Brain Fog or ADHD?
My Brain Struggles to Filter Distractions
You walk into a room and have no idea why you are there. You lose your keys for the third time this week. You feel like you are trying to think through a cloud of cotton candy.
And you wonder: “Is this ADHD? Or am I losing my mind?”
We call it brain fog. It is not a technical medical diagnosis, but it is a very real problem. And I hear about it all the time.
In my experience, the culprit is often hiding in your diet. Specifically, additives like MSG and aspartame can play a big role.
I will never forget a patient who came to me absolutely terrified. She was convinced she had early-onset dementia. She was forgetting appointments, losing track of conversations, and feeling completely lost. She was ready for neurological testing.
So we played detective. We looked at her daily habits. It turned out she was drinking diet sodas from morning until night. She was flooding her brain with aspartame all day long.
We cut out the soda. Within weeks, the fog lifted. Her memory came back. She was not losing her mind. She was poisoning it.
Now, it is not always that simple. Brain fog is your body’s “check engine light.” It is telling you something is off.
It could be a thyroid issue. It could be low iron. Remember the dopamine connection? It could be lack of sleep or chronic stress.
Yes, sometimes it really is ADHD, where your brain struggles to filter out distractions. And in some cases, brain fog can even be an early sign of dementia.
So if you are dealing with brain fog, take all of these possibilities into account. But start with the basics. Look at your intake of aspartame and MSG.
If you clean up your diet and you are still having symptoms, talk to your healthcare practitioner. There may be something deeper going on. But you might be surprised how much better you feel just by changing what you put in your body.
Authored by Gerard Guillory, MD
Gerard Guillory, MD, is a board-certified internist who practiced for nearly four decades with a focus on functional, root-cause medicine. He is the author of three books on irritable bowel syndrome and the founder of It’s My Health, where he and his team put current health news in context and help members understand the underlying causes of chronic symptoms.
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