Do you feel that your memory is failing, do you feel confused and overwhelmed?Tired? When you talk to someone, do you feel like you don’t understand what they’re saying?When you read or watch a TV show, do you feel like you don’t understand what’s going on?If you said yes? These questions, it’s important to know what mental fog is.
Concentration and memory issues can be a big problem, not only for work or study, but also in day-to-day life, and the consequences can go much further, as they can affect self-esteem, personal relationships and even emotional stability.
- And since it’s no reason to be afraid or panic.
- Let’s call it.
- Because it’s one thing to have a bad day and another to feel a constant inability to concentrate or maintain attention.
- What is mental fog? It is precisely this disability that includes confusion and forgetfulness.
- As well as lack of concentration and mental clarity.
Mental fog is an anomaly that is not recognized as a disease, but corresponds to an internationally recognized state of mind. Unfortunately, brain fog is quite common, even if it doesn’t make it “normal. “
Mental fog refers to a problem that goes beyond the difficulty of concentration; when this comes up, you feel confused, confused and have trouble thinking. With mental fog, your brain sends an important signal that there is an imbalance in your life that needs to be resolved. .
In fact, what may seem like a mental or psychological problem may be something else, in fact, mental confusion can occur due to lifestyle (in which very different factors come into play than we might initially think of, such as food) and can also be the side effect of a medical condition or even a specific medication.
Exactly for these reasons, mental fog is preventable and treatable when we identify the factor that maintains it, which doesn’t necessarily have to be the same one that caused it, sometimes it’s as simple as living a healthier life.
Now that we know what mental fog is, it’s important to talk about its main causes.
There are many cases where brain fog is due to conditions directly related to health, in fact, many medications that treat certain diseases or dietary supplements that we consume to supposedly improve our quality of life, can cause or contribute to the appearance of a brain fog. .
But mental fog can also appear from an unhealthy lifestyle, especially because of poor diet. As we will see below, the subject of diet is very serious and goes beyond concern for our physical health, as it is decisive for our mental and emotional health. Then we’ll see how to clear the mental fog and improve concentration.
When you eat poorly, the chances of mental confusion increase, but what is eating wrong and what is eating right? The answer is simple, but quite difficult to assimilate and, in fact, many people do not like to listen.
For starters, it’s one thing to eat something very different, it’s consuming edible products, the difference is that food provides the necessary and beneficial nutrients, while edible products eliminate hunger or thirst, but in the end they don’t provide what your body really needs.
So when you eat well, you need to eat little and when your diet isn’t based on nutrient-rich foods, you need to eat more often because your body demands nutrients it hasn’t received, so you need to reduce as much as possible. at your meal a number of edible products and replace them with real foods.
Concentration and mental haze problems can be caused by nutritional deficiencies, in fact, even if you eat healthily, these deficiencies may occur, perhaps because consumption is not enough or because the assimilation of the body is not adequate.
The main nutritional deficiencies that can cause mental confusion are:
Certain dietary supplements can help dispel mental confusion. However, you should be careful with these supplements because they are not always as useful as they seem. This is the case with nootropics, substances that can make you more concentrated, motivated, positive and productive, but which, when it comes to the truth, are not as useful as they seem or as harmless as they seem. .
Mental fog can be caused by a lack of quality sleep, after all, sleep is essential for the functioning of the brain, both in the short and long term, when you sleep there is a kind of brainwashing, a cleaning that allows to consolidate memories. During sleep, the brain creates new brain cells that somehow make up for everything that has been lost during the day.
Only a bad night can affect memory, concentration, coordination, mood, judgment and the ability to manage stress the next day. In addition, some experts claim that losing a night’s sleep affects mental performance as much as being drunk.
Stress is one of the symbols of our time and chronic stress is its main standard-bearer. Be emphasized wrong to be productive, popular and succeed. However, stress increases the risk of serious illnesses, including cancer and dreaded brain diseases, such as dementia. Alzheimer’s disease.
Chronic stress causes anxiety, depression, poor decision-making, insomnia and memory loss. Too much cortisol, the stress hormone, causes an excess of free radicals that damage the membranes of brain cells, resulting in normal loss of function and death. , cortisol interferes with the formation of new brain cells.
There are risks associated with medication. Mental fog is one of the most common side effects, both with prescription and freely sold medications.
For example, cholesterol-lowering drugs and prescription sleeping pills are known to cause memory loss. In addition, drugs called anticholinergics work by blocking the action of Acetylcholine, the substance from memory and learning in the brain. include mental fog, forgetfulness and inability to concentrate.
In addition, many over-the-counter medications also work by blocking Acetylcholine, such as certain medications for allergies, acid reflux, pain and insomnia. Therefore, it is important to carefully review the literature and assess whether the side effects outweigh the benefit that may result from the treatment itself.
Some health conditions can cause brain mist problems. In some cases, it is the treatment of this disease that can cause these problems. This is the case for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
A common side effect of chemotherapy is a specific type of mental confusion associated with this treatment. The official position of the American Cancer Society is that this mental confusion caused by chemotherapy is caused by a combination of illness, treatments, sleep problems, hormonal changes, depression and stress.
When researchers analyzed patients’ brain activity before and after chemotherapy treatments, they found that chemotherapy caused observable changes in brain function, indicating that chemotherapy itself plays at least some role in reducing mental clarity.
For its part, some health conditions associated with symptoms of mental fog include, among other things:
Once you know what mental fog is and what its main causes are, the next step is how to combat it.
There is no unique solution to dispel mental fog and improve concentration, each person should look for their own personal solution, first identifying the factor or factors that give density to fog, most people will need to start correcting their eating habits as well. such as looking for ways to manage stress and improve your sleep patterns. It will also be necessary to review each person’s health status to find solutions. In fact, mental fog can be a symptom of an undiagnosed health problem.
The main guidelines we can give you so you can clear the mental fog and improve your concentration are:
Now that you know what mental fog is and how you can combat it, be proactive in adopting a healthy lifestyle for your body and mind. Don’t make excuses, don’t look for the culprits. Nobody’s going to care about your brain as much as you do, and nobody’s going to appreciate it more than you.