Reply To: Debilitating "Brain Fog"

[drooney]

Hi Everyone,

This is my first time participating in this forum, and I have just recently found this site, for which I am profoundly grateful!!! 🙂  I am a 35yo who was diagnosed last July. The last six months have been a interesting, revolutionary, hellish at times (almost daily, in the last 3 months), rewarding and unexpectedly educational. I am responding to this particular thread because I just watched a video last night on that mentioned “brain fog” that cpb756 expressed. I am no expert and I can’t personally say I experience a “fog”, and I am not sure if you have heard Dr. Russell Barkley speak, but he mentioned a condition called SCT, or Slow Cognitive Tempo, a condition the “professionals” are still trying to understand. It is mentioned with ADHD because it appears to affect the “inattentive” type by 30-50%, or quite possibly could be in the future what is now called the “ADHD “inattentive type”, but who knows because they don’t really understand it fully right now (do they ever??) I found the differentiating symptoms from ADHD confusing, but I think overall I understood it. What I found most interesting, was that Dr. Barkley hypothetically questioned if -a medication such as Provigil, a drug largely used to treat Narcolepsy but sometimes an ADHD med- would work. I wonder if doing some research on this SCT may shed some light on your experiences of brain fog….I apologize if you are familiar with Dr. Barkley already, or have heard of SCT before. I just wanted to share what I found. 🙂

I don’t know if we are allowed to post links here but you can find the 3 hour talk Dr. Barkley gave to CADACC called “Essential ideas for Parents”, on youtube. Skip to the 38th minute where he breaks down the DSM’s definition of the 3 types of ADHD, and watch for maybe 10 minutes. He includes a good chunk of info on SCT in this bit. I almost finished watching the whole 3hrs last night, but what I finally got to sit through was so incredibly helpful and empowering (for me at least). It took me about 8 times to watch it completely, due to how emotionally profound I was affected by this crystallized information, and due to the fact that I just couldn’t sit through it 😉

However because of the emotions and weight of the information, I found rewatching it to be helpful for understanding what I did retain the previous times, and picking up new information I missed the previous times 😉

Regardless, I wish you lots of luck!!! I am having no luck with the first psychiatrist I have been seen by, and I am looking forward to finding one that will at least look me in the eye and speak respectfully to me.

Best!

d.

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