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Solution for Crohn's Brain Fog

I was diagnosed with Crohn's 14 years ago and suffered from significant and worsening brain fog symptoms for the past 7 years or so. A couple of years ago I started an experimentation process during which I tinkered with every dietary variable I could think of, and experimented with literally dozens of supplements to try to alleviate this issue, and the thing that has helped me the most has been reducing my fat intake.

I was eating a relatively high fat diet (I regularly added oils after cooking, consumed generous helpings of high fat snacks almost daily, and my #1 protein of choice was the highest fat salmon I could find), and a few months ago when I turned my attention on the fat variable, and decided to cut fat containing foods to assess how it might affect my brain fog, the results were dramatically good. Quite simply, I find the lifting of the cloud on my thinking, memory etc to vary directly with limiting the fat in my diet. I am a different person now. And while I imagine most people would not characterize their diet as being high fat necessarily, I believe this might help those of us on a "normal" fat diet too. I now eat a low fat diet, as low as I can go really, and when I deviate, I feel it, I find that to that degree the fog comes back.

After my discovery I found an article that might very well contain the scientific reason/support for it. Since I'm new to the forum and haven't yet made 10 posts it's not allowing me to post the direct link but Google "zombie-diet-way-you-eat-causing-you-lose-brain-cells", it's an article by Shape magazine from 11/30/2015 if you want to see it. And the article links to a study "High-fat diet prompts immune cells to start eating connections between neurons". While the article isn't specifically about IBD it makes sense that the impaired ability to properly digest/absorb fat and the inflammation might cause the exacerbation of what it's discussing (and the study specifically references chronic inflammation as the underlying culprit).

I would note that despite that high fat diet I used to consume (for several years, I think the genesis of it was just the idea/fear of not consuming enough calories to sustain/increase my weight), and the normal fat diet I was on before that since my diagnosis (at age 16, I'm now 29), none of that fat was sticking around, I've always been somewhere on the moderately underweight (when not flaring)-severely underweight (when flaring) spectrum.

Best of luck to all :)
Sam
 
Wow, thanks for posting! I actually asked about this myself not very long ago at all:

Brain Fog/Cognitive Issues
https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?sh...forum.com/showthread.php?t=82947&share_type=t

My diet is quite high fat (lots of junk if I’m being honest.) My problem is that once again I’m losing weight and so I was putting the brain fog down to flaring in general. I will do some additional reading on this and work out the best way for me to start changing my diet. I’m still following low fibre so that could make it tricky, but small changes can always lead to big ones!

Do you have any particular go to meals or snacks just to give an example?

Thanks again [emoji4]
 
Hey, I'm low fiber too. I'm a pretty boring/bland eater so I don't know how inspiring my meals would be for others, but here are the main go-to ingredients I currently use to construct meals (and since my transition to low fat has been very recent I'm still very much in tinkering/assessing mode and am definitely on the lookout for more ideas myself):

Carbs: White rice, sweet potato starch noodles, potato, sweet potato, vegetables (my favorites/easiest on my system are broccoli and the squash family), white flour based foods

Protein: non-fatty fish and cuts of poultry/meat, egg whites (you might want to experiment with the yolk and see how that goes for you, I'll probably try that soon)

Snacks: Rice cakes, pretzels, rice/wheat crackers, low/no fat potato snacks
 
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