How to best gauge levels of brain fog & fatigue

[alex3619]

My brain fog can improve or worsen in seconds. I think there is some kind of dynamic process there.

Lately I have had tiny improvement in fog, and substantive in energy, from Brazil nuts, high in poly omega-6 fats and selenium. Its why I have been writing more prolifically the last week. I occasionally took one instead of a selenium supplement or for essential fat deficiency symptoms, but something I have discovered this year is a threshold effect.

Eating seven Brazil nuts all at once. once a week, has a more powerful effect than eating one a day. I see something similar with resveratrol.

PS It doesn't help with spelling or typos though, I still need to edit my posts.

 

[Hip]

I find selenium is a supplement that seems to boost my energy quite considerably, provided I take a highish dose of 400 mcg daily (of yeast-free selenomethionine, which is the most absorbable form of selenium). Selenium should be taken on an empty stomach.

One Brazil nut contains around 50 mcg of selenium, so you'd need to eat 8 of these a day to get the 400 mcg dose.

For anyone who is going to try this: I found it takes around 10 days of selenium supplementation before the energy boost kicks in. So after 10 days of taking selenium, you may feel noticably more energetic.

 

[student]

What about the early effects on the eye-movment stuff. That one works badly when brain fog is involved. Is that not easy measurable? – Could we develope a self testing version? Maybe a computer animation. And the testing should rather flow like a game, no?

 

[Hip]

What about the early effects on the eye-movment stuff. That one works badly when brain fog is involved. Is that not easy measurable? – Could we develope a self testing version? Maybe a computer animation. And the testing should rather flow like a game, no?

Interesting idea. This are eye-tracking devices to detect driver fatigue: apparently near the onset of falling sleep, eye movement reduces.

Though whether eye movement level correlates to brain fog and ME/CFS fatigue is something that would have to be investigated. I think these eye-tracking devices are expensive and still in early stages of development.

There is this free open source software-based eye-tracking system called PyGaze that you can run on your computer, which works in conjunction with a webcam, but it seems to be more of an experimental software development kit.

 

[panckage]

I wrote an android app for this last year. I tried to focus on yes/no questions as I found ratings (eg. 1-10) too subjective to be useful for me. I started trying to do ratings based on on functional factors but that didn't really pan out. I was also unable to find functional inventories for ME and when I asked people were really dismissive about it. I ended up just giving up because it became to complicated and wasn't helping

These sites are popular for people to test the effectiveness of nootropics and make it easy to make comparisons over time:
http://www.quantified-mind.com/
http://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/

There's this one too. I think I got it from this site and somebody said it was for ME.. I didn't find it very useful though
http://www.healclick.com/

 

[Hip]

I tried to focus on yes/no questions as I found ratings (eg. 1-10) too subjective to be useful for me.

Yes, subjective "how do you feel" questions don't help much, because usually with ME/CFS, all you can remember is whether you are better or worse than yesterday, but you don't usually have much sense of how you are doing on any absolute scale. So subjective introspection of your mind state does not appear to be a good gauge of health level.

In this post I mention natural objective rather than subjective measures that can be used to gauge health level, fatigue and brain fog.

 

[panckage]

That's pretty much the same thing I came up with @Hip. My best metric is:
1) if no work did I leave home?
2) if work was I able to do something after work?

 

[Hip]

That's pretty much the same thing I came up with @Hip. My best metric is:
1) if no work did I leave home?
2) if work was I able to do something after work?

After some years of "ME/CFS experience," I found I started noticing all sorts of activities that help gauge my current health / fatigue / brain fog level. Generally I find that noting the activities you do is a much more reliable and absolute measure of your current health level than introspective observations on how you feel.

For me for example, I used to be a computer programmer, but brain fog usually prevents such activity now. However, on some days or some weeks I may notice I am getting involved in complex computer programming-like activities, things that I would normally not be able to do, and only then do I realize that my brain fog must have got better during that week. Sometimes it is only afterwards, when I look back in retrospect, that I realize my activities during a certain time period involved things I would not normally have the capabilities of doing.

Usually such improvements happen when I am trying out a new drug or supplement treatment, and some benefits appear.

I think it is important learn to watch out for these natural objective measures of health, these changes in your activities or habits. They can occur in any area of your life. It's just a case of noticing them, noticing any unusual changes in the things that you do.

If you don't take note, then you may miss out on the benefits offered by a drug or supplement you are testing.

 

[acer2000]

I had a doctor tell me that they use this site:

http://www.neurotrax.com

With Lyme patients to gauge progress. I haven't used it myself, though.

There is also http://www.lumosity.com its pretty popular.

 

[panckage]

For me for example, I used to be a computer programmer

That's pretty cool. Me too. One thing that hugely helped me rekindle that was marijuana. Dosing is very crucial, but a puff or 2 from a vaporizer would make my brain work well enough to work on a moderately complex android program (~40 classes I believe) for 20-30min. After that time my brain would start going down and I'd have to take another puff or 2 to keep going. This worked to be able to program for 60-90min before the secondary effects of marijuana would come in and clog my brain. The most I would use is 0.1g but most of that was after I finished programming for the evening. The amount I used for programming was probably 0.05g or less. Very very small amounts are needed for this brain enhancing function!

Anyway if you have any ideas for ME related software I would be more happy to collaborate

 

[Hip]

That's pretty cool. Me too. One thing that hugely helped me rekindle that was marijuana. Dosing is very crucial, but a puff or 2 from a vaporizer would make my brain work well enough to work on a moderately complex android program (~40 classes I believe) for 20-30min. After that time my brain would start going down and I'd have to take another puff or 2 to keep going. This worked to be able to program for 60-90min before the secondary effects of marijuana would come in and clog my brain. The most I would use is 0.1g but most of that was after I finished programming for the evening. The amount I used for programming was probably 0.05g or less. Very very small amounts are needed for this brain enhancing function!

That's very interesting. I might try that. Have you seen the thread on cannabidiol (CBD) by the way? The mental focus benefits you get I guess come from either THC or CBD, or a combination of the two. I am just wondering whether pure CBD might give the same mental focus without the later secondary effects clogging your brain.

However, in my case, CDB oil gave me a vague, spaced out, unfocused feeling, so it was not useful.


Have you ever tried the nootropic drugs / supplements piracetam (or aniracetam which is very similar), and noopept? I find these help a lot for mental focus. Noopept is particularly good, and you only need a dose of around 30 mg of noopept powder (best taken sublingually or snorting intranasally).

Anyway if you have any ideas for ME related software I would be more happy to collaborate

Great, I'd like to do that also. Perhaps one day, when I get my brain a bit more back together. I am still searching for any drugs or supplements that might bring just sufficient mental clarity to be able to do at least a few hours of programing each day.

 

[panckage]

The mental focus benefits you get I guess come from either THC or CBD, or a combination of the two

Well I haven't programmed since last Christmas so my memory is a bit fuzzy but I believe it's more likely the thc. The reason being is I would turn up the vaporizer temperature over time which would lead to the gradual vaporization of non THC compounds and hypothetically the dulling of my mind.
Specifically when I used it I was motivated enough to open an IDE, start looking at the classes and what needed to be done but not have the memory to get much beyond this. Marijuana worked perfectly to help me do what I needed to do in this case. OTOH If I am just lieing brain dead on my couch, I think marijuana maybe wouldn't be able to help very much

As for nootropics I've just started experimenting with them recently. I've tried noopept a couple times but the problem is now that I already have a number of other useful drugs (specifically kratom, marijuana, and ritalin), I'm not sure where to put it. I did about 7mg sublingual which I thought helped focus... But then I did a placebo trial where I just pretended I was on noopept and tried extra hard to be focused... And well it felt similiar to actually being on noopept so I don't know yet

30mg sublingual sounds like a big dose from what I've read... Does it give you headaches or any problem on the come down? Also how long does that last? After how many hours do you redose?

 

[Hip]

30mg sublingual sounds like a big dose from what I've read... Does it give you headaches or any problem on the come down? Also how long does that last? After how many hours do you redose?

I was snorting 30 mg of noopept powder once a day, I think the effect lasted the whole day. I read that if you take noopept with say 500 mg of choline bitartrate, it prevents headaches appearing, so this is what I did. I found noopept also had an antidepressant effect, and I have some depression, as well as anhedonia, as a comorbid symptoms to my ME/CFS.

Noopept is a peptide fragment of vasopressin, and some have reported it helps treat urinary frequency just as vasopressin does.

I did get a bit of a comedown, in terms of feeling increased depression, when I stop noopept after taking at daily for several weeks. Though that comedown might be preventable by tapering off noopept more slowly.

I'd like to try Ritalin, but as a controlled drug, it's hard to find for sale online. In the UK, it's I understand it's hard to get adult prescriptions for this drug.

I had spectacularly good effects from Wellbutrin — my mind became so clear and competent I even taught myself two new programming languages (PHP and javascript) within a week, and started a new project using them. However, after exactly two weeks, Wellbutrin ceased working entirely, and after this I could not longer do any further work on the project. I posted my Wellbutrin experience here.