9 Ways to Reduce Brain Fog to Do Productive Work at Home

Have you ever had a feeling of confusion, or like your brain was dragging along through murky waters? You try to concentrate but you can’t get your brain to focus or you’ll be going through a normal activity like carrying a conversation and then it feels like your brain just short-circuits and you forget words?

If any of these situations sound familiar, then you might be suffering from brain fog. Although it is not a medically recognized term, brain fog is a common feeling among many people.  Different people have reported feeling lie they’ve expended their usefulness before the day is halfway, feeling confused and unable to concentrate. Some extreme cases have reported a decline in memory and having trouble in recollection.

Another term for brain fog that might help you better understand what’s going on with you is mental fatigue. Our brain is the most powerful organ we have and can be expended just like any other muscle in the body.

When accomplishing simple mental tasks feeling like shooting at moving targets, then you have a problem in your concentration. You can’t seem to focus on one thing and your mind constantly wanders off and bringing it back to the task at hand becomes a major problem.

Brain fog can affect your memory and the way you remember things. It can affect simple memory retrieval like where you just placed your keys to more serious issues like forgetting what you had for dinner last night. Serious brain fog-if ignored can lead to memory conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

As a sign of brain fog, chronic fatigue is characterized by extreme tiredness that doesn’t seem to fade even after taking long stretches of rest. The problem can’t seem to be fixed by easy solutions like caffeine either and you end up going through your day like a zombie and may even find it difficult to work simple muscles like walking.

This is the general feeling of your mind being off. Instead of feeling sharp and active like you normally would, you feel dull and unmotivated. You feel unproductive and maybe depressed as a result. Your day’s tasks and activities blur together and everything seems to be moving in slow motion and you are just a spectator watching it all happen.

It’s difficult to determine if one is suffering from brain fog because most of these symptoms could also be a result of other conditions like being distracted or not paying attention and lack of proper sleep.

Knowing what’s causing your brain fog is the first step in fixing the problem. The causes of brain fog usually fall into two categories- lifestyle-related or a side effect of a medical condition or medication. Here are some causes and how to fix it.

This is one of the biggest causes of brain fog and also the easiest one to fix. What you eat greatly affects not only your general health but also your mental health.

Glucose is good for mental health because it fuels the brain but processed sugars, fructose, and corn syrup are bad for your health. They create an imbalance of too much glucose and then too little. This sudden fluctuation causes brain fog, moodiness, irritability, and in some extreme instances may cause Alzheimer’s.

Avoid processed sugars at all costs. Before you put a food item in that shopping cart, check out the added sugar content and then translate that to how many damaged brain cells you’ll end up with.

This may come as a surprise but a healthy fat diet is good for your brain. Your brain is made up of primarily fat and uses the fat you take in your diet to produce raw materials it needs to create essential brain chemicals. Lack of consumption of enough fat in your diet leads to your brain using itself for fuel.

Have more healthy fats in your diet like nuts, avocados, wild salmon, and eggs. GET RID OF VEGETABLE OIL because they are bad to the general health of your brain. Instead use coconut oil, olive oil. If you can up your intake of dietary cholesterol, your brain would thank you for it.

Ever noticed that marathoners and other people that lose water in some form of exercise become groggier? That's because water is essential to brain health. Your brain takes about 73% of the water you take in and the slightest reduction of that could make you groggy, reduce concentration, increases fatigue, inability to focus, and may also lead to impaired memory.

Add more water to your daily intake. If you’re not already taking the 2-liter recommendation, then try to meet this minimum requirement. Eat more vegetables as they help in the absorption of water and get rid of drinks like too much caffeine that may interfere with your water absorption rate.

Sleep deprivation is a huge factor in your brain fog. Sleep is crucial to brain repair activities, consolidation of memories so you remember what you learned the previous day and is an opportunity for your brain to create new cells.

Get some high-quality sleep. To do that, you need to take care of some simple lifestyle changes. Reduce your caffeine intake, especially close to your bedtime. Don’t snack before bed and stick to a sleep routine.     

Stress puts you at great risk for all major diseases including dementia and Alzheimer’s. When you’re stressed, your brain focusses more on the cause of the stress, forgetting to perform its other duties that may lead to a fuzzy brain and poor memory.

Stress causes cortisol- the stress hormone- to be produced that damage brain cell membranes and interferes with the formation of new brain cells.

Stress management activities like yoga and meditation are great. Meditation heals the mind by making you think less. You can also so a mindless activity like painting, or gaming, or whatever makes you get out of your mind for a while.

Physical exercise increases endorphins to the system and gets more glucose and oxygen flowing to the brain. This action alone causes the brain to refresh itself and have more energy. Exercise also helps in the burning of cortisol and stimulates new brain cell formation, making it the single most effective way of clearing brain fog. No wonder you tend to feel clear and level-headed after a good workout.

Take walks as they are good to clear your mind and work wonders for brain fogs and stand frequently if you sit for long periods of time during work.                           

Sometimes you may be doing all the right things: you’re eating right, sleeping, exercising but you still suffer from a foggy brain. If this happens to you, then you might need to consult your health practitioner to know if you need to be on any supplements.

Supplements are good because they may or may not be a part of your diet but are essential to your overall health.

Vitamin B12 deficiency is a very common occurrence especially for the elderly and vegetarian as it is only found in animal products. Lack of vitamin B12 in your diet may cause poor memory and be in a constant state of fogginess. If you mostly don’t eat animal products, are elderly, or use anti-acids, because stomach acid is used to break down B12, then getting Vitamin B12 supplements should be on your to-do list.

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It may be the most commonly available vitamin out there because we can get it directly from the sun but it is sadly lacking in most of our diets and people living in areas that experience less sun are vulnerable to this deficiency. Vitamin D can lift the mood, eliminate depression and brain fog, and improve memory and problem-solving skills. If your doctor determines that you have a Vitamin D deficiency, then it’s time to get the supplements.

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These are essential fatty acids that the brain uses and are crucial to memory and overall brain health. You can get these fatty acids from fatty fish like salmon, sardines, and trout but if you can’t then consider taking supplements with a high dose DHA- the most beneficial structural component of the brain in the cerebral cortex- the memory area.

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Gut health is directly linked to normal brain function. For this reason, you need to keep the bacteria that keep things running in your gut happy. Taking probiotics and prebiotic supplements will speed along this process and keep the healthy bacteria working for the good of your entire body and especially for your brain.

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Brain fog is undeniably frustrating: you know that you’re capable of accomplishing so much, but for some reason trying to accomplish anything is feeling like you’ve been put on slow motion while the rest of the world was sped up twice. And what’s even worse, really thinking about the situation doesn’t make it better, only worse, thus having the whole thing on repeat. The good news is that brain fog is not permanent and taking the measures above you can reverse the symptoms and clear your head.