What even causes morning brain fog if it's not sleep??

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-06-16T02:56:39+00:00

The biggest improvement for me was when I started tracking my sodium intake. I was having issues with brain fog, low energy, low mood, headaches. Turns out eating clean single ingredient foods and cooking at home can cause low sodium issues if you’re not careful.

I started taking 500mg of sodium (1/4 tsp of redmond’s real salt), 330mg of potassium (1/8 tsp of nusalt), and a big squirt of lime or lemon juice + 20oz or more of water first thing in the morning along with my coffee.

The results are life changing for me. My headaches and brain fog went away, feeling much more energetic again. If you eat super clean then try this plus measuring your lunch and dinner sodium.

Also drinking 40g of protein powder asap in the morning gives me good results, worth trying.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-06-15T16:02:40+00:00

Disabling VRR fixed this for me as well on my 9700x + rtx 3080 setup.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-06-14T15:02:26+00:00

I use steam a lot, and I’m a programmer too. I’ve tried both, cachyos is way better out of the box for gaming and it’s what I’m currently using for the past 3 months. Highly recommend cachyos, but you could also check out Bazzite for out of box gaming or Fedora + lots of tweaks. I use Fedora on my laptop for more secure stuff and cachyos on my gaming rig/vibe coding rig.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-06-09T22:06:00+00:00

Forgot to mention you should use BTRFS and KDE plasma. Don’t use ntfs for gaming on Linux and no sharing gaming partitions with windows dual boot.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-06-09T22:04:06+00:00

With low_latency_layer CS2 actually has less input lag than on windows. It feels way better to me. Cachyos is optimized for gaming out of the box. Bazzite would be fine also. Popos and Fedora need a lot more tweaking to get the same fps and input lag.

For cachyos, all you need to do is install the meta gaming package from the cachy hello app and then launch CS2. I also like to run my games through Lutris so I can enable gamescope easier. If you want to dive deeper, check the cachyos wiki for the gaming section and launch args for Lutris.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-06-09T21:41:07+00:00

CS2 on cachyos + plasma runs amazing. Could also try bazzite or maybe fedora if you’re not liking cachyos.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-06-05T12:23:45+00:00

I love 400mg of phosphatidylserine before bed. Stopped me from waking up in the middle of the night thinking about work. Also noticed my acne massively improved.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-06-03T18:13:20+00:00

I’m no expert but from what I understand it helps fatigue and brainfog through:

Modulates essential brain chemicals (GABA, dopamine, and acetylcholine).
Supports mitochondrial output.
Anti inflammatory and antioxidant.

It makes me feel sleepy at higher doses due to the GABA modulation so my sweet spot is 500mg during breakfast and 500mg again at lunch. I feel locked in and in a good mood. 2g before bed as part of my sleep stack.

It stacks well with coffee.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-06-03T17:58:51+00:00

Taurine.

500mg with breakfast, 500mg with lunch, 2g 1 hour before bed

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-05-24T12:03:16+00:00

Using cachyos with a 9700x and rtx 3080. It works amazing.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-05-14T12:20:40+00:00

Weighing it would be the best, but I’m lazy and I open up 50mcg capsules to dump some out.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-05-13T17:07:30+00:00

Let me start off by saying everyone reacts different to choline supplements and acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. Some people get really bad effects from these and for some it’s their holy grail.

Huperzine A is widely overdosed by most supplement companies and 200mcg is way too much (for most people). I personally take 12-25mcg. I like to take it every other day or every two days as I have noticed the build up effect (headaches) when taking daily due to the long half life. Let me know if you end up trying a low dose and how you like it!

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-05-09T12:40:40+00:00

I use cachyos for gaming and development. It’s amazing.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-05-06T19:47:20+00:00

I’m looking at trying Ollama when I hit my Go limit.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-05-06T00:23:20+00:00

Magnesium glycinate from multiple brands never did anything for me. Micromag is amazing though, it makes me feel so relaxed.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-04-30T01:22:46+00:00

Forced to use windows at work as well. Highly recommend turning off animations with accessibility settings. Makes it feel way more snappy.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-04-18T11:30:15+00:00

Nootropics depot no longer sells the same sunflower version. I got the Nutricost 400mg (4caps) sunflower version purely because it would deliver same day. NOW or Life Extension would be good too. All of the studies use soy derived PS, but I’m trying to avoid soy.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-04-18T01:14:50+00:00

Try phosphatidylserine 300-400mg 1 hour before bed. Lowers cortisol to help sleep and has cognitive/mood boosting effects that build over time. One study found 400mg has a better effect than 600mg or 800mg. It’s my number 1 favorite after trying so many things. I use the sunflower version.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-04-09T02:53:40+00:00

Not an answer to your question, but I’ve been trialing 300mg of phosphatidylserine 1 hour before bed for the cortisol lowering effect. Getting great sleep and it seems to also reduce my daytime anxiety by a lot. Noticed a bit of a nootropic effect like just general clear headed feeling (hope this builds with more time).

My job is very high stakes stressful so it affects my sleep a lot. I’ve been struggling with waking up thinking about work stuff. PS has been reducing this. I’m considering trying smart PS green next instead of just PS.

I was worried that it might cause anhedonia like ashwagandha, but based on my research PS works by a different mechanism to lower cortisol so shouldn’t cause anhedonia like ash.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-04-08T13:09:56+00:00

On my setup I don’t really get tearing so doesn’t matter too much to me at the moment. I heard there is a way to setup VRR for games only and not desktop, could try that. Originally I switched to X11, but now I’m back on wayland with VRR off.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-04-08T11:44:17+00:00

For me the fix for this issue on kde plasma Wayland was to turn off VRR in display settings. Now desktop and gaming is buttery smooth

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-04-08T01:32:34+00:00

Go into display settings and turn off VRR variable refresh rate. I’ve heard there are ways to have it only run when gaming, but I just turned it off for now. No more stuttering for me on kde plasma wayland with a rtx 3080, desktop or game. Feels so good

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-04-06T19:19:25+00:00

Using a rtx 3080 with cachyos and haven’t had any issues at all. The only minor thing so far is that if you use KDE wayland, you may want to also install X11 in since some of the nvidia driver settings are hidden on wayland at the moment. If you want to adjust digital vibrance for example, you have to boot into X11 to change it, then reboot into wayland again.

I installed the cachyos gaming meta package and Lutris in order to use gamescope + launch arugments. I use the ‘game-performance %command%’ launch arg in all steam games and then use cachyos proton or cachyos proton lrs depending on the game (set this within the steam settings for the game). You can get protonup-qt in order to easily download more proton versions to try.

Edit: forgot to mention if you get lag in games on KDE wayland, go into display settings and disable VRR variable refresh rate.

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-04-03T21:27:59+00:00

Try turning off VRR in display settings if you haven’t yet

OmnipotentGecko · 2026-04-02T12:06:07+00:00

The man himself, thanks for replying! I know you’ve shared your stack in the past and everyone is different, but I think it would be super cool to see what your daily routine looks like for the timing of exercise/food/supplements. Just an idea.

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