Struggling with brain fog? A 60-Second Trick Could Help Sharpen Your Mind

Brain games, crosswords and math puzzles are often touted as ways to sharpen memory, but neurologists caution that generic exercises may not address the specific cause of brain fog.

Dr. Rhonda Voskuhl, professor of neurology at UCLA and co-founder of Cleopatra RX in Los Angeles, says brain exercises only work if they target the specific mental function that’s slowing down.

“You can’t just do random cognitive exercises,” Voskuhl told Fox News Digital at the Livelong Women’s Health Summit in New York in September. “They have to adapt to the problem.”

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The problem, she says, is verbal memory. “Doing math isn’t going to help you…You need an exercise that will help you with words.”

Generic brain games like Sudoku or number puzzles often fail to clear brain fog because they don’t target the specific brain functions that are slowing down. (iStock)

According to Voskuhl, brain fog — especially that triggered by midlife hormonal changes during perimenopause and menopause — affects very specific areas of the brain.

When estrogen levels drop, overall intelligence and basic logic remain completely normal. Instead, the brain is affected in two main areas: verbal memory (recalling names and words) and processing speed (thinking quickly under pressure), experts say.

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Games like Sudoku and other number puzzles primarily exercise logic and math skills, so they may not improve word memorization difficulties.

“It’s not a global brain problem,” Voskuhl said. “It’s not overall brain atrophy, but some regions on MRIs and research studies show that the hippocampus, the memory area, will have atrophies, functional connection problems.”

Effective cognitive training must match the person’s specific weakness, a neurologist said. (iStock)

To understand why word-based exercises can help, it helps to distinguish between the next two stages of memory, experts say.

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• Coding: How the brain absorbs and stores new information
• Recovery: How the brain retrieves this stored information when needed

Brain fog generally affects retrieval, not encoding. The word or name is still safely stored in memory, but the brain’s search engine works slowly.

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Building a Better Brain Training

To effectively target brain fog, Voskuhl says exercises should focus on two things: finding the words and working quickly.

“It’s basically processing speed,” she said. “So you need an exercise that will make you rush, will make you do it quickly.”

Midlife brain fog due to loss of estrogen affects localized brain areas related to verbal memory and processing speed while leaving overall IQ, mathematical logic, and general reasoning intact. (iStock)

The following types of exercises target processing speed and active word recall.

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• Timed word games: Set a timer for 60 seconds to list as many words as possible in a single category (like naming animals or foods).
• Speed ​​reading and quick summaries: Read a short article quickly, then immediately summarize it out loud in two or three sentences.
• Quick recall exercises: Use flashcards or picture prompts to name objects or people as quickly as possible, without pausing.

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Experts recommend targeted exercises focused on speed and active word recall, such as timed category exercises, flashcard recall, and speed reading summaries. (iStock)

Instead of using generic puzzle apps, Voskuhl recommends paying attention to where you stumble in daily life and choosing games that match those challenges.

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People “know for themselves,” she said, “what they’re bad at or what they were good at and now they’re not as good… Once you know those things, you should think about what kind of games (to play).” You can play with different games. You can see if it pushes you.