How my on-air ‘brain fog’ moment sparked a big debate

When I rather nervously shared a personal post about battling brain fog at work on the social networking site LinkedIn last week, I had no idea it would have such a huge impact.

It was viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Women stopped me on the street to talk about it.

I was overwhelmed by the hundreds of messages from people sharing support and their own experiences.

I usually cover technology news. But given the answer, I thought it was important to talk about this too.

“Brain fog” is not a medical term. But you probably know exactly what I'm talking about.

That moment when you suddenly can't remember the word for something really obvious, or you're mid-sentence and lose your train of thought. It's infuriating and can be embarrassing.

Where have I been?

Oh yes, for me, a woman in my 40s, it coincided with perimenopause, a stage in my life when my hormone levels change. Of course, there may be other neurological conditions that may have brain fog as a symptom.

If you work in a job where public speaking is part of your job, this can be especially scary.

“I’ve been a professional voice for 30 years,” wrote Janet Edgecombe, an internal communications expert.

“Suddenly I forget words for basic things. “That gray thing in the thing we cook chicken on.” My husband responds, “Oh, there’s a baking sheet in the oven.” Hm. “Yes, this thing.”

I also heard from teachers, startup founders who have to pay presentations to investors, women teaching seminars, giving speeches, and fellow journalists trying to report on air, like me. But of course, it can also strike in the middle of a conversation, in a more intimate but no less frustrating way.

My post was about my decision to keep the notes page on BBC News at Ten. The story took place late in the evening, after an already busy day, and by the time we reached 10:00 pm, I realized that I was tired and felt foggy in my head.

I was going to talk about an outage that affected dozens of websites and apps, and I planned to use the technical jargon used by the affected company to do it, and then explain what that actually meant.

But I just couldn't get that phrase to stick in my head and I knew that without it I wouldn't be able to say the rest of what I needed to say.

I was reporting live from Glasgow. Like many of my professional colleagues, I do not and never have had a car signal. And so, for the first time, at the last minute, I decided to save a page of notes with an offensive phrase.

At the time, this seemed like an admission of failure to me. I was taught to never take notes—unless, for example, there was a specific legal reason why the wording of a statement had to be precise, or unless there were a lot of numbers to remember.

Even then, I prided myself on having a fairly good short-term memory to help me cope.

Using notes is not recommended in the world of public speaking. They are not allowed to give a 12-minute TED talk. The speaker is expected to remember his speech.

Staring down the barrel of a camera and squeezing that paper live on TV was hard.

But about 10% of women report leaving my job due to menopausal symptoms, according to the Fawcett Society. And research from insurance company Royal London found that half of women who go through this suffer I was thinking about quitting my job. I don't want to do this – and that's why I stick to my decision.

To my great relief, several people said that they thought my article seemed authoritative, that they simply assumed it was a sensational story, and that the page contained up-to-date information. Others asked why I didn't use a device instead – I guess I thought being able to fiddle with the screen would be even worse.

“Let's start a movement: leave your notes,” wrote Elisheva Marcus, vice president of public relations at venture capitalist firm Earlybird.

This is how the hashtag Holdthenotes was born.

“Have you ever checked your testosterone levels?” menopause expert Dr Louise Newson asked me.

She says testosterone, despite its reputation as a male hormone and its connection to sex drive and libido, is actually an important brain chemical for both men and women, and its levels fall in both sexes. One result is brain fog.

“It’s like you’ve been drugged,” she says. “It's really scary, a lot of people worry they have dementia.”

“I remember 10 years ago I went through the levels and thought, 'Thank God, at least I know why I feel so terrible.'

She adds that research dating back to the 1940s shows that testosterone can improve brain function and well-being in women as do men, but randomized control trials, in which participants were given either a placebo or the product itself to see if it really worked, focused only on improving libido.

National Health Service prescription hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, is traditionally a combination of estrogen and progesterone. Testosterone usually doesn't turn on.

Instead, doctors may separately prescribe testosterone to female patients at lower doses than to males.

There are also many menopause supplements that claim to relieve symptoms, including brain fog. Estimates vary, but it's a multibillion-dollar industry and thriving.

Women spend on average £147 per year on supplements to try to ease menopausal symptoms, according to a survey conducted earlier this year by nutrition news site NutraIngredients.

“They can help a little,” says Dr. Newson.

“I do yoga every day and it helps my brain become clear and focused, but I have a hormone deficiency and I can’t get rid of it through food or exercise.

“Many women spend a fortune trying to relieve the symptoms of hormone deficiency with something else.”

Dr. Joshua Chen is a member of the Photobiomodulation Research Group at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. The team is studying how red light frequencies can change mitochondria inside the brain, improving alertness.

He describes it as “like a face mask, but for the brain.” It can also be applied to the vagus nerve in the neck to reduce stress, he says.

He founded a company called Niraxx, which sells a headband called Neuro-Espresso that can be worn for up to 20 minutes a day. He claims that the results are immediate. It must be connected to the network – for safety reasons, the device does not contain batteries.

Angela Marsh is a registered nurse and menopause coach. She says her clients often describe brain fog as feeling like they're “living life in soft focus.”

“I don’t think brain fog is taken seriously enough at all,” she says.

“Many women feel deeply anxious about the changes that are happening to them. They think there is something wrong with them or they are 'losing it' when in fact there is a clear biological reason.”

As for me – well, I signed up for a blood test to check my hormone levels. I'm going to try red light therapy. And you'll probably see me posting a little more often.