Does Your Brain Fog Have Anything To Do With What You Ate For Brunch ?

I wrote a piece on here a little while ago about how taking a blood test and removing certain foods from my diet cured my endometriosis. What I didn’t mention at the time (because quite frankly I thought that it sounded a bit mad and anyone that I’d mentioned it to previously looked at me like I was bonkers) is that I used to be a big fan of eggs Benedict and on a weekend would always make sure that a Sunday started with brunch and that it was most definitely on the menu. After doing the blood test to work out my intolerances I could no longer enjoy this as dish as part of my weekend routine because a key part of eggs Benedict is obviously EGGS and that lovely sauce has a lot of butter in it (I’d also cut out dairy) and it came on white bread (I’d cut out dried yeast which is what they use to make all breads except sourdough which is made using a natural fermenting yeast - in those days (2004) in the UK sourdough wasn’t available yet as it hadn’t become popular). I started to notice that I’d get pretty grumpy on a Sunday afternoon after I’d eaten brunch if I’d lapsed and eaten something with eggs in. I mentioned it to my Mum who rolled her eyes, as to her this was surely just another fad thing I was doing. Anyway, I got better at avoiding all the things that I couldn’t eat and thought that I’d surely just got it into my head that eggs made me grumpy so when I had the odd egg here and there if I felt grumpy or a bit sad then it was my subconscious surely ?

Cut to 2020 and I’m trying to get pregnant, I’ve been told because of my age that it’s important to have a very healthy balanced diet to give my body the best chance of conceiving and that eggs are key in getting pregnant and that I should re-introduce meat and eggs and try and have a balanced diet. Previously I’d been only eating fish and avoiding all meat / eggs and dairy but I decided that that as it would only be for a shortish period of time (in the grand scheme of things) I added everything back in including the eggs, to be honest I didn’t really notice any differences in my mood straight away, possibly because I had avoided them for 13 years. With some foods when you have an intolerance and avoid them for and extended period of time it’s possible to re-introduce sparingly without side effects. Also because I was trying to get pregnant I was aware that emotionally I was in for a bit of a rollercoaster so any feelings and changes in my mood I put down to what I was going through and tried to distract myself. Cut to getting pregnant and trying to make sure that I was eating enough protein to keep my body and baby happy / healthy I kept up the eggs, to be honest I didn’t feel like eating many things in the first trimester and I felt rubbish emotionally but I could totally stomach eggs on toast or for dinner and so I carried one eating them. Again because of all the hormones in my body, that’s what I put my low mood down to. I’d read lots about how you can not feel like yourself when you are pregnant and then once the baby is born and all those hormones leave your system you suddenly feel like YOU again. I was having eggs most days and then suddenly it’s Christmas and lockdown and for a few days I didn’t have eggs for breakfast, maybe only 3 days in total but I remember waking up and feeling different on the 3rd day, like REALLY different, a cloud had lifted, I felt like me, old me, I felt like cooking again (which I love doing but hadn’t felt like doing for months). I’d taken to ordering take-aways A-LOT, I felt motivated to do stuff in a way that didn’t feel like it was an effort and my mind felt clear, previously it had been very foggy. I was so forgetful but put this down to hormones. I actually didn’t feel like I was pregnant because that fog had lifted, but I was still pregnant, baby still kicking (check). I was due to have a scan because they were keeping an eye on my cervix, I naturally have a short one so they wanted to make sure it wasn’t shortening too quickly as this can lead to premature a birth, this time it measured longer (phew) I asked the lady performing the scan if food could alter the length and told her about my egg theory, she told me to not have anymore eggs and that if I was eating a balanced diet the baby would be getting exactly what he required. I started googling to see if anyone else had had the same experience with eggs, most were quite the opposite with lots of sites telling you about the benefit of eating eggs due to the amount of B vitamins which are important for people who suffer from depression to eat. There was one story about a man who was suffering from the blues and brain fog and who did the same test as I had done and removed eggs and sure enough the brain fog and the blues disappeared.

I am not saying that if you are depressed then by removing eggs from your diet is the cure BUT if you ever suffer from brain fog and sometimes feel a bit blue and that blue comes out of nowhere then it might be worth getting a blood test to check if any of the foods that you are eating you are actually intolerant to. Eggs are most definitely now off the menu for me, I just wish that I’d put two and two together earlier but then again when you have brain fog it’s really hard to put anything together.