Rhonda is a rare gem of critical thinking in the wild west of nutrition science. I cannont suggest her enough. I do wish she would make more layman-accessable content, but am loathe to ever ask anyone to dumb themselves down. Very dense in information and theory, but assumes an understanding of some basic biology to follow. I think her appearances on the Rogan podcast are the easiest to parse for most.
Similar to having a single drink or two. It dulls the brain just enough to remove internal distracting thoughts, but not enough to dull all higher thought functions.
Sleep deprivation (I’m an insomniac) has a similar effect if I have a lot of grindy work to do there is a point between tired and exhausted where I can hammer through it.
That's a freaky (sorry, but it fits) idea. I mean, it does seem that rabies increases the likelihood that its hosts will bite others. And respiratory viruses cause sneezing. So it's not impossible that selection pressure could drive viruses to modify behavior of hosts in other ways. Something like black-box decompiling.
I have a probably TMI story about a case of food poisoning my wife and I had that was prefaced by us being especially frisky for a few hours — we even both said something to each other about how unusual it was. I’ve always wondered if there was a connection.
I used to spend a lot of time on an alternative medicine forum whose primary goal was to provide support for parents of children with ASD and similar conditions. They primarily were focused on metal poisoning, but some kids were being treated for infection, such as PANDAS.
Perhaps some cases of ASD involve infection and fever helps suppress it a bit.
I belive this is caused by anti-inflammatory medication and not by the fever itself.
There is plenty of research linking brain fog with inflammation. I myself am far more social on ibuprofen than the default and I suggest you try this yourself; try taking 400-600mg ibuprofen even when not sick but "not feeling like yourself" and notice the effects.
EDIT:
Reading the article further they tried to give sulforaphane to patients and they saw improvements. This compound is believed to have anti-inflammatory and neuro-protective effects ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5225737/ ).
Sure, it is not a long term solution and even short term you should never take it on an empty stomach. I was only suggesting it as a sort of test, if it lifts your mood or makes you more social you can start researching natural ways to get the same effect like eating brussel sprouts daily for the sulforaphane or taking it as a supplement. CBD could be helpful as well
As someone with both chronic brain fog and a chronic inflammatory condition, occasionally taking a nondrowsy H1 blocker like loratidine is hugely helpful. H2 blockers work even better, but then I basically can't digest anything so I have to avoid those.
Reading that link it seems sulforaphane has wonderful properties, but my geeking is limited to MCUs. Left wondering if the positive results are seen in humans, and if so whether ibuprofen is an effective sulforaphane analog?
I have a hypothesis that getting sick (and taking the necessary rest to heal) is beneficial to mental health. The current culture of taking a pill and plough on regardless might be a cause of these epidemic spread of depression, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz4YVJ4aRfg