Maybe you've heard of brainfog. Perhaps you suffer from brainfog. If not, you may be wondering what brainfog refers to. Well, let me try to explain.
When I developed ME, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, apart from the devastating and surprising refusal of my body to do the things it could previously do, my sleep suffered dreadfully. I believe this had a lot to do with the brainfog which I then started to suffer. Without proper sleep anyone's brain starts to misfire but added to the neural damage of ME it's a sure fire way of not being able to function normally.
My sleep at that time was severely affected. Sometimes this meant being awake all night and, obviously, tired all day. Sometimes I did sleep at night, though the sleep was not like real sleep at all. I would become unconscious, switch off you might say, but wake suddenly in the morning without any sense of having slept. No drowsiness, no dreams, and I hadn't moved at all during the night. I don't know what kind of sleep that describes, not being an expert, but it isn't normal and it isn't refreshing or healing.
It would appear that, although I went to sleep, it was only into stage 1 light sleep; I never entered REM sleep in which dreams occur, or reached deep or slow wave/delta wave, sleep. During the deep stages of non REM sleep, the body repairs and regenerates
tissues, builds bone and muscle, and appears to strengthen the immune
system. So without that it's hardly surprising that ME sufferers are very ill.
I still have disturbed nights and reversed inner time clock issues, though when I do sleep now I do tend to sleep "properly". I have dreams, and often feel that warm drowsiness on waking, though not always.
However, when this lack of proper sleep goes on for months or years, it's no wonder the brain starts to give up. The inability to concentrate is the most obvious symptom. Reading, a favourite pastime, became such hard work. After a very short time my brain would feel "full". And, worse, I would read the same sentence over and over again before it made any sense. Watching tv game shows used to be fun, but now I found that by the time the presenter had got to the end of a question I'd forgotten the start of it. My short term memory was shot.
Losing words, in the way a stroke victim does, is also a problem. Everyone has this problem at times of course, especially as we get older, but with brainfog it's constant. Searching for the word you want is so frustrating, but in time I learned to stop trying and just either find another word that means the same, or just describe the thing I meant. I find now that just changing the subject in my mind, looking away as it were, makes it easier. When I stop trying, the word I wanted will sometimes just pop into my mind.
Personally I also lost the ability to type. I had been touch typing for many years but suddenly I found that, although I knew what I wanted to type, my fingers weren't getting the messages from the brain. I would type with the correct fingers but on the wrong hand, or the letters came out in the wrong order, and my thumbs developed a mind of their own and stuck spaces in wherever they felt like it. It's like a kind of dyslexia in reverse. There may be a name for it but I don't that.
This is all very irritating of course. I still tend to spend more time correcting my typos than actually typing, thought it's not as bad as it used to be. At my worst I simply couldn't remember the alphabet. And at my age that's not funny. Well, not very funny.
Brainfog, therefore, is a way of describing the brain's inability to think, to concentrate, to work things out. Pretty much as it sounds really. I have to say that I have improved to some extent. I put it down to the handfuls of supplements, recommended by Dr Myhill, an ME specialist; in particular the brain feeding ones, which made a huge difference to my ability to sleep. Fish oils or other foods containing EPA and DHA for instance. The brain is something like 60% fatty tissue, so feeding this is important. However the thing that made the biggest change for me was PhosphatidylSerine, sometimes written as two words, an amino acid vital for neural function. Although normally the body can create it from foods it is being looked at now as a supplement for Alzheimer's patients.
I've seen various articles saying that PS helps, or it doesn't help, or it may help. All I know is that within a few days of taking it I started to sleep normally and over time my brainfog has improved. One quote says:
"Because PS is necessary for effective neurotransmission, PS deficiency
is linked to mental impairment, including Alzheimer's and
non-Alzheimer's dementia, depression and Parkinson's disease among
middle-aged and elderly people."
To have a brain that is akin to an elderly person with dementia, while you are still young, or fairly young, is very frustrating. We call it brainfog. It occurs in people with Fibromyalgia I understand, and quite possibly in other long term disabilities. My own experience is that it can be improved, if not entirely cured. I hope something I have shared here makes sense to others. I still have some problems myself, after all.
Sunday 16 February 2014
Saturday 1 February 2014
It's the Little Things.
It's the little things. The big things, well, people understand it more. For instance, I haven't been able to go shopping for years now. It's tough not being able to choose your own groceries or whatever, something most people don't have to think about, but at least there are supermarkets who will do it for you and deliver their choices to your door. This works well enough most of the time until they don't have what you ordered and the person doing the choosing for you has very different ideas from you. It's a bit like Christmas, every week, but not in a good way. You open the bag wondering what surprise you're in for this time. Will it be something you wanted, or not?
Like most people who get home deliveries I have been presented with substitutions - food I would never buy, don't like, would never eat, or just don't want. I am then in a dilemma. If I don't take it, what do I eat instead? And if I send it back it will just be thrown away, which I find unacceptable. Problem. Stress. Stress I don't need. But on the whole I manage.
Going out when absolutely necessary is simple, I call a cab and struggle the rest of the way.
Housework? It just doesn't get done, mostly. Luckily I was never all that houseproud. My bedroom looks like a jumble sale. The living room is in chaos. I always joke that no one will ever break in because it looks like the place has been turned over already. I move hesitantly, sloth like, around the house, resembling mountaineers at a high altitude, body and brain on go slow. Except when they're at a dead stop. But there's no one here to see it, so I don't care.
No, like I say, it's the little things. Like turning over in bed. You're probably thinking: "What? Turning over in bed? I can do that in my sleep!" Indeed you can, and I'm sure you do. Film of sleeping people shows just how often most people do it, moving around all night long. I used to do it myself once. And on good nights I still do. But on the bad ones...well. The thing is, we have to turn sometimes to keep the circulation going, to avoid pressure sores, going numb, etc. But if your body is flatly refusing to do it, what then? I have nights where I wake up in exactly the same position I went to sleep in, having not moved at all, the sheets totally undisturbed. I have other nights where I wake up just to turn over, because it takes quite a lot of concentration. Oh yes.
It's as if my subconscious is behaving like an orchestra without a conductor. No one is telling which bit of me to move next. Even awake it can be just the same. Have you seen those people who scale sheer rock faces with no help? That three points of contact rule. It's a bit like that sometimes. Move this foot, move this hand, now this one, now that one, and so on, until you get where you want to be. It can take quite a time. And a lot of effort, when your limbs feel like lead. Such a little thing, you'd think, but it takes forever.
Making a cup of tea is another. You're sitting in your seat with a dry mouth, trying to decide if you really need that drink or can you do without a bit longer. It does make me sound awfully lazy, I know. But it's not that. It's the effort it takes to haul your body out of the chair, stumble to the kitchen, then realising you didn't bring your cup with you so you have to go back for it. Then you fill the cup with water and tip it into the lightweight camping kettle to boil. You put the teabag into the cup, pour on the water, shuffle over to the fridge for milk, add the milk, go back to the fridge to put the milk away. Then you have to pick up the cup of tea which feels like a lead weight and try to get it back to the living room without spilling it, set it down and collapse into the chair. By which time you're too exhausted to drink it.
Another little adventure, just one of many during the day in the life of someone with ME.
But before you can start your day of course you have to get out of bed. Now many people will lie in bed thinking about whether they want to get up or not. Not many people lie in bed thinking about how they are going to get up. I do. On bad days anyway. On good days, if I've been sleeping well for a while and have some energy to spare I can get out of bed reasonably easily. Even if it means forcing myself to find the energy, which is counter productive as I suffer for it later. On bad days it's a whole other story.
Imagine waking up and you can't move. Your whole body feels like lead, lifeless, heavy, immovable, like gravity has increased somehow in the night. After a time you can maybe open your eyes, perhaps wiggle toes or a little finger. Good! You wait. After a time you can turn your head. Great! Wait some more and the arms feel like they're less heavy, so you try moving them. Yes! Success! The body is still lying there like a beached whale, but things are improving. In time you can wriggle a bit but the legs are still lying there, two great lumps of meat. Oh you can feel it if you touch them. They aren't numb. Just going nowhere. Eventually, after what feels like an eternity, you can move them a bit, slide them around on the bed. The beached whale has gone, to be replaced by an elephant seal. Things are looking up!
That's when I wait until I start to feel my bladder. When I feel that it needs emptying I know my body has finally woken up and I can make it off the bed to stagger with still wobbly legs to the bathroom. Rather like a mermaid newly transformed who isn't used to having legs yet.
This whole procedure can take up to an hour. For me it's never a case of do I want to get up. I have never enjoyed just lying in bed doing nothing. But now I spend most of my time reclining or lying, occasionally sitting, and rarely walking. Boring? Yes, it can be, though I have my computer and books and so on to stop me from going stir crazy.
Every little thing has to be thought about, things others take for granted, things I once took for granted. And this with a brain that is itself compromised. Short term memory is crap. Sometimes I feel like I'm developing dementia but I know it isn't that. It's just ME. Just, she says. Right.
Yes, I know there those much worse off than me, some who can never leave their beds at all, who can't stand any noise or light, have to be tube fed, or are stuck in hospitals being treated like criminals. I am extremely thankful that my level of disability allows me some modicum of independence. I would go crazy otherwise, not being good around people. I am thankful that I have a home, a pension which allows me to eat and buy the essentials, a daughter who cares even if she can't visit often. Maybe it's being thankful for those things that keeps me going. The big things. But the little things? Those are a nightmare.
Like most people who get home deliveries I have been presented with substitutions - food I would never buy, don't like, would never eat, or just don't want. I am then in a dilemma. If I don't take it, what do I eat instead? And if I send it back it will just be thrown away, which I find unacceptable. Problem. Stress. Stress I don't need. But on the whole I manage.
Going out when absolutely necessary is simple, I call a cab and struggle the rest of the way.
Housework? It just doesn't get done, mostly. Luckily I was never all that houseproud. My bedroom looks like a jumble sale. The living room is in chaos. I always joke that no one will ever break in because it looks like the place has been turned over already. I move hesitantly, sloth like, around the house, resembling mountaineers at a high altitude, body and brain on go slow. Except when they're at a dead stop. But there's no one here to see it, so I don't care.
No, like I say, it's the little things. Like turning over in bed. You're probably thinking: "What? Turning over in bed? I can do that in my sleep!" Indeed you can, and I'm sure you do. Film of sleeping people shows just how often most people do it, moving around all night long. I used to do it myself once. And on good nights I still do. But on the bad ones...well. The thing is, we have to turn sometimes to keep the circulation going, to avoid pressure sores, going numb, etc. But if your body is flatly refusing to do it, what then? I have nights where I wake up in exactly the same position I went to sleep in, having not moved at all, the sheets totally undisturbed. I have other nights where I wake up just to turn over, because it takes quite a lot of concentration. Oh yes.
It's as if my subconscious is behaving like an orchestra without a conductor. No one is telling which bit of me to move next. Even awake it can be just the same. Have you seen those people who scale sheer rock faces with no help? That three points of contact rule. It's a bit like that sometimes. Move this foot, move this hand, now this one, now that one, and so on, until you get where you want to be. It can take quite a time. And a lot of effort, when your limbs feel like lead. Such a little thing, you'd think, but it takes forever.
Making a cup of tea is another. You're sitting in your seat with a dry mouth, trying to decide if you really need that drink or can you do without a bit longer. It does make me sound awfully lazy, I know. But it's not that. It's the effort it takes to haul your body out of the chair, stumble to the kitchen, then realising you didn't bring your cup with you so you have to go back for it. Then you fill the cup with water and tip it into the lightweight camping kettle to boil. You put the teabag into the cup, pour on the water, shuffle over to the fridge for milk, add the milk, go back to the fridge to put the milk away. Then you have to pick up the cup of tea which feels like a lead weight and try to get it back to the living room without spilling it, set it down and collapse into the chair. By which time you're too exhausted to drink it.
Another little adventure, just one of many during the day in the life of someone with ME.
But before you can start your day of course you have to get out of bed. Now many people will lie in bed thinking about whether they want to get up or not. Not many people lie in bed thinking about how they are going to get up. I do. On bad days anyway. On good days, if I've been sleeping well for a while and have some energy to spare I can get out of bed reasonably easily. Even if it means forcing myself to find the energy, which is counter productive as I suffer for it later. On bad days it's a whole other story.
Imagine waking up and you can't move. Your whole body feels like lead, lifeless, heavy, immovable, like gravity has increased somehow in the night. After a time you can maybe open your eyes, perhaps wiggle toes or a little finger. Good! You wait. After a time you can turn your head. Great! Wait some more and the arms feel like they're less heavy, so you try moving them. Yes! Success! The body is still lying there like a beached whale, but things are improving. In time you can wriggle a bit but the legs are still lying there, two great lumps of meat. Oh you can feel it if you touch them. They aren't numb. Just going nowhere. Eventually, after what feels like an eternity, you can move them a bit, slide them around on the bed. The beached whale has gone, to be replaced by an elephant seal. Things are looking up!
That's when I wait until I start to feel my bladder. When I feel that it needs emptying I know my body has finally woken up and I can make it off the bed to stagger with still wobbly legs to the bathroom. Rather like a mermaid newly transformed who isn't used to having legs yet.
This whole procedure can take up to an hour. For me it's never a case of do I want to get up. I have never enjoyed just lying in bed doing nothing. But now I spend most of my time reclining or lying, occasionally sitting, and rarely walking. Boring? Yes, it can be, though I have my computer and books and so on to stop me from going stir crazy.
Every little thing has to be thought about, things others take for granted, things I once took for granted. And this with a brain that is itself compromised. Short term memory is crap. Sometimes I feel like I'm developing dementia but I know it isn't that. It's just ME. Just, she says. Right.
Yes, I know there those much worse off than me, some who can never leave their beds at all, who can't stand any noise or light, have to be tube fed, or are stuck in hospitals being treated like criminals. I am extremely thankful that my level of disability allows me some modicum of independence. I would go crazy otherwise, not being good around people. I am thankful that I have a home, a pension which allows me to eat and buy the essentials, a daughter who cares even if she can't visit often. Maybe it's being thankful for those things that keeps me going. The big things. But the little things? Those are a nightmare.
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