The signs that your brain is eating itself include cognitive decline and memory issues, mood and behavioral changes, sleep disturbances and physical changes like uncontrollable hunger and extreme daytime fatigue.
Your brain eating itself is known as phagocytosis or autophagy, which is a biological process in which specialized brain cells like astrocytes and microglia clear out damaged material as well as old connections and cellular waste.
Your brain clearing out damaged material and old connections and cellular waste is a normal and healthy nightly cleanup routine.
But extreme starvation, severe sleep deprivation or even neurodegenerative conditions can cause these cells to go into overdrive and then mistakenly destroy the healthy brain tissue.
If your brain's maintenance systems malfunction or destroy the healthy cells as a result of external stressors, you often primarily experience emotional, behavioral or cognitive warning signs.
The cognitive decline and memory issues that can occur during the brain eating itself or phagocytosis or autophagy include.
Severe forgetfulness, like forgetting names, forgetting appointments or forgetting what you did earlier in the day.
Brain fog, such as feeling mentally sluggish and struggling to process new information.
Disorientation, where you experience sudden confusion or even spatial dizziness.
And executive dysfunction, where you struggle to plan tasks, organize your thoughts or maintain basic attention.
The mood and behavioral changes that can occur when your brain is eating itself or phagocytosis and autophagy include.
Uncontrollable hunger, as when the body is starved, hunger inducing neurons literally eat parts of themselves through autophagy to trigger intense, frantic signals for food.
Extreme daytime fatigue, where you feel completely exhausted, even though you get what you thought was enough rest.
And chronic insomnia, where you have an inability to sleep, which also ironically accelerates the overactive self eating process.
Emergency symptoms of the brain eating itself and autophagy and phagocytosis include having rapid, unexplained muscle weakness or vision loss, sudden loss of consciousness or severe delirium.
Visual or auditory hallucinations and psychosis and sudden seizures or involuntary muscle twitching.