 1: the medical space or feeling like your brain fog is unexplainable,
[31:16] Speaker 1: feeling like this is just your life. That itself is
[31:19] Speaker 1: majorly taxing and it's majorly exhausting to on your already
[31:23] Speaker 1: exhausted self and mind, it's really important to rule out
[31:28] Speaker 1: something underlying that you could get proper care for and
[31:31] Speaker 1: proper instruction on. Then like, or at the same time,
[31:36] Speaker 1: implement the lifestyle changes that are best. Instead of just
[31:39] Speaker 1: randomly cutting out every single thing that you might enjoy
[31:42] Speaker 1: from your life, cutting out sugar, cutting out alcohol, cutting
[31:45] Speaker 1: out caffeine, cutting out food, and still feeling like I
[31:49] Speaker 1: did all this. I did everything that everybody told me to.
[31:51] Speaker 1: I drink two liters of water a day. And I
[31:53] Speaker 1: feel like crap. Brain fog is often a messenger. And
[31:59] Speaker 1: I just want to remind you, it's not normal to
[32:01] Speaker 1: feel weird or bad in your body. Like that is
[32:04] Speaker 1: not normal. If you actually can't concentrate and if you
[32:06] Speaker 1: can't pay attention and you aren't functioning, something is off.
[32:11] Speaker 1: You should not feel like your mind is only 50%
[32:13] Speaker 1: online all the time. The same way you shouldn't feel
[32:17] Speaker 1: a lingering pain all the time. The same way you
[32:20] Speaker 1: would go to a doctor if your stomach was hurting
[32:22] Speaker 1: all the time or you had a headache all the time.
[32:25] Speaker 1: You know, there is only so much I can mention
[32:27] Speaker 1: in a 30-minute episode on this. I'm going to leave
[32:30] Speaker 1: some more resources below. But from this research, what I'm
[32:34] Speaker 1: really learning is the intersection between brain fog and feeling
[32:39] Speaker 1: ignored and brain fog and feeling like and all these
[32:42] Speaker 1: other conditions that get ignored and ignored and ignored until
[32:45] Speaker 1: they get really, really bad. severe or there's no more
[32:50] Speaker 1: ignoring that we can do. As I said, we're in
[32:54] Speaker 1: this massive moment where this condition, this feeling is getting
[32:58] Speaker 1: so much attention. I don't know if you've noticed, but
[33:01] Speaker 1: every single study that I mentioned is 2024, 2025, 2026.
[33:05] Speaker 1: I really do think we're on this path to figuring
[33:09] Speaker 1: out that neural link, figuring out that cognitive link, perhaps
[33:15] Speaker 1: the link between brain fog and neurons in the stomach
[33:20] Speaker 1: or cells in the stomach all the way up to
[33:22] Speaker 1: your brain. So if you have been dealing with brain
[33:26] Speaker 1: fog and you're like, is this going to go away?
[33:28] Speaker 1: Perhaps it's chronic rather than episodic. I just want to
[33:31] Speaker 1: say there is so much hope and so much research
[33:34] Speaker 1: coming out of this space. I can seriously imagine doing
[33:37] Speaker 1: an episode on this next year and having entirely new
[33:41] Speaker 1: things to say. So there is something to be optimistic about.
[33:44] Speaker 1: I'm going to leave some more links in the description,
[33:47] Speaker 1: particularly for a more longer episode on the nutrition behind
[33:51] Speaker 1: brain fog, the link between brain fog and ADHD. And
[33:56] Speaker 1: there's another one that I can't remember, but there was
[33:58] Speaker 1: another episode I listened to that was really informative around
[34:01] Speaker 1: the psychological mechanisms that influence brain fog that I'll put
[34:04] Speaker 1: in the description. And if you're struggling with this, I
[34:06] Speaker 1: would really, really recommend that you check it out. Once
[34:09] Speaker 1: you go diving in this research, you will be swimming
[34:12] Speaker 1: around for a long time. So I hope that I
[34:14] Speaker 1: provided you with a little bit of a summary of
[34:16] Speaker 1: the current state of psychology and psychological research on this. Yeah,
[34:20] Speaker 1: I hope you find answers for yourself. I hope some
[34:22] Speaker 1: of these tips were important or helpful. I want to
[34:25] Speaker 1: thank our researcher, Erin, for assisting with this episode. If
[34:29] Speaker 1: you have any tips for brain fog, if you are
[34:32] Speaker 1: a sufferer, leave them in the comments below for other
[34:35] Speaker 1: people to gain important information from, especially if you're listening
[34:39] Speaker 1: on Spotify, there's a comment section that you can drop
[34:42] Speaker 1: all of your best ideas and feedback in. I'd love
[34:45] Speaker 1: to see them. Remember, you can watch episodes of The
[34:48] Speaker 1: Psychology of Your 20s on Netflix now. So if you haven't,
[34:50] Speaker 1: you can check out an episode over there. We also
[34:53] Speaker 1: have a sub stack. We have an Instagram. And on
[34:56] Speaker 1: our Instagram, we often post smaller summary versions of the podcast.
[35:01] Speaker 1: So if you don't have time to listen to the
[35:03] Speaker 1: full thing, you can find those over there as well.
[35:05] Speaker 1: So I'd highly recommend giving us a follow and a
[35:08] Speaker 1: five-star review as well. If you got anything from this episode,
[35:11] Speaker 1: or if you just feel called to do so. I
[35:13] Speaker 1: think that's all we have time for, but I really
[35:15] Speaker 1: enjoyed looking into this. I love episodes where you can
[35:18] Speaker 1: just get into the nitty gritty of an emerging research field.
[35:21] Speaker 1: So it was such a fascinating one. Maybe I'll have
[35:24] Speaker 1: to do a part two later on, but until next time,
[35:27] Speaker 1: be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will
[35:29] Speaker 1: talk very, very soon.

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