How to Overcome Brain Fog and Regain Clarity During Recovery

But if your fogginess is accompanied by other symptoms and is significantly impacting your ability to function, it’s worth talking with your healthcare professional to rule out potential underlying conditions. Limiting alcohol consumption or eliminating it entirely can help prevent alcohol brain fog brain fog. We can also enhance our cognitive health by getting adequate sleep, regularly exercising, eating a healthy diet, staying hydrated, and practicing stress reduction techniques. Pursuing cognitive behavioral therapy is one part of alcohol addiction treatment.

Moderate drinking has also been associated with a lower risk of gallstones and diabetes.

This contributes to blackouts and short-term memory lapses when drinking. Research has shown that men and women experience alcohol-induced blackouts at equal rates, although women drink less often and heavily than men. Alcohol lowers inhibitions and clouds judgment, which may lead you to engage in risky behaviors.

Tips to change your night-owl lifestyle

During brain fog, you may experience any or all of the following symptoms. You can rest assured that brain fog goes away just like your other withdrawal symptoms. While the time line is different for everyone, you should start to notice differences in your mental acuity as you make your way through the detox process. Most people find that they are thinking much better within the first week, and their ability to make decisions and remember information only continues to improve as they make progress in their recovery.

The Brain and Alcohol Abuse

Set aside 30 minutes before retiring to engage in a wind-down routine, such as taking a warm bath or meditating. If possible, be consistent with the time you go to bed and what time you get up in the morning. This will cause your brain to automatically begin to wind down near bedtime.

• This feel-good chemical does a lot more than just make you feel rewarded.
• A person may think they have damaged their brain or need alcohol in order to think, which can trigger a relapse.
• Alcohol brain fog refers to a range of cognitive impairments that occur during alcohol consumption or in the aftermath.

Long-term effects

• Basically, dopamine is what teaches your brain that alcohol equals reward, making you naturally want more alcohol.
• Other studies have found that cognitive measures predict how long after treatment a patient will resume drinking and the chances of a patient remaining abstinent for more than 6 months following treatment discharge.
• Alcohol also decreases the effects of glutamate, which regulates dopamine in your brain’s reward center.
• However, other studies suggest there could be a window of time immediately after menopause when hormone replacement could delay the onset of dementia.

Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome