How To Clear Up Brain Fog & Feel Mentally Sharper - Dr. Rhonda Patrick

what happens when people get brain fog like what what is what is brain fog I know what it feels like but like what's what's going on um yeah so brain fogged or as I like to call it uh a reduction in mental Clarity um I such a docked way of like I've just heard too many like people say like brain fog brain fog like and it's I I got like this like I was telling you I got this new jerk reaction to like you've got brain fogi I do when people like say brain fog I'm like oh no what are you going to say you know but yes it is a thing so it's um you know when when you have a reduction in a mental Clarity it feels like this brain fog and you know there I personally think it all comes down to food I think it really comes down to food I mean when you're sick you have brain fog but we can talk about how it overlaps with that so I think there's really two big it all has to do with meals and and and eating um so the first thing I think that's highly involved in this reduction in mental Clarity or brain fog as people like to call it is what's called the postprandial glucose response so that means blood glucose levels going up after a meal and um what happens is this if you have a really high postprandial glucose response you're eating a high glycemic index food something that's definitely like a refined carbohydrate for example that'll really smash you um you're going to get this really sharp peak in glucose and then like a drop and or a sugar crash as people like to call it um and so it's really hard for your brain to to be functioning properly with that postp prandial glucose response and that's partly why you'll hear a lot of anecdotes and myself included people that have tried a ketogenic diet or I used to always like to do podcasts on a fast in a fasted State because um you're not getting that postprandial glucose response is one thing it it really sort of it it's evens it evens it out y not everyone responds well to to a ketogenic diet and I certainly uh don't think it's easy to continue on forever so there are other things um obviously re avoiding refined carbohydrates is is an easy no-brainer right there's nothing in there anyways what do you need from there nothing no micronutrients you no protein right like you're not getting anything from that so that would be one thing to avoid because that'll make sure you're not going super super high but you can still have it um from from from a meal and um some of the things that you can do to mitigate that one would be exercise snacks so this is like doing a really short burst of intense like vigorous exercise 80% max heart rate for like 1 to 3 minutes and you do it 30 minutes or up 30 minutes up to an hour either before or after a meal so you kind of do it within this hour before or after a meal and what happens is that vigorous intensity exercise while you're you know shooting your heart rate up you know and it's it's hard to do you're you're increasing lactate and it doesn't take much it gets soaked up by the muscle and this is then um causing Transporters glucose Transporters to come up to the muscle and it's opening the gates basically so that when you eat that meal the glucose goes into your muscle it's more anabolic you want it to go there and it's not you're not getting that like huge rise and then drop in the post with the post pral glucose response so that would be the one thing exercise snacks lots of studies out there especially with people with type two diabetes have a problem you know maintaining their blood glucose levels the second thing would be food order like the order you eat your macronutrients on the plate kind of so so I would say about 10 minutes it it can be on the plate depending on how slow you eat so if if food order um there's been studies again largely in people with type two diabetes who have issues regulating their blood glucose if you eat protein or fat 10 to 30 minutes before carbohydrates it can very much blunt and slow the postprandial glucose response so if you have like let's say you eat a can of sardines before you're going to go to a restaurant you're going to eat out you're presumably going to eat more terribly than you would if you're cooking at home right or you do a little protein shake 20 minutes before you're going to go to a restaurant or whatever and that'll or or before like even just if you're going to do a podcast and you need mental Clarity you want to make sure that let's say just eat the protein and and not have the the carbohydrates right um so what that does is it's I mean it's doing essentially like increasing insulin so that when you do have that glucose it's going prepped I mean if you were if you were going out for dinner presumably something else you could do is try and have the starter be steak tartar chuna tartar oysters something like that and just be like can we just wait an extra 10 minutes on Mains like however long you think that we need just give us another 10 and then you've encapsulated it within the the entire meal I guess as long as everybody else is on board with that otherwise someone's had a bunch of bread and they just they want their whatever main cause to come out see that they should that's like the worst thing is having the bread on the table first right it is good but like eat the pro eat the steak tartar first and then go for the bread right you you'll you'll slow the glucose response there's a place in Austin called Dean Italian uh it's just down the street from you you should go you should Goan Italian yeah I I'm looking for restaurant recommendations please I'll send you some send me some more so uh Deans Three Forks and um the somewhere else that I went the other evening that was phenomenal but Deans Deans and Three Forks are the uh two steak restaurants I go to the most uh but Deans do this they call it a bread Crown so it's like a literally looks like a little crown that comes out kind of about that size and there's a pot of whipped butter in the middle of this thing and it's glazed on top it's got like a salt glaze this thing is like crack it's so good and it's it's just there you arrive you sit down you've got the drinks or whatever and then this thing arrives and you just can't it's impossible to not eat so yeah almost getting is there something that we can do with this like pre-appe Tizer appetizer to come after the appetizers around about 15 minutes if that's okay because Dr Rhonda said so yeah so food order you know is is something legitimately that's been studied empirical data showing it does blunt the glucose postrenal glucose response and um so that is another thing that can really I think affect mental Clarity or brain fog so um just like I said like the protein or or fat like an avocado sometimes I'll have an avocado and that kind of just delays the emptying of your stomach into your intestines and it kind of slows it even Keel rather than real high Spike and then lower presumably as well prioritizing the foods during an eating window even if you do the protein shake at home and then go out for dinner afterward prioritizing that and skewing that toward protein is just going to cause you to eat less of the carbs if there is dessert at the end you're going to think I'm like not as bothered because I've just put more in me that's being skewed and discriminated in the direction of what you should be prioritizing anyway absolutely so you get more satiety plays a role I mean if like you're eating something before like protein you're just not going to eat as much you know you're not going to eat as much but that kind of leads into the second that's not the only part of the meal or food or eating that I think plays a role in this reduction of mental Clarity and brain fog the other thing is the post prand inflammatory response so eating a meal causes inflammation it happens in everyone every meal it's no there's no avoiding it like to some degree it happens and but you can minimize like how much of an inflammatory response you're having so people um eating a very high sugar and high fat meal it really that's the real those are the two real big movers of it um but even if you're just doing a ton of fat without like fiber or protein fat is Harsh on the gut and so what ends up happening is your gut epithelial cells there's like things holding them together tight junctions they open up and they let little pieces of bacter so our microbiome I mean we got is leaky gut is exactly what it is it's intestinal permeability and it allows pieces of bacteria to get how for every for every like bro science term I've got you've got the specific term that comes out of medicine is it brain F it's a reduction in mental Clarity so is it leaky gut it's the the wall lining of the intestine is opened up to yeah intestinal permeability or leaky gut as it's called that's what you're doing so meals cause that to happen transiently uh some people have like a very big problem with leaky gut but so transiently you're letting bacteria get into your bloodstream and this is what happens is it's pieces of bacteria they're called endotoxin or lipopolysaccharide same thing but um they're getting into your circulation because they're opening up right getting from not supposed to be there right and your immune system gets activated so your immune system's like like it it it knows those pieces of the bacterial membrane it recognizes it that's how it you know recognizes a bacterial and pathogen and so it gets activated and um what ends up happening there is one your immune system is activated okay that requires a ton of energy so energy is shunted away from your brain and it goes to the immune system because your body goes triage is it goes I need to survive there's a bacteria there's a bacterial Invader in my system right now I'm going to take all my energy and I'm going to make sure that I get rid of this Invader so I don't die right so that's that's the first thing that's happening in terms of like energy is being diverted from the brain from neurotransmission from thinking everything and it's going to the immune system to activate it okay it doesn't you know happen for that long of a period but it it's happening after a meal um the second thing that's happening is that your immune system itself is creating cyto kindes that are activating other immune cells that's how they like talk to each other and these things are um they're essentially can be somnogenic so they can make you sleepy so when you're sick what happens when you're sick you're you have no energy right because all the energy is going on your immune system and you're sleepy y so that's exactly what's happening after a meal what's happening when you're sick to a smaller degree is happening after a meal the post post prandial inflamatory response and then the other thing that's happening is those cyto kindes also are Crossing into your brain and disrupting neurotransmission disrupting connections like we now know that it's the bloodb brain barrier does not keep immune molecules out it gets in they get in there and they're wreaking Havoc so it's another reason why you don't want to have you know inflammat a lot of inflammation but so then the question is okay what do I do right so that's the question how do I not get such a big postprandial inflammatory response and it's also again why a lot of people myself included always feel like more mentally clear when I'm fasted right uh but I'm like I don't want to lose the protein I mean the the muscle mass so I need to get some food um but the question is what do you do one obviously avoid the sugar high sugar high fat okay that's clear two um small smaller meals have less of a postp parial inflammatory response so the bigger the meal the bigger the response Spike and then Spike and then down yeah but it's like now we're talking you're getting both you're getting the glucose and you're getting the inflammatory response y that's another thing so actually like smaller meals does help that so like if you need mental Clarity and stuff like don't have a big meal um and the other thing that actually makes an effect on that is believe it or not we're going full circle omega-3 omega-3 has been shown in clinical studies to blunt the post post pral inflammatory response with the meal or at any point throughout the day so that's why I take my Omega-3s throughout the day with meals and it's doing it to some degree both to some degree both something systemic but there's also something acute exactly there's something systemic the inflammation process but there's something acute in the gut that it's also playing a role in preventing the lipop poly thyroid from getting into circulation is there a is this dose dependent if I have one gram with each meal you say two Gam of triglyceride responsibly saour blah blah blah from a Norwegian guy that's doing it like this with fish can I have one gram with each meal would that be sufficient I think the studies and I can't remember I think it was like they were lower dose like 500 milligrams I think it wasn't even that high so I typically do the one gram with each meal I think that's a safe it's a nice way to remember to do it but yeah nice way and um and that's so so I like to do the reason I like to have Omega 3s throughout the day is for one that reason blunting the postprandial inflammatory response two I want these like specialized resolving like these specialized resolving molecules in that they produce like when you're metabolizing in my blood constant resolving inflammation working interesting yeah so through uh throughout my 20s I said I was a club promoter and I I thought I had depression or like acute depression that would come on every so often like intermittently throughout the year I think looking back it was just low mood and burnout I think that's what was going on but the way that it would manifest for me is I wouldn't get out of bed I wouldn't want to go to to work and see people and I was the I was in charge of this company so I could do whatever I wanted no one could tell me otherwise but one of the things that I would do is I would order pizza or like high sugar foods and sweets and stuff like that and it would comfor e right like I'd comfor e and that would be something I'd do but I'd notice especially if you have you know a big dominoes in front of you and you've got some sweet stuff to have after that the sense that you get in your body especially if you haven't been outside if you basically not moved because you're feeling a little bit Mis and you the curtains are drawn and you've just laid in bed and the Uber driver or whatever's come and you've taken the food off him the inflammation like the throbbing that you feel in your body it's almost like your heartbeat feels like or your blood pressure feels like it's gone up and then almost all of the time after that and I think this is very common for people that deal with low mood if they do Comfort eat like that they'll then fall asleep so shortly after that and then that disregulation of your sleep pattern also makes you feel even more like and then you come out of this sleep your emotions are all over the place you've still got tons of like either blood sugar rushing around you or you don't or you've got digestive discomfort because you've just eaten all of this food and um yeah just seeing that as like a little uh petri dish microcosm for what happens if the least amount of movement possible like you've gone from bed to door back to bed and that's it nothing in terms of any kind of stimulation already in low mood and then you go to sleep the most sedentary of all of the positions uh yeah it's you can feel that inflammation that cyto kind response and your thoughts again super super muddy which more so um feeds back into that low mood it's a vicious cycle right exactly no and you mentioned it's funny how you mention people get when you get sleepy after a meal it's like that's the cyto kindes that are somnogenic it's the post-inflammatory infl inflammatory response and again it happens with a bigger meal too you'll notice like the bigger the meal if you overeat the sleepier you are right and so it's more of an inflam response so now you can think about it as oh I'm not sleepy it's oh I'm I've got some inflammation going on after that meal interesting in other news this episode is brought to you by ag1 nutrition doesn't have to be complicated it just has to work and that's why I've used ag1 every single day for over 3 years now ag1 is literally the best in the world at providing you with a scientifically backed blend of ingredients that helps to fuel your body you might have heard Tim Ferris and Joe Rogan and pettier and Andrew hubman and myself talk about this product and that's because it is the best foundational nutrition supplement on the planet ag1 is a comprehensive nutrition solution formulated to support whole body Health it's got 75 high quality 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