Tag: brain

It’s funny how physical tiredness is not something one would think to question. It seems pretty obvious. We understand that if somebody has spent decades using and abusing their body, they’re going to face consequences as they get older. If you’re doing extreme running, hundreds of kilometres, or an insane amount of walking, crossing continents, your body gets worn out. We also understand that as we age, we may still be capable of doing things, but it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do them. For example: I can still carry very heavy loads, but if I do, my back is going to remind me the next day that I’m not 20 years old anymore.

For some reason, we do not seem to apply the same kind of thinking to the brain. Or at least, I didn’t. Although we understand that the brain has limits – everybody experiences some degree of cognitive tiredness at some point or another – we seem to think that the consequence is temporary. We need a break, we’re done for the day, we need a good night’s sleep and then we can start over. We know about burnout and that sure, of course, you need to take the time to recover if you want to function correctly again. But wear and tear over years and decades does not really seem to be on the radar.

We don’t tell somebody who keeps pushing their brain day after day, month after month, year after year, that they should ease up a bit – as we would our sport-obsessed friend who trains 6 times a week and considers “rest” a 10k run. We look at performance (what are you delivering at work), but not at effort and actual “cognitive use”.

My accident has driven home for me, in a frighteningly clear manner, that “cognitive overtraining” is as much a thing as “physical overtraining”. I’ve been “cognitive overtraining” all my life, and for most of it, unaware that I was doing it or that there was such a thing.

I am really good at pushing myself. It’s not always visible, because I have a lot of ressources (one way to put it is that I am clearly towards the right end of the IQ bell curve) and therefore compensate well for my hearing loss and ADHD. But that compensation has a cost, even if it is not visible that I am compensating. I am only now starting to measure how much effort goes into “simple” things like following conversations and managing my daily life. I am in a somewhat paradoxical situation where many of the things I receive most praise and recognition for are those that cost me the less – and those that cost me the most go completely unnoticed. This means that I have trained myself, all my life, to consider the efforts I make as “normal” rather than recognise that I am pushing myself.

This also means I have internalised the idea that when I “fail” (and by that I mean: feel tired “without reason”, don’t manage to get around to doing housework, miss parts of what is being said) it is because I was not trying hard enough. Pushing myself is the norm.

I had a moment of realisation regarding that the other day. I went back to singing practice, which I hadn’t really been able to since my accident. I was a bit tired, but I wanted to go as we were starting a new programme which contains a lot of songs I like. So I decided to go and “take it easy” – something I’ve been trying to practice these last months. Going easy. I told myself “I’ll just go and not try too hard”. Very quickly, during the rehearsal, I realised how much effort I was putting in, despite myself. Concentrating really hard to understand what the director was saying. Paying close attention to try and sing the line correctly as soon as possible, and memorise things as I went along. I usually use the time when the director is working with other registers to learn lyrics and compare musical phrases to help me remember them. It was very weird to tell myself to “just relax” when the others were working, and “nevermind” if I couldn’t hear or understand what was being said.

Earlier, some time last year I think, I realised that when I had long meetings in German at work, I really had trouble being productive the next day. But I hadn’t gone beyond “ok, plan a light day the next day” in terms of drawing conclusions. I kept thinking that the main driver of whether I could perform cognitively or not was sleep. But it’s not.

According to the neurologist who is treating me for my post-concussion syndrome, chronic cognitive overload is a clear risk factor for this type of complication. It’s also a risk factor for worse recovery after a stroke, or worse outcomes in case of cognitive decline or dementia in older age.

This has given me an awful lot to think about regarding how I’m using my brain-as-organ in my life, and how things are going to have to change. Where can I save on my brain budget? Where is it worth expending effort? What else can I put in place to have a lower “cognitive burn rate” just to get through daily life?

I’m not too bad at managing the load I place on my body – now I have to do the same with my brain.