Interest in an "Explain like I have brain fog" thread?

[Yann04]

Although I don’t have access to multitasking or continuous concentration at all.

yeah me neither. the way I’ve described it is that 99% of my RAM capacity is gone, but my CPU is generally nearly as good as before I was sick.
(I don’t have the energy to translate this to non-technical terms rn sorry)

 

[Utsikt]

yeah me neither. the way I’ve described it is that 99% of my RAM capacity is gone, but my CPU is generally nearly as good as before I was sick.
(I don’t have the energy to translate this to non-technical terms rn sorry)

Very good analogy!

 

[jnmaciuch]

yeah me neither. the way I’ve described it is that 99% of my RAM capacity is gone, but my CPU is generally nearly as good as before I was sick.
(I don’t have the energy to translate this to non-technical terms rn sorry)

That’s what we’re here for

Explain like I’m brain-foggy:
The baseline ability of the brain to carry out cognitive tasks is unchanged (CPU), but there’s way less “storage” to be able to keep track of all the necessary bits of information at once (RAM)

 

[AliceLily]

@jnmaciuch I notice discussion about milk fat, is it BTA2A2? Does it have any significance in regards to how much milk one consumes, helpful or not? Or is it not connected to milk consumption?

I drink a lot of milk that is why I ask.

 

[jnmaciuch]

@jnmaciuch I notice discussion about milk fat, is it BTA2A2? Does it have any significance in regards to how much milk one consumes, helpful or not? Or is it not connected to milk consumption?

I drink a lot of milk that is why I ask.

Ah no, that discussion was about BTN2A2 during lactation specifically. It's necessary to produce the milk fat globules

 

[AliceLily]

Can anyone tell me whether a medication that can cause weight gain then produce a result in a gene highlighting a BMI connection to an illness?

Say a person had schizophrenia and was put on medication and that medication caused weight gain and then the patient had their genes tested which showed a connection between BMI and schizophrenia. Is this something that could happen?

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Can anyone tell me whether a medication that can cause weight gain then produce a result in a gene highlighting a BMI connection to an illness?

Medications do not affect genes but the apparent link between brain genes and high BMI could, as you imply, be due to people with brain diseases being given drugs that raise BMI. There is then a correlation betwen brain genes and BMI. As an analogy, if you looked at genes that confer risk of loss of taste you might come up with the copper transport gene caeruloplasmin not because there is any relation between taste and copper but because a defective caeruloplasmin gene causes Wilson's disease, for which the treatment is penicillamine, which causes loss of taste.

On the other hand, I suspect that the impact of psychiatric drugs on BMI makes only a very tiny tiny difference to gene correlation. The simpler explanation is that we know that BMI is more or less entirely controlled by part of the brain - the hypothalamus, which produces hunger.

 

[richie]

My experience is brain float - a kind of inability to bring the brain into focus which may be a kind of dopiness or an inabiltiy ot stop it racing away; brain fag which is the American term for brain fog but which I refer to as the brain's stamina running out, and brain fog where clarity of thought is missing. The brain fag is from the ordinary work of life but also the extra work of having to deal with these 3 elements. I also have had occasions lately where I cannot understand a written text - simply a blurring and inability to interpret elementary text into any sense or even say the words I am seeing out loud. Only the latter difficulties antedate sarcoid diagnosis.