Alcohol Brain Fog: How to Heal Your Brain

«We worry about that for safety reasons, of course, but this is also a sign of cell death,» said Lara Ray, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of California Los Angeles Brain Research Institute. «So we also worry about brain damage—and with multiple episodes of heavy drinking, that damage can have long-term consequences for learning and memory.» SK channels regulate membrane excitability by shaping excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSP) and controlling intrinsic activity, dendritic integration, and pacemaker firing (Bond et al., 2005; Fakler and Adelman, 2008).

• Alcohol also lowers inhibitions and clouds judgment, which could lead a person to engage in risky behaviors like having unprotected sex or driving a car while drunk.
• They may lose the energy they acquire from food or rest by thinking about a difficult subject.
• I’m currently a registered nurse at the detox and love this company because they truly treat their staff and clients like family.
• Inducing recovery from brain damage by manipulating environmental variables has been seen before in both animal and human research (see Rose and Johnson 1992).

If you are still experiencing withdrawal symptoms after three days, talk to your healthcare provider. For most people, alcohol withdrawal symptoms will begin sometime in the first eight hours after their final drink. When someone drinks alcohol for a prolonged period of time and then stops, the body reacts to its absence. This is alcohol withdrawal, and it causes uncomfortable physical and emotional symptoms. This article discusses alcohol withdrawal, its symptoms, and potential complications.

Who Experiences Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms?

Brain fog occurs when a medical condition impedes a person’s ability to think clearly. It is not a medical condition in and of itself, so a doctor cannot diagnose a patient with brain fog. Alcohol brain fog is just as common, and it can be devastating for the recovery process.

For example, Parsons (1987) and coworkers noticed that alcoholics appear to change a strategy (that may be correct) before it has been sufficiently tested or to continue using ineffective approaches even after it is obvious that they are inadequate. On difficult verbal learning tasks, Butters and Granholm (1987) have suggested that cognitive deficits stem from the inadequate encoding strategies alcoholics use when storing information rather than from a specific alcohol brain fog inability to learn or remember. In other words, correct information may be placed in a file drawer, but an inadequate label on the file might make retrieval of this information difficult. It can also develop into a more severe alcohol brain fog, especially if you consume alcoholic drinks more often than usual. Alcohol withdrawal can occur when a person who has used alcohol for a significant period of time stops drinking or significantly decreases their use.

What Is Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome (“Wet Brain”)?

Test findings from a wide group of studies show that alcoholics are remarkably free of impairment of general intelligence. Their cognitive deficits are more consistently revealed using specific tests of abstract reasoning and visual perception. In addition, alcoholics have not consistently shown learning and memory deficits despite the fact that more severe versions of these impairments are https://ecosoberhouse.com/ symptoms of Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (see Parsons et al. 1987). Exercise is an important part of a healthy lifestyle post-addiction, but it can also be good to help with brain fog. Exercise has been proven to decrease fatigue, improve memory, boost mood, reduce stress, improve thinking skills and lead to better sleep.1 All of these benefits can help decrease brain fog in recovery.

«But there are certainly limits,» said Pagano, «and we often see improvement only after months of complete abstinence and giving the brain time to heal.» The brain’s hippocampus region—which helps create new memories—is also affected by alcohol, which contributes to blackouts and short-term memory lapses while drinking. According to a 2020 review in the journal Alcohol Research, men and women experience alcohol-induced blackouts at equal rates, even though women tend to drink less often and less heavily than men. Binge drinking also affects the cerebellum (which helps regulate balance) and the cerebral cortex (which is responsible for taking in and processing new information). When these regions of the brain are slowed down, a person might feel dizzy and stagger when walking, have blurred or double vision, and have difficulty paying attention to things going on around them. «Your sensory uptake has been dulled, so you’re not going to be taking in new information as well,» said Pagano.