Seven ways to beat brain fog
HAVE you found yourself tired and struggling to focus on the task in hand recently? Welcome to the effects of 'brain fog', which experts say reaches a peak at this time of year (and this year in particular) — a culmination of rising anxiety as we attempt to adapt to seasonal changes in weather and gradually diminishing amounts of daylight.
The prospect of too much or too little to do in the months ahead can leave you feeling overwhelmed or underwhelmed with daily life, adding to what psychologists term your ‘allostatic load’ — the mental and physical effects of exposure to stressors. With our ability to stay calm and focused hampered by our daily routines, it is easy to find yourself more frazzled and forgetful, mentally flighty and less able to focus on even the most mundane tasks. Informally, it’s known as 'brain fatigue', and anyone who has even the slightest experience of it will know the impact it can have on concentration levels, clear thinking, and mental alertness.
“Our attention and focus rely on present-mindedness,” says Sabina Brennan, research assistant professor at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. “But our minds are more prone to wander and less able to focus on the here-and-now when we are stressed or anxious — as many people are during the pandemic — which means more people feel they are forgetful and struggling to concentrate.”
Lose focus, and it’s easy for the mind to stray towards negative thinking, which adds to the stress load.
Fortunately, the toolbox for tackling mental tiredness is vast. “There are very simple things you can do to help your everyday attention,” says Brennan. Here are the habits to form to overcome autumnal brain fatigue.
Worrying is the scourge of a productive mind. Research at King's College London showed that operating a worry-free zone (WFZ) — a five-minute period when you focus away from worry to a task in hand — is one of the tools that can help to alleviate worry levels by as much as 53%. Your WFZ could be anything from an action such as making a cup of tea, to a place (such as the bathroom), or a determined time period (for example, from waking until going downstairs). Although Dr Colette Hirsch, a reader in cognitive clinical psychology and the study author, says worry “will naturally come back into your mind” at first, you will learn to override it and can then increase the number and duration of your daily WFZ.
Sitting for too long can exacerbate brain fog, but taking brief three-minute ‘brain breaks’ can reboot cognitive performance in areas including decisionmaking, attention, and working memory, researchers reported in the last year. In a study of Australians aged 55-80, Michael Wheeler, a physical activity researcher at the University of Western Australia, found that a 30-minute morning walk boosted short-term memory compared to prolonged sitting. He also found, however, that adding three-minute brain breaks — where you stand up and leave what you are doing to move around — every hour or so boosted the cognitive outcomes. Levels of brain-derived neurotrophic growth factor, a chemical that plays an important role in preserving information-transmitting neurons in the brain, were elevated both after the morning walk and the mini-brain breaks. Wheeler says it “demonstrates how relatively simple changes to your daily routine could have a significant benefit to cognitive health”.
Green is a colour psychologists associate with positivity, and surrounding yourself with it can help boost your mood and focus. Researchers at the University of Exeter and Cardiff University found that something as simple as putting greenery in a spartan workspace with plants served to increase productivity by 15% and also enhanced focus and perceived air quality. Psychologist Marlon Nieuwenhuis from Cardiff, who led the study, suggested that plants make workers more physically and emotionally involved in their work and makes an office “more enjoyable and more comfortable”. According to the British Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), an office plant was shown to reduce fatigue and headaches by 20-25% in one study. The RHS recommends easy-to-grow office plants such as the spider plant and peace lily.
A few years ago, researchers at Heriot-Watt University attached portable EEGs (electroencephalograms) to the scalps of volunteers to study their brainwave patterns as they walked in different environments. They were looking for wave patterns that were related to frustration, directed attention, mental arousal or calmness, and a meditative state. Their results showed that walking in green, leafy spaces lessened brain fatigue and that the walkers’ brains were mentally quieter when they passed through parkland — an effect of nature engaging the brain in an ‘effortless’ way that allows scope for reflection. Added to this is a recent study from Jönköping University in Sweden published in the journal showed how walking, running, or cycling for as little as two minutes at a time reduced mental sluggishness in participants aged 18 to 35. In their review of 13 studies, they found that bursts of just 120 seconds of moderate to high-intensity activity — enough to make you puff — "improved learning memory, planning and problem solving, concentration... (and) verbal fluency" with the positive effects lasting for up to two hours. As there was also a link between exercise and "learning ability" it could be that exercising before work could improve mental clarity before working or studying.
Being more organised and planning ahead is a great way to relieve brain fog, says Dearbhla McCullough, a psychologist who has worked with members of Ireland’s Olympic team. “Writing yourself a timetable or to-do list in advance frees up lots of your mental energy when time is short,” she says. It also helps to improve focus by removing wriggle-room for daydreaming. “Be realistic about how much you can get done so that you don’t add to stress by overwhelming yourself,” she says. Brennan says that self-talk and daily checklists are also helpful. “People in high-pressure jobs, such as pilots, use self-talk to keep themselves focused and in the moment,” she says. “And by setting goals every day you become more efficient — just don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t get to the bottom of every list you set yourself.”
Most people tend to overthink and dwell on negative thoughts at 2am. “Negative images in your mind keep anxiety and other feelings intact,” says consultant clinical psychologist Jennifer Wild, an associate professor at the University of Oxford and author of (Robinson). “They push us towards what we call ‘safety-seeking behaviours’ — habits we use to keep ourselves safe, but which actually hold our attention onto our worst fears."
If you lie awake worrying, Wild says the most effective method of dealing with it is to conjure up a more positive image.
“In our studies, we have found the best way to disengage from troubling thoughts is to picture things working out fine or just to focus on a positive image in your mind,” she says. “It can be any sort of positive image — picturing sunshine is highly effective.”
Angry outbursts, road rage, and agitation are sometimes signs of depression and have been associated with low mood and lack of productivity — but they also could be putting your health at risk. A study published this week in the shows that heart-attack patients who are sarcastic, cynical, or irritable are more likely to suffer from a second heart attack.
“We know that taking control of lifestyle habits improves the outlook for heart-attack patients, and our study suggests that improving hostile behaviours could also be a positive move,” says lead researcher Tracey Vitori, assistant professor of nursing at the University of Tennessee.
Curbing your grumpiness could be easier if you get more sleep. Recently, psychologists at Iowa State University reported how losing five hours of their regular sleep quota across two nights unleashed anger when participants were then exposed to irritating noise. In contrast, well-slept participants adapted to the aversive sounds. “Sleep activates a plumbing system called the glymphatic system that helps fluid to move more rapidly to the brain,” says Wild. “A good night’s sleep is clearly linked to better mood and memory.”
McCullough says that “any sort of regular physical activity has a positive effect on mental focus”, but lifting weights is probably not the first thing that springs to mind. Yet a study published in February that looked at the effects of twice-weekly resistance-training sessions on the brains of people with mild cognitive impairment found it produced significant benefits. Author of the study and leader of the Regenerative Neuroscience Group at the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre, Professor Michael Valenzuela, found that six months of strength training — using free weights and exercise machines with progressively heavy loads — led to improvements in areas of the brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease compared to control groups who did either cognition training or stretching and watching videos. Even better, the protective effects of strength work lasted for up to one year after the training programme ended.
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