What causes brain fog? Five physical causes worth checking

You lose a word halfway through a sentence. You read the same page twice and it still doesn’t sink in.

You walk into a room and stand there, trying to remember why.

If that sounds familiar, you’ve probably wondered what’s going on. Brain fog often has a physical cause, and it’s worth finding out what yours is.

What is brain fog?

Brain fog is the everyday name for thinking that feels slow, cloudy and hard to hold on to. It describes how you feel rather than naming a specific illness.

The signs are easy to recognize. Words that won’t come, and names that used to arrive instantly.

Trouble holding your focus. Needing lists you never used to need.

Many patients also tell us the fog gets thicker as the day goes on, and is worst by mid-afternoon.

What are the most common causes of brain fog?

Your brain runs on what the rest of your body supplies: nutrients your gut has absorbed, steady blood sugar, thyroid hormone and a proper night’s sleep.

When one of those runs low, your thinking can be the first thing to slow. That’s why the cause often sits outside your head.

Here are five places worth looking.

• Nutrients
• Thyroid & blood sugar
• Your gut
• Sleep
• Hormones

Low nutrients. Your brain relies on B12, iron and vitamin D. If you’re low on them, fog can be one of the first things you notice.

Your thyroid and blood sugar. Your thyroid is a small gland in your neck whose hormones help set your body’s pace. When it runs slow, your thinking can slow with it, and one basic blood test doesn’t always show it.

Blood sugar matters too. If it rises fast after a meal and then crashes, your focus can crash with it. Feeling foggiest an hour or two after lunch is a clue worth noting.

Your gut. Your gut and brain are in constant contact. When digestion is struggling, your focus and memory can struggle with it.

And if your gut isn’t absorbing your food well, those nutrients may not reach your brain, even on a good diet.

Sleep. Your brain clears out and resets overnight. Miss the deep, restoring part of the night and you wake up foggy, however long you were in bed.

Hormones. Did the fog arrive around menopause? Falling hormone levels can make words and names harder to reach. Men can notice this too as their hormone levels fall.

Often it’s two or three of these at once. Our brain fog page explains how each one can cloud your thinking.

Could stress or my medication be part of it?

Long-term stress can throw off your sleep and leave you wired at night and drained by day. Both of those can feed the fog.

Some medications can also affect focus and memory. If you think yours might, talk to your physician.

Please don’t change or stop anything on your own. Any decision about medication stays between you and your physician.

Is brain fog just something you live with?

You may have been told it’s just your age, or just menopause. It’s common, but common and normal aren’t the same thing.

It’s natural to quietly worry about what it might mean. If you’re worried about your memory, please talk to your doctor, who can arrange the right assessment.

What we can tell you is that brain fog very often has physical causes worth looking into. And they’re rarely checked all together.

What can I do about brain fog?

Puzzles, coffee and lists can all get you through the day. They work on the fog itself, so it tends to roll back in once you stop.

A better first step is noticing your pattern.

Is it worse after meals? After a bad night? Did it start around a change in your cycle or a stressful stretch?

Write down what you notice for a week or two. It gives you something concrete to talk through with whoever you see next.

It’s also tempting to buy a brain supplement off the shelf. But that’s a guess. It might be the wrong nutrient, or one your gut can’t absorb.

At Back to Wellness, Dr. Anthony Alphonso looks at nutrients, thyroid, blood sugar, gut, sleep and hormones as one picture. He has been in practice since 2007, and we work alongside your physician.

One patient wrote in her Google review: “I had significant improvement in my... brain fog, memory, focus, energy... and overall well-being.” That was her own experience, and results vary from person to person.

If you’d like to see how we approach it, visit our brain fog and focus page.

When to talk to someone

Some changes in your thinking need medical help first. Please call 911 or go to urgent care right away for:

• sudden confusion
• sudden trouble speaking or understanding speech
• weakness or numbness on one side of your body

And if your memory is getting steadily worse, you get lost somewhere familiar, or the people close to you have noticed changes and are worried, please see your doctor soon.

If none of that applies and you want to find out what’s clouding your thinking, book a free 15-minute call.

It’s by phone, with no cost and no obligation. We’ll hear the whole story and tell you honestly whether we can help.