Menopause BRAIN

No, your brain fog isn't an early sign of dementia. Neuroscientist and women's brain health specialist Dr Lisa Mosconi sorts out fact from fiction

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A long with sweating and poor sleep of and poor sleep often comes something many menopausal women don't anticipate: Brain fog. Few things are more disconcerting than when your brain feels like mush rather than the sharp and useful tool you've been used to, or when your memory takes a turn for the worse.

Although brain fog is not a medical term, it aptly describes the fogginess in one's thinking, the mental fuzziness and the difficulty processing information that often accompany menopause.

This phenomenon is perhaps best described as feeling that you're enveloped in cotton wool, finding it hard to absorb and recall information or r concentrate on everyday tasks, which now require greater concentration, time and effort.

The most common complaints include things like forgetting what you walked into a room for, struggling to remember words and familiar names or losing focus during a mental task.

One of our patients described this experience in these words: "I don't feel like myself any more.

I feel like a shell of my former self." Another patient told me, "No matter what I do, my brain just won't turn on." Statistics report more than 60 percent of all perimenopausal and postmenopausal women struggle with brain fog. The experience is so marked that it can disturb one's sense of efficiency, especially when memory lapses crop up. It's important to realise that forgetfulness can spike during perimenopause, which can feed fears of experiencing early dementia.