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Brain Fog

laurelfla

By laurelfla
in Coping with Celiac Disease

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laurelfla Enthusiast
laurelfla
Posted

i'm learning so much about celiac disease on here! you guys have been super helpful.

i have a new question. i keep reading about brain fog as a pre-diagnosis symptom/gluten reaction and i'm wondering exactly how you'd define it. i guess it sounds self-explanatory, but can somebody give me some examples of how it feels? i have been super out of it lately and can't seem to really wake up. but maybe it's not severe enough to be labeled brain fog. not sure.

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Carriefaith Enthusiast
Carriefaith
Posted
i have been super out of it lately and can't seem to really wake up.
That sounds like brain fog to me!

My brain fog kind of feels like I am being partially sedated or like I have taken two tylenol 3's (I used to have to take them when I was younger and they'd have a "drug" effect on me). When I have brain fog, I get temporay ADD (I can't concentrate on things), I get "stupid", and I find myself staring at something for awhile for no real reason (lol). When it is bad, I refuse to drive :)

Lisa Mentor
Lisa
Posted

My Brain Fog usually comes when I am typing posts on this board.

But what is most embarassing is when I am conducting a public hearing and I am try to make a legal statement and....all of the sudden I am at a total loss for words and everyone is looking at me, and the more they look the worse it gets. I try to scramble my brain for another choice of wording or stall for time for the right thought to mobilize and spit it out of my mouth. I once, recently, instead of calling the meeting to order, I opened up the meeting and "called the meeting to adjourn". Thought everyone was going to get up and go home........after two minutes into the meeting.....'BRAIN FOG TO ME'.

Rachel--24 Collaborator
Rachel--24
Posted

If I get brain fog now its alot more mild than it used to be. Before I knew what the hack was wrong with me I had brainfog 100% of the time. It was scary to me. I was fuzzy all the time. If I was to lose my train of thought I could never get it back...it was sort of like an etch-a-sketch....once the pictures gone its gone for good. Thats what my brain seemed like...stuff would just get erased and I couldn't get it back. I couldn't absorb anything which sucked since I like to learn things. It was sort of like when you're buzzed from alcohol. Once when I left work I was so out of it I ran a red light even though I had seen the red light my brain just didn't tell me to stop. 2 days later I did the same thing at the same light but this time 3 cars were coming right toward me and I just got really lucky. Normally this would have freaked me out and my heart would've been pounding but I just kept driving like nothing had happened. I was in a total fog. It scared me so I decided I should go off work till I could figure out why I was so sick. Now if I get it its more like I just walk up and down the stairs a million times forgetting what I was doing. :rolleyes:

elonwy Enthusiast
elonwy
Posted

My brain fog felt like I never really woke up all day long. You know that stupid-fuzzy feeling you get when you haven't had enough sleep right between the alarm going off and the coffee? Like that, except the coffee didn't make it go away. YUck!

Elonwy

cdford Contributor
cdford
Posted

It is the oddest sense of floating through the day unsure how to get the thoughts to be coherent...much less manage to get them from the brain to the mouth. It is as though you want to function but cannot seem to quite get there. You forget stuff between the time the thought went through your mind and when you carry it out. Some days there is such a delay between the thought and the action that you forget what the action was supposed to be. I liked the description of being drugged. You are not anesthetized and totally out of it, just slowed down into slow motion operation. You know something is not right but sometimes cannot even put your finger on what is wrong.

I would say things that made no sense or put words in sentences that did not belong (like writing a user manual and tell the user to click on the refrigerator button to admit a patient into the hospital). I also mixed timeframes in discussions. One comment might be about something current and the next sentence containing data from something years ago...but I spoke them as though they belonged together and couldn't figure out why others were confused.

It is certainly a frustrating way to live. Nowdays, the brain fog is not as pronounced unless I am tired or have been glutened. Thank God.

ianm Apprentice
ianm
Posted

When I would get really bad brain fog it was like an out of body experience. I could see and hear everything going on around me but would be unable to connect with reality. It was also like having my head sealed in an airtight box. Nothing could get in or go out. Like some of the others there were times I just could not drive and had some way too close calls on the road.

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Canadian Karen Community Regular
Canadian Karen
Posted

Mine is very similar also. It is almost as if I am having an out-of-body experience, the feeling like I am just "not there". When I am having a brain fog, it is impossible to shake off, I have zero energy, totally can't concentrate, feel exhausted and I also have difficulty driving. I have literally more than once actually slapped my face to try to shake myself out of it or vigorously shake my head back and forth (so my cheeks were moving like a St. Bernard's lips!!!) trying to shake it, it just won't go away....

Karen

misskris Apprentice
misskris
Posted
Thats what my brain seemed like...stuff would just get erased and I couldn't get it back. I couldn't absorb anything which sucked since I like to learn things. It was sort of like when you're buzzed from alcohol. Once when I left work I was so out of it I ran a red light even though I had seen the red light my brain just didn't tell me to stop. 2 days later I did the same thing at the same light but this time 3 cars were coming right toward me and I just got really lucky. Normally this would have freaked me out and my heart would've been pounding but I just kept driving like nothing had happened. I was in a total fog. It scared me so I decided I should go off work till I could figure out why I was so sick. Now if I get it its more like I just walk up and down the stairs a million times forgetting what I was doing.  :rolleyes:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This is me totally. I've ran a stoplight, almost been in countless accidents, zoned out in meetings at work...you name it. The "brain fog" was the FIRST symptom I had that led me to find out about Celiac. I remember I had a test in one of my college classes and (I've always been very studious, but) I could NOT concentrate to study. I would try to read and instead I would just be zoning out while staring at the book. After a few weeks of that, I was like OK...SOMETHING is majorly wrong here. I'm still having problems with this as well as short-term memory problems and an inability to concentrate. It gets worse when I've been glutened, but I have it a little bit all the time. :(

laurelfla Enthusiast
laurelfla
Posted
  • Author

i am getting foggier by the day here. :( teaching is the worst, i can't hold on to a train of thought for long enough to finish communicating it! my students and i laugh about it. today it bordered on being too much, though. maybe i will share just a bit with them about what is going on, so they don't think i'm the absent-minded professor!

my fatigue/fog/whatever was definitely not helped by giving blood today. but i wanted to do my part. LifeSouth was on campus with a bus and they had a goal of 25 donors. i was the 26th at 4:00pm. :D

i told them i had celiac. it was my first donation since the diagnosis and i'd read that we can donate, so i went. they had never heard of it, and it wasn't in their manual. you would have thought i'd said i had a strange disease which caused me to spontaneously sprout 3 heads. so i got to do a little educatin' today. they very skeptically took my blood; hopefully it will make it to someone who needs it.

they say that the need for blood with regard to Katrina is not immediate, but that eventually those blood centers in the affected areas will need more from other centers. i didn't get to eat the fun cookies after my donation though. :( oh man, i'd about kill for an oreo. those glutano things are a far cry!!

Rachel--24 Collaborator
Rachel--24
Posted
I would try to read and instead I would just be zoning out while staring at the book.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I had the same problem. An hour could go by and I'd still be on the SAME page....it was so unlike me. Plus I'd forgotten what I'd read almost immediately after reading it. I was just staring at the words. :blink:

cdford Contributor
cdford
Posted

Oh Laurelfla, I cried when I had to stop teaching. First I went from teaching math and computer science at the local college to just teaching classes at CompUSA where the courses are pretty well scripted. The brain fog just was no longer working with me, especially in the math classes. Then I finally had to give even the CompUSA courses up. I could no longer drive home after a class because I was so exhausted. By that time the neurological stuff was so bad I would stutter and lose the ability to get words out. It was so embarrassing. I miss it so much. I still get to tutor some, but have to do it on my terms. There is nothing like watching the light bulbs go on for someone who has struggled with math for their entire life.

pattyanne Newbie
pattyanne
Posted

Yes! This is the symptom that I feel is the most "off" with me. I have always had digestive problems (diagnosed with IBS at 8) as well as gall-bladder out at 23, high cholestral, osteopenia etc. I have only recently connected all my symptoms to self diagnose celiac disease. I had blood tests but haven't been back to discuss with my Dr. (pretty sure they must have been negative). But the brain fog was the one symptom I couldn't define. I wrote it off to pre-menopause, but the more I read the more celiac disease fits the total picture. Thank-you all.

Janelson Apprentice
Janelson
Posted

I get brain fog all of the time! I can be in the middle of writing a paper when I suddenly forget what the topic is really about and I can read the topic over and over again but its like it does not absorb. Or the other day I forgot how to get to the store and ended up on my way to the cities! I just needed some MILK. LOL But hey I am still breathing and at least now I have an excuse for all my ditzy moments!

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