Brain Fog is a Real Thing
Are you finding it difficult to manage simple tasks or struggling with organizing your thoughts? When you open your laptop, do you feel unsure where to begin? If this resonates with you, you may be among the millions experiencing "brain fog," a result of chronic stress that has surged over the past year.
Some other indications of brain fog include difficulty recalling words, making decisions, and a short attention span - like heading to the refrigerator for milk but forgetting why you opened the door. Brain fog can also lead to profound mental fatigue, reducing productivity and making even minor tasks feel exhausting.
For instance, tidying up the kitchen, a routine part of your day, may feel challenging. This year, the task seems even more draining than usual, even though few of us typically enjoy it.
In this CBC News article written by Jennifer Moss, we discuss what causes brain fog and how to help manage it in our daily lives.
Contributors to Brain Fog
The reason we're struggling like this, according to Dr. Lily Brown, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, may be because our fight or flight is in overdrive lately. When our limbic system is consistently triggered by stressful information or events it overrides the executive functioning part of our brain, which is where rational and clear decision-making occurs. The more that override happens, the more we struggle to focus, motivate, think clearly, or control impulses.
We also see brain fog show up when we're engaging in less physical activity than usual during the day and/or experiencing poor sleep. Both of these deficits also happen to be a result of stress.
In previous columns, I've discussed how lack of sleep can be massively disruptive to our well-being. One study found that after just one all-nighter, subjects who participated in a simulated driving experience drove similarly to people with a blood alcohol level of .10 per cent (.08 is the drunk driving limit in Canada).
According to physician Dr. David Greuner, who has led several sleep studies, "In a nutshell, sleep consolidates memory; a lot of the information you take in while you're awake is processed while you're sleeping so not only is your memory affected, but your ability to solve problems is also hindered, in addition to your alertness, attention, concentration and judgment. Your brain isn't as efficient as it should be."
A 2013 study at the University of California, Berkeley found that during sleep, your memories are moved from short-term holding to long-term storage. When you get poor quality sleep, those memories don't move to the prefrontal cortex for storage and they're forgotten. In other words, after a bad sleep, we don't retain any of the information or learning we've acquired the day before.
Vicious Cycle of Stress and Brain Fog
Poor sleep may be a result of stress, but right now it's also being exacerbated by the massive shift to working from home and video conferencing.
Where people used to get up and walk around the office to chat with co-workers or go for a walking meeting, many are now sitting at desks all day, on video conferencing calls, becoming extremely sedentary.
And, a decrease in physical activity increases poor sleep because we aren't tiring ourselves out physically during the day – so brain fog becomes a vicious cycle.
Recent evidence shows that chronic stress and the resulting brain fog can lead people to experience depression, weight gain, an increase in alcohol consumption, and feelings of isolation.
When we're tired from being on conference calls, or tired from brain fog, it may be hard to motivate ourselves to get on the phone to call a friend, so we disconnect from others. This increases our feelings of loneliness – and there's that vicious cycle again.
How to Manage Brain Fog at Work
The workplace is where we're seeing the impacts of brain fog most clearly: On average, in the past year people have added 48 minutes to their workday.
Trying to keep up with productivity demands at work when it's hard to stay on top of those demands because we're unfocused or because work takes way more effort than normal increases the risk of burnout. That's why we need to manage the causes of brain fog.
First, we need to reduce the amount of time we're spending on video conferencing calls. In the past year, meetings have increased by 24 per cent, on average. So, communicate with your peers, manager or team and start asking:
Is this meeting necessary?
Does it have to be a video call?
Does it have to be longer than 30 minutes?
Who absolutely needs to attend?
Can we turn off our cameras or get on a call?
Can we start the meetings with a check-in: How are people feeling? Are they back-to-back all day?
Can the meeting leader set a timer to let people who are booked back-to-back jump off 5–10 minutes early?
We need to get better at questioning practices that were used for solving immediate problems in an acute situation – we're now a year into the pandemic. This – working from home and video conferencing – is how we're working now and will be for some time, so it's important to figure out ways to make it more sustainable.
How to Manage Brain Fog in Daily Life
To address brain fog effectively we need to identify the cause.
Ask yourself:
Is the source of stress temporary — like a big project at work — or is it more work in general?
Am I experiencing a challenge to work/life balance – more chores and life tasks to juggle while working?
Is my diet or alcohol consumption contributing?
Is this feeling of brain fog persistent both in times of stress and times of calm? If it's there in times of calm, it's important to see your doctor because it could be a sign of something more serious.
If we're pretty certain the cause of our brain fog is a year of unrelenting stress, here are a few ways to tackle it:
Of course, more sleep and exercise, less drinking and overeating. This recipe is common knowledge but sometimes, during a stressful time, hard to manage.
If you want to do something right now and – as I like to say – control the controllables, start by taking just 15 minutes for something you love. That could mean doing something you think is totally frivolous. There's one caveat: It must be done with zero guilt. Remind yourself that you're giving a very fried brain a much-needed chance to recharge. To optimize our brains, we need to take short breaks throughout the day.
Develop a stress management plan:
Set boundaries around time for self-care.
Analyze your schedule: Is there anything you can de-prioritize? Be ruthless. It's easy to say that everything is a priority, but that's never the case.
Come up with your "three ways to manage stressful situations anywhere." Your three things may include breathing exercises, or mindfulness – just make sure they're things you can do anywhere.
Spring is Around the Corner!
The weather can also be a contributing factor to brain fog. During the winter months, finding the motivation to make changes can feel challenging.
However, it's essential to remember that spring is just around the corner, only a month away. As the days get brighter, some of the mental cobwebs may dissipate. Holding onto this glimmer of hope can help us to clear our minds and move forward.
Do you want to discuss brain fog with Jennifer Moss? As an international public speaker, award-winning author, and UN Global Happiness Committee Member, she is here to help. Moss is based in Kitchener, Ontario. Click below to start a conversation.