Why Your Brain Fog Won't Lift: The Six Mechanisms of Cognitive Dysfunction in Chronic Illness, and Why Standard Interventions Keep Failing — Why the Six Mechanisms Are Not Independent

The standard treatment approach to brain fog treats each of the six mechanisms as if it were independent. A different specialist for each. A different supplement for each. A different lab panel for each. The patient accumulates a stack of partial responses that do not integrate into resolution. The mechanisms are not independent. They share several upstream nodes, and the upstream nodes determine why the standard approach fails. The first shared node is the gut epithelium. The gut is where serotonin precursor absorption happens (mechanism one), where the barrier integrity is set that determines endotoxin translocation (mechanism two), where the bioenergetic state of the highest turnover tissue in the body is established (mechanism three), where amino acid precursors for neurotransmitter synthesis are absorbed (mechanism four), where the microbiome that drives histamine production and mast cell activation lives (mechanism five), and where the bile acid cycling that affects hormone metabolism happens (mechanism six). The gut epithelium is not one mechanism. It is a node that touches all six. The second shared node is the mitochondrial network. Every mechanism above depends on cellular energy. The gut epithelium that drives mechanism one has the highest energetic demand of any tissue in the body. The microglia that drive mechanism two cannot maintain their resting non inflammatory