I used to get this pretty regularly, I thought I just keep burning out. I have an unusually high IQ and noticed that my symptoms were very similar to the string of condensed matter physicists that committed suicide. Their descriptions of their health issues before they killed themselves mirrored my own and I too used the Flowers from Algernon to describe my difficulties to others. I shared other weird stuff like extreme sleep difficulty and extreme noise intolerance. I found out only relatively recently it was due to ME/CFS which was from undiagnosed hEDS, a condition nowhere near as rare as it’s thought to be. I had been to see a huge amount of doctors and none of them diagnosed me with this despite being a walking bag of symptoms and having extreme hyper-mobility. Anyway, I think tech, like physics, has a fairly strong IQ selection criteria bias so I’ve noticed a concentration of the same health issues here on HN.
The characteristic brain fog seems to be tied to dysautonomia and excess IL-1B pro-inflammatory cytokines. I treat the latter with a strict no sugar diet, and high doses of D3, TUDCA, and DIM. I treat the dysautonomia with LDN, modafinil, amitryptiline, and a low dose of semaglutide (ozempic).
Interesting - your story of ME/CFS mirrors mine. Mine was triggered by a really mild cold a couple of years back, likely COVID. Thankfully a lot more research is going on into this, and im mostly back to full health now but the brain fog made me doubt myself at work a lot more than usual.
> The characteristic brain fog seems to be tied to dysautonomia and excess IL-1B pro-inflammatory cytokines. I treat the latter with a strict no sugar diet, and high doses of D3, TUDCA, and DIM. I treat the dysautonomia with LDN, modafinil, amitryptiline, and a low dose of semaglutide (ozempic).
Very much so, night and day. I’ve been pretty much issue free for 2 years, except for PEM which means I have to avoid cardio. I don’t know how to fix that. Instead of cardio I eat healthy and lift weights. I was one of those gifted kids which was a hell of an advantage but things slipped away from me as I got older, now I’m back and as good as ever.
I am very sensitive to Ozempic and take a low dose of 0.5mg/week after 2 years. I started very carefully on 0.05mg and had the usual adverse reactions people experience at much higher doses. I assume my sensitivity increased with the prolonged absence of GLP-1 for a good portion of my life - as in the Ozempic is directly treating an absence. I'm not trying to lose weight with it so it's just a maintenance dose to help with the auto-immune stuff.
The characteristic brain fog seems to be tied to dysautonomia and excess IL-1B pro-inflammatory cytokines. I treat the latter with a strict no sugar diet, and high doses of D3, TUDCA, and DIM. I treat the dysautonomia with LDN, modafinil, amitryptiline, and a low dose of semaglutide (ozempic).