Trying to find the cause of my Brain Fog

Oh, one “objective” way to measure your brain fog could be using Muse -headband (I have Muse S) and do a 5-10 minute meditation always at the same time of the day when you’re most likely to have brain fog. I got totally different results when I’m experiencing the brain fog than when I’m not.

Hi @LNP, I’m sorry I didn’t realize today in the self-research meeting that you are LNP here on the forum. I should have! Brain fog is a common topic and I thought you were two different people. (It wasn’t very smart of me to suggest you start a project log since you’ve been posting here and I’ve been following it.)

From the evidence you’ve gathered so far, it looks like you have some good hints that peanut butter (and perhaps almonds) make it more likely you will suffer brain fog. You also have some other more detailed questions about the nature of the brain fog.

A few suggestions based on what you’ve done so far.

  1. For testing interventions: Definitely keep tracking your subjective experience of brain fog. It is much more important that your observations be reliable and valid and convenient to consistently collect than that they be precise. A crude question like “did I experience any brain fog today” is likely to be more useful over time (if you can get an observation recorded every day) than a cognitive assessment that you can only do once in a while.

  2. For more clarity about the phenomenon: Here you should be prepared to test with the full Quantified Mind range of tests a few times to get a baseline, and then a few times when you feel severe brain fog; and, do this a few times over a few weeks. You don’t just want to know what deficits show up, you want to know if they show up consistently. How long do these take you? I’ve only used a few of them, but may try them out if you are doing it so I can keep up. I’m interested in what you learn.

One of the questions you posed last year was:

why did I only experience brain fog on some of the days, even though I ate 20g almonds each day?

This presumes a fairly simple causal relationship. As other posters have noted, it may be multi-causal. Perhaps eating almonds makes it more likely you will experience brain fog but doesn’t cause brain fog under all circumstances. I think you evidence so far calls out for a very simple experiment of eliminating tree nuts and peanuts for a couple of months and getting a brain fog measure at least 1x a day , then reintroducing them.

Please report your QM lessons if any. Thank you for posting your project.

I don’t if this helps but I’ll share what I learned about some of my diet related brain fog. Last year whilst trying to combat feeling sad and down due to the winter cold here (SAD) i looked for ways to boost my serotonin. I found that about 100g of peanuts/peanut butter made me super sleepy and i would nod off for about 4 hours or so. That wasn’t the intention but it was effective :slight_smile: I know i’m not allergic so considered it might be related to something like the food coma situation where you eat too much and can barely keep your eyes awake. I’ve used the trick many times with nuts now to get a good catnap (it’s as simple as eat the whole packet! buuut I’m a tiny fella, ymmv) Anyway, I need to research more , but my “Point” is that i think it’s to do with tryptophan and how that connects to serotonin and melatonin. I think carbs and insulin have a link as well certainly brainfog hits me with high carb foods (especially with refined fructose like jams or undiluted apple juice). I should say I test negative for diabetes though there is history in the family. Perhaps eating a meal dense in carbs + tryptophan would knock me right out ? Shall I try around Thanksgiving? Jokes aside, I think one way to test if I’m on the right path would be a wearable blood glucose monitor. Last year I couldn’t afford one so I went keto instead. To see if reducing/ eliminating big insulin spikes helped. I suspected I had adhd and because of work and responsibilities i just couldn’t afford any more random extra confusion inconsistency. i already had too much with my suspected condition. So dietary brain fog had to go. Keto helped. My occasional successful retest of the nut thing showed it that it was at least predictable. I have since gotten a formal diagnosis confirming my adhd and have medication and am maintaining keto and overall my brainfog is gone. At some point i’ll retest carbs and nuts just in case my issues were actually adhd related but considering the noticeable results i suspect they were separate compounding issues. Anyway, I hope my waffle helps to offer you a direction you haven’t looked into before. Best of luck :slight_smile:

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Okay, so your problems came from ADHD and maybe also nuts/carbs?