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Dr Andrea Robertson is an Osteopath, Naturopath, and Nutritionist. The information shared in this podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider before making changes to your health regimen.

Show Notes

Episode Transcript

Episode 4

Andrea: [00:00:00] Because brain fog is a signal. It's not meant to be here forever, and it's not what getting older looks like,  Your brain is approximately sixty percent fat. The quality of the fat in your diet directly determines the quality of your brain cell membranes, Every blood sugar crash is a direct cognitive impairment event. Every spike and crash cycle deprives the brain of its primary fuel in the very moment it needs it most. The hippocampus, that's in your brain, remember, it literally grows. Memory improves, processing speed improves, and the neuroinflammation reduces

[00:02:00]  The word on the tip of your tongue that will not come. The room you've walked into with a purpose you've already forgotten. The email you have reread four times and still can't quite absorb. The meeting where everyone else seems sharp and present, and you are somewhere behind frosty glass watching it happen.

I'm Dr Andrea Robertson, osteopath, naturopath, and nutritionist. Here, we nourish because food is medicine, and what you eat changes everything. We heal because the body has an extraordinary capacity to self-repair when we remove what's blocking it. And we rise because feeling well isn't the destination, it's the foundation for living the life you truly desire.

This is Nourish, Heal, and Rise.

[00:03:00] Before we begin, a quick and important note. Everything I share on this podcast is for educational purposes only. It's not personal medical advice, and it can't be, because in the context of this podcast, I don't know your health history, your medications, and what else is happening in your body. What I want this podcast to do is give you the knowledge to ask better questions, understand your body more deeply, and make more informed decisions in partnerships with the practitioners who do know you.

If something resonates and you wanna take action, please work with a qualified healthcare provider who knows your full picture

Welcome back to Nourish, Heal, and Rise. This is episode four, and we are continuing our series on the eight most common signs of chronic inflammation in women's bodies. In episode two, we went deep on inflammatory fatigue, the exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix, and why the problem is happening at a cellular level that no amount of early bedtimes can reach.

In episode three, we covered weight loss [00:04:00] resistance, why fat loss becomes so physiologically difficult in the context of chronic inflammation, and why this is a biochemistry problem, not a willpower problem. If you've not listened to those yet, I would definitely encourage you to go back because the mechanisms we are building episode by episode connect and compound in ways that make each one richer.

Today, we're on sign number three, and this is one I wanna spend a moment with before we even begin because this is a sign that many women dismiss and minimize almost more than any other. They laugh it off, blame it on busyness, put it down to getting older

Or having too much on, or not sleeping well enough, or having too many tabs open. But underneath the jokes, the mum brain jokes, the menopause brain jokes, there's often something much quieter, a private, unsettling fear that something might be genuinely wrong.

Brain fog. It's that mental fuzziness, words that won't come, walking [00:05:00] into a room and forgetting why, reading the same paragraph three times and still not absorbing it. Operating at sixty percent or maybe forty percent of your cognitive capacity

Conversations where you lose the thread halfway through. Moments where you're looking for a word you've used it 10,000 times and it simply will not surface I want to speak to something about this experience that I think is kind of painful and that does not often get named.

There is a specific kind of grief in feeling cognitively less than. Your thinking, your quick wit, your capacity to hold complex ideas and move through them clearly, that's all your mind, your brain, and it is central to how you show up in the world.

In your work, your relationships, your parenting, your sense of who you are, your sense of self. When that changes, when something that used to feel effortless now starts to feel really effortful, and yet sometimes effort is not enough. [00:06:00] Well, that's not a minor inconvenience. It's disorientating, it's frightening, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

I want to address that quiet fear directly right at the start of this episode, And then I want to give you the full picture like I love to do, that real biological picture of what is actually driving brain fog,

Because brain fog is a signal. It's not meant to be here forever, and it's not what getting older looks like, and it's not something you have to accept. When you understand what it is signaling, and when you address those drivers, the clarity comes back. Women describe it as feeling the lights come back on, as feeling present in their own minds again, and being able to think quickly, speak clearly, finish sentences, and engage fully with the life they're actually living.

That clarity is not gone. It's just waiting for the conditions that allow it to return, and this episode is gonna give you those conditions. So let me map out what we're going to cover today. We are gonna go through the specific biological [00:07:00] mechanisms that drive brain fog in women, and there are more of them, and they are more connected to each other than most people realize.

Then we're gonna move through into a set of practical, specific steps you can begin implementing straight away. We will discuss which steps are the highest leverage entry points and why, and we will finish with what to expect as you make these changes and how to know that what you're doing is working.

Before we go into those mechanisms, I want to spend a moment to describe what brain fog actually is, because brain fog is one of those terms that gets kind of used loosely, and I want to be really specific about what I mean here. So brain fog is not simply tiredness.

It's not just an ordinary distraction. It's a distinct, consistent, and often kind of progressive experience of cognitive impairment, of your brain dimming. It's persistent enough to affect your daily life, your work, your relationships, your sense of self, but often not severe enough to be picked up on, I don't know, standard cognitive [00:08:00] testings that you might get if you go to your doctor about it. Women describe it in different ways. Some say they are thinking through cotton wool. Some say their brain feels like a browser with too many tabs open, slow, laggy, constantly at risk of crashing. Some describe it as losing the thread of conversations mid-sentence.

Others notice it most in word retrieval, like the right word is clearly there somewhere in the brain, but they can't seem to locate it in order to be able to say it. And many describe a loss of the mental sharpness and quickfire thinking that used to come naturally, like a speed and clarity that they really miss, even if they cannot always precisely name what has changed I can think of a client right now, actually.

I'm gonna call her Claire for privacy reasons. She is a lawyer, fifty-one years old. She was at the peak of her career when we first met, with a mind that had been one of her greatest assets throughout her professional life.

Over about 18 months, she had noticed a gradual but unmistakable change. [00:09:00] She was slow in meetings, she was relying more heavily on always taking notes, and she had a to-do list for everything now because she didn't trust herself to remember otherwise. She was missing that quick lateral thinking that had always made her exceptional.

And she told me she was terrified, It wasn't a frustration. Like, she was genuinely frightened that she was losing her mind, like losing her edge permanently. And she wondered quietly whether early cognitive decline might be part of her picture.

When I looked at Claire's full health picture, inflammation was significant across multiple systems in her body. So she was perimenopausal, Estrogen and progesterone were in the early stages of transition.

Her gut microbiome on functional testing was really depleted. Like, she had a really big imbalance of those bacteria. One of the reasons why she'd had three courses of antibiotics in the preceding two years. And did you know that it takes about 16 months after one course of antibiotics for [00:10:00] that microbiome to refresh?

And even some strains of good bacteria don't even come back even after that. So she'd had three courses of antibiotics in the preceding two years. Plus, she'd had lots of extra antibiotics in her teenage history, too. And her diet, which was kind of healthy on paper, it was relatively low in fiber and diversity, like variety of plants.

We measured her iron panel and her ferritin, which is her iron stores, was 19. We're gonna discuss that shortly, but it is very, very low for cognitive function, regardless of what the reference range says. We tested her thyroid as well, and that showed an impaired T4 to T3 conversion on that full thyroid panel.

She was sleeping six hours most nights, so not really enough, but she was waking regularly between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning and had not really had a good night of deep sleep for as long as she could remember. And she was under significant long-term kind of sustained stress from a huge workload as her main colleague that she worked closely with had been [00:11:00] away on long service leave for six months, and she was taking on the extra load.

Then layer in two teenage children to manage, and I'm sure many of you can relate to this kind of situation. Not one of these factors was the main problem in isolation for her. But together, layered on each other, each one amplifying the others, they created this kind of neurological environment in which Claire's brain simply couldn't perform at its natural capacity.

So we worked on all of it systematically, beginning with the highest leverage interventions first. And within 12 weeks, she sent me this beautiful message saying, and I do think about this often, she said, "My brain is back. I don't know how else to describe it, but my brain is back." And that is what's possible when you address the biology.

So let's go through it Before I take you through the specific mechanisms, I want to say something about how they all connect, because I think it's really important to understand this as a whole rather than as a list of separate symptoms, because all the mechanisms we're going to talk about are very intertwined.

We're going to talk [00:12:00] about neuroinflammation, which worsens insulin resistance in the brain. Then insulin resistance worsens cortisol dysregulation. Cortisol dysregulation damages the gut lining, and gut damage drives more systemic inflammation. Systemic inflammation suppresses thyroid function and estrogen production, and all of it disrupts the deep sleep where the brain tries to clear the inflammatory debris.

It's an interweb, like all parts are connected. And that is why addressing a single thing alone, like taking a supplement or cutting one food group, doing one thing differently, like it rarely produces that brain improvement women are hoping for. The whole interweb connection has to shift. So when you understand it as an interweb...

I think it's a new word I've made up, but anyway, I love it. It describes it perfectly. When you understand it as an interweb, the comprehensive approach I'm going to describe in the practical steps section later on in this podcast makes complete sense. You're not doing 10 [00:13:00] things.

You're addressing one interconnected system from multiple angles simultaneously. Okay, so let's now go into the eight mechanisms driving the brain fog that is a kick on effect of chronic inflammation

Mechanism one is neuroinflammation and the microglia. Did you know your brain has its own resident immune cells, and they're called microglia? They are extraordinary. Think of them as the brain's security and maintenance team. In their resting state, they're constantly surveying the brain environment, clearing cellular debris, pruning unused synaptic connections, and maintaining the health of the neural tissue.

They are essential and super beneficial. When the brain is exposed to inflammatory signals from the bloodstream, from the gut, from chronic stress, these microglia activate. They shift from their maintenance role into a defensive, acute inflammatory mode. In the short term, this is [00:14:00] protective, and it's the brain responding appropriately to a perceived threat.

But in the context of chronic systemic inflammation, microglial activation also becomes chronic. It's like the security team never stands down, and chronically activated microglia cause significant disruption. They slow the speed of neurotransmission, so that's the rate at which signals travel between brain cells.

They interfere with neurotransmitter production and balance. So a neurotransmitter is a chemical messenger that carries signals between brain cells. And this chronic activation of the microglia cells interfere particularly with dopamine and serotonin, which are critical for focus, motivation, mood, and memory.

And chronically activated microglia cells also generate oxidative stress in brain tissue. They create what is sometimes called a neuroinflammatory state. So that's a brain environment that is metabolically compromised, [00:15:00] less efficient, and less able to sustain the high energy demands of clear, sharp cognitive brain function

result is what women describe as brain fog, the mental fuzziness, the cotton wool sensation, the inability to hold a train of thought, the words that will not surface, the walking into rooms and forgetting things. This is not a vague or mysterious phenomenon.

It has a name, a mechanism, and a set of very specific drivers, and all of these drivers can be addressed. So that was mechanism one, neuroinflammation and the microglia. Now we go on to mechanism two, the glucose and insulin resistance piece. Your brain is the most metabolically demanding organ in your body.

It represents approximately 2% of your body weight, but it consumes approximately 20% of the energy your body produces. And unlike most other organs, which can switch between fuel sources, your brain runs almost exclusively on [00:16:00] glucose

When insulin resistance is present, and remember, chronic inflammation is one of the primary drivers of insulin resistance, brain cells begin to struggle to access the glucose they need to function optimally. The signaling between insulin and the glucose transporters in brain cells becomes impaired, so the brain is being under-fueled even when blood glucose levels appear adequate, and an under-fueled brain is a foggy brain.

Some researchers are now referring to Alzheimer's disease as type 3 diabetes, a condition of insulin resistance in the brain specifically. Now, I want to be very clear. I'm not suggesting that brain fog leads to Alzheimer's disease

What the research does tell us is that the metabolic disruption created by chronic inflammation and insulin resistance has a real and progressive impact on how the brain functions. And we need to address this not just for clarity today, but for cognitive brain resilience and brain health for the rest of your life [00:17:00] Blood sugar instability is also a direct driver of acute brain fog episodes.

Every time blood sugar crashes, like after a high carbohydrate meal, or after going too long without eating, the brain's glucose suddenly dips sharply. Cortisol rises to rescue the falling glucose, and during the crash itself, cognitive function deteriorates noticeably. I don't know about you, but I definitely have that from time to time.

I had it last Friday, in fact. I didn't get my breakfast in time. I was at a cafe, and they forgot my order, and I felt myself crash. And the whole day was a bit of a rollercoaster for my brain, and my body, and my blood sugars. So I'm sure you can relate as well, and we've all had those experiences. But it's really like that 2:00 PM mental flatness, the post-lunch brain fog, that inability to think clearly in the afternoon that so many women kind of accept as normal.

But it is, in the vast majority of cases, a blood sugar crash, and it is entirely addressable through how and what you [00:18:00] eat. Okay, so that was mechanism number two, glucose and insulin resistance.

Now I want to go into mechanism three about why chronic inflammation drives brain fog, and that's the gut-brain axis. The connection between your gut and your brain is one of the most extraordinary areas of research in medicine right now, and I think it will completely reshape how we understand and address cognitive symptoms in women over the next decade.

I covered the gut-brain connection in episode two on fatigue and episode three on weight loss. It's very important. But in the context of brain fog specifically, I want to go deeper on it because it's very important that you understand it in this context too. Your gut and your brain are in constant bidirectional communication via the vagus nerve.

It is a direct neural pathway that runs from the base of your brain all the way through the chest and into the abdomen, connecting with every organ along the way. Think of the vagus nerve as like a motorway, a vast multi-lane communication system between [00:19:00] two major cities. Information travels in both directions continuously every minute of every day, probably every second of every day.

What happens in the gut directly signals in the brain, and what happens in the brain directly affects the gut. They are not separate systems that occasionally talk to each other. They are one integrated system that happens to have two geographical centers, one upstairs in the brain and one down below in our belly.

Your gut produces approximately 90% of your body's serotonin, your primary mood-stabilizing and cognitive-regulating neurotransmitter. Most people think of serotonin as the happy chemical, but it's really the clarity chemical.

It is what allows you to hold a thought to its full conclusion, to stay present in the conversation and feel mentally organized rather than overwhelmed and scattered. When gut health is compromised and serotonin production drops, that mental order starts to fray. The focus goes, the memory gets patchy, the brain [00:20:00] just feels less like yours.

The gut also produces GABA precursors. So GABA is your brain's primary calming neurotransmitter, the chemical that allows the nervous system to quieten enough for clear, focused thought. It produces dopamine precursors that influence motivation, drive, and the pleasure of engaged thinking. And certain gut bacteria, like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium species in particular, directly produce short-chain fatty acids, including butyrate, that cross the blood-brain barrier

And have lovely anti-neuroinflammatory effects also. A depleted dysbiotic gut quite literally provides a less chemically favorable environment for clear thinking. And when gut lining is compromised, so the intestinal permeability stage, otherwise known as leaky gut, something called lipopolysaccharides, which are toxic fragments from the outer wall of certain gut bacteria, well, they enter the [00:21:00] bloodstream, and trigger a systemic immune response.

These inflammatory compounds, they cross the blood-brain barrier and directly activate that microglia that we discussed in mechanism one. So the gut inflammation and the neuroinflammation are not parallel problems. Like they're the same story written just in two different organs. Heal the gut, and you begin to resolve neuroinflammation.

It's one of the most powerful leverage points in the entire brain fog picture. I just love how cool that connection is. Like, how good is science that we've worked this out? As a human species, we've worked this out. So good. Okay, so that was mechanism number three on how chronic inflammation drives brain fog. And we talked about the gut-brain axis.

Now let's go on to mechanism four, estrogen and the neuroprotective effect

Oestrogen has a really good neuroprotective effect, and this is something that regular medical conversations about perimenopause and menopause they kind of often miss and skip over. So listen in, because what I'm about to share is super [00:22:00] interesting and super important. Oestrogen actually supports the growth and maintenance of neurons, nerve cells.

Amazing. It supports the production and balance of neurotransmitters. They're those chemical messages, especially serotonin, dopamine, and acetylcholine. Acetylcholine in particular is critical for memory formation and thought or word retrieval, and it is the neurotransmitter most closely associated with learning and with that kind of quick thinking that feels sharp and clear.

So oestrogen also directly reduces microglial activation, which means it actively suppresses neuroinflammation. It also supports the integrity of that blood-brain barrier, and it enhances cerebral blood flow, the delivery of oxygen and glucose to the brain. Like how good is estrogen? Think of estrogen as one of the brain's primary caretakers, keeping the environment clean, the fuel supply reliable, the inflammatory response appropriately modulated.

Women often don't realize how much cognitive work estrogen has been [00:23:00] quietly doing on their behalf till it begins to decline. So as estrogen declines through perimenopause and into menopause, and this can begin as early as the mid to late 30s, often years before periods become irregular and other perimenopause symptoms pop up.

While that neuroprotective layer, as estrogen starts to reduce, also starts to reduce. The microglia become more active or reactive. The blood-brain barrier becomes more permeable. Neurotransmitters are affected, so blood flow to the brain reduces.

And the brain fog that so many women notice intensifying in their mid to late 40s is, in a significant part, a direct consequence of reduced estrogen and estrogen's reduced neuroprotective effect. So this is often all happening simultaneously with an often increasing inflammatory load from gut health, stress, sleep disruption, metabolic change.

And here is something that I want you to know because I think it's one of the most empowering pieces of physiology I can [00:24:00] share with you in this episode, and it's rarely talked about in the mainstream perimenopause conversation I'm so excited to share this with you because it's so good. Now listen.

Your body does not simply stop making estrogen when your ovaries begin to wind down. Mother Nature actually has your back here. So the adrenal glands, those two small glands that sit above your kidneys, can continue helping produce estrogen after the ovaries reduce their output. And they do this by creating androgens that then get converted into estrogen through a process that happens often in the fat tissue, the adipose tissue, with the support of adrenal glands.

And it's not the same volume as ovarian production, but it is something, and it is your body's built-in contingency plan for this life transition. Here's the catch, though. The adrenal glands produce both cortisol and the precursors for estrogen, but they cannot do both at the same time with equal priority.[00:25:00] 

When the adrenal glands are chronically occupied producing cortisol, which is exactly what happens in a woman who is under sustained stress with poor sleep, carrying significant inflammation, estrogen production with the support of the adrenals is compromised. The body prioritizes survival over reproduction.

Cortisol wins, and estrogen loses. Which means that women who are chronically stressed, chronically inflamed, and chronically sleep-deprived are not just experiencing estrogen decline from perimenopause, they're also suppressing the very backup system their body has in place to buffer that decline. They are getting hit from both sides simultaneously.

So this is why reducing the stress load, reducing the inflammatory load, and protecting sleep are not just general wellness recommendations for women in perimenopause. They are direct estrogen-supportive strategies.

They free up the adrenal glands to do the estrogen production that nature intended them to do during this transition

[00:26:00] Progesterone also plays an important role in brain fog. It has calming neuroprotective effects of its own. It supports GABA activity in the brain. It reduces neuroinflammation, and it supports the quality of deep sleep, which, as we'll discuss shortly, is when the brain does its essential overnight maintenance.

I can't wait to tell you about it. It's so exciting. As progesterone declines, sleep quality deteriorates, and the nervous system becomes more reactive, and the restorative capacity of sleep for the brain reduces significantly. And again, the same principle applies.

A woman whose stress response is regulated, whose inflammation is low, and whose sleep is protected will experience progesterone decline very differently from a woman whose body is already under siege. The transition is the same, but the experience of it is not. Okay, so that was mechanism number four, estrogen, progesterone, and the neuroprotective effects of them.

Now let's go on to mechanism five, the thyroid-cognitive connection

[00:27:00] Thyroid hormone, specifically the active form T3, is essential for normal brain function. T3 receptors are found throughout the brain, and thyroid hormone directly regulates the speed of neural processing, the production of neurotransmitters, and the metabolism of brain cells. When thyroid function is impaired through inflammation suppressing T4 to T3 conversion, through elevated reverse T3 blocking the T3 receptors, through any of the mechanisms that we have described in detail in early episodes two and three, the brain runs slower.

The brain's processing speed decreases. Your memory recall becomes less efficient. Word retrieval slows. The cognitive experience of thyroid underfunction is remarkably similar to what women describe as brain fog, which is one of the reasons I always include a full thyroid panel when working with a woman experiencing significant cognitive and brain function symptoms

[00:28:00] In hypothyroidism, which means a slow or sluggish thyroid, we often see a higher TSH. Medically, the range for TSH is usually about 0.4 to four, and anything outside of that range says you're sick with your thyroid gland. For best optimal health, I like that range to be between one and two for TSH. So even subclinical hypothyroidism, where the TSH is borderline, it's above two, but it's under four, so it's not so dramatically elevated, but even that is one of the most common reversible causes of brain fog in women.

And because so many women are told their thyroid is just fine based on a result of TSH alone, the thyroid as a driver for brain fog can often go unaddressed for years. If brain fog is a significant part of your picture and your TSH has come back in the normal range, please ask specifically for a full panel, T3, free T4, and reverse T3.

The full panel tells a completely different story From just TSH alone. [00:29:00] Especially look into this if your TSH is normal, but not within that one to two range. Okay, so that was mechanism number five of how chronic inflammation drives brain fog, which is your thyroid gland. Now let's go on to mechanism six, iron, oxygen, and the brain.

Low ferritin, which is iron storage, is one of the most consistently missed drivers of brain fog in women. And I want to spend a little bit of time on this because I think it's super underappreciated. Iron is required for the production of hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to every tissue in the body, including the brain.

Without adequate iron, oxygen delivery to the brain tissue is negatively affected, and an oxygen-deprived brain is a slow brain, a foggy brain, a brain that cannot sustain the high metabolic demands of clear, sharp, cognitive brain function Iron is also directly required for the production of dopamine and serotonin, the neurotransmitters that regulate focus, motivation, [00:30:00] mood, and memory.

The enzymes that convert the precursor amino acids tryptophan and tyrosine into serotonin and dopamine production are respectively iron dependent. They need iron, which means that low iron produces neurotransmitter deficiencies independently of any other mechanism. And iron is also required for myelin production.

So myelin is the kinda insulating sheath around nerve fibers that allow electrical signals to travel quickly and efficiently between neurons and nerve cells. Think of myelin as the insulation around electrical wiring, and without adequate insulation, the signal degrades and slows. Low iron impairs myelination,

And impaired myelination slows neural processing speed

A woman with a ferritin of 15 or 20 who has been told her iron is just fine may be experiencing brain fog from iron deficiency alone. And then the thyroid suppression. Add the neuroinflammation. [00:31:00] Add the gut dysbiosis. Add the estrogen decline and the blood sugar instability, and you begin to understand why brain fog in women is so often multi-layered and why addressing a single driver rarely produces complete resolution

Okay, so that was mechanism number six for how chronic inflammation drives brain fog, your iron and ferritin. Let's go on to mechanism seven, cortisol and the hippocampus. So chronically raised cortisol, which as we have established, is a consistent feature of chronic inflammation. It has direct and specific toxic effects on the hippocampus.

The hippocampus is the brain region primarily responsible for memory formation and consolidation. Think of it as like the brain's filing system, the area responsible for taking new information and organizing it into long-term memory files. It's also one of the few regions of the adult brain where new neurons can be generated, a process called neurogenesis.

And this capacity for renewal is directly [00:32:00] suppressed by chronic cortisol exposure Chronic cortisol is like acid rain on that filing system. Studies consistently show that chronically elevated cortisol reduces hippocampal volume over time when seen on brain imaging. Chronic raised cortisol also impairs the formation of new memories and reduces the capacity for clear, organized thinking.

Women under chronic stress, Which is essentially the same at a physiological level as chronic inflammation. Well, these women consistently show changes in hippocampal function and memory performance.

Luckily, though, this is reversible. Now, I want to sit with the word reversible for a moment because I think it's important. The hippocampal volume loss associated with chronic cortisol is not permanent when the cortisol burden is reduced. The brain has a remarkable capacity for structural recovery.

Neurogenesis resumes, hippocampal volume can be partially restored, memory [00:33:00] function improves when the chronic cortisol exposure is addressed. Exercise is one of the most powerful stimulators of hippocampal neurogenesis. Something called BDNF,

which we'll come to in the second part of this podcast, where I share some actionable tips with you. Well, BDNF directly supports hippocampal repair and reducing the inflammatory load that is sustaining the cortisol elevation in the first place creates the biological conditions for repair and recovery as the structure of this part of the brain

Cortisol also directly impairs prefrontal cortex function. That is the area of the brain responsible for executive function, planning, decision-making, working memory, and the kind of flexible, complex thinking that characterizes super good cognitive brain function and performance. When cortisol is chronically elevated, the prefrontal cortex quite literally operates less effectively.

Resources are diverted [00:34:00] towards the more primitive threat-focused regions of the brain at the expense of higher order thinking. Which is why under chronic stress, complex analysis feels harder, decisions feel overwhelming, and the mental clarity and quick thinking that used to come effortlessly seems to be really hard to get back This is why cortisol management is central to managing brain fog, but more on that later in this episode.

Okay. That was mechanism number seven, cortisol. Now let's go into mechanism eight, the glymphatic system and sleep. I'm so excited for this one. one of my absolute favorite pieces of brain science to talk about this because it is only recently relatively discovered.

It is extraordinary, and it completely reframes why sleep matters for cognitive function and brain health. Did you know your brain has its own dedicated waste clearance system? It's called the glymphatic system, and it operates almost exclusively during deep sleep.

[00:35:00] During slow wave deep sleep, the cells of the brain actually shrink slightly, creating channels through which cerebrospinal fluid flows, flushing out the metabolic waste products that have accumulated during the day's cognitive activity. Among the waste products cleared by the glymphatic system are inflammatory proteins, including beta amyloid and tau proteins, which are the proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease pathologically.

Think of the glymphatic system as your brain's overnight cleaning crew. Every night during deep sleep, the crew comes in, mops the floors, clears the rubbish, and leaves the brain ready for a fresh day of function. Now, here is the very important connection. Chronic inflammation directly disrupts deep sleep architecture.

Inflammatory cytokines interfere with the slow wave sleep stages where the glymphatic clearance happens, which means that the same inflammatory picture driving brain fog during the day is also preventing the overnight cleaning and clearance that would [00:36:00] reduce neuroinflammation and restore cognitive function.

It is both the cause of the problem and the thing that prevents the natural nightly resolution. This is why brain fog so often intensifies over time in women who are not addressing the underlying inflammation. The inflammatory waste products accumulate over days and weeks. The glymphatic clearance is constantly inadequate, and the neuroinflammation gradually deepens, which is why the foggy baseline that felt manageable six months ago

now feels more pervasive. Why the good days are getting shorter, and why rest alone is no longer producing the cognitive restoration it once did. It is a progressive accumulation of a problem that is addressable, but that addresses itself only when the conditions for deep sleep are genuinely restored.

For a brain operating in a chronically inflamed environment, protecting deep sleep is one of the most important clinical interventions available. [00:37:00] Okay, so that was our eight drivers of how inflammation can cause brain fog. I wanna now go onto some practical tips and steps of things you can do to address this.

But before I do, I want to acknowledge something. The mechanisms we have just covered are numerous and interconnected, like I said at the start of the podcast, and I understand that hearing eight biological drivers of brain fog can feel overwhelming, particularly if you're currently experiencing the cognitive symptoms that we have been discussing, and if your brain is not at its sharpest right now.

So I wanna offer you this reframing. You do not need to address all eight mechanisms simultaneously and perfectly from day one. What you need to do is start somewhere with the steps that are the highest leverage and most immediately actionable, and build from there. The biology rewards consistently accumulation more than it rewards perfection.

Progress over perfection. Three things done consistently for three months will produce more meaningful change than eight things done [00:38:00] sporadically. So the action steps I see as the highest leverage, blood sugar stability, gut healing, and sleep quality, are consistently where I see the most significant early cognitive improvements in the women I work with.

Start there, then build the rest around them. Okay, so let's go on to those. Let's go on to the eight practical specific steps you can begin implementing immediately

[00:39:00] Step one, stabilize your blood sugar, starting with breakfast today. If you take one action from this episode, let it be this one. Every blood sugar crash is a direct cognitive impairment event. Every spike and crash cycle deprives the brain of its primary fuel in the very moment it needs it most. [00:40:00] And the breakfast you eat sets the glucose trajectory for the entire morning, for the entire day, which is typically the period of peak cognitive demand for most women in that morning time.

A breakfast built around twenty-five to thirty grams of protein, like eggs in any form, a quality protein smoothie, leftover protein from the night before, smoked salmon and avocado, or my favorite, a turkey-mince scramble, though today I had a pork-mince scramble. It creates a slow, stable glucose supply to the brain for the first three to four hours of the day.

The cognitive difference compared to a carbohydrate-dominant breakfast is significant and frequently felt within days of making this change consistently. So a few rules here. Never eat carbohydrate on its own. If you eat fruit, pair it with protein or fat, berries with a handful of nuts, or an apple with some almond butter.

And if you eat rice or potato, pair it with a substantial serve of protein and some healthy fats. Always buffer that carbohydrate with something that slows its conversion to glucose and moderates the insulin response. [00:41:00] This is a great way to build meals that support your brain's ability to function clearly across the day.

Meal timing also matters for cognitive function. Going more than four to five hours without eating creates a blood sugar trough that impairs mental performance regardless of how healthy your last meal was. Women who skip lunch or who eat a very light lunch and then try to get through the afternoon on coffee or willpower are creating a predictable afternoon cognitive decline that has nothing to do with their intelligence or their capacity and everything to do with the availability of glucose to the brain.

So let's chat about that afternoon brain fog slump, which so many women accept as just what three p.m. feels like. This is, in the majority of cases, a blood sugar crash. Address the blood sugar crash, and you address the slump. It's literally that direct. And the cognitive improvements in the afternoon when blood sugar is properly managed are sometimes the most immediate, dramatic change women [00:42:00] notice in the early weeks of this approach.

Okay, so that was our first action to stabilize blood sugar. Next, let's chat about what else we can do to help brain fog, and this is heal the gut. Specifically, heal the gut for your brain. Given that ninety percent of your serotonin is produced in the gut, and given the direct connection between gut health and brain function via the vagus nerve, gut healing is

One of the most powerful interventions available for brain fog, and it is one that conventional medicine almost never recommends in the context of cognitive symptoms because the gut-brain connection is simply not part of the standard clinical framework for addressing brain fog. Women are often offered antidepressants or referrals for a cognitive assessment or reassurance that this is just normal for their age.

The gut is rarely part of the conversation, and yet in my clinical experience, it is constantly one of the highest leverage entry points. We remove the gut disruptors first. So let's talk about what that means. It means removing refined [00:43:00] sugar, seed oils, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods.

They need to be out. Refined sugar feeds the pathogenic bacterial overgrowth that drive dysbiosis in our gut, or that imbalance of the good and not so good bacteria, and refined sugar impairs serotonin-producing species in the gut. Then we have the industrial seed oils, the sunflower, canola, soybean, and corn oils in almost every packaged food.

They directly damage the gut lining and drive intestinal inflammation. Alcohol also impairs the gut microbiome, increases intestinal permeability, the leaky gut, and as we have discussed, it also suppresses the deep sleep where that glymphatic system, the brain does its overnight repair. Then ultra-processed foods contain additives, emulsifiers, and preservatives that have direct negative effects on gut microbiome diversity

These are the primary disruptors for the gut. Removing them consistently is not the whole solution, but it is the foundation that must [00:44:00] be there. There is no supplement or quick fix or longevity hack or biohack that can out-supplement or out-fix a poor nutrition approach. Also, a few things we can add in.

Increase diversity of plant foods. Think 30 different plant foods across a week. This rebuilds microbiome diversity and supports the bacterial populations associated with healthy serotonin production and cognitive function. Think seeds and herbs and spices. They each count as a different plant food. And then different colors of vegetables count as different plants.

This is super easily achievable with a normal weekly eating pattern if you put your attention to it. I want to give you an example of this. So I was thinking about my plate last night at dinner. I had, um, some beautiful eye fillet steak, but on the side, I had a buckwheat salad that I had made. And in the buckwheat salad, I had buckwheat, uh, four different types of seeds and nuts that were toasted, so really, yummy [00:45:00] and, crunchy.

It had, , two different types of herbs, so coriander and parsley. It had some currants, it had lemon, had red onion, like so many good things. There's probably 10 different plant-based foods on that plate.

And then I made a side salad as well that had a whole lot more plant-based foods. So I had about 20 different plant-based foods on that one plate at dinner. That's what our gut really wants. It wants that variety. And then fermented foods are also great, but just add them carefully. We're thinking sauerkraut, kimchi, coconut yogurt, even kombucha, water kefir.

These help introduce beneficial bacterial species that directly support gut-brain axis function. But start with small amounts, especially those stronger ones like your sauerkrauts, and notice how the body responds. However, just a little caveat 'cause it always is with nutrition. Some women with histamine sensitivity find fermented foods can worsen symptoms initially, so just watch out for that one if you know you're a histamine bunny

Now consider a glutamine supplement as well, because this [00:46:00] supports gut lining integrity and the reduction of intestinal permeability or leaky gut. When the gut lining is leaky, inflammatory compounds can reach the brain. When that's intact, that pathway is closed.

A typical therapeutic dose is five grams per day stirred into water on an empty stomach. However, always discuss supplementation with your practitioner before beginning. So healing the gut was our second action for helping brain fog. Let's go on to action number three, which is nourishing your brain with targeted nutrition and supplements.

Just a little pause here. If you hear my little dog, Sunnie, snoring in the background, my apologies. Though she is super cute. Now, targeted nutrition and supplements. Your brain is approximately sixty percent fat. The quality of the fat in your diet directly determines the quality of your brain cell membranes, and the quality of those membranes determines how efficiently electrical signals travel between neurons, your nerve cells, and how well neurotransmitter receptors function, [00:47:00] and how effectively the brain manages its own inflammation.

Now, DHA is the primary structural fat in the brain. Think of it as the premium building material for brain cell walls. DHA is directly required for the fluidity of neural membranes, for the efficiency of synaptic transmissions, and for the resolution of neuroinflammation. Low DHA is directly associated with cognitive impairment, mood instability, and increased neuroinflammatory activity.

So the best food sources of DHA are oily fish, salmon, sardines, mackerel, anchovies. Aim for three to four serves of these per week. Now, for those of you who do not eat fish, a quality algae-based DHA supplement, which is where the fish get their DHA from in the first place.

This quality supplement is the most reliable alternative. And when choosing a fish oil or a DHA supplement, look for one that specifies the combined [00:48:00] EPA and DHA content. And I want you to aim for two grams combined per day. And make sure it's high quality so that it's third-party tested for any heavy metals, particularly mercury.

We do not want that. Then let's talk about magnesium as a supplement, specifically magnesium threonate, a form that crosses the blood-brain barrier particularly effectively. It directly supports synaptic plasticity and cognitive function. Think of synaptic plasticity as the brain's ability to form new connections and adapt.

It's the biological foundation of learning and memory. Magnesium threonate has shown in research to increase brain magnesium levels specifically in ways that other magnesium forms do not achieve as effectively. Then magnesium glycinate is a more widely available and less expensive alternative while it supports sleep and general neurological function well, though without the specific brain-penetrating advantages of the threonate form.

Then B vitamins are also really important for brain health, particularly B6, [00:49:00] B9, which is folate, and B12. They're directly involved in neurotransmitter production and in the methylation cycle. Now, I wanna give methylation its proper due. We're gonna have a dedicated episode coming up that goes into it in depth because it is a topic that affects cognitive function, mood, hormone clearance, and inflammation profoundly, and it deserves its own full conversation.

What I will say here is that adequate methylated B vitamins are essential for the production of serotonin, dopamine, and the maintenance of neural tissue. The methylated bioavailable forms, methylfolate, methylcobalamin, rather than the synthetic folic acid found in most basic supplements, are what the brain actually requires.

And women who carry the MTHFR genetic variant, hands up, I'm one of those, which affects a significant percentage of the population and is something I'll explain in full in the methylation episode. Well, these women have an even greater need for the premethylated forms of the B vitamins.

[00:50:00] Another great food source or supplement is lion's mane mushroom. It's one that I wanna mention because the research on it is specifically for brain health, and it's really compelling. Lion's mane stimulates the production of nerve growth factor, NGF, which supports the growth and maintenance of neurons and has shown particular promise for cognitive function and neurological repair.

It's available in supplement form and as a culinary mushroom. But it's not a magic bullet, as none of these are. But within a comprehensive brain health approach, lion's mane is also a great addition when you can add it.

Specific nutrition and supplement support was our third action for helping brain fog. Let's go on to action number four, protect your sleep, specifically for glymphatic clearance.

We established in the mechanism section in the first part of this podcast that the glymphatic system, the brain's overnight waste clearance mechanism, operates almost exclusively during deep sleep, and that chronic inflammation disrupts that deep sleep, preventing the clearance of this happening [00:51:00] effectively.

So I've got five sleep practices specifically to protect deep sleep and support glymphatic function that I want to share with you now. Okay, so number one, take magnesium before bed. The three and eight form that we just talked about before, or magnesium glycinate, 300 to 400 milligrams to support GABA and improve the depth and quality of sleep.

This is consistently one of the most impactful single interventions that I use for sleep quality with my patients. Number two, have a cool bedroom, 16 to 19 degrees, because the body must drop its core temperature to enter and sustain deep sleep. Even one degree above this range kind of reduces time spent in slow-wave sleep.

Then number three, no alcohol in the evenings. And I want to be direct about this one. Alcohol initially may help you fall asleep, but it significantly suppresses deep sleep and REM sleep in the second half of the night. The glymphatic clearance that is [00:52:00] supposed to happen during deep sleep is impaired by alcohol.

And women who remove evening alcohol consistently, well, they report often within two to three weeks, a significant improvement in how rested they feel in the morning. Not just their sleep quality score on their Apple Watch, but the actual cognitive experience of the whole morning is so much better. Then number four, no screens for 30 to 60 minutes before bed.

The blue light spectrum from your phones, laptops, and the TV

suppresses melatonin production. That's your nighttime hormone. It also keeps the brain in an alert state when it should be winding down. Then number five, consistent sleep and wake times, including weekends. Your circadian rhythm, which is your body's and your brain's internal 24-hour clock, it responds really well to regularity.

The more consistent your sleep timing, the more reliably your brain moves into the deep sleep stages where the glymphatic system clearance happens. [00:53:00] Irregular sleep timing, even if the total hours are adequate, well, that irregularity disrupts the architecture of sleep in ways that really reduce its restorative quality.

So protecting our sleep with those five tips was our fourth action for helping brain fog. Let's go on to action number five. Move your body. Specifically, move your body for your brain. Exercise is one of the most potent brain-protective interventions available to us, and I want to tell you why. Because understanding the mechanism makes you more likely to actually do it consistently, in my experience anyway.

Knowledge is power. So let's start talking about exercise by talking about BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Think of BDNF as fertilizer for your brain, the compound that supports the growth of new neurons, the formation of new synaptic connections, and the repair of existing neural tissue.

It's sometimes called Miracle-Gro for the brain, and that analogy holds [00:54:00] up. A brain with high BDNF is more plastic, more capable of learning, more resilient to inflammatory damage, and more efficient at cognitive processing. A brain with lower BDNF is slower, foggier, and more vulnerable to the kinds of neurological decline that accumulate over years.

So listen in because this is important. Aerobic exercise is the most reliable stimulator of BDNF production we know of. Even a single 30-minute walk at moderate intensity produces a really good increase in BDNF. Done consistently, five days a week for several months, aerobic exercise produces structural changes in the hippocampus.

The hippocampus, that's in your brain, remember, it literally grows. Memory improves, processing speed improves, and the neuroinflammation reduces

A quick walk straight after meals also has a targeted benefit for brain health. It blunts the [00:55:00] post-meal blood glucose spike, improving the stability of the brain's fuel supply in the hours that follows.

So 10 to 15 minutes of walking after lunch produces a better cognitive performance in the afternoon compared to just sitting down. This is one of the simplest things you can do. Go for a walk after lunch every single day. Then strength training. Okay. Strength training supports cognitive function through distinct mechanisms, specifically

Through its improvement of insulin sensitivity, which improves glucose delivery to brain cells and through its reduction of cortisol and systemic inflammation over time. It also supports the production of a compound called IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor, which has neuroprotective effects and works in conjunction with BDNF to support neural repair and maintenance.

The combination of regular aerobic movement and strength training is therefore the most comprehensive exercise approach for brain health, and it's so important for so many other parts of our body as well. So we're not [00:56:00] talking extreme volumes of either, just consistent, sustainable, enjoyable movement.

A walk in the morning or join me for a game of padel and then strength training three times a week with some yoga or mobility work, of course, as well. But it needs to be something that you can maintain over months and years because the brain benefits of exercise are accumulative, and they require consistency.

And a final point on exercise and brain fog that I think is important. For women in the early stages of addressing really bad brain fog, significant brain fog, starting with walking rather than a high-intensity exercise is both more effective and more sustainable.

High-intensity exercise actually elevates cortisol acutely, which can worsen cognitive symptoms in the short term when the HPA axis is already dysregulated. That's your hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis, like your stress organs. So walking, particularly in green or blue spaces like parks or along the water [00:57:00] next to the beach, it reduces cortisol, it improves mood, and produces that BDNF without the inflammatory cost.

So start there. Get consistent. Build healthy habits around exercise, and then build them up over time. All right. Exercise was our fifth action for helping brain fog. Now let's go on to action number six, reduce your toxic load, specifically reducing it for brain health. So there are several environmental toxins that have neurotoxic effects, which means direct damaging effects on brain tissue and cognitive function.

And reducing exposure to them is an important part of the brain fog picture. And I have four main ones I want to talk about today. Heavy metals, particularly mercury and lead. They can accumulate in brain tissue and interfere with neurotransmitter function.

They interfere with mitochondrial energy production in neurons and neural structure. The primary dietary source of mercury is large predatory fish, So think tuna, swordfish, shark, so flake mostly. And so avoid [00:58:00] consuming these in high and frequent amounts.

Instead, sardines, salmon, anchovy, they're all low in mercury and high in the DHA your brain needs. So go for the tin of salmon rather than the tin of tuna if it's a regular thing for you. Occasionally, tuna's okay, but if it's regular, go for salmon. Now, mould toxins, mycotoxins. These are less commonly discussed, a very important driver of neuroinflammation and brain fog.

And I've had some really tough cases over the years where we found mould toxicity in cases where my patients were really unwell. We removed the mould, and we took a targeted healing approach, and they eventually became well again. However, women who have lived or worked in water-damaged buildings or who have a history of significant mold exposure may find that mycotoxin load or burden is a part of their cognitive picture that they may not have actually kind of registered as important.

So this is something worth exploring with a functional medicine practitioner or someone like me [00:59:00] and my team if other interventions have not produced the expected improvement. So we're definitely here to help if you need. Then we have endocrine-disrupting chemicals, particularly things from plastics like BPA and phthalates.

These are increasingly linked to neuroinflammatory effects. This is what you need to work towards doing, okay? Reduce plastic food and drink storage. In Australia, go to Harris Scarfe or Big W, somewhere like that, and buy some Pyrex glass containers. I think IKEA's actually doing some glass ones at the moment too.

Then choose glass or stainless steel water bottles. I actually bought some great ones from House, The House Shop in Australia at Christmas time for $8 each. It was really beautiful stainless steel water bottles. What a bargain. And then never heat food or put hot food in plastic containers. Never. Then alcohol, which I've already mentioned in the sleep context, is in itself a neurotoxin.

That means it's a toxin for the brain. It is not a coincidence that the morning after a hangover, your brain [01:00:00] feels like it's in an acute hyped-up version of the chronic brain fog we're talking about. So avoiding alcohol and plastics is key for brain fog. Now let's go on to something else we can do to support brain health, and that's action number seven, support the thyroid and iron picture

As I mentioned earlier in this episode, if brain fog is a significant part of your experience, both of these need to be properly investigated, not just assumed to be normal. For thyroid, ask your GP for TSH, free T3, free T4, and reverse T3. If free T3 is low normal or reverse T3 is elevated even with a normal TSH, this is an important piece of the cognitive picture.

Supporting T4 to T3 conversion through selenium, zinc, and iodine and reducing the inflammatory drivers that create the conversion impairment, it directly improves the thyroid-brain connection over time. Then for iron, ask for a full iron panel, including ferritin, [01:01:00] serum iron, transferrin saturation, and TIBC.

Optimal ferritin for brain health and function is between seventy and one hundred micrograms per liter. A ferritin of, say, nineteen or twenty is still resulting in neurotransmitter deficiency and oxygen deprivation effects in the brain, regardless if the reference range says that it's normal If iron supplementation is indicated, iron bisglycinate is the most bioavailable and gentlest form.

Often mitigates any of those gut issues and constipation that can sometimes come with taking an iron supplement. And then always take it with vitamin C for absorption. Always take it away from calcium, coffee, and black tea. And then retest ferritin after three months to confirm if your levels are rising.

Now our last action topic for supporting brain fog is manage cortisol directly. Given cortisol's specific toxic effects on the hippocampus in the brain and its impairment of prefrontal cortex function, cortisol management is a brain health intervention, not just a general wellbeing [01:02:00] recommendation.

I wanna be really deliberate about that framing because women often hear stress management advice and file it under, "It's very nice to have. I don't have time for that." But in the context of brain fog, it's not a nice to have. It is clinically essential. Okay, so my favorite ways to reduce cortisol is extended exhale breathing.

Think in for four counts, out for six to eight counts, ten to fifteen repetitions. Now, this directly activates the vagus nerve and results in a reduction in cortisol within minutes. Done before cognitively demanding tasks like a meeting or there's something you've gotta do that really requires brainpower, it really does genuinely improve performance.

The mechanism is reliable and direct. And the barrier to doing it is purely one of remembering it and prioritizing it, which I know is kind of hard with brain fog to remember to do it. But let me tell you, just use sticky notes. Put sticky notes everywhere. Put reminders [01:03:00] everywhere until your brain is now functioning better from this beautiful breathwork you're doing.

Then I love adaptogenic herbs, specifically, ashwagandha, or also known as Withania. Adaptogens s how evidence for supporting HPA axis regulation, that's our stress organs, and reducing chronically elevated cortisol. Now, they're not magic bullets, but within a comprehensive approach, they do contribute to reducing cortisol, which then helps with reducing brain fog.

And the one that is consistently underestimated, genuine, non-negotiable scheduled rest. Not scrolling, not streaming, genuine rest. A little gentle walk in nature, sitting quietly, time by the water, reading something for pleasure. The prefrontal cortex requires true recovery time.

When it is chronically overloaded by cortisol, by inflammation, by inadequate sleep, and the relentless demands with no genuine space between them, it operates below its capacity no matter [01:04:00] how much you want it to perform. And building real rest into a day, not as what happens if everything else gets done, but as that non-negotiable component of your brain health practice, well, this is one of the most powerful things you can do for your brain.

I wanna finish this episode with what the recovery arc actually looks and feels like, because I think managing expectations is as important as the steps themselves. And I want you to know what to watch out for as you implement some of these changes.

Brain fog recovery is not dramatic in the way that resolving acute physical pain can be. It's more like the gradual lightening of a sky in the morning. It happens incrementally, little bit by little bit, and often the clearest evidence that change is occurring comes not from what you can do, but from what you suddenly notice that you're doing easily, things that used to require effort.

Women describe it to me like one morning you're in a conversation and you're actually completely present, not watching it happen from a slight distance away, but fully in it, responding [01:05:00] quickly, finding the words without searching. Or you sit down to write something and the structure of it arrives clearly without the usual full of effort thought processes of trying to get it all together.

Or someone asks you a question, the answer surfaces immediately, where six months ago it would've taken several uncomfortable blank seconds of word retrieval. And you remember what you were doing when you walk into a room. These are the early markers of a brain returning to its natural capacity.

In the first two to four weeks, particularly with blood sugar stabilization and improved sleep, most women notice the afternoon cognitive slump improving first, that afternoon brain fog. The two to 3:00 PM brain fade becomes much less severe, more consistent. It's more manageable, and this is usually the first concrete signal.

Over weeks four to eight, as the gut begins healing and the inflammatory load reduces, morning clarity improves. Words come a little more readily. Concentration holds a little longer without the effort. And then over months, three to six, as [01:06:00] thyroid, ferritin, cortisol, and estrogen pieces are addressed alongside the dietary foundation, the deeper cognitive recovery becomes real.

Processing speed, word retrieval, the capacity for sustained complex thinking, the ability to hold multiple threads simultaneously without losing any of them. Claire, remember that lawyer I described at the beginning of the episode? She moved through this arc. Not overnight, not in a dramatic moment, but week by week the conditions for her brain improved.

And the brain responded because that's what brains do when they're given what they need. Brain fog is a signal from your gut, your hormones, your blood sugar, your mitochondria, your glymphatic system, your thyroid, your iron stores, your cortisol, that something in your brain's environment needs attention

And when you address that environment, when you stabilize blood sugar, heal the gut, nourish the brain with the right healthy fats and nutrients, protect the deep sleep that allows the brain to clean itself [01:07:00] overnight, when you move consistently and support your nervous system and reduce the inflammatory load driving that neuroinflammation, well, the clarity comes back

So start with step one today, a protein-rich breakfast. Your blood sugar will be stable from the very first meal. And notice even within days how differently your brain performs when its fuel supply is consistent. Next week, we are moving on to sign number four of chronic inflammation, which is joint pain and body aches.

Why inflammation makes your body feel stiff and sore and unreliable, and what to do about it. As an osteopath, this is territory I know intimately, and the connection between systemic inflammation and musculoskeletal pain is one that conventional medicine consistently underestimates. Do not miss that episode.

All of my free resources, my three-week inflammation detox, and my 12-week whole health solution can be found at andrearobertson.health. Everything you need is right there waiting for you. If you loved today's [01:08:00] episode, please take 30 seconds to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening to your podcasts.

It genuinely helps more women find the show so they can nourish, heal, and rise too. Until next week, nourish your body, keep healing, and never stop rising. I'm Dr. Andrea Robertson, and this has been Nourish, Heal, and Rise.

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