Brain Health: How Can I Cut Through Debilitating Brain Fog?
Video Transcript:
This next question is from Diana. She says, “Hi, Dr. Melissa. I have the worst debilitating brain fog. How can you help? Thanks so much, Diana.”
Okay. That is an excellent question, Diana. And I feel both your concern and your frustration. Brain fog is a really, really common occurrence. Especially now there are a lot of influences to brain fog. I want to address not only the feeling of brain fog, but also your mental acuity and optimal cognition. This is really critical for recall and regular problem-solving in your day-to-day life, but also the times when you can’t remember where your keys are, or if you’re wearing your glasses on your head, but you’ve been running around the house looking or your glasses.
So we are going to address that by first addressing the different causes of increased brain fog or imbalances in your neurocognition. And this is really important. There are certain things where lifestyle and nutritional choices can come into play for making this more severe or tamping it down and resolving the imbalance. So, first, let’s look at some of the causes.
Causes of Brain Fog
First and most problematic, is going to be lack of sleep. So if you are not good at getting your eight to 10 hours of sleep each night, or you might be dealing with nutritional deficiencies, brain inflammation, as well as glucose intolerance and insulin resistance, these are very common causes, as are adrenal imbalances. So your adrenal glands are your fight or flight glands. If you’re feeling like you’re fighting and flighting all the time, or highly stressed or charged and you’re not calm, dealing with anxiety or panic attacks, that can be indicative of some of the underlying conditions for brain fog.
Balancing the Brain with Brain Food
With my patients and my followers, I really love to talk about brain food. And when we’re dealing with some of these causes, we need to help balance the brain. And one of the most impactful ways to do that is by our daily lifestyle of consuming a rainbow-rich diet. When I say rainbow-rich, eating the rainbow, literally choosing red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and indigo, and white, and brown. Foods that are going to be nutritionally dense in all of the different nutrients to power up your brain.
I recommend eating as clean, organic as we can, going for raw, lightly steamed and fresh juices are always my recommendations. Similarly, a lot of folks are on these kinds of fad diets. They’re on some of the intermittent fasting, and sometimes the keto diet, and some of my patients are going fat-free. Well, the brain needs protein and it needs fat, and it also needs hydration. So if you are not getting enough protein, or you’re not getting enough fat, or you’re dehydrated, those three things can be a very common source for brain fog. And even if you notice you start some of these diets and maybe you’re restricting your intake of protein, fat, or hydration, those symptoms can very easily clear if you add those three items back into your diet.
Ample Sleep, Reduced Stress, and Exercise Outdoors
Now, the other thing that’s really critical for addressing any of the brain fog, is sleep. And sleeping eight to 10 hours is really what I recommend. I know sometimes that feels like it’s not possible, but if you try to sleep as close to the sun setting in your time zone, and waking up as the sun’s rising, that tends to be the best way to set your circadian rhythm, your cycle, where your body will get the ample rest, as well as exercising outside in the morning, can also help recalibrate our brain center that helps open up the brain for nutritional density, but also sets the right stage for decreasing inflammation.
Lowering your stress is absolutely critical. So if you find environmental stressors, or work stressors, or body-related stress, we want to address that. And some of the best ways to do that is by exercising. So I recommend with brain fog, exercising in the morning. Part of that whole morning sunlight capacity for exercising outside is to allow your body to also get vitamin D and natural sunlight. It is very, very good for our mood and nourishes our brain.
Supplementation: Nootropics
Now, I also want to talk to you about two really critical things you can add in supplement-wise. There’s a whole kind of newer category of supplementation called nootropics. These are, simply put, brain-powered, fuel-based supplementation. And here at Organixx, we have Ageless Brain, which is a powerhouse of herbals and brain nutrition. One of my favorite herbals that’s in this Ageless Brain combination, is Bacopa.
Bacopa’s been studied, so there’s a lot of clinical research behind it, as it’s able to help your brain regenerate and also minimize brain cell deterioration and the dying of brain cells. And this is really great for individuals of all ages. So teenagers, all the way to individuals in their 80s and 90s and 100s, it’s wonderful. So Bacopa in Ageless Brain is a winner.
Now another one that’s been heavily studied, are the category of functional mushrooms, particularly lion’s mane. It’s this beautiful white lion mane kind of hairy mushroom that it’s not only beautiful to look at, but it’s very, very powerful. It looks like a brain. And it’s kind of interesting how nature occurs, where the brain-power in lion’s mane is very potent at neuroprotection. So that basically means that lion’s mane has the functionality to protect your brain. This has been greatly studied, and it is wonderful at also helping connect our neurons and keep our brain functionally optimized.
So if you find you’ve got some of the brain fog, if you haven’t added Bacopa via Ageless Brain, and functional mushrooms, like lion’s mane, which we can find in Organixx 7M+, oh, it’s great – those two are really potent together for neuroprotection, brainpower, and brain healing. I love that.
Bonus Tip: Supplements to Lower Inflammation
So I am going to also, one last kind of bonus tip, is to recommend if you find you have any type of inflammation within your body, maybe you have biomarkers of inflammation, it’s not a bad idea to also add in certain supplements that help lower your inflammatory levels, or lower, calm down, your inflammatory response. When it comes to the brain, the state of our brain health, an inflamed brain will trigger brain fog and a whole bunch of other things. So one of my favorite complexes here at Organixx is the Joint & Muscle Care. So Ageless Brain, the 7M+, and the Joint & Muscle Care – yea! They’re winners for brain health.
So, I’m excited to hear, Diana, how you do with these, and please keep us posted.
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