Brain Fog Treatment: What’s Really Behind It and How to Get Your Clarity Back

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Dr. Brighten: It is time we do a series on brain fog because it is getting the best of some of us, and it really shouldn't be that way. How do you know if you're in the right place right now? Well, let me ask you, have you ever been mid-sentence and suddenly blinked on what you were saying, or maybe you walked into a room and you had no idea why you went in there and then you leave. You remember you go back again and you're like, wait, what was it?

Yeah, it's pretty annoying, right? That my friend is what? So many women call brain fog. I have been there multiple times in my life before I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. That's definitely coming in the series. We're gonna talk about that. And then the other time where I was put into a chemically induced menopause with Lupron, and it was like I lost my hormones, I lost my mind.

My family were like, you're losing your mind. Here's what I want you to know. If you're having brain fog, it's not this random one-off thing that you should just ignore. Brain fog is a signal from your body. We're gonna unpack some of the [00:01:00] top causes today of brain fog in women, how to actually know if each one applies to you and what you can actually do about it.

Here's the thing, this is a lot to cover and I'm gonna break it down into several parts. And the reason for that is because if you have brain fog, you don't need me to talk to you for three hours. I could probably go longer than that. I want to give you sections of things to focus on, and we're gonna be talking about this very practically, what to implement, what to do, how to do it, to start improving your brain.

So in our first part on brain fog, we're gonna get into three very common reasons that women experience brain fog. And then we will go deeper and deeper. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna build out this resource for you, and I'm going to be linking to other podcast episodes as well that will serve as resources, especially those that go deep on lab testing, reference ranges, things [00:02:00] that you should be looking for.

I'm also going to be sharing with you some of the science. Go to dr Brighten.com, D-R-B-R-I-G-H-T-E n.com. Get into the show notes and I will have guides there for you. I will have the study cited. I will have your back in this.

I'm Dr. Jolene Brighten. I'm the host of the Dr. Brighten Show. I'm board certified in naturopathic endocrinology. I'm a certified menopause practitioner, and I'm your guide to understanding your brain and your body and your hormones . 

Now, before I get totally into it, can you take like a minute, leave me a review. I would be super grateful because it helps the show so much, and if you can forward this to somebody who needs it. I appreciate your support and it is your support that makes this podcast possible and makes it so that women get the information they need from other women who have been through it. Alright, with that said, this episode's gonna be packed with value, so let's dive right in. The first cause of brain [00:03:00] fog is hormone fluctuations. We're gonna talk about that and it's not just perimenopause. It's not just menopause. When estrogen, progesterone are shifting wildly, it can also be showing up before your period. It can also be postpartum. So estrogen, if you caught my other episodes, this gonna be a bit of a reminder for you, which is great 'cause that's how we solidify information.

Estrogen impacts serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine. So we're talking about like feelgood neurotransmitters and focus chemicals. And so without estrogen or when estrogen is low, that can definitely impact how well our brain functions. It can also lead to inflammation. Free radical oxidative stress in the brain, mitochondrial dysfunction.

So we haven't got brain energy. Now, when we talk about progesterone, progesterone's all about that gaba. GABA calms the brain, GABA helps us sleep. And if we're not sleeping, we're definitely gonna have brain fog. So when these [00:04:00] hormones start dipping out on us, brain fog hits the brain hard. Now you may be asking like, how do I know if this is me now?

You can be in perimenopause as early as age 35, which is lame. And if I had a magic wand and I could be your fairy godmother, I would make that go away, but I can't. So here we are. Okay. So how do you know if it's you? So maybe it's perimenopause, maybe it's postpartum, so if you're, you're finding your word, finding issues around your cycle, especially in that luteal phase.

So after you ovulate, that's your luteal phase, and you're like, Hmm, brain's not as sharp. Uh, yeah, that could be, that estrogen's taken a backseat. And especially as we age, we're not making enough of it, not making enough progesterone. We can have memory lapses, mid-sentence. , And if you're a DHD, this can actually lead to impulsivity, increased impulsivity that manifests as interrupting people.

And that is because you're forgetting mid-sentence and you're panicked and you're like, oh my God. Again, I gotta, I gotta interrupt because I will forget what I'm saying. [00:05:00] Mid-sentence. You may also feel more irritable, mentally scattered, and, um, we especially see that postpartum and in perimenopause. And I did an entire episode about what hormonal changes are happening in perimenopause and how they affect the brain, and what happens if we lose our hormones too soon, as in primary ovarian insufficiency, Lupron treatments, or, uh, ectomy losing your ovaries.

So I'll link to that episode if you wanna nerd out with me and know all the science of that. And if you're like, I'm 25 girl, you wanna know what's coming and what to do about it. But if you're listening to this right now, you're probably like, just gimme what to do about my problem right now. So first things first, protein.

Gets broken down to amino acids in your gut. You absorb that, that becomes the building blocks of your neurotransmitters. So yes, we talk about eating protein, 25, 30 grams every single meal because we want blood sugar balance. Yeah, that's really, we're gonna talk about why that's important for brain fog in an upcoming episode, but we [00:06:00] also need it to build those neurotransmitters.

Go to dr Brighten.com/plan. Grab the anti-inflammatory meal plan because if you've got brain fog, no matter what the cause in this entire series, that is gonna help you immensely. Now, other things that you can eat that. I don't think get enough attention are nuts and seeds. So flax seeds, chia seeds, sesame, pumpkin, walnuts.

These things have healthy fats that support the brain, but they also support your hormones as well. If you're not someone who has done yoga and meditation in the past. Here's an invitation to try some kind of mind body medicine. Something that gets you too calm to still to be in your body and to work and train your brain.

That's what these are doing. Don't look at it as like some woowoo, be chill, like peace and love. Look at it as brain training and [00:07:00] specifically training your nervous system. If your nervous system is getting lit up on everything and it is fried and frazzled, that is pooling on brain energy. And if your problem with brain fog is not enough estrogen as fuel and then not enough progesterone to say, stop freaking out, then you've, you've gotta, you've gotta get the mind body practices in place.

Saffron, if you've heard me talk about it, like I'm, I'm in a love affair with Saffron.

Don't tell my husband no, actually. He's fine with it because it helps your libido too. So Saffron is gonna support mood, it helps with hot flashes, it helps with emotional balance, it helps with brain function. It may even play a role in helping with some of the inflammation that can get upregulated in the brain when estrogen goes low.

But COPA is another one that can do that as well, helping with, um, its antioxidant capacity. So, um, these, those are two that I definitely think about when I [00:08:00] think brain fog. Zinc is another one. It's crucial for ovulation. So if you're still ovulating, you need zinc. Also crucial for progesterone and for your neurotransmitters getting regulated.

If you find that you are not someone who's eating, beef oysters, then you need to start bringing in pumpkin seeds a lot more. But you may also need to supplement with zinc. Remember, I'm a doctor. I'm not your doctor. So any supplements that I talk about, you always gonna run by them. And when it comes to zinc, I can caution you that if you go high, like sometimes when people are sick, they use 30 milligrams three times a day.

You do that for too long, you're gonna have a copper deficiency, you're gonna have cardiovascular issues. So caution there. Usually when I'm supplementing with zinc ongoing, we're looking more at like 10 to 15 milligrams. I am gonna talk about magnesium, , so magnesium glycinate or threonate, these are the ones that we want to be looking to, they can help calm overexcited neurons, improve sleep, um, better word [00:09:00] recall the next day.

So with magnesium L threonate, that one specifically crosses the blood-brain barrier and it's been shown to help with working memory with magnesium glycinate. Also a very well absorbed form of magnesium that one is gonna support sleep and it's better for supporting women's hormones.

Magnesium glycinate typically using 150 to 300 milligrams a day. Migraine sufferers are usually using about 600 milligrams a day, and when you're doing magnesium glycinate, that's an evening formula. You can actually take it any time a day, but if you want to help with sleep, take it.

I usually take it after dinner, so I will eat my dinner, then I go into the kitchen and that's when I take my evening supplements because I have to have a routine to remember if it's magnesium, L three NA, typically there's gonna be 1.5 to two grams per day, which is only delivering about 140 milligrams of elemental magnesium. So if you're someone who's like, I read the brain [00:10:00] research on the 550 milligrams of magnesium a day, understand it's kind of hard to get there with L three and eight, uh, but it is crossing the blood-brain barrier, so it does have those benefits.

Now with magnesium, there have been studies to show improvements in executive function and memory. In older adults. Um, often in these studies where we're looking at, , memory and we're looking at cognitive function, we're gonna see that it's older adults because those tend to be the people who have the biggest cognitive deficits.

And so, um, just because it is in older adults doesn't mean it won't be helpful in younger adults. But I just think it's important to understand that it's why almost every study that's the population being looked at and in my opinion, looking at once people have brain changes. And then what helps is, is great to know.

But I would like to know what prevents brain changes. And it does appear that magnesium can be one [00:11:00] of those. You've probably heard me talk about creatine before. Creatine monohydrate. Big fan, I take five grams a day. It provides rapid energy to the neurons. It's like an A TP buffer, which is like the energy packets that our brain cells use.

Now, the brain uses about 20% of the body's energy. It's a greedy, greedy, little expensive organ. Um, but rightly so, right? It does so much. Now, creatine helps prevent the mid-sentence dropouts in some people. So the losing words, and it can be especially effective when you're under cognitive stress, sleep deprivation, high new moms, I'm talking to you.

And hormonal fluctuations, especially like, let's be real, we have hormonal fluctuations throughout the entire month. So it can be really helpful, , for all of us, but especially we see perimenopause and menopausal women, , report that they have great benefits when using creatine. Me personally, I have a DHD.[00:12:00] 

Creatine is one of the things that I found helped me in the luteal phase and I was doing, so the dosage is usually about three to five grams a day. That's the standard, that people are using. I went up to like 10 grams a day and I found it helped in the luteal phase, however, so I was doing five grams daily.

Ovulate 10 grams daily. Mm. I couldn't get my rings on. I just started holding onto water and not feeling good. So for me personally, it wasn't worth the trade off. So Miss 10 grams may be better, maybe for some people, but it isn't without side effects. I would also, like, my stomach just didn't feel right and, and I was doing it in divided doses.

So you gotta, you gotta do what works for your body. I wanna note that creatine has been shown in research. To improve memory, mental performance when you are under like, serious mental fatigue and strain. And so I think that [00:13:00] is really promising research, especially when you consider, when we talk about being a new parent.

Parental burnout is real, very, very stressful time. Or when you talk about perimenopause, when most women are sandwiched between, , caretaking or thinking about how they're gonna have to caretake their parents and caretaking smaller children, to think about being, if it's helpful under mental fatigue and stress, hmm, we can consider the times of our lives that are really stressful.

Now, I mentioned Bacopa earlier and I think I should talk about it a little bit more because it's, it's pretty incredible. So with Bacopa, it's not to enhance synaptic plasticity, so brain plasticity. It also may increase acetylcholine, it may reduce stress related forgetfulness. So if that the creatine isn't doing it for you, might wanna try bacopa instead.

And there's been strong evidence for improving delayed recall and word learning tasks. [00:14:00] So basically pulling things out of your brain, right? Having that memory recall, and then the tasks that are word learning based, like take bacopa, listen to Dr.

Brighten Show, and you're gonna learn more. So with Bacopa, typically there's the dosages are like 150 to 300 milligrams a day. , You wanna use a standard extract, if you've heard me talk about it, our Radiant Mind formula, which was developed out of me being put into chemical menopause and being so desperate and being so, like, I'm, I'm never gonna feel this way again.

So I am making the supplement to give my brain energy. I use OGEs in our formula because that is the one that's evidence-based backed up by clinical trials. And what is so cool about Bacopa is that there's been randomized control trials that show significant improvement in memory and retention.

So I think that's. Pretty phenomenal. It's also what turned me [00:15:00] onto it is that when I was like in my Lupron haze, which makes it sound fun, it wasn't fun. Um, but when I was feeling that way, I saw all these a DH ADHD years talking about bacopa. But people were like, oh, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Well, I found, like, I got into the research, I was like, sometimes it doesn't work because it's not actually a standardized extract. It's not actually like being third party tested. So, you know, that's actually what's in there and it's not being manufactured at a high quality grade. Um, but I searched out and I actually had a hard time getting my hands on this, which is why I was like, I'm just gonna formulate it.

I'm just gonna make it myself. Now, if you've heard me talk about Cozine or Cyl choline, Cozine is the one with, actual studies to back it up. But it is cyl choline that's providing choline for acetylcholine. Uh, emphasis on the choline there. Synthesis. So that's key for memory and word recall. It may also help support dopamine signaling and brain energy [00:16:00] metabolism.

And so I think anyone who's been pregnant, you've probably heard how important choline is for baby's brain development. And they tell you, take choline. By the way, I always recommend getting choline outside of your prenatal 'cause no prenatal can put enough in there, just like they can't put enough or keep it quality of omega fatty acids.

Take it outside of there. But just like it's important for a developing brain, it's important for your brain, as we talked about with perimenopause, that's a whole remodeling of the architecture of your brain. So if you are, if you, if your brain is like going through a developmental period, do you wanna have like a good dose?

So like 250, maybe 500 milligrams of cogni. 500 milligrams is a lot, I'm gonna tell you, you're gonna have to take that all on its own 'cause you can't combine that with other stuff. But, uh, 250 to 500 milligrams seems to be the range that is beneficial. And the, you know, when I look at it like there are higher doses, but it, it's not always like, oh yeah, if you take [00:17:00] much more that you're getting, um, this dose dependent outcome that like, looks so much more phenomenal now, the other reason why I sing the Praise of Cogn is because it improves verbal memory, it improves attention, it improves focus, especially in women my age. Um, and I have been taking our radiant mind and I, I tell my brain is like working, I didn't think I had a deficit as of right now, but it has been working so well.

And what has been really helpful for me is that with the saffron added in my moods, so if you saw on social media, I had a late, uh, stage miscarriage. It's so seriously, so hard to talk about still. Um, and after that, with the grief and the stacking of just like everything that comes with that, I started sliding back into PMDD symptoms and I've been like crying, working out in the gym, like literally lifting weights while I cry.

And Saffron has seriously like. In some ways I feel like it's like [00:18:00] part of the clouds for me and let the sun shine on me. Again. I know that sounds like really dramatic, but it is. Anyone who has struggled with PMDD knows how freaking dark and difficult it is. So I am technically in postpartum as I record this and I'm talking to you, um, of recovering for that.

And that is something that I found like. I, the radiant mind has been super helpful, but like I said, I do exercise every day. I am doing some form of exercise. I'm also taking creatine, five grams. I'm also, uh, I take Omega-3 fatty acids. I have, uh, well, you probably know, I have endometriosis, adenomyosis, uh, multiple autoimmune diseases.

So I like omegas to help keep that immune system in check on top of everything else I'm doing. And I guard my sleep. So I, I like to be like really honest. With you guys because, um, [00:19:00] yes, I, I am noticing, I mean, we're all, my whole, everyone in my company is noticing, like, radiant Mind has made a difference, which is like really funny too, is that the, um, the, uh, manufacturing company, when we put together this formula, they were like, um, is it cool with you if we actually like, hold bottles to the side?

Like, can we order extra on top of your formula so that we can have it for the people on our team? Because this is like such an amazing formula. And I'm like, spread the word. Spread the word because like, I needed this so badly years ago. Now, if you wanna think about like, how to approach these things, if you are having low hormones, estrogen, progesterone, even testosterone as part of your brain fog problems, okay?

Firstly, should you consider hormone replacement therapy or menopause hormone therapy, whatever you wanna call, it's all the same thing. Okay? Um, but should you consider that. Um, probably if you're in [00:20:00] perimenopause or menopause. So if you are, um, in your forties or above, it's a good idea to consider that as well.

I've done other episodes on it and, um, I've talked about it actually in multiple episodes, and some of the feedback I got is like, could you do some episodes just talking about natural therapies and natural ways to support our brain and our hormones? And I hear that, um, some of you had said , it feels like everybody's pushing hormones on us and that doesn't feel good.

They have benefits. I've been prescribing 'em for over a dozen years. I'm particularly so excited that like. Finally, when I talk about 'em, I'm not being told that I'm like the worst human ever for prescribing them. So I'm very excited and I do think they have a lot of benefit, and I do think you need access to this information.

I've done other episodes. I will link to it. But I do wanna honor your requests in this episode and focus more on natural things that you can be doing. If you wanna be approaching this because it's a hormonal issue, we wanna be thinking about top of the day, [00:21:00] that's when we want to be doing our saffron ORs, choline or bacopa.

Um, if you're taking zinc, you take it with food friend because you don't want tummy troubles. I am someone who's very sensitive to supplements, so I'm always warning about that. If you're doing creatine, it doesn't matter what time of day it is, it's about when it works for you. I personally am like, I have my ritual of creatine with electrolytes.

'cause I think creatine tastes horrible and I hate it so much, but creatine, maybe I should make a better tasting one 'cause we shouldn't have to put up with that. But anyhow, creatine electrolytes. I just put it in a big old mason jar and I take that to when I go work out, I have a home gym, so I just take it in there.

That's my routine. Um, for you, you might be like, oh, like I'm gonna remember it. Like, you know, before I have my morning coffee. Like, whatever, whatever works for you for magnesium. I say magnesium. If it's glycinate, do it at night because that's gonna help you sleep at night. And, uh, if we're sleeping better at [00:22:00] night, we're gonna have better brain function.

I'm gonna talk about that in a minute. Now this is like, if it's, if it's hormonal related brain fog, right? It's estrogen and it's progesterone. The other thing that we wanna think about is that mind body medicine that I talked about. So supporting your nervous system, supporting, um, you not being so frazzled so that you aren't taking energy away.

And then you want to look at every single meal structuring it. As anti-inflammatory as possible. I am not a super stickler for like super strict diets and stuff like, you know, outside of like something like celiac disease, right? You can't mess around with that. But when it comes to like telling you, oh, anti-inflammatory diet 80 20 rule works just fine.

So, uh, protein fi, fiber, every single meal, 25 30 grams of protein, dr Brighten.com/plan. I put it together for you so you don't have to think about it. You can just grab that and make it work. Alright. I said we were gonna do sleep disruption as one of our causes today for brain fog. So let's [00:23:00] talk about what it is and how do you know if you have it. So poor sleep reduces memory consolidation and executive function. You got night sweats, you got cortisol spikes, you got a DHA related circadian rhythm issues that can wreck deep sleep.

I got a whole episode on that. I will link to it 'cause the strategies are a little bit different. So basically you can't consolidate memory. Your brain can't fire at full capacity the next day because you are not getting the right kind of sleep. When we sleep at night. You've got the glymphatic system all up in your business cleaning up your brain.

If you don't have that going on, you've got metabolic waste just hanging out. Now how do you know if this is you? If you are waking in the middle of the night and you can't fall back asleep, you are um, up 30, 40 minutes, maybe even an hour. That's the worst. I'm sorry. But that is one sign that you've got sleep issues going.

If you notice that you have worsening brain fog after you've had a poor night of sleep, or you had like, particularly bad hot [00:24:00] flashes, and we always think about hot flashes, , happening in, perimenopause, but postpartum, you can have hot flashes too. You lose that placenta, there goes your hormone factory and you're having hot flashes.

So if you notice like yes, there's a cor correlation, like, I don't sleep well, my brain doesn't work well, if you struggle with energy crashes and poor focus the next day after a poor night, if sleep and how do you know if this is you? Right? You're, because I, I can say energy crashes, but this might be a, if you are the person that after a poor night of sleep.

You are drinking three, four cups of coffee. You are eating afternoon donuts, cupcakes, chocolate bars, like quick fixes of sugar. that is your brain being like, we're struggling for energy. Please help us. , I think it's important that I say that to you because that can feel like, oh, I don't have willpower.

Um, I am somehow like a bad person. 'cause there's so much like morality attached to food these days, but [00:25:00] really what it is, you haven't had enough sleep. Your satiety hormones, your, I'm full, I don't need food hormones. Signaling is get, it gets thrown off. Now, we don't often think about brain fog and sleep connection unless it's really bad.

So yeah, we think about it in postpartum, uh, in the first three months when baby's not sleeping. But here's the reality. There is a good portion of people not actually getting enough sleep. And what's enough sleep? Well, you gotta be getting at least seven hours, and for women we need more like eight to 10, and it can be eight, seven or eight in your follicular phase, and then it's more like nine to 10 when you're in that late phase luteal phase. And so there's a couple things going on with sleep.

Number one, there is people not getting enough sleep. Then there are people not staying asleep throughout the night. Then there are people that are not [00:26:00] honoring their chronotype. I have a entire episode with Dr. Elisa Al, where we talk all about chronotypes, but um, they're not honoring their chronotypes and where they're at.

And then the other thing in all of this is they're not honoring their hormonal cycles. They're not honoring their body's needs. So there's hormonal cycles that can change, that can make it so we need more sleep. There's also cold and flu. Okay. Yeah, we can wrap our head around that one. Right? There's also inflammatory surges that can happen.

You have adenomyosis, you have fibroids, you have endometriosis. You have an autoimmune condition and you don't slow down when the body says, Hey, I need you to slow down. It will make you slow down eventually. And one of the early signs is my brain is foggy and not working. Alright, let's get in. What to do about it though I feel like I'm like kind of intense.

We have talked about magnesium glycinate. We can take that as a supplement, 150 300 [00:27:00] milligrams at night. We can also eat pumpkin seeds and almonds and leafy green vegetables. Make sure that we're getting magnesium rich foods. Tart cherry juice before bed can be helpful with a natural source of melatonin.

I will link to our episode on sleep hygiene and all of the different hormones affecting sleep. You definitely need to sleep in a cool room. You need to have a wind down for bedtime routine. You, you gotta calm the nervous system. Get into the parasympathetic nervous system.

Avoid light exposure at night and have morning light exposure. Uh, when you wake up, like within 30 minutes to help with your circadian rhythm, with a caveat there, if you haven't gotten six hours of sleep, morning, sunlight might actually disrupt that further. Uh, your circadian rhythm. So we want to make sure that we're getting enough sleep and then we morning sunlight, maybe go for a walk, do some earthing with it, as well as ways to start to tonify your nervous system.

And then I [00:28:00] would ask you to think about when the sunsets that you also do a digital sunset. So if you can do no screens an hour before bed, that's amazing. If you're like, no, that's not for me. I get it. Amber glasses. Okay. Blue light blocking glasses or you're gonna get something that, um, blocks it if it's on your phone, your tablet, if it's not backlit on your Kindle, like do something so that you're not getting that degrading, that melatonin degrading light source.

Now, other things that can help with you getting better sleep and also are supporting the brain function. So I'm gonna go back to Saffron again. I told to I'm having a love affair with saffron. So Saffron's also been shown to improve sleep quality. Nighttime waking gets reduced and it's helping with hot flashes.

So if hot flashes are what are keeping you up and making your sleep poor, saffron can be a nice alternative to estrogen therapy or it can be used with estrogen therapy.

Making sure that your exercise is happening at [00:29:00] the top of the day when your cortisol goes up, make that your hardest efforts in the gym. Okay. And then at night, if you wanna exercise, make it cool. Make it calm. Make it chill. Exercise. That's when I do all my mobility exercises. So shoulder mobility. 'cause, um, Tara Lara, she actually came to my house and uh, she made it very clear to me that I need shoulder mobility.

And she was right. But also hip mobility. It's when I'm doing stretches. L-theanine, I have other episodes where I talked about L-theanine, phosphatidyl sine passion flour.

Those are all helpful for helping you stay asleep. Melatonin's that like go to sleep, uh, those, those are about the stay asleep. So, phosphatidyl Seine, if you haven't heard of it before, it's an am amino acid that helps with lowering evening cortisol. It can improve stress resilience as well.

It. If you, if you're that person that's like, oh, I'm so sleepy, my body's so tired, but my brain will not shut up, and it's wired, that points to cortisol and the [00:30:00] curve being wrong. You having high cortisol at night when it should be high in the morning. And that's where taking like 50 to a hundred milligrams of phosphatidyl searing just before bed, I take it usually that's part of my dinner stack as well. Like after dinner, everything I take again, like I do it that way because I will forget. So I just have my way of doing it. Um, and if you're someone that's like, no, I take it right before bed and that works for you, that's great, but usually we gotta get it in like at least an hour before bed and phosphatidyl searing.

I will also say that if you have racing thoughts, uh, you feel alert at bedtime, then it's a good idea to consider phosphatidylserine and maybe even couple it with L-theanine. 'cause L-theanine is really good at helping calm the nervous system, calm the mind. It helps with GABA so that you can have that stop break and you stay asleep.

So GABA helps us stay asleep through the night. It's also great paired with ashwagandha, and [00:31:00] Ashwagandha is one of those herbs that if you've heard me talk about it before, I'm always like, it's like sh hush cortisol, like just, just hush. You don't need to be so intense. You don't need to be Dr. Brighten with brain firing at like 150% capacity.

I'm making jokes here but, um, now the thing about phosphatidyl searing is that it can blunt the cortisol response and improve sleep in people who are stressed. If you are somebody who has low morning cortisol, you don't wanna take phosphatidylserine in the morning.

So this is something that we reserve for the evening because that's when cortisol should go down.

We wanna support the natural circadian rhythm and there are times I use phosphotyrosine earlier in the day, but that's when I see someone's cortisol is spiking, um, when it shouldn't be. So l cine that I talked about previously, that's also in the adrenal calm formula, and it helps with increasing the alpha brainwave so that your calm alert state of the brain [00:32:00] gets supported. It's supporting you to relax without you feeling sedated. So, um, if you're the person who grabs Benadryl to try to sleep at night, firstly you talk to your doctor.

That's not a good idea in general, but that's like really sedating and you can wake up groggy. And that's the nice thing about L Thine is that you're like, I feel chill. I can go to sleep. The brain's get in the signals, the state it needs to be in. Um, and you don't feel like hungover the next day. As I mentioned, I like L-theanine.

When people have anxious thoughts, when they have difficulty winding down. I definitely like it for a DHD related sleep issues. So if you have delayed sleep face syndrome, if you've got the mind chatter at night, L-theanine can be a nice thing to add to the stack. And that's typically at a dose around 200 milligrams.

Some people, some people do more, so some people will do 400 milligrams, but I caution with that because some people, anything that pushes GABA a little bit too much, they can get headaches and they can just kind of fill off. So, [00:33:00] um, if you're gonna try it again, talk with your doctor, but try one to 200 milligrams.

200 milligrams seems to work well for most people. And if you're gonna time that it's 30 to 60 minutes before bed, but again, you could take it at dinner time. But if you want it to help you with going to sleep, get it within 30 minutes or more before going to sleep. If you have the stress kind of driven insomnia, uh, the, you are having perimenopause related cortisol spikes or, um, you're just like a really stressed out person, you're having cortisol spikes all the time. If you're waking up and you're not refreshed, you're waking up with morning headaches that can sometimes point to cortisol issues and that's when we start to consider ashwagandha.

So I had mentioned ashwagandha earlier, putting the hush on cortisol, a hundred, 200 milligrams, sometimes 300 milligrams of ashwagandha root. Uh, and it's gotta be like a standardized extract of that. That can be super helpful for putting that [00:34:00] Hes on cortisol and I honestly find that combination formulas are really effective for people.

You may choose to take a one off, which is why I'm going through these like one by one. That's totally fine. Uh, some people take just ashwagandha and they feel better. Then some people are like, I take ashwagandha, I feel a little bit better. But I combine that with El Thine and I feel a lot better. Oh, and I bring in the Sile Syrian, and now I'm really sleeping.

And I started with the passion flower. And like they start to realize that like all of these, um, they basically like have their own superhero and their own powers. And so you basically get to, to form like, you know, the squad of superheroes to support your sleep. And with ashwagandha there are randomized control trials that have shown significant improvement in both the quality of sleep but also the amount of stress people are perceiving. So, um, if stress is what's keeping you up at night, you can consider some of these things because [00:35:00] this is what gets really tricky is that you're really stressed out and then you're not sleeping well and then because you're not sleeping well, you're starting make mistakes 'cause your brain's not working well and then you get even more stressed out and it can just feel really overwhelming.

If you've heard me talk about Passion flower before, well, hi, you, you listen to the podcast. I love passion flour. I actually, um, I used to grow it in one of my houses. I'm gonna replant it and grow it again because I like making passion flour teas. Um, I just love the ritual of passion flour and passion flower helps enhance GABA activity, helps calm the nervous system, and it's, it is mildly sedating.

It's not like a sleep medication, but it is something that I would never be like, just drink passion flour and go driving or anything. Uh, because some of us are much more sensitive now. Passion flour, you can take it as a tincture. You can also take it in a capsule. We have it in the adrenal calm formula [00:36:00] as well.

Or you can make it part of like a ritual at night where you do passion flour, chamomile, like as a tea with a little bit of honey, maybe some collagen in there. Like there's lots of ways that you can leverage this. So. When you are having trouble with your sleep onset, your mind is like, you know, waking up and it's not consistently staying asleep at night.

Passion flower can help with that. There is evidence that passion flower improves subjective sleep quality, which means that, um, people's perception of their sleep quality is improved. And they specifically looked at women who had insomnia and found that passion flower was helpful with that. I think I mentioned Valerian root earlier. Valerian root helps with gaba, adenosine signaling. 'cause that's the molecule that builds up, that builds sleep pressure, that tells the body it's time to go to sleep. Valerian can be another really good one. People will use it for trouble falling asleep.

Or if they're having light and [00:37:00] restless sleep, they just like not getting into that deep sleep. For some people, they don't feel great with Valerian or they feel kind of like, um. Like when they take high dosages or they're doing a tea, sometimes they're like, oh, I kind of feel groggy the next day. And so if you're doing it as a supplement and you're like, oh, valerian really helps, but it's affecting me the next day, move up the dose.

So take it earlier in the evening. There have been some randomized control trials for this one as well, which show to reduce time to fall asleep and that people were having better sleep quality when they used Valerian. Now the other thing to note about Passionflower and Valerian is that, we wanna avoid high doses taken with alcohol, antihistamines, prescription sedative. So again, if you're on a medication, always talk to your doctor before you start a supplement. That wraps up the sleep part.

We're gonna get into stress and cortisol dysregulation So let me tell you what this is first. Okay? So. Chronic stress elevates your cortisol, shrinks your [00:38:00] hippocampus volume in your brain. That can impair short term memory. That's one of the big mechanisms of how when you feel constantly wired but tired, that your cortisol is impacting your brain and impacting brain fog.

So again, if you feel constantly wired and tired, we're look at cortisol. You got short-term memory slips that are happening. If when you feel stressed out, your brain feels like it wants to shut down, like you're having trouble focusing under pressure, that could be another sign that it's pointing to HPA dysregulation.

So hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access your stress system. So let's talk, I feel like I talked so much about sleep and I spent a long time there, uh, because it relates to this whole cortisol problem as well. But I just, I'm gonna get right into like what to do about, um, this whole cortisol conundrum, if you will.

So firstly, take inventory of your stress. I like to have people just brain dump. I tell patients like, just write it down on a piece of paper. Like just write down [00:39:00] one word for like everything causing you stress. Circle what you actually have to deal with and start crossing off the other things that you really don't have to take on.

Sometimes we're making things as stressful and they're not actually stressful. So take inventory. Consider low intensity movement such as walking, yoga, Pilates, and adding that into the routine. You can still strength try and you can still do other things, but things that are more movement that tonifies your nervous system, especially if you can do it in nature.

Oh, even better. If you can get out for a hike, do some nature walking, that is phenomenal. Other things that you can consider is adaptogenic herbs. So Rhodiola, we already talked about ashwagandha, but rhodiola can be super helpful with that. Um, but copa, so we talked about it before because it's used as a brain tonic, um, but it has adaptogenic properties [00:40:00] and that it can calm the stress response, reduce anxiety, enhance memory, um, and it's also going to support helpful neurotransmitters that are gonna help your brain actually work. If you have that stress related forgetfulness that we were talking about and you're having kind of anxious thoughts, sleep disturbance from a racing mind, bacopa can be really helpful with that as well. And I wanna say about, uh, Rola. Rhodiola is an endurance herb, so it's for mental and physical stamina. There have been studies about individuals, like they've done on college, students, they've done different studies looking at what your mental stamina is like, and Rhodiola can really help with that. So it's helping with the stress response and it's helping with your brain function. now I wanna mention Saffron again because it's been shown to help with reduced stress perception. It can help support your mood balance. And when you have a better mood that is helping your stress overall, [00:41:00] which lends itself, you know, yes, saffron is great, but also I have to ask the question like, how much joy are you implementing into your life?

Like book and your life with joy, with things that are. Delightful and make you feel amazing. Like put those at the front end in the back end of your day so that you have something to look forward to. And then you wake up like feeling like, yes, this is my life and I love it. So, you know, I, I like I'm talking to you about supplements, I'm talking about exercise, I'm talking to you about sleep, but there's also a lot about mindset and making sure that you are seeking out things that bring you joy, that fill you up, that that helps the nervous system immensely.

Other things you can be doing to regulate your nervous system. I'm going to link to the vagus nerve episode that we had with Dr. Nabib because it is such an easy thing to gargle, to sing, to do these things, to stimulate your vagus nerve [00:42:00] and it can drop neuroinflammation. And that is definitely one of the causes of brain fog that we are gonna talk about in an upcoming episode. I would also encourage you to meet and find community, community that makes you feel like glitter community that makes you feel good. Oh, because it can make such a difference in your stress. If people you hang out with leave you feeling depleted, you dread hanging out with them, stop hanging out with them that is messing with your HPA system.

Okay? Totally messing with it. And if you're like, I am doing all the things and I still have HPA dysregulation, my adrenal's, like, they ain't got my back no more. You need to figure out what's going on. It could be that you have an autoimmune disease. It could be that you have an infection. It could be that you have a gut dysbiosis, like something else might be going on that's stressing your HPA system.

As I said before, you know, endometriosis, adenomyosis, fibroids, , these conditions, they have this hormonal component to them, but they [00:43:00] also have an inflammatory component to them. If you're not already eating foods rich in B five, I mean you may wanna consider supplementing with B five because it's a precursor to co-enzyme A, which is what the adrenals use to make cortisol and other steroid hormones.

And this is so tricky because low B five is linked to adrenal dysfunction. And so when you see people who have long-term stress, low energy, , what people call adrenal fatigue, , patterns, but we know it's HPA dysregulation per the research, those people need B five. Like they almost always need vitamin B five and vitamin C because, , those adrenal glands, they've been working hard and the whole stress system has been working hard.

And it's not that your adrenal glands are giving out, it's that your body starts to compartmentalize and change the way signaling happens that you don't get over exposed. To all that cortisol. 'cause that's really bad for your brain. Cortisol can literally delete, [00:44:00] uh, brain cells. , It can cause a lot of cognitive changes that we don't like.

Um, and I'm like, as I say that, someone's gonna be like, oh my God. Yes. And your, your brain can make comeback your brain. If you're listening to this right now, za, you are still at a phase of life and still at a junction when your brain can make a comeback. Um, I mentioned vitamin C. High concentration of vitamin C is actually found in the adrenal glands.

They're one of the most concentrated tissues with vitamin C. Vitamin C is used for cortisol production and it's also protecting against the oxidative stress that chronically high cortisol can cause. So you need both. , So vitamin C is like all about adrenal glands, but you also need vitamin E, which is gonna be in the fat layer of the cells and they work together.

And when it comes to vitamin C, oranges are great, but bell peppers are better. So very, your vitamin C rich foods, if you find part of your adrenal symptoms are that you're like getting [00:45:00] sick all the time and you're like, I'm always getting sick. Like, we're the family that's always sick. You may need to consider supplementing with vitamin C.

And so we'll typically look at like. 500, 2000 milligrams daily and divided doses. If things are really bad, we might do a thousand milligrams four times a day. If you do it all at once, you'll get diarrhea. Please don't do that. You'll hate me forever. But there is evidence that, uh, vitamin C helps with subjective stress, helps with your cortisol all. Now a tulsi tea is really nice or holy basil. , That could be something nice to have in the mid-afternoon instead of your coffee. Tulsi or holy basil is an adaptogen that helps lower stress. Anxiety supports mood, supports better cortisol levels, supports sleep quality, sleep better. Sleep isn't always happening just before bed, okay?

Like sometimes getting better. Sleep is all the things is like everything you do from the moment you wake up and on. So with holy Basil, you'll find Tul cts out there. [00:46:00] That's a really nice way to use it. Um, I have holy basil in our adrenal support formula, which is the morning formula that's I take two caps with breakfast every day so that I have the energy to do all the things I need to do.

And what we know about Holy Basil is that it can also help with stress adaptation, and it can help when stress of your life is driving your anxiety. Holy basil can be nice to bring in. So again, you can take it as a supplement or you can make yourself a tea and, and replace that afternoon coffee that's disrupting your sleep with tea.

Oh, I just wanna mention that, um, Rola that I talked about. I'm a huge fan of Rodeo Rola, but you gotta take it in the morning or early afternoon because it can be a bit stimulating. , we don't wanna be passing 200 milligrams a day of Rhodiola. Okay? There are some supplements out there that recommend taking it multiple times a day. 100 milligrams is the safe spot, like 50 to a hundred of [00:47:00] Rhodiola. If you ever have a concern of like, could this trigger something with my mental health? and while we're mentioning things, holy basil can lower blood sugar and blood pressure. So if you're doing that at a high dose, , and you are someone who already has low blood sugar, you already have low blood pressure as an issue, that can make things worse. I bring this up because I'm saying talk to your doctor, but maybe your doctor doesn't know that.

So you can bring that up to them and have that conversation with them of like, is this something that I should be concerned about? Okay, so that's our top three. In this episode coming up, we're gonna be talking about blood sugar imbalances. We're gonna be talking about thyroid. We're gonna be talking about inflammation. I've got several more to cover and I'd love to hear from you. Was this helpful to cover it in this way where it was just chunks and solutions and just getting you directed on like, what can actually help solve this problem?

Let me know because I wanna make sure that this podcast is working well for you and that it's supporting you [00:48:00] on your endeavors. And if you can take a minute, leave us a review, share this podcast, I would really appreciate it. And don't forget, I've got lots of goodies for you in the show notes. And if you didn't know, if you go to dr Brighten.com/newsletter, you can jump on my newsletter. Every single time I email about a podcast episode, I also include bonus information, things that go beyond what was in the podcast or structure it in a way that makes it really tangible.

You can implement it just from glance and get the email so that you know, if you're like, I, I won't get to this episode until tomorrow. You've got some things that will hopefully change your life just from reading that email and deciding to implement some of these practices. Thank you so much as always, for being here with me, and I will see you next time.