Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Ankylosing Spondylitis Podcast. This is going to be the 23rd episode already. This is fantastic. In this episode I'm going to talk about, you've been diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis. Now what? First I want to recognize that it's just been amazing. The number of downloads I've seen coming through for November, is looking like it could top October, which was a record month. So thank you to everybody that's listening. Thank you for all the feedback I've been getting. We've also had some people checking out the show from a couple new countries, South Korea, Bulgaria, Singapore, and Honduras. So welcome to those new places, and also a flurry of people out of Ireland have been downloading the show. So to all the listeners, Thank you so much. So let's jump in and do the Question of the Week.

What was I going to talk about? Question of the Week. Oh, yeah. Brain fog. I don't know about y’all, but I've seen this discussed multiple times throughout the forums. I get these brain fog episodes. I get things like I can't quite comprehend anymore, and I myself get that. I do a weekly trivia game and there's answers that pop up that I know. I know them and I just can't think of them or I want to say something to somebody and I, I sit there and it just rattles around my head. I'm like, “I know the answer”, but why can't I get this out?

Well, forgetting names, losing words, trouble concentrating. You know, brain fog is common. It can be disturbing. I don't like getting in and I'm sure nobody else does. It can be thing that causes concern when you're at work, if you forget things, will I forget things? Did I forget something? All that can play into your stress related to work and maybe even trigger a flare if it gets too bad? 

A study done in 2018 that was on Rheumatoid Arthritis patients, not Ankylosing Spondylitis patients, but I think there are enough similarities that is of interest in that study found that they think that there's a connection between inflammation and cognitive dysfunction. The inflammation disrupts signals between pain receptors in the brain literally fogging up mental functioning. That's very interesting. So I'd be curious if anybody's brain fog gets worse during a flare, have you noticed it? Have you noticed in times of high stress, your brain fog gets worse? You know, now, I haven't had any writing or spelling issues result of that. I'd be curious to know if any of you guys have mine is just recalling certain things. My recollection of facts and figures gets real murky. 

There are also some medications that may potentially cause some brain fog. One person I saw blamed their brain fog on Humira. I don't know if that's true or not, that's just what I saw them saying. Other drugs, such as prednisone, it's put out there to reduce inflammation, but it can sometimes affect cognitive

Issues. Again, I found nothing that said these were long-term effects. They were more short term when. drugs were in your system. There's also some cholesterol lowering statins, which may contribute to brain fog. I'm on one of those. And that may also be part of the issue. See, there we go. Couldn't get the words out. 

I'm going to do this, I suggest you do this as consult your doctor. I'm not a doctor. None of this is, you know, hard and fast medical advice is just to make you aware of some issues so that you can bring these up and talk to your doctor about them. So you're not going crazy. Most likely, these are not long term permanent effects they may most likely are medication effects. So again, talk to your doctor, see what he or she says is the best course of action going forward. I've seen one person and this is only for states where it's legal, obviously, who swears by cannabis to control the brain fog. It's not something I've tried, but whatever works...