I often feel like I can’t remember stuff anymore. When we were younger, I was a vault. I could remember my best friend’s sister’s birthday and my whole classroom’s landline number. I was a sponge. Now? I can barely remember what I did this past weekend.
I live by lists. I have to write everything down, and yet things slip. I walk into a room and stand there, paralysed, forgetting why I entered. I rummage through my bag for keys while holding them in the other hand. I open a text, answer it in my head, and then ghost the person for three days. Even the “smart” stuff—building strategy for a project, writing an article, making a simple mind map—feels like I’m dragging a sled through gravel.
I kept saying: I just feel foggy. The information is there, somewhere, floating in the ether of my grey matter, but I can’t retrieve it.
And I’m not alone. “Brain fog” has become the defining ailment of our times. First, we talked about it in the ominous context of long Covid. Then, it became a buzzword in perimenopause conversations. Now, it’s trending alongside GLP-1s like Ozempic and Mounjaro, with users claiming the drugs reduce “food noise” and clear the fog. But what is brain fog, really? Is it just a convenient label for the fact that we can’t focus because we use ChatGPT for everything? Is it because we are chronically online? Or is our hardware actually failing?
What really is brain fog?
To understand what was happening to me, I first needed a definition that wasn’t from Instagram. Dr Arun B Shah, director of Neurology at Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, Mumbai, describes brain fog as “transient cognitive dysfunction”.
It’s not a permanent state; it fluctuates throughout the day. It manifests as mental fatigue—that feeling of being exhausted after minimal mental effort—along with word-finding difficulties (that “tip of the tongue” feeling that drives you crazy), short-term memory lapses during conversation, and decision fatigue.
So, if it’s “transient”, why does it feel so chronic? I spoke to Dr Aradhana Chauhan, a neurologist at Sahyadri Super Speciality Hospital, Pune, to see if my fear that I am slowly losing my mind was unique.
It turns out, the waiting rooms are full of us.
“I’m seeing far more young professionals today, often in their late twenties and thirties, who come in genuinely worried that something is wrong with their memory or cognition,” Dr Chauhan explains. “In most of these cases, after a thorough neurological examination, we don’t find evidence of a primary neurological disorder,” says Dr Chauhan. Instead, the diagnosis is usually a lifestyle indictment. “What we do find is chronic sleep deprivation, prolonged screen exposure, high stress levels, and nutritional deficiencies, particularly vitamin B12.”
Dr Chauhan notes that the brain is extremely sensitive to metabolic balance. “When someone is sleeping poorly for months, multitasking constantly, and never allowing the brain to truly rest, it begins to show up as forgetfulness. These symptoms feel alarming, but they are often functional and reversible.”
The multitasking myth
So, if my brain isn’t degenerating, why does it feel like it’s physically slowing down by 4 pm? According to Dr Chauhan, there is a legitimate physiological change happening when we claim to be “multitasking”.
“The brain isn’t designed to handle continuous multitasking,” says Dr Chauhan. “What we call multitasking is actually rapid switching between tasks, and each switch places a demand on attention networks. Over time, this leads to mental fatigue and reduced efficiency in the prefrontal cortex—the area responsible for focus and planning.” Think of your brain like a browser. You might feel productive having 45 tabs open, but your RAM is screaming.
“After prolonged cognitive overload, the brain’s neurotransmitter systems become less efficient,” Dr Chauhan notes. “Sleep deprivation compounds this by preventing the brain from clearing metabolic waste overnight. So, while the brain isn’t inflamed in a pathological sense, it is functionally exhausted.”
Do not disturb
This functional exhaustion hits hardest when we try to do “deep work”. Anjan Sachar, a freelance beauty writer, told me the fog usually descends right when she needs to synthesise information. “I find it very hard to get any writing done in the day,” she says. “You want to sit for one stretch and work, but I’m constantly required for something. It’s my phone.”
Her experience highlights a vicious cycle we all recognise. “When a sentence gets hard to write...I randomly start scrolling. Next thing you know, it’s been half an hour. The scrolling does not cause the fog; I scroll because I’m already foggy.”
To combat the overstimulation, Sachar has developed a specific sensory-deprivation protocol. “I am able to write some of the best work after 11:30 at night. My hack is to put headphones on with Spanish or Latin music. That sound drowns out the world, but because I can’t understand the language, it doesn’t distract me.”
We tend to gender this conversation. Brain fog is often categorised as a women’s issue—the darling of perimenopause threads, mommy blogs, and conversations about the invisible mental load. We assume it’s hormonal. But Anshul*, who works in consulting in New York, suggests that the fog is an equal-opportunity offender.
For Anshul, the experience isn’t emotional; it’s more technical. “I don’t feel ‘foggy’ in a poetic sense; I feel like my operating system is lagging,” Anshul jokes. “In my job, I need to connect dots instantly. But sometimes, I’m in a meeting, staring at a deck I built, and my brain is just doing that little spinning wheel of death. The data is there, but the page just won’t load because I’m already thinking of the 10 other things I have to do after that meeting.”
It raises an interesting point: Is brain fog actually gendered or is it just the vocabulary that differs? While my female friends describe it as a mist or a feeling of being overwhelmed, guys like Anshul describe it as a performance issue or a processor error. It suggests that while we might blame oestrogen (or the lack thereof), the reality is that modern work culture melts everyone’s hard drive eventually, regardless of gender.
When should you worry?
Now, if you’re spiralling and convinced it’s not just your addiction to scrolling, Dr Chauhan offers a simple way to distinguish between modern-day burnout and a medical red flag: the test of time. The biggest indicator of a real problem is progression. Burnout fluctuates—it’s bad on a manic Tuesday but usually lifts after a solid weekend of sleep. Neurological conditions, however, don’t play nice with rest; they tend to steadily worsen regardless of how much self-care you throw at them. Dr Chauhan notes that if you find yourself getting disoriented in familiar places, experiencing physical symptoms like persistent headaches or numbness, or if your family starts noticing behavioural changes that you’re missing, that’s your cue to get checked.
We are living in an era of cognitive overload. We treat our brains like machines that can run 24/7 without cooling down, and then we panic when they overheat. So, before you convince yourself you have early-onset dementia, try the basics. Close the tabs. Eat a steak (or a B12 supplement). Put on some Spanish music. And for the love of God, put the phone in the other room.
*name withheld by request
