I remember having days when I literally got nothing done.
The brain fog was that bad. So bad that work was difficult, but it also had an effect on my personal relationships.
I didn’t have access to all the tools I cultivated to maintain compassion and a positive outlook like meditation and gratitude.
My mind would instead wander to negative self-talk and ruminations of past experiences and come out of my mouth as snapping at my son, gossiping with a frenemy or bad luck on the dating scene.
I didn’t like those days and often found myself apologizing to loved ones and looking for solutions. Sure, I blamed a lot of it on menopause’s “the change,” like all of us do, but there had to be an underlying, holistic reason for why my brain wasn’t working.
Research, research, research = discovery. How do we tie it all together? Life is a science project.
I want to break down a holistic approach so you can:
Make progress toward zero brain fog
Understand how gut health promotes optimal states of consciousness
Reinvent yourself
Benefit yourself and others
Raise your consciousness, which is the purpose of life
Brain Fog
What causes brain fog?
I devoured Datis Kharrazian’s book Why Isn’t My Brain Working and became obsessed with how he brings it all together.
Neuroinflammation decreases the speed of neuron responses and leads to symptoms such as brain fog and depression. - Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, MS
Neuroinflammation is at the source of brain fog. It slows our brains down and keeps us from having a positive attitude.
I’m sure you have heard a lot about inflammation and how it may be the cause of many conditions when left unchecked. It is both good and bad, but we will focus on the bad side for now.
Inflammation becomes bad when it is out of control.
This happens when we eat an inflammatory diet (fried food, gluten, etc.), have uncontrolled blood sugar (diabetes and high-carb diets), abuse alcohol, and are exposed to environmental pollutants.
Neuroinflammation happens when our brains are affected by what we eat and expose ourselves to. We have more control over one of these than the other…
How does the inflammation get into our brain?
Microglia cells [in the brain] can become activated and promote neuroinflammation in response to inflammatory diets, head trauma, lack of oxygen, diabetes, environmental toxins, autoimmunity and systemic inflammation. - Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, MS
We don’t want to over-activate the microglia to keep them from causing inflammation, and one of the biggest risks to doing so is degradation of the blood-brain barrier or BBB.
The BBB is the protective layer around your brain’s blood vessels that keeps the good in and the bad out.
The junctions between the cells need to be tight to only allow into our brains what our brains need.
Causes for breakdown of the BBB are: chronic stress, alcohol, elevated glucose and poor diet. - Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, MS
So there we have it, the root cause of our brain fog.
Best practices to reduce brain fog are directly related to stress and diet.
Lots of things are, but here we are trying to focus, right? Let’s start small and focus on those two biggies.
Read on for simple changes you can make right now.
Gut health and consciousness
It’s not just specifically the brain we need to focus on as it does not operate on its own.
You may have heard of the recently discovered gut-brain axis. Researchers have shown that the vagus nerve and our gut work together to influence brain function.
Brenda Watson wrote a very straightforward book called The Great Gut Extinction in which she relates the health of our gut to our brain function.
Microbes in the gut have a significant influence on brain function. - Brenda Watson, CNC
The gut microbiome has had a lot of attention lately, we have heard about it a lot for digestion and immune health in the past years.
Whether you understand what it is and how it works is not so important. The important takeaway is that it influences us in ways we are just now beginning to understand.
These beneficial microbes are known as probiotics and are found in and on our food like yogurt, kimchi and even on our fresh-from-the-garden produce.
Probiotics and their byproducts offer many benefits including: strengthen the blood brain barrier and thereby decreasing inflammation. - Brenda Watson, CNC
There it is again, the blood-brain barrier.
Remember how it relates to neuroinflammation and brain fog?
Probiotics can provide support while we change our diets and reduce stress.
Probiotics also: - Improve mood and reduce anxiety - Communicate with the vagus nerve - Help with the production of brain neurotransmitters, like serotonin and GABA - Maintain the integrity of the intestinal lining - Brenda Watson, CNC
By now you are seeing how connected this all is.
Look at how similar the lining of our intestine is to the blood-brain barrier pictured earlier:
The integrity of those tight junctions is called out here again.
They are important for allowing nutrients through to the bloodstream and keeping toxins and pathogens out.
Probioitics help maintain these tight junctions.
What would happen if you had a leaky gut and a leaky blood-brain barrier?
That is two lines of defense that are compromised that could lead to systemic, full-body inflammation.
If our guts have too many bad microbes and not enough of the good guys because of poor dietary choices it directly affects how we feel and act on a daily basis.
Focus, outlook and being present all suffer the consequences.
Holistically everything is connected.
We have a “gut feeling” this is true, but still treat symptoms with an isolated approach whether with pharmaceuticals or vitamins and minerals.
Want to know what you can do about it?
5 Simple changes to make now
1. Meditate and reduce stress – there are many ways to do both. I prefer using an app called brain.fm that uses personalized neural effect sounds and headphones to get me in the zone and meditate. If you click on the link, you get the first month for $1 (I'm not getting paid to say any of this BTW :)
For stress reduction, I use Rescue Remedy, a gentle, non-sedating flower-essence liquid formula that has been used since the 1800s.
2. Balance blood sugar and create a healthy environment for a diverse microbiome through dietary changes. This step will help balance hormones as well, which when out of whack, can lead to brain inflammation and aggravate menopause and andropause symptoms.
3. Stop drinking alcohol - It causes gut dysbiosis (reduces good bacteria and promotes the bad) and may cause leaky gut and neuroinflammation.
Recent research shows no amount of alcohol is good for you. Alcohol abuse can cause brain shrinkage.
When the alcohol is out of your system for 2 weeks, you will feel great. I’ll write more about my experience shortly.
4. Consider a diverse, high-potency probiotic. I feel mentally stronger and happier when I take the right ones for me. The ones I take are:
Progurt sachets as needed for a mood and focus boost. They have 1 Trillion Colony Forming Units (CFU) Beneficial Bacteria Capability from Human Probiotic Isolates™ and it always has the most noticeable effect. I am an authorized reseller, contact me for more.
Vital Flora Advanced Biome 100 strains 100bil once a week.
5. Try supplements that may help promote healthy brain inflammation: luteolin, resveratrol, rutin, curcumin
I always start with a low dose and work my way up until brain fog clears. More on my journey with these plant flavonoids coming soon.
Benefit yourself and others by elevating your consciousness
Our life’s purpose is to elevate our consciousness.
To raise your consciousness, you must increase your level of mind.
No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. - Albert Einstein
Increasing your level of mind takes focus, intention and a positive attitude.
We cannot effectively achieve these 3 things without addressing stress, diet and happy mind tools.
Write down your goals, keep a vision board, a gratitude journal and a diet logbook.
Sit alone in silence and decipher what is truly important to you.
99% of the time it will distill down to wanting to benefit others.
By reinventing yourself with a happy mind your presence and actions will cause a butterfly effect of change in this world.
Gut health and diet are directly tied to our ability to focus, be present, reduce brain fog, raise your consciousness.
Becoming more in tune with your body as you balance blood sugar and get rid of brain fog will reveal an ability to access parts of your brain you didn’t know existed.
Meditation will be easier, work will be less stressful, and life will become not such a big deal when this happens.
This benefits not only you, but everyone with whom you come in contact.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
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