What Causes Chemo Brain Fog?

Introduction

Chemo brain fog is a common side effect of receiving chemotherapy for cancer treatment. Brain fog can cause confusion, lapses of memory, difficulty concentrating, and can even become dangerous to the patient and those around them if put in situations such as driving a vehicle. Though doctors for years have tended to shy away from granting any reality to the chemo brain fog phenomenon, increasingly more cancer treatment doctors are beginning to find that chemo fog is a real disorder, and a serious side effect of chemotherapy treatment.

What is Chemotherapy?

Chemotherapy is designed to target cells that aggressively multiply, as cancer cells do. However, the drugs can also do harm to other cells in the body that multiply frequently (for example, the cells that make up your hair follicles), or happen to be between dormant growing stages. This can leave other important cells in the body open to be killed by chemotherapy treatments, including brain cells associated with memory and basic function.

For Women

Women are especially prone to developing chemo brain fog after chemotherapy treatments. One reason may be that chemo often creates an early onset of menopause. Estrogen in women plays a key role in the functions of neurotransmitters in the body. Neurotransmitters play an essential role in memory. Since both chemotherapy and menopause cause a dramatic drop in estrogen, chemo brain may also be caused by this same problem that creates memory loss in those entering menopause.

Frontal Cortex

Another reason that chemo brain fog may develop is the effect that chemotherapy has on the frontal cortex of the brain. The frontal cortex is the area of your brain that controls memory. In a study done by Dr. Daniel Silverman at the University of California in Los Angeles, recent chemo patients were given PET scans to see if any changes occured in the brain after chemotherapy. The women who complained of chemo brain fog after treatment had noticeable differences in the frontal cortex of their brain, suggesting that the chemo may have altered the way in which the frontal cortex works, resulting in the memory loss and other symptoms associated with chemo brain fog.

Resources

• American Cancer Society