Live data from Hacker News

Strategies to Reduce Brain Fog and Improve Clear Thinking

thriveglobal.in

51–60 of 98 posts

Re: Strategies to Reduce Brain Fog and Improve Clear Thinking

#51
post #39
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paracetamol doesn't have a significant anti-inflammatory action.

This is literally the purpose of paracetamol. What do you feel it is for, if not as an anti-inflammatory aid? EDIT: Interesting discussion in child comments, certainly news to me!

Paracetamol doesn't have any significant anti-inflammatory effects. It's just an analgesic (painkiller).

There's even some interesting research on exactly /why/ it isn't - but like many drugs there's not really consensus on how exactly it works (a summary is available: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1460-9592.... )

I've seen lots of people confuse paracetamol and ibuprofen - maybe that's what's happened here?

Re: Strategies to Reduce Brain Fog and Improve Clear Thinking

#52

Mental fog, for me, is a physical symptom of stress and exhaustion. It has nothing to do with having a clean workspace. This article reads like self-help fluff. The solutions I've found are get to enough sleep, try not to fill my day with mentally taxing work or meeting and, in a pinch, drink coffee or take paracetamol.

All are good. Sometimes brain fog is a medical condition.

I had it bad for years before finding out I had an autoimmune condition.

Re: Strategies to Reduce Brain Fog and Improve Clear Thinking

#53
post #31

Thrive Global is Ariana Huffington's vehicle to repackage the last several years of self-care fads and sell them to corporations under the guise of improving employee productivity. It doesn't have anything of value to add to the conversation, as this article makes clear.

Would you like to actually engage with the content of the article? Edit: my snark was unwarranted, as commenters helped me realize. Apologies.

Would you actually like to engage with the content of the comment? Rated: informative

Re: Strategies to Reduce Brain Fog and Improve Clear Thinking

#54
post #31

Thrive Global is Ariana Huffington's vehicle to repackage the last several years of self-care fads and sell them to corporations under the guise of improving employee productivity. It doesn't have anything of value to add to the conversation, as this article makes clear.

Would you like to actually engage with the content of the article? Edit: my snark was unwarranted, as commenters helped me realize. Apologies.

Why would one engage with the content of an article from a vendor one thinks produces self-serving garbage?

That's not to say that's what the article is, just to be clear. But given our incredibly finite amount of time alive, I think it's important to have good filtering heuristics on how one spends one's time.

As an example, people who criticize Qanon as bonkers often get asked to just watch a few (long) Q-fan videos. If somebody asked me to do that, I'd say no. I have an infinite number of better ways to spend my time. All of that goes in my "garbage content" bucket. I know all I care to from the reports of others who have dug around in the bucket.

If you'd like to convince somebody they've mis-bucketed something, I think a better approach is to say exactly what you see as redeeming about the content of the article.

Re: Strategies to Reduce Brain Fog and Improve Clear Thinking

#55
post #39
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paracetamol doesn't have a significant anti-inflammatory action.

This is literally the purpose of paracetamol. What do you feel it is for, if not as an anti-inflammatory aid? EDIT: Interesting discussion in child comments, certainly news to me!

Pain killers can reduce the sensation of pain in other ways than by reducing inflammation - paracetamol is one of these.

Re: Strategies to Reduce Brain Fog and Improve Clear Thinking

#56
I can only speak from personal experience, but I've removed fog almost entirely by removing sugar and carbohydrates from my diet (Ketogenic), and doing intermittent fasting (IF).

My energy levels are always elevated, I sleep better, and the clarity of thought that comes with a Keto + IF combination is something I only wish I had known about when I was younger.

Whilst I'm speaking anecdotally, the benefits are grounded in science and is something that anyone can try. Once you get over the initial "keto adaptation" period the rewards will be well worth the effort.

Also, intermittent fasting (and even just removing sugar) is something that can be done separately if you're not a fan of low/zero carb lifestyles.

Re: Strategies to Reduce Brain Fog and Improve Clear Thinking

#57
post #46
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally the purpose of paracetamol. What do you feel it is for, if not as an anti-inflammatory aid? EDIT: Interesting discussion in child comments, certainly news to me!

True. An analgesic drug will help cope with the pain caused by inflammation, but an anti-inflammatory like Ibuprofen will reduce the cause of the pain.

Oddly, I've just found this concept to be analogous to many other 'ills' we face as humans. And not just the physical ones.

Sometimes we just want to stop feeling pain.

Sometimes we feel the need to try and stop the cause of it.

Re: Strategies to Reduce Brain Fog and Improve Clear Thinking

#58
post #20

Mental fog, for me, is a physical symptom of stress and exhaustion. It has nothing to do with having a clean workspace. This article reads like self-help fluff. The solutions I've found are get to enough sleep, try not to fill my day with mentally taxing work or meeting and, in a pinch, drink coffee or take paracetamol.

Mental fog, for me, is a physical symptom of stress and exhaustion. It has nothing to do with having a clean workspace. The first sentence of the article is "mess creates stress". I don't see a contradiction. It could be that article is wrong, but I have heard many people express that sentiment. If you have evidence that it's not true, I would like to see it.

The rest of that same article says in several different ways that stress is necessary stimulation. So much for that.

There have been observational studies (vs plain declarative opinion pieces like this one) that correlate clutter with intelligence, creativity, and productivity.

The mechanism probably doesn't work the same way for everyone, and so clutter probably isn't good for everyone, but that also means it isn't wrong for everyone either. So much for that.

The article is essentially garbage.

Re: Strategies to Reduce Brain Fog and Improve Clear Thinking

#59
post #42

Brain fog is caused by passive acceptance of our interregnum.

How do we as a community feel about some of the tinfoil hatting going on in HN lately? I understand this is a watering hole for folks of all ideals and walks of life, but a comment on a fluff piece about physical symptoms being somehow linked to the more conspiratorial edge of the news cycle is much lower than I think we have been as a community. I could be wrong, though, I'm absolutely open to hearing different thou…

As a former Redditor I can't complain too much, but I feel like there was a big wave of reddit-like comments and voting that started around 18 months ago or so. HN used to be a refuge from dumb jokes, dumb comments, personal attacks, and the overall negative tone you find on other discussion forums. HN is still better than reddit, but there are some topics I just avoid now, or make more liberal use of the [-] to collapse a toxic thread.

Re: Strategies to Reduce Brain Fog and Improve Clear Thinking

#60

Beyond the mushy feels good and free advices from the article you might also want to check yourself for physical problems such as dehydration, Lyme disease, sleep apnea, chronic fatigue syndrome, poor diet, poor sleep, depression and other causes a googling for “brain fog“ should return.

Frankly, pretty much all of these items (albeit often phrased differently, but objectively same pattern/issues) lined up with adult ADHD as well. Adults are hard to diagnose, as they'd generally accumulated a lifetime of habits and coping mechanisms that can mask the underlying patterns, with various degrees of success. Some of the how to do better items listed in the article are classic coping mechanisms, and do help - if you can do them.

If you've struggled with doing these methods, or persistently fall back on old habits besides trying them, and it's causing you some distress - you might want to check out https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/adult-adhd/sy...

Nearest as anyone can tell right now, it affects ~ 4-5% of the adult population, men and women in equal amounts, but is poorly understood and often attributed to other causes. Women in particular.

Post reply on HN