Mental Health
Here’s How Jennifer Healed Her Brain Fog
A 64-year-old breast cancer survivor naturally cured mental fatigue with simple lifestyle changes orchestrated by healthcare professionals.
Introduction
Six hundred million people worldwide suffer from cognitive dysfunction. Brain fog is one of the conditions related to cognitive dysfunction.
Like many people, I also suffered from brain fog, ironically in my younger years when I was on high carbohydrate diets that caused inflammation, chronic stress, and autoimmune conditions. This is a friend’s story who experienced a similar condition caused by different issues and solved them using other methods.
Jennifer, a retired tertiary education teacher, had localized breast cancer when she was 59. She was fortunate as her tumor was identified at an early stage and did not spread to other organs. She had excellent care and multiple therapies, such as chemotherapy, radiation, and endocrine therapy, and she got her health back.
While she was extremely grateful and happy to beat cancer, after 60, she started experiencing noticeable mental fatigue, commonly known as “brain fog” or “chronic fatigue syndrome”. She received various mental health therapies, which helped her survive the condition to some extent.
However, despite her psychological and psychiatric therapies, Jennifer frequently lost focus, forgot things, felt irritable by minor stressors, and had occasional depressive thoughts and feelings. In addition, her energy level was much lower than when she was in her fifties.
She initially blamed her age for these mental conditions. However, after consulting various mainstream and alternative health experts, her condition was diagnosed as mental fatigue caused by chronic stress, inflammation, and the use of medications.
Jennifer has always been proactive with health-conscious, especially after her breast cancer situation, which she, fortunately, identified early and got cured timely.
In addition to consistently seeing her healthcare professionals such as her family doctor, psychiatrists, and endocrinologists, Jennifer also leveraged natural therapies by consulting with a functional medicine doctor, a dietician, a naturopath, a sleep therapist, a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner, a yoga trainer, aqua instructor, piano teacher, clinical massage therapist, and a Reiki healer. Her functional medicine doctor referred her to other practitioners.
As an academic, Jennifer is open-minded, questions the information she consumes, takes personal responsibility, takes necessary measures, and makes sound decisions to apply expert recommendations. She did not make the mental mistakes I did.
After obtaining substantial input from various health experts, the root causes of Jennifer’s brain fog were crystal clear in her terms. She informed me that chronic stress, chronic inflammation, and medications that she used to treat her other conditions were the root causes.
While her psychiatrist kept her on low-dose mood-boosting medication, and her endocrinologist helped her balance the hormones, her primary healthcare show was orchestrated by her functional medicine doctor, a medical specialist in mental health and gut health.
Jennifer admired her private functional medicine doctor as he approached her conditions holistically and focused on the root causes of her disorders. Therefore, she believed her doctor was worth investing.
Nothing was more important than her health in life, particularly after experiencing breast cancer. Besides, her private health insurance covered 70% of her expenses, including natural remedies.
Since we are close friends and have experienced similar conditions, we have had many conversations discussing the effectiveness of therapies.
In this post, I want to share feedback from Jennifer about her health advisors and a few fundamental approaches and techniques she used to heal her brain fog.
Even though some of our solution methods were similar, Jennifer used a few other methods since the root causes of her brain fog were different from mine.
I won’t repeat the techniques I used as they are recorded in a previous story. Instead, I mention the key points Jennifer used to keep this story in a reasonable size. Here is my story for readers who might have missed it before:
What Jennifer Gained from Multiple Health Experts
1 — Functional Medicine Doctor
This qualified medical doctor focused on the root causes of Jennifer’s condition. He created a plan to address chronic stress, inflammation, and side effects of her medication.
As a health orchestrator, this functional medicine doctor coordinated all activities in the master plan. He obtained extensive blood, urine, fecal, and saliva tests.
Jennifer was surprised when her doctor was intensely focused on her gut health. She initially couldn’t figure out the relationship between the gut and the brain. But she understood the connection when the doctor articulated it with compelling evidence.
2 — Dietician
Jennifer’s functional doctor explained the relationships and referred her to a naturopath and dietician to heal her gut. A special diet designed by her dietician helped her increase her energy levels.
Since brain fog might be caused by nutrient deficiencies, the dietician’s input in increasing essential vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, healthy fats, and amino acids, the dietician also introduced time-restricted feeding in intermittent fasting format, suiting Jennifer’s lifestyle.
Jennifer disliked eating fish when her dietician recommended consuming at least two servings per week. However, the dietician helped her increase her omega-three intake by at least a gram of DHA and EPA using high-quality fish oil, krill oil, and cod liver oil. Omega 3 fats play a critical role in brain health.
Another prominent recommendation from the dietician was increasing magnesium via diet and supplementing with Vitamin D3 tablets as her blood tests showed severe deficiency in Vitamin D. Due to fear of common Melanoma in Australia, Jennifer always protected herself from sun exposure. However, she was happy to supplement with Vitamin D.
3 — Naturopath
The naturopath created a plan to improve her gut by supplementing her diet with pre-biotic and probiotic food and several natural supplements, which were also approved by her dietician and the functional medicine doctor.
While the dietician recommended her noninflammatory nutrition, her naturopath supplemented her diet with several herbs to reduce inflammation.
The naturopath also recommended stress and anxiety-reducing herbs in tablet and liquid format. In low doses, some of these bitter herbs had a hormetic effect on her body and helped her detoxify.
The naturopath also recommended additional detoxifying substances such as activated charcoal. Why Is Activated Charcoal in My Emergency Bag? Is It Hype or Hope? Scientifically proven benefits of charcoal, testimonials, and personal experience.
4 — Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner
The functional medicine doctor and naturopath referred Jennifer to see a TCM practitioner specializing in acupuncture. This practitioner was a licensed acupuncturist. The purpose was to address chronic stress from a different angle.
Acupuncture triggers particular points on the skin with tiny needles. These needles stimulate nerve-rich parts of the skin to activate blood flow in tissues, glands, and organs. Jennifer was initially scared of needles but mentioned that they did not hurt at all.
According to Jennifer, acupuncture balanced the energy flow, thus addressing her stress accumulation in various parts of the body and reducing anxiety. After ten sessions, she felt a significant reduction in her stress and anxiety. In addition, her energy level increased, and she experienced a better sense of well-being.
From my experience, acupuncture helped me to reset my biological rhythms. The Importance of Biological Rhythms & Psychological Aspects in Fat Loss Journey: Five simple & effective habits to speed up fat loss process.
5 — Sleep Therapist
Jennifer always had a problem with sleep. Her overactive brain and critical mind were preventing her from having quality sleep.
The sleep therapist, collaborating with her dietician and naturopath, created a sleep improvement plan for Jennifer. For example, her dietician introduced food rich in tryptophan and glycine. Her naturopath prepared relaxation and sleep-inducing herbs.
In a short time, Jennifer’s sleep significantly improved. As she slept better, her cortisol level normalized, and inflammation markers such as C reactive protein reduced.
6 — Yoga Instructor
Jennifer loved yoga. As she is a mature age woman, she prefers gentle and joint-friendly workouts. Thus, yoga was ideal for her.
Initially, Jennifer took private lessons from her yoga instructor. She learned many valuable techniques. Her posture improved, and her flexibility increased.
After several months, she joined yoga classes in her community center. These community exercises contributed to Jennifer’s mental health as she built great relationships with the members.
Yoga helped Jennifer to reduce mental and physical stress naturally. Her mobility was much better after learning and practicing yoga. After each session, her mood improved. She started focusing better and remembering things more leisurely.
When I mentioned to Jennifer the laughter yoga club in our community, she joined with no hesitation and loved the atmosphere. She mentioned that laughter helped her ease her tension, anxiety, and chronic stress.
7 — Clinical Massage Therapist
Jennifer was fortunate her private health insurance covered clinical massage therapists specializing in mayo-therapy.
Mayo therapy helped her reduce physical tension. She also felt mentally clear after each massage therapy. In addition, her muscular pains were significantly reduced.
Mayo therapy contributed to reducing stress, anxiety, and inflammation. This therapy also improved Jennifer’s sleep quality.
8 — Aqua Therapy Instructor
Jennifer loved swimming, the sauna, and the hot spa. So her functional medicine doctor recommended she join the aqua club designed for patients experiencing excessive inflammation and pain.
Fortunately, her private health insurance also covered aqua-therapy. So she joined the club and initially received one on one sessions from the instructors. After a while, she participated in community activities, including various aqua-therapy sessions.
These sessions included gently moving in the warm water, playing balls, and dancing to music as a group. Aqua therapy sessions helped her to reduce stress, inflammation, and muscular pain. In addition, after each session, she slept better.
9 — Reiki Healer
Reiki was new to Jennifer. Her academic mind caused resistance initially, but she found that people in Asia practiced Reiki for over 2,000 years when she researched the topic from diverse cultural sources.
Initially, her TCM practitioner mentioned the effectiveness of Reiki in healing from mental and emotional disturbances. My understanding of Reiki, it improves energy flows in the body and causes deep relaxation.
Her functional medicine doctor approved this as her chronic stress relates to her emotions. Jennifer felt great after several reiki sessions. The gentle hands of the reiki healer transferred Jennifer to an altered state of mind. In this state, the brain functions better due to a reduction in stress and anxiety.
Even though she did not find scientific evidence on the therapeutic effects of Reiki, she loved it and did a course to become a Reiki practitioner.
She used Reiki techniques for her healing. In addition, by learning techniques and joining a reiki club in her community, she helped many other people. She believed Reiki addresses her mental and spiritual issues by balancing the flow of neurochemicals.
10 — Piano Teacher
Jennifer always enjoyed music but never had a chance to learn to play a musical instrument. However, through her research, she found that playing a musical instrument could improve her mental capabilities, such as focus, memory, and task switching.
She hired a piano teacher and learned to play the piano in a few months. Since she loves playing the piano so much, her husband and kids bought a grand piano as a birthday present.
She improved so much that she joined her local church to play religious songs on Sundays. She also loved participating in dancing rituals. This charitable activity contributed to her mental and emotional healing. In addition, playing an instrument helped her create cognitive reserves from my observations.
Conclusions
Many health issues cause brain fog. The most common ones are chronic stress, inflammation, nutritional deficiencies, and side effects of medications. Common symptoms are losing focus, forgetting things, feeling irritable by minor stressors, experiencing high anxiety, and having occasional depressive thoughts and feelings.
Jennifer was fortunate to understand her symptoms, get her root causes identified timely, and obtain support from multiple professionals by taking personal responsibility for her health.
After around two years, Jennifer's brain fog disappeared with a holistic health solution approach. All symptoms have gone. She started feeling great. Moreover, while solving her brain fog, Jennifer gained new insights into health and turned her learning into her lifestyle.
Since then, Jennifer has experienced noticeable differences in her transformed physical and mental health. Her focus significantly increased, her memory improved, and her irritability disappeared. In addition, her inflammation markers improved considerably, and her hormones, such as cortisol, normalized. Consequently, her overall anxiety and stress substantially decreased.
The moral of this story is healthy lifestyle changes play a critical role in improving our health by making epigenetic effects in healing. Like many other health conditions, brain fog can also be cured with assistance from healthcare professionals and healthy lifestyle habits.
Focusing on physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual aspects in an integrated way can produce optimal results.
Here is my experience of dealing with brain fog.
Here’s How I Defeated Brain Fog with Six Lifestyle Habits Decades Ago.
Reversing chronic diseases is of particular interest to me. Here are three examples from my circles.
Here’s How Georgia Defeated Clinical Depression in 10 Steps
Here’s How a Mature-Age Couple Reversed Diabetes and Trimmed Their Bodies with Lifestyle Habits.
After Defeating Arthritis Pain, Shane Lost Visceral Fat and Gained Lean Muscles in Five Steps
10 Lifestyle Practices and Habits to Improve Cognitive Health and Performance
I documented many more as compiled in this collection for easy access.
Thank you for reading my perspectives.
Disclaimer: Please note that this story is not health advice. I shared my reviews, observations, and perspectives for information purposes only, If you have mental disease symptoms, please consult your healthcare professionals.
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Prominent Scientific References on Brain Fog
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Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
As a new reader, please check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting my reviews, observations, and decades of experiments optimizing my hormones and neurotransmitters. I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.
Petechiae, ALS, Metabolic Syndrome, Type II Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, Heart Disease, Strokes, Obesity, Liver Cancer, Autoimmune Disorders, Homocysteine, Lungs Health, Pancreas Health, Kidneys Health, NCDs, Infectious Diseases, Brain Health, Dementia, Depression, Brain Atrophy, Neonatal Disorders, Skin Health, Dental Health, Bone Health, Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain, Brain Fog, Chronic Inflammation, Insulin Resistance, Elevated Cortisol, Leptin Resistance, Anabolic Resistance, Cholesterol, High Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, Gastrointestinal Disorders, Thyroid Disorders, Anemia, Dysautonomia, cardiac output, and urinary track disorders.
I also wrote about valuable nutrients. Here are the links for easy access:
Lutein/Zeaxanthin, Phosphatidylserine, Boron, Urolithin, taurine, citrulline malate, biotin, lithium orotate, alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, CoQ10, PQQ, NADH, TMG, creatine, choline, digestive enzymes, magnesium, zinc, hydrolyzed collagen, nootropics, pure nicotine, activated charcoal, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, and other nutrients.
Disclaimer: My posts do not include professional or health advice. I only document my reviews, observations, experiences, and perspectives to provide information and create awareness.
As part of my creative non-fiction writing goals, I’d like to share a few stories that might warm our hearts with a bit of humor into weighty topics.
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