Type 1 Diabetes Brain Fog: When It’s Not just the ADHD or Perimenopause
Some mornings I can’t tell if it’s my blood sugar, my ADHD, or my hormones deciding to have a meeting without me. I’m standing in the kitchen, forgotten why I walked in, hands a bit shaky, can’t hold a thought long enough to finish a sentence to my own kid. Is that a low? Is that just Tuesday? Nobody tells you these three things can look completely identical from the inside.
Type 1 brain fog, ADHD brain fog, and perimenopause brain fog all show up wearing the same outfit. Forgetfulness. Word-finding gaps. A shorter fuse that wasn’t there last year. The difference matters for treatment. It makes zero difference for how it feels standing in Coles trying to remember what you came in for while doing mental maths on a double downward arrow and agreeing to buy the kids chocolate because you need it too.
Is that the ADHD, or the 3.8 that’s trending down?
It’s not just Coles. It’s kindy pickup, when I’ve forgotten which kid has the excursion and which teacher I needed to grab.
It’s 9pm at the desk, staring at a sentence I’ve read four times, wondering if I need a snack, a nap, or just fewer things wanting my brain at once.
Why Getting It Wrong Has Cost?
Treat a low that isn’t one and I’ve overeaten carbs and I’m dealing with the spike later. Write off a real low as just brain fog and I’ve made a mistake with actual consequences. The three systems don’t just feel the same, they compete for the same fifteen minutes of clarity I need to work out what’s actually happening.
The Gap Nobody’s Built a System For
Nobody I know of has built a system for women managing all three at once. I understand exactly why. Or do I? The diabetes team asks about my sugars. The GP asks about my mood. Neither is wrong to ask what they ask, they’re just not asking the question that matters at 8am in my kitchen: which system is lying to me right now. That’s not a gap in anyone’s training. It’s a gap in how the whole thing is structured, one condition per appointment, when the body doesn’t run one condition at a time.
What I Actually Do About It
I’m not offering a fix, because I don’t have one. Although I am currently using AI to help with some of the fog. Review on that to come later. What I have is this: on the mornings I can’t tell what’s causing what, I stop trying to diagnose myself in real time. Actually, that’s a lie, I always have 500 tabs open. But I do check my levels, because that’s fixable. Everything else gets a “I’ll deal with it later,” if I remember to, which given the brain fog is a real if.
If your brain currently feels like three systems arguing for control of one body, you aren’t broken and you aren’t imagining it. You’re just running more software than the manual accounts for.
You are just running more software than the manual accounts for.
