My brainfog is horrible. I would forget about the simplest things like turning on the stove. I frequently have to check it to see if its on or not. Last thing i want to do is set my home on fire. Its possible that my mind is preoccupied with this crap constantly thinking about it and forget that i had to do something.
Well, 60% of the human brain is involved in visual & balance processing, so itās no wonder than when there is a dysfunction or deficit in this sense (however reversible that may be) your brain has to work overtime. I suspect that brain fog is a state below a full migraine.
The issue imho is that the situation fluctuates so much your brain cannot adapt and learn - in other words it is an āunstable lesionā. This imho is why you end up not being able to compensate fully (until such time as the ālesionā itself stabilises enough)
The problem with the inner ear in particular, is it is ruled by plumbing and a highly complex set of bio-chemical processes. In a healthy ear in homeostasis you have harmony and a predictable response. In a Hydropic ear, pressure remains high and it & concentrations fluctuate, causing a lot of instability in both its vestibular and audio response. I imagine the vestibular system āhearsā a vestibular ātinnitusā just like the one you can āhearā. Worse still, the high pressure probably communicates fluctuations in blood and CSF pressure more readily. The Signal to noise ratio therefore is much lower and this causes the brain a significant extra challenge.
It is also clear to me having had this condition for a while, that we have evolved without a perfect ability to address imbalance in a single ear. i.e. some of the management of fluid balance in your inner ears is āMONOPHONICā, not tailored to each ear ā¦ this explains why it is hard for your body to address Hydrops in one ear. Iāve wondered if this is because the inner ear has a mechanism first evolved in fish. I propose that mechanisms first evolved to handle significant changes in water pressure when fish sank and rose in deep water. In that environment a solution evolved which prioritised a global setting of fluid pressure in the inner ear, and not one that was specifically tailored to cope with differences between the ears, as external water pressure is always the same for both ears (unless you were an incredibly wide fish swimming sideways 
)
So in summary, Hydrops in one ear presents:
- An unstable lesion presenting a difficult to predict, fluctuating response
- Increased signal to noise ratio
- A challenge for a largely globally regulated system (both ears)
In short, a nightmare for a system which is tasked with correlating, learning and adapting.
Now I donāt wish to sound too negative and will say that the system may well stabilise slowly over time (it clearly hasnāt evolved to do this rapidly!). Iāve noticed a real decrease in many symptoms and it seems to me that the hydrops has calmed a lot over time ā¦ long way to go though!!
Just some thoughts ā¦
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I forgot what year it was, while sitting in a meeting due to brain fog ! I even forgot how to drive back home one day ! My brain fog is like my brain is mega scrambled. Effexor helps loads with the brain fog.
That is something similar to mine. I forget why iām driving at times lol. Is effexor helping at all with imbalance? That is my main symptom right now.
@Young_Lee effexor cleaned up my rocking and swaying but imbalance is still there. But mind you i am not at the dose Hain claims to work. I still at 1/3. But if i exercise and do cardio, i get one hour afterward where i feel normal. Hope this helps. I still get episodes of āVMā where things are bad , effexor spaces them apart. Also when i am tired imbalance is bad.
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Tiredness seems to bring on more symptoms for me as well. Constant imbalance is killing my legs and my legs are compensating alot and my legs are tired by end of the day and all Iām doing is just sitting in my cubicle.