Brain Fog
Brain fog is, when you feel like there is kind of fog around your thinking. You are not focused, you feel like you are daydreaming all the time and whenever you try to concentrate, it takes a ton of energy.
I experienced this for a while, and it was annoying me so much, I did a quick, but intense research on the topic. Here is what helped me:
Eat a lot of fiber
Not the first thought one might have, but definitely what helped me most. I have never been a big fan of green salads, because they do not taste like much, and they are not high in nutrition (if you do not break up the cells and get the chlorophyll). Anyway, I totally changed my mind when I learned about the amazing benefit they have on our gut bacteria. Because high fiber products …
- … catch free radicals and transport them out of your system.
- … lead to bowel movement, so nothing gets ‘stuck’ within your digestive system. Not even the bad stuff. This is one of the reasons, why fiber also helps prevent intestinal cancer.
- … help gut bacteria to produce certain kinds of vitamins.
And a healthy microbiome (sum of gut bacteria living in your intestines), strengthens the blood brain barrier, which definitely helps clearing up the brain.
Sleep, exercise & stress-reduction
These are probably the most obvious ones.
- Get a proper amount of sleep – you can find my article about sleep here
- do your exercise and
- reduce stress as much as you can. Exercise helps blood circulation and thus bringing oxygen to your cells. Also it induces the production of growth hormones and other hormones.
And stress is a killer for recovery and clear thinking, so whatever you can do to reduce stress, it will help your body to work at its best. We are going to dive deeper into the topic soon, stay tuned. For now you might want to try meditation, journaling, listening to relaxing music, drinking tea instead of coffee (especially in the second half of the day), doing yoga, breathing exercises or trying any mindful practice.
Other nutritional factors
There are a few other nutritional factors, besides fibre, that help fighting brain fog. For Example: Eating enough Omega 3, which is really important for your brain to function right. Get enough protein, so all metabolic process can work at their best. And schedule in a fasting period every now and then. This break and digestion gives your body the freedom to work on other metabolic processes that are important within the body.
Support focus with music
Something that you can do right away, is to listen to focus music. I can totally recommend brain.fm. Before listening to brain.fm , I usually just listened to binaural beats, but it makes a crazy big difference if you use their professional focus music. They have studied brain waves and which circuits within the brain are turned on during certain activities (like focus, creativity, relaxation), and then they discovered that music can turn on these circuits of the brain too. So by listening to the music, you get into your desired mode of thinking.
To sum it up: What helps fighting brain fog, is what supports your physiology. The main factor being nutrition, but also sleep and exercise. If you are too high in stress though, this will counteract everything you are doing right. So take a look at these factors first, play with different forms of nutrition and see what is benefitting you the most.
PS: Another thing, that can totally destroy a clear mind is alcohol of course, but that is probably too obvious to even mention 😉