Notes on The Brain Fog Fix by Dr. Mike Dow

My Notes on The Brain Fog Fix by Dr. Mike Dow

 

Its all connected; if you’re brain is in bad shape, chances are the rest of your life is, too. Eat more berries & travel to explore, wean off the sugar rushes, & help others to discover a sense of purpose & reshape every aspect of life.

The problem is not the sadness itself but how we allow it to rule our lives. Dont let yourself go. Storms do pass. Strengthening our reserves is easier than we think. Instead of trying to ambiguously overhaul one aspect of our lives entirely, with some difficult-to-maintain resolution, begin by making small & desirable changes in different areas of your life. You have to take your whole person in account if you want to think & feel better: the way you sleep, eat, connect, disconnect, move, love, find peace & remember who you really are.

Walnuts & grassfed meats can improve mood & black pepper can drastically reduce dementia. Relationships are more potent than any mood booster & social media can either improve or erode those relationships. Meditation & prayer are a fundamental part of being human. When you get out of bed, you make millions of seemingly insignificant choices from the second you wake up. These tiny choices send ripples through space & time, affecting your body, thoughts & feelings, behavior, relationships, & the differences you make in the world.

 

“Brain fog” is another word for chronic cognitive & mood problems. A cognitive behavioral therapist helps patients transform their thoughts & feelings, & the best way to do that is to help people change their behavior. Humans are most drastically changed by their own experiences.

 

Depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, forgetfulness, confusion & dementia are on the rise. This is partially but significantly due to imbalances in brain chemistry because people are simply not getting the support they need to produce the essential brain chemicals that keep us energized, calm, focused, inspired & healthy. If we eat the wrong foods, get insufficient amount of sleep or exercise overindulge in social media & TV, over-stress with no way to have downtime, & cope with loneliness, lack of connection & meaning, the inevitable result is chronically imbalanced brain chemistry with cognitive & mood problems. The brain can’t maintain high levels of feel-good brain chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, & low levels of the stress hormone like cortisol.

 

Serotonin is primarily responsible for feelings of calm, serenity, optimism, & self-confidence. Serotonin makes you hopeful. If serotonin levels are low, you would experience depression, anxiety, hopelessness, sleep problems, a negative attitude, & lack of self-confidence.

 

Dopamine is the chemical basis for feeling excited, motivated, energized, & “pleasured.” Dopamine allows you to enjoy the life. Low dopamine levels can result in listlessness, boredom, & the general sense that life has lost it’s savor. Imbalanced dopamine can also make it harder to focus, to think things through, & control your impulses. Imbalanced dopamine is associated with compulsive & addictive behavior.

 

Cortisol is the stress hormone that your body uses to rev into high gear. It helps meet all the large & small demands that life throws at you. Imbalanced cortisol levels can leave you feeling exhausted, wired or sometimes both; listless & dragged out during the day, anxious & sleepless at night. When cortisol levels are off balance, you might feel so frayed that the smallest problems set you off or so unmotivated that you can barely drag yourself through the day. Permanently high cortisol levels can depress dopamine levels while preventing serotonin from binding to certain areas in your brain. High cortisol levels have also been shown to inhibit neurogensis – the creation of new brain cells.

 

The key to feeling better is rebalancing these three brain chemicals. Starting with brain chemistry is crucial, because when serotonin, dopamine & cortisol levels are not properly balanced, your brain simply does not work the way it’s supposed to. If your brain chemistry is amiss, all the “brain training,” psychotherapy & positive thinking in the world won’t cure anything.

 

What Your Brain Needs:

• Proper nutrients, including the right vitamins, essential amino acids, & healthy fats
• Exercise
• Sufficient restful sleep
• Regular, healthy circadian rhythms
• Downtime for relaxation & restoration
• Purpose & meaning
• Spiritual practice
• A connection to something larger than yourself

 

What Fogs Your Brain

• Sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, & artificial sweeteners
• Processed white flour
• Too many inflammatory foods including conventionally grown meat, unhealthy fats & many artificial ingredients & preservatives
• An imbalance of omega-6 & omega-3 fats
• An excessive use of such brain-altering substances as caffeine, alcohol & recreational drugs
• Many medications, including unnecessary antidepressants, antianxiety agents, ADHD stimulants, sleep aids & painkillers
• Overexposure to “blue light” of electronic screens like computers, TVs & phone
• Bombardment with diverse tasks & inputs, such as ongoing flood of social media, texts & emails
• Too much time spent in activities that do not feel meaningful & purposeful, whether they’re obligations (such as work & family) or entertainment (shopping & gambling)

 

The Brain Fox Fix Program

 

The Three-Week Program:

Week 1: The 7-Day Mood Revolution

Change your diet to go from unbalanced & listless to revitalized & energetic. Use cognitive strategies to help change the way you think, focusing on one of the seven pitfall thought patterns each day.

 

Week 2: The 7-Day Energy Revolution:

Use sleep, circadian rhythms, exercise & neurogenesis to go from foggy & scattered to alert & sharp. Neurogensis is the ability of your brain to grow & change what is stimulated & learning new things. Use behavioral strategies to help change what you do.

 

Week 3: The 7-Day Spirit Revolution

Connect to something larger than yourself to recommit your life’s purpose & rediscover your joy in life.

 

Week 1: The 7-Day Mood Revolution

 

Diet Overhaul:

Get Rid of:

1. Sugar & artificial sweeteners
2. Flour & processed snacks
3. Pro-inflammatory omega-6s
4. Caffeine, alcohol & any other substances that put you on a hormonal roller-coaster

 

Add:

1. Omega-3 superfoods
2. Fruits & vegetables

 

Sugar is a major culprit in the up-&-down mood roller coaster. There is a strong link between high-sugar diets & neurodegenerative conditions like dementia & Alzheimer’s.

 

Eliminate:

• All sugar
• High fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, corn syrup solids
• Any other kinds of syrup: carob, golden, malt, maple
• Dextrin & maltodextrin
• Agave
• Honey
• Fruit juice or “sweetened with fruit juice”
• Artificial sweeteners: sucralose, aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame potassium

 

Replace with:

• Stevia (acceptable)
• Swap fruit-flavored yogurt for plain Greek yogurt
• Try organic, plain Greek yogurt with organic blueberries & stevia
• A smoothie with 80% vegetables & 20% fruit.
• Quest protein bars

 

Flour (even the virtuous whole wheat varieties) has a through-the-roof glycemic index, meaning it raises your blood sugar levels – the state we try to avoid.

 

Eliminate:

• All flour
• All bread containing flour
• Pasta
• Tortillas & chips
• Potatoes
• White rice

 

Replace with:

• Brown rice
• Quinoa
• Barley
• Oatmeal
• Bulgur wheat
• Millet
• Couscous
• Spelt
• Flourless & sprouted grain bread

 

(A good source: Ezekiel Food for Life 4:9 is a great flourless sprouted bread that also provides brain-healthy amino acids & more protein than other types of bread.)

 

Healthier Suggestions:

• Nuts for snacks instead of chips
• Only use ½ cup of brown rice
• Celery with salsa
• Cut red peppers, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes with hummus
• Apples with peanut butter
• Mashed garbanzo beans
• Shirataki noodles
• Black bean & corn salad

 

Correcting omega-3 to Omega-6 ratios is one of the most important steps to fighting inflammation, brain fog & depression. One major source for Omega-6s are conventionally raised animal products.

 

Eliminate:

• Conventionally raised, nonorganic, or grain-fed meat, dairy & eggs
• Fried foods
• All oils except four

Replace with:

• Meat, dairy, eggs labeled with one of the following words: organic, grass-fed, pastured, free-roaming, or free-range.
• Extra virgin olive oil, olive oil, canola oil, flaxseed oil

 

Reducing roller coaster substances requires either natural coffee (200 mg or two cups), 4-6 cups of green tea, & quitting smoking & drinking & cutting backing on sleeping pills or benzodiazepines.

 

Add at least one Omega-3 superfood per day, namely fish. Any of these is good:

• Albacore tuna – any kind
• Farmed arctic char
• Farmed, U.S., barramundi
• Black cod
• Wild, California, Oregon or Washington dungeness crab
• Wild or Atlantic longfin squid
• Farmed mussels
• Farmed oysters
• Wild Pacific sardines
• Farmed rainbow trout
• Wild or British Columbia spot prawns
• Coho, farmed or U.S. salmon
• Wild salmon
• Shrimp

Or

• Walnuts (¼ cup)
• Flaxseeds, ground (2 tbs) or oil (1 tbs)
• Chia seeds (2 tbs)

 

The next time to add is at least seven servings of veggies & whole fruit per day:

• Favor vegetables over fruits
• Favor berries among all fruits
• Favor organic over conventionally grown
• Make sure to get antioxidants to prevent inflammation
• When eating fruit, make sure to eat it whole or blended, not juiced

 

To get the most out of the produces: make sure to drink at least 10 8-ounce servings of water every day.

 

Cognition Overhaul

To avoid unhelpful thought patterns, specialize in identifying them first:

• Personalization: assuming that something is happening because of you.

“I didnt get the job because I’m not smart enough.”

• Pervasiveness: allowing a problem in your life to invade all parts of your life.

“I have a headache – might as well call in sick to work today.”

• Paralysis-analysis: getting stuck in your own thoughts.

“Why couldn’t I remember where I kept my keys last night? What does this mean? What will I do if this keeps happening?”

• Pessimism: always believing the worst about everything.

“I felt foggy this morning – I must be getting dementia.”

• Polarization: seeing everything as either/or, black/white, yes/no.

“My boss didnt respond well to my presentation – I might as well quit.”

• Psychic: feeling sure that you know what another person is thinking.

“I know she’s never liked me anyway.”

• Permanence: using the past or present to judge the future.

“I’m never going to get over this divorce.”

 

Awareness is the first step. By choosing to pay special attention to each pitfall thought pattern, you’ll notice how often it tends to show up in your life. You’ll learn to reduce the number of times you engage them.

 

Week 2: The 7-Day Energy Revolution

 

Learn to get energized by focusing on:

1. Sleep & circadian rhythms: adjust your brain’s relationship to natural light to regulate your sleep rhythms & boost your energy.
2. Exercise: give your body the exercise your brain needs to stay active & support neuron growth.
3. Neurogenesis: keep learning new things to enhance your brain, because if you’re not moving forward, you’re sliding backward. Also get to eating neurogenic superfoods containing tumeric & black pepper every single day.
4. Attention & reward: cutting back on social media & electronics will boost your ability to focus & concentrate while restoring your ability to enjoy life.

 

Get to sleep: the goal is about eight hours each night if possible, which means going to bed earlier than accustomed to. To promote good sleep:

• No TV.
• No computer use after 7 p.m and stay away from screen an hour before you sleep.
• Replace fluorescent bulbs you’re exposed to after sunset with incandescent or LED bulbs with a dimmer to keep the light output as low as possible to prevent eye strain.
• Wear sunglasses during sunset if outside.
• Allow your eyes to be exposed to sunlight in the morning & during the day. Go outside. Open the blinds during the day & turn toward the windows while working or studying if possible.
• If there is any light that comes into your room while sleeping, use black out curtains or get a sleep mask.
• Keep your room cool, around 68 degrees, but make sure your feet are warm.

 

Get moving: get around 44 minutes of aerobic exercise per day minimum to stimulate the dentate gyrus of your hippocampus, which is linked to your memory, mood & stress. This helps support neurogenesis. For around 12 minutes a day, solve a puzzle.

 

Bring novelty into your life: Do something new each day that gives you a sense of pleasure or productivity or power or passion or pride or peace or purpose.

 

Eat one food containing tumeric & black pepper to reduce chances of dementia every day.

 

For a week, completely cut out TV, video games & social media to attain attention span again. After this one week, return to them but only for an hour a day. Phone/computer usage shouldn’t go above three hours a day & never consecutively. Take your break.

 

Week 3: The 7-Day Spirit Revolution

 

This aim is become inspired, connected & purposeful. The focus is to connect you to yourself, your loved ones & the rhythms of the universe surrounding you. The reason animals don’t need to meditate is because they don’t have the highly developed part of the brain that makes us uniquely human: the prefrontal cortex. This is where change & neurogenesis occurs in partnership with the hippocampus. To be in touch with your own life purpose & feeling connected to something larger than yourself is what elevate brain health. Research of monks showed that daily meditation improved their prefrontal cortex to make decisions & control emotional responses.

 

Remember: no sugar or artificial sweeteners, no flour or processed snacks, no foods that are high in pro-inflammatory omega-6s, no recreational drugs or smoking, reduce caffeine. Add one omega-3 superfood each day & seven servings of vegetables & fruits.

 

Exercise: make a conscious note every time you engage in a pitfall thought pattern.

 

• Personalization is taking something negative that is happening in your life & pinning all the blame on yourself. You go to a job interview & don’t get the job; you tell yourself that you’re not smart enough. The person you went on a date with doesn’t call you back & you tell yourself that you’re not attractive enough.

The opposite of personalization is to place more of the blame on the negative situations & causes outside of yourself. You have to put the person above the situation. This isn’t always the case but it’s also not always the case to blame yourself for everything or even most things. Don’t value situations over people. By choosing to constantly blame yourself, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is also in a way very self-centered & in no way benefits you.

• Pervasiveness means allowing problems in one area of your life to bleed into every other or most areas of your life. You have problems at work, so you take it out on your family. Or your love life is a mess so you perceive yourself to be a failure. When you allow failure in one area of your life to define your entire life as a failure, you drain not only our well-being but also your sense of self-worth.

Consider the opposite: you allow strengths & successes in one area of your life brighten every area of your life. You allow the small successes add to become big ones & you allow yourself to admit that those successes are what define & center you. Imagine that you’re sailing a ship across the ocean & theres a leak in one part of the ship. Instead of letting that entire ship sink, you’d simply seal that one part off, stay afloat & keep sailing. The leak will get fixed but in the meantime, you’re still floating. Don’t allow the leak to spread through the rest of the ship so the entire thing sinks.

 

• Paralysis-analysis is a thought pattern marked by excessive worry & rumination, which makes it difficult or even impossible to move forward in your life. When a fearful thought or feeling enters your awareness, you ruminate, let it stew & overanalyze the situation. By turning the fearful thought over in your mind again & again, you become fearful & this creates a state of mental paralysis toward growth. It does nothing to change the situation or make it better.

While it’s necessary to confront problems, you can’t think yourself out of a negative situation & run from problems. The key is to fill your life with purposeful action & mindful thoughts. Ask yourself: how differently would I feel if I didn’t engage in the fear? What could I be doing right now in action instead of brooding over it? If I changed this pattern from worrying to doing, how would it change my life?

• Pessimism means you obsess over what’s wrong in your life instead of looking at what’s right. You’re always worrying about possible worst-case scenarios which are most likely to never happen. You focus on imaginary catastrophic scenarios instead of engaging in what can turn odds into your favor & make you better at handling contingencies.

To look on the bright side is a choice. Everyone has both blessings & burdens, but not everyone chooses to focus on the blessings to overcome the burdens. There is no way to positivity, positivity is the way. You may not exactly be where you thought you’d be in life but there are accomplishments you’ve made that you can most definitely be proud of. Optimism makes every day a little sunnier & attracts an abundance to even more blessings.

• Polarization means you’re seeing the world through a lense of black & white without considering solutions that transcend bipolarity. You’re always considering right vs wrong instead of making the best of what’s available & working to make even better instances occur. This means that, if something you perceive is not working perfectly through those biased lenses, then you believe nothing is working at all, & this leads to crashing. This leads to perfectionism, an impossible feat for any human to commit. This limits possibilities in life. You also miss out on seeing the world through the many lenses of others & this means losing out on intimacy & connection.

To deconstruct polarization, one has to looking beyond being right or wrong & look for understanding & what you truly need, to not ignore the blessing of 99 other answers because you’re obsessing over one & coloring it one of two bleak colors when they’re all-consuming.

• Psychic is a thought pattern in which you expect others to read your mind without verbally expressing what you’re thinking, feeling, want or need. You expect others to interpret your behavior & when they don’t, you become hurt or angry. In addition, you also believe you are psychic, going on to make assumptions & without ever really experiencing anything.

You need to explain exactly what you’re going through & to ask for what you need instead of stomping around & expecting people to simply get it. By engaging in this, you block connections from occurring & prevent intimacy to grow.

• Permanence means that you feel or believe a current negative situation will never change. Emotionally, it feels like it’ll never end. This is what happens when you take an emotion & bring up every memory associated with that emotion & allow yourself to forget all others, leading you to reject reality & fall into an illusion that you will always be in a negative situation.

Remember that negative events are temporary. The key is to remember that & to not forget all of the positive memories that go along with it. To believe in the inherent goodness of life.

 

Finally, understand that loneliness will lead to thoughts such as, “I’m not okay,” & “I’m not safe.” Isolation makes us see the world as more dangerous than it already is. The result is more stress & falling deeper into a sense of loss & hopelessness. Extreme loneliness can be deadlier than smoking two & twice as deadly as obesity. A review of 148 studies of over 300,000 people found this to be true & an analysis confirmed that social relationships lead to a 50% increase in the likelihood of survival. Human beings have an innate need to feel each other, to be supported, connected & loved, to be together. One of the best predictors of feeling better is being married to someone you love & trust, as this ensure to enormous levels that you won’t be alone to an unhealthy degree.

It’s about connecting with somebody & maintaining balanced relationships, with frequent expressions of love that help people live healthier & longer.

 

Remember to get your sleep, to work out at least 45 minutes a day, to find something fun to solve & build meaning with. Meditate, pray & don’t forget to add a little spice into everything you do. Realize & say this back to yourself as many times in a day as possible, “I’m okay,” “I’m good enough,” “I am loved,” “I am loving,” & that “People who are right for me do stay.”