BRAIN FOG / how i cured it with one simple remedy

hi my name is andrew and this video is covering the brain fog remedy i use to go from feeling dull to sharp when i was a kid i was so full of energy i could create entire worlds and stories in my head effortlessly but somewhere in the past 10 years this fog started to settle over my life and it got so hard to focus that i would spend two hours working on a blog post and not even make it past the first sentence so i started trying different supplements and diets and productivity routines and eventually

came up with seven things that worked and one thing that really didn't work i even made a brain fog checklist with remedies you can try but i'm getting ahead of myself because how do you even know if you have brain fog technically brain fog is not a medical condition but everyone seems to agree the three main symptoms are memory problems difficulty concentrating and a general sense of slowness or fatigue for me it started in high school by lunchtime it would be a struggle to keep my eyes open and the classroom would be swimming like an

educational fishbowl in college i started forgetting things for example one time i was telling my friend kayla about this thing that happened in fiction 101 and she was like andrew i know we're in the same class by the time i started my first copywriting job in 2014 i literally had to drink five cups of black coffee to make it through the day it was frustrating because i just didn't feel like myself and i wanted to explain to people like this isn't me but it wasn't until five years later that i started to unravel the mystery

of my stressed out brain when i started researching the causes of brain fog the seven that came up most were medications caffeine social media insomnia lack of exercise poor nutrition and chronic stress which pretty much summed up the last seven years of my life in high school i stayed up too late and started taking allergy medication that listed drowsiness as a side effect in college i started drinking smoking weed and eating lots of high carb junk food aka ramen and ketchup as a copywriter i binge drank coffee spent most of my day managing social media

accounts and was constantly getting distracted by meetings and working in an open office aka introvert hell i'm also going to need you to go ahead and come in on sunday basically you could have put me in a museum because i was exhibit a for how to develop brain fog in 2019 i decided to get focused creatively by drawing one comic every day for 365 days and along the way i ended up solving my brain fog so here are the seven steps i use to get there step one sleep the first thing i did was stop

using an alarm clock and just get to bed by 10 pm so i could wake up naturally with the sunrise i also bought a kindle paper right to cut down on blue light and a hands-free reading stand to give my fingers a rest from typing all day which was accidentally genius because i'd fall asleep in around 10 minutes versus half an hour or more when i was holding a book and turning from side to side step two exercise in march i started barefoot running every day and my friend rohan introduced me to this idea of

laying out clothes by my bed so i could just wake up and go straight out the door if you're not a runner walking and hiking can work too and i found that even taking a five minute break to walk around the house can get your blood flowing and spark a bunch of creative ideas i still don't know what the perfect diet is but one thing i do know is that high carb processed food makes me sleepy and switching to whole food with more protein fat and fiber gave me a huge energy boost i also stopped

taking my allergy medicine and replaced coffee with dark chocolate which changed my buzz crash cycle into a consistent flow pro tip if you're trying to quit coffee you can trick your brain by brewing a cup taking a sip and then dumping out the rest step four procrastination i don't know about you but when i'm feeling tired i tend to procrastinate so i came up with a simple test called the ugg rule which states anytime you think uh i don't want to do x you should do x immediately see the mess clean the mess thought action

step five psychedelics in the summer of 2016 i was so burned out from freelancing that i didn't know what to do so i decided to try lsd not knowing what to expect i took a 100 microgram tab which is a basic dose and it was like all the grime and stress that had accumulated over the past 10 years just washed away eventually i switched to psilocybin which is more mellow and started using it as a deep check-in with myself every six months or so obviously psychedelics are not a toy and this is just my personal

experience not a professional recommendation but tripsafe.org has a great article on magic mushrooms if you want to learn more step 6 iodine after i finished my 365 comics challenge i felt like brain fog was starting to creep back in so i hired a naturopath who ended up recommending iodine there's a lot of controversy over iodine with some people saying the rda is so low that it's creating an epidemic of thyroid issues and i don't know to what extent that's true but i do know that when i started eating three grams of iodine-rich seaweed every day

my memory and focus improved drastically which is saying something because i've tried all kinds of supplements and nootropics and never got any results from them like psychedelics you want to be careful with iodine and get different perspectives from multiple health practitioners before you try it step seven all the things i've mentioned so far had a big impact on my life but the mack daddy of brain fog remedies the one thing that changed everything for me is fasting as a freelancer i would sometimes forget to eat until like 2 or 3 p.m and i would get

these crazy levels of focus which made zero sense until this year when i started reading about intermittent fasting i always thought that food gave me energy and it does but the catch is that you have to digest it first so by starting my day with a meal i was asking my body to do two difficult things at once honestly transitioning to fasting was kind of fun because i just shifted my first meal of the day back until i was eating breakfast at noon and every time i did i got more focused when i watched videos

of myself before i started fixing my brain fog it's almost unbelievable like i'm watching a completely different person and i started writing the outline it was like just a struggle to get a few bullet points together for the past 10 years i thought there was something wrong with me and maybe you feel the same way but the truth is that it only takes a few basic lifestyle changes to make a big difference and once you start your mind will get sharper your memory and decision-making will improve your digestion will get stronger you'll be more creative

and focused and productive and instead of feeling tired and stressed all the time you'll start rebuilding your sense of purpose in life and making progress on your goals case in point it used to take me days and sometimes weeks to write my video scripts but after a couple months of fasting i woke up this morning at 5am and i wrote an entire video script 1500 words before 9am and i realized like holy [ __ ] my workday has gone from nine to five to five to nine [Music] ah man that was a lot of brain

defogging if you got to the end of this video you're like oh my god i don't even know where to start don't worry because i have put a link down below to a brain fog checklist with step-by-step instructions for everything that we covered but if you only take away one thing from this video let it be this just stop eating breakfast when you allow your body to focus on one thing at a time you're going to feel a lot more energized and creative and confident in other words an empty stomach is food for a thought

because fasting makes you hungry for life p.s if you like this video i also have a mini comic guide to brain fog on instagram at the lines plus other comics about creativity minimalism and barefoot running also if you have a brain fog remedy that works really well let me know about it down in the comments below thank you for watching catch you next time peace [Music]