Link between inflammation and mental sluggishness shown in new study
birmingham.ac.uk
birmingham.ac.uk
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10538...
N = 20 healthy males.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2953363/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1586/14787210.2014.8...
And this:
>In Miklossy’s work, Borrelia burgdorferi—the species of spirochete that causes Lyme, was identified in 451 out of the 495 Alzheimer’s-riddled brains they examined. Yet, her work at the time was derived by other researchers and until recently, she had difficulty securing funding.
https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/could-a-pathogen-be-the-ca...
derived by other researchers
For example, I use to feel tired all the time, and I would get sick all the time. I swear I could "feel" that my immune system sucked and I constantly had to fight things off.
Now I feel like my immune system is stronger, and it shows because I get sick so less often. My brain fog is basically gone and my energy levels are a lot higher. Every now and then it comes back, but recently I always wondered:
Is there a set of anti-biotics, anti-parasitical, anti-viral drugs that you could take in a row to try to flush the body of any infections? There's been similar comments about HSV1, that a lot of people have, but there's also Toxoplasmosis. If you look into it, so many people have both of these infections, but what are the side effects on the body?
I think immune system is one part of the picture. I also think your bodies natural response to the environment has something to do with this. I've been way more social and have gotten WAY better social feedback from all angles in my life (positive feedback loop) and that has helped immensely with mood and feeling good all the time.
When you combine a lot of these things, such as: poor immune system, conflicted social life, bad diet, and lack of exercise, I could see how the combination could manifest its self into mental illness.
I'm still convinced pathogens have a high ranking in the cause of brain fog and emotional issues tho, social life being second, diet third and surprisingly exercise being last even though I initially thought it was number 1. It just made me feel good, but it didn't really get to the root of any issue for some reason.
Many even go as far as associating the onset of their "idiopathic chronic fatigue" with a specific instance they used an antibiotic.
My uninformed guess is no, they probably lower your immune systems defenses.
What you can do is work on your sleep hygiene, work out more, and eat lots of vegetables. Reduce milk, red meat, alcohol and caffeine. Basically anything that's known to cause inflammation (milk and meat) and bad sleep (alcohol and caffeine).
Have you got a source for that assertion? A brief search yields contrary evidence[1], unless you limit your audience to those allergic to bovine milk.
Good news is, just 20 minutes of exercise is enough to reduce inflammation.
Exercise has direct impact on inflammation markers (initially increases them, but suppresses them over longer timescales), and also helps substantially with nutrient uptake + digestion. You may also find that you crave healthier food options immediately after having just completed an arduous workout.
In my experience, the best approach for keeping inflammation under control and generally being in the best mental state possible is to exercise every morning while fasted, and then eat 1 big meal sometime in the afternoon. This approach ensures your body experiences a shift in metabolic modes on a daily basis, and makes it a much more seamless experience as you shift between them (assuming you stay consistent). I feel that being in a ketogenic state (i.e. right after you complete your fasted exercise session and before you eat your big meal) yields countless health benefits. And, if you can essentially guarantee that you experience this mode for 4+ hours every day, whatever benefits it may confer should be substantially realized.
I actually found myself less attracted to junk food after working out but I am not aware that there is a connection behind.
Buy hydrolyzed collagen supplements (take 30g per day at start for 1 week) and increase fat intake, simplest is beef tallow (ideally grassfed), eat 2x 5 table spoons of it per day for 5 days at start.
And cut all processed sugar and sweets.
Replace table sugar and fructose with glucose.
Fasting is useful for seeing how your mental state is while limiting external food resources (you're using internal fat reserves otherwise), otherwise intermittent fasting is the best option.
This measuring alone ensures that they get enough fats, which seem to be the main reason for brain fog in most people (combined with too much artifical sweets).
Also because of this extreme diet they completely throw all all processed food & artifical sugar/sweets.
I use my own experience with Igg food sensitivity testing and removing those foods to see how I felt after. After allowing my system to calm from the foods then reintroducing just one of the foods that I was conditioned to the discomfort of, it let me see how much discomfort/pain different foods that showed up on the Igg test that make me feel horrible.
Buddhist monks are not supposed to eat after noon, although some cheat by adding a lot of sugar to their evening tea or coffee. This is supposed to keep their minds sharp and clear and aid in meditation. It appears to be a well-tested rule.
Here's one (theoretically) similar example:
https://www.datagraver.com/case/relation-terrorism-attacks-a...
When you notice something like that, stop eating it. You may be able to add it back in small quantities later, but for now, just stop.
When you've identified the major ones and stopped eating them, then take stock of where you are. Is it enough? Or do you want to go further?
We started being very careful what we eat because one of my daughters had extreme food sensitivities. I said "Nah, not me, I'm good". But I felt a lot better/less mentally foggy as well.
Standard doses are way too small to be effective, and most of the science and anecdotes refer to small (1-3g) doses.
All the diets folks recommend are not really proven to help with things like autoimmune disorders (even though some folks swear by them). If it were that simple, it would be standard treatment and no one would go through the side effects that some of the medicines for autoimmune disorders have. I don't know how effective the diets and supplements are for other things, but I'd not trust it unless it came from the mouth of a medical doctor I trusted.
OR because insurances and governments aren't interested in not spending thousands of dollars per month per patient on autoimmune medicines when a simple diet change could do the same thing?
There are more players than doctors. Folks go to specialists all the freaking time for their disorders, but not all disorders need that. You'll probably be just fine going to the normal doctor for type II diabetes. You'll probably go to a neurologist for your MS. Not all disorders need something like the Mayo Clinic. When we suck, we simply suck and that includes the Mayo Clinic and similar clinics.
None of this changes the fact that there isn't evidence that diet helps in the long run for a lot of disorders. Staying generally healthy helps, sure, but saying anything else dupes folks into trying a bunch of weird, non-approved things and buying into snake oils.
Its that easy huh. I'm afraid you got it exactly backwards. Snake oil is the last resort of people who are not being helped by the medical system. People don't love going from one doc to another, being told that "its probably psychological". Countless tests are not great even if they don't bankrupt you. I'm not saying its easy! Most doctors aren't even remotely trained for this, and they don't have the time per patient. Its a difficult task.
What we need are special doctors for chronic diseases. There is a department at a German university (Heidelberg I think), which is being subsidised by the other things they do. They have good successes, helping people that could not be helped for years, but the waiting list is very very very long.
There are special doctors for some chronic diseases - like MS. Most folks go to a normal neurologist, and a few are lucky enough to have some specialists near them. I have nurses that are specialized that I see more than the neurologist as it helps the neurologist see more folks.
That said, not all chronic diseases and conditions need a specialist. Type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition. High blood pressure is a chronic condition (and not always caused by diet/exercise). Depression is chronic. The thing is that some of these are common enough that it is pretty easy for a doctor to know about them. If you are lucky, you see an internist, who specialises in adult general medicine.
Not all chronic diseases and conditions are things that are puzzling either. There is no reason for most folks to see these sorts of specialists, but I wish they were more available for folks that need them. This is a pretty slim portion of patients, though. Some diseases we don't know much about, and we need science to help. I've donated spinal fluid to help things along and I'll donate my body to science after whatever organ donation they'll let me do. I urge others to do similar stuff, and this is why I both want medical records digital and want them to be searchable by researchers. For everyone that doesn't specifically opt out, anyway.
Most of the tests you mention? Yeah, if you are going to see a specialist, they are going to do the tests. Medicine is a profession of puzzles. You take vague symptoms that could have many causes and do tests to rule things out.
I remember the study with the "rats in a sterile environment" vs "rats in a rich environment" where the latter group formed many more brain connections.
In the end, they found it wasn't the rich environment that caused the brain growth, it was the exercise wheel in it.
1. Sleep study.
2. Vitamin D blood test.
3. Generally a conversation with your doctor who might suggest other tests.
However, the brain fog went away. Brain fog is a common reason people try gluten free or low carb (keto, Meng, etc).
Good luck.
Aubrey de Grey?
Is this study proof inflammation is the root cause, or that it correlates with other symptom.
I can here it now, "Obesity isn't my problem, inflammation is." Or "It's not my lifestyle. I don't need to exercise and/or eat well. My problem is inflammation."
Of course, the notion that there's a correlation between what you consume and what your body exhibits is common to pretty much every culture, including modern culture. Likewise for classes of foods correlating with classes of ailments.
The devil is in the details--what's the particular effect, if any, of a particular ingredient or mix or ingredients. Rarely do the claims and the reality line up in a rigorous, medically significant manner. But like with religion, the classes of foods and ailments are susceptible to very liberal interpretation, and lend themselves to equivocation with whatever correlation may actually exist. And because foods obviously can and do have significant health effects, opportunities for coincidental relationships abound.
That said, modern food science isn't particularly rigorous either, relies on its own gross generalizations and fallacies, and even shares some with folk medicine--most infamously, the supposed relationship of salt and saturated fat consumption to hypertension and cholesterol, respectively, exhibit many of the same classic errors you see in folk medicine.