Sleeping alone can cause the kind of symptoms you're talking about. And you definitely want to get it under control as there's a ton of gunk that builds up in the brain between the cells if you don't sleep. At this point, any damage is probably still reversible, but if you keep on with poor sleep into middle age, you're probably going to have serious impairment.

Also, take a look at your diet, if you're eating a ton of sugary crap and processed foods you can wind up with a brain fog as well. Sometimes food intolerances can lead to that sort of feeling as well. Cutting all the wheat and or dairy products out of your diet for a month would probably let you know if it's an issue. Some people have food allergies that aren't severe enough to be easily noticed, but can reek havoc on a persons body anyways.

I am in a hurry so I just read your opening post and not the rest of the thread, so I'm sorry for being THAT prick.

Anyways, how about this?
Cut out the Caffeine and try getting more sleep. You might not realise how powerful the effect of caffeine on your sleeping patterns is and maybe it is not the cause of your condition at all. The effects of caffeine vary wildly from person to person. I find that in times of high caffeine use not only is my sleeping time reduced but also my sleeping quality. In those cases I experience symptoms similar to yours, though not as persistent. It might not have any adverse effects on you but it might as well be the very reason for your issues. Insufficient sleep or low quality sleep especially over prolonged periods of time can wreck some serious damage on your brain and the need for sleep varies greatly from person to person and is influenced among other things by diet, age, weight, sport, diseases, genes, stress... I am saying this because you mention programming + lots of coffee in your post and it might be a cliche, but us "computer guys" rarely have healthy biorhythms.

Other than that:

Unless there is some serious imbalance in your system, there is no need to add special herbs and spices to your food. Just eat a bit more healthy overall.

And:

Music works on a very deep level of your brain. The axact mechanisms are as of yet unknown, but even dementia patients remember the songs of their childhood and even those who have lost speech are able to sing along. So if you have even trouble remembering music, then you should really consult a neurologist. Fuck it, consult one today! Even if I or anyone else here is right, you might want to have some valid diagnosis and someone who can help you monitor your recovery and potentially uncover some deeper issues.

The good news is that at least judging from your post you don't seem to have suffered damage to your mental strength beyond your memory.

Memory loss can also be a symptom of mercury poisoning or lead poisoning. Especially the latter is possible if you still have old lead pipes in your water grid, or old paint on your walls. Artist's paint also sometimes contains lead.

So, please check your surroundings (and see a doctor).

If there is no organic reason (illness, poison) to be found it can be a psychological problem. I don't know what chances of therapy you have, but one thing can at least ease a lot of mental afflictions is learning meditation and practising it regularly - gives the mind some space to sort itself out.

I would go to doctor ASAP, if you really feel it is that bad. How old are you anyway, ie. do you feel it could be age-related?

I can't say I have the best memory either, I can't be sure if if has been like this always. I quite often forget even the most basic words, both in Finnish and/or English, e.g. when writing these messages. Having Google Translator open in another window helps a lot.

It is funny how sometimes I even e.g. forget some Finnish words (seems to happen especially with adjectives, especially less common ones), but I happen to remember it in English instead. So I have to use the translator to remember what the English word was in my mother language. :) Odd but true. Like that one time I just couldn't remember the Finnish word "moottorikelkka" ("snowmobile" in English).

Then again, I do remember passwords or strings that I use relatively often, even my credit card number and details. So it seems my memory still works passably, as long as I need to remember something relatively often.

Maybe the biggest problem I have is with names. I just keep forgetting them after awhile, be it some famous actor, or a friend of mine from the childhood that I haven't seen for a long time (I might remember the first name, but not the last name).

Like a couple of days ago, for the life of me I couldn't remember the names of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. For some reason, when trying to think of the name of Angelina Jolie, the name "Jessica Hudson" kept appearing in my head. I knew that was not the one I was looking for, but what can I do, it just kept coming. I don't even know who Jessica Hudson is (an actress?) or did I just invent that name out of the thin air.

In the end I found the actor names by going to www.imdb.com and checking who was the actress in the movie "Tomb Raider", and from there I could also find the name of her spouse. :) Damn, how can one forget The Brangelinas?

Ps. I didn't have to use the Google Translator even once while writing this message. Whee! Apparently I used common enough words this time.

This is a really good point, most of the time when people have "bad" memory it's not really bad memory as much as it is they're not remembering things they think they should remember. Names is an extremely common one, but there's other things that people have trouble remembering like numbers.

Anyways. following a stroke I had a complete inability to locate any of the words that I'd previously learned for the purposes of creating sentences. I could recognize them,but I couldn't find them. To this day my English still suffers a bit of trouble with fluency when I speak, but in Mandarin I rarely have any problems finding words, provided I actually learned them in the first place.

Globally bad memory is usually a symptom of something. Most people are just not that zoned out all the time. Usually they'll remember things that are interesting to them and forget things that aren't. And that's completely normal. The brain is the largest user of energy in the body accounting for about 20% of your caloric needs. And it's terribly inefficient.

Just read this and in principle, being more aware of what you add to your body is good advice, but if you had a gluten intolerance you'd know because those don't come in many varieties beyond "Holy crap, I'm dying!".
Also, right now there are many scams trying to scare you so they can sell you a blood test to develop a special diet just for you. The thing is: Those are nonsense and no two companies come to the same conclusion on what you can eat and what you can't. Do not fall victim to scams and pseudo-science.

But before you doctor around to much, consult a neurologist who will conduct some tests and first establishes the exact nature and extent of your problem.


Anyways: Consult a neurologist. Any advice other than consulting a professional specialist would be reckless. Oh, and don't take the detour over other doctors if you can avoid it. Saves time.

I very much hope so, too.

And please keep in mind that I'm not a doctor and what I wrote is not a diagnosis. There is a very good chance that I'm completely off and that the symptoms you're experience are the result of a couple of external factors which can easily be remedied.

But since your symptoms are quite pronounced they need to be looked at by a neurologist, no matter what the cause.

Your official user title is 'god of sarcasm'. I don't know what to make of this.

In the 70s there was an experiment where scientists tried to find out what happens if one gets no sleep for a week. They put people alone in a room, with everything they needed, except a bed. Then they watched them. Everytime one fell asleep they woke him up again, to make sure he doesn`t get sleep. After 3 or 4 days they had to end the experiment because people were starting to get insane. They got aggressive and had illusions. Although they had a clock with a calender in the room, they where saying that the "Sadistic scientists" were puting the clock and calender to an earlier time to have them forever in the room, and that they were sitting in this room for months now, instead of the 3 or 4 days they really were in.
Conclusion: Lack of sleep can cause serious damage to your mental health and brain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2QrWzsfghA

That could largely be it, but I feel I do meet a lot of people who seem to remember things (names and such) much more easily than me. Like if I am trying to remember a name or a term, the other one just comes with "You mean xxxx?", appearing baffled that I couldn't remember it.

I recall when I was training e.g. taijutsu (it's been awhile I've been in the classes, this might be a permanent "hiatus"). One of the biggest problems for me in the class became trying to remember the Japanese names of different moves and techniques, even for some basic things we trained almost every time. Yep, now that the instructor said it, I remember it for the rest of the class... but next week if someone asks it from me, yep, gone, I just can't recall the name of the technique, even if I know the technique itself fine in my muscle memory.

I don't know if it really was my lack of interest (yeah, I felt it was kinda uninteresting to memorize obscure Japanese names of different techniques, but I guess they have to be named somehow...), but it just seemed almost everyone else in the class remembered them so effortlessly. Ok there were people there who also trained the Japanese language (that probably helps remembering when you know what they mean), but others too, even beginners.

First off, thank you guys! Everyone one of you are thorough and logical. Many ideas I read here have not crossed my mind on their own. And I already can't catch up to everyone.

As already mentioned, better sleeping for me is essential. Exercising is also a must for variety of reasons. I started doing that again more regularly about a few weeks ago. And I agree about drinking water. I am drinking it, not too much, not too little.

I don't feel like I have a problem focusing. At least at that exact moment. I am able to multitask (maybe playing poker on 5-7 tables at once and sort of watching a TV show just for the sake of something happening in the background could be an example (losing is a rare thing to happen)). I am able to switch my focus on different details, patterns or feelings at almost any given time.

Expecting more from myself also sounds logical. I do believe that certain thoughts somehow leads to subconsciously doing certain actions or making certain choices that lead to the thought's realization.

I have heard of mnemonics and I can also agree that they work. My best example might be this: one time I had a math test that was made of 59 questions. Each question had 5 different answers - A, B, C, D or E. We were given a few hours to do the test. I was pretty fast and had almost an hour left. Remembered something about mnemonics and thought "Could I remember all my answers tomorrow? Or maybe a few days later?" I assigned a word (noun) for each letter, lets say apple (A), bank (B), caterpillar (C), danger (D), elephant (E). And then, depending on the sequence of my answers, I made a story in my head, my answers being the given words. Later that day and even after two weeks I could correctly tell my test answers.


Sugary crap is present in my day to day meals and drinks. Processed foods (like those from fast food restaurant) are not, I usually cook myself. Gradually limiting my consumption of sugar might do good overall.


Cutting out caffeine would have a positive reaction. There was a time in my life when from time to time I would have sort of arrhythmia or tachycardia attack. My heart would start beating irregularly fast. I learned to stop the attacks with breathing, but no blood tests could find anything suspicious. I cut out coffee. And what do you know? Attacks stopped, not a single one. Started drinking coffee again, I would have an attack from time to time. So yeah, coffee is not essential for my survival and I am not in favor of idea that I must drink it, because I feel sleepy. I just like coffee for the taste.

Music also seems to help. At the very least, for focusing. I tend to listen to smooth jazz or classical music when I have to work. And it even makes me happy.


I am not a painter, so don't have paint present in my surroundings. Also, I tended to travel from place to place, from country to country and as I recall where I've been, poisoning is not likely the cause. But still, a good thought.

I am 21, turning 22 this year. So age related mind losing is least likely I guess. It is a bit funny with words and translations, I get that too. While writing in this thread, I used translator a few times to remember a certain word or to check how to spell it correctly. Same thing (forgetting a word in say, Lithuanian, and remembering in English) when I talk to people. Then it is harder tell what I want to tell.

As for passwords, I made myself a system that allows me to have a different password for each website, yet I can be calm that I won't need to stress out remembering them.

And really, who is Jessica Hudson?


Concerning diets, I can say that my digestion system is very fast. I can practically eat anything in any amounts and I wouldn't seem to get bad visible results. But still, balancing what I eat is good. Since my habits are really irregular.
I heard about this experiment, but my version also included those "patients" killing one "patient". Cause of insanity. Horrible.

See a doctor as soon as posible! It might be nothing, but you never know, look what happened to Totalbiscuit: he just ignored his symptoms for some time without realizing he had bowel cancer. If he had had it treated earlier it might have been curable.

:)

Turmeric is not a strong herb. Slightly bitter and slightly pungent. Kind of tastes earthy - and is mostly known for food coloring (e.g the yellow color in curry, etc).