I'm A Neurologist. For Years My Parkinson's Patients Asked Me About The Brain Fog And The Fatigue. I Told Them It Was Part Of The Disease. I Was Only Half Right.
By Dr. Sarah Chen, MD | Integrative Neurology | June 8, 2026
I want to tell you something I didn't learn in medical school.
I've been treating Parkinson's patients for fourteen years. I know what the medication does. I know what it doesn't do. And for most of my career I had no answer for the thing my patients complained about most.
Not the tremors. The fog. The fatigue. The feeling of being completely disconnected from their own thoughts.
"Nearly all day every day."
That's what a patient said to me three years ago. She was 71. Former schoolteacher. The kind of woman who had an opinion about everything and wasn't shy about sharing it.
By the time she sat across from me she had stopped finishing her sentences. Not because she didn't have thoughts. Because somewhere between the thought and the words something was going wrong and she couldn't explain it and neither could I.
She asked me what to do about it. I gave her the answer I'd been trained to give.
"It's part of the disease. We can't do anything about it."
She nodded. She didn't argue. She was too tired to argue.
I've thought about that appointment more times than I can count. And I've spent the last two years wishing I could take that answer back.
What Nobody Was Telling My Patients
Let me explain what's actually happening in the brain with Parkinson's. Not the version from a textbook. The version that finally made sense to me when I started asking different questions.
Everyone knows the basic story. Parkinson's damages the brain cells that produce dopamine. The medication replaces that dopamine. That's why the tremors get better. That part is true and it works.
But here's what that explanation leaves out.
Those same brain cells, the ones Parkinson's is attacking, need enormous amounts of energy just to keep doing their job every single day. More energy than almost any other cells in the entire body.
And Parkinson's doesn't just damage their ability to make dopamine. It breaks their ability to produce energy first.
So here's what's actually happening in a Parkinson's patient whose medication is working perfectly:
The dopamine is being replaced.
The tremors are managed. The neurologist is satisfied with the numbers.
But the brain is still starving for fuel. Every single day. Getting worse as the disease progresses. And there is nothing, not one thing, in standard Parkinson's treatment designed to address that.
*Image depicting what many parkinsons patients feel daily
This is why the fog rolls in. This is why the words disappear mid sentence. This is why patients describe feeling disconnected from their own thoughts.
This is why someone who was sharp and present starts going quiet and withdrawing.
It is not always the disease suddenly getting worse. Sometimes, often, it is simply the brain running out of fuel with nothing there to restore it.
More than half of all Parkinson's patients report that fatigue and brain fog, not tremors, not stiffness, are their single most disabling daily symptoms. I have colleagues who have been practicing neurology for thirty years who have no protocol for it beyond telling patients they don't have a treatment for it.
I was one of them. For fourteen years.
The Moment I Started Asking Different Questions
It wasn't a dramatic revelation. It was a patient.
She came in for a routine appointment. Her medication was working. By every clinical measure she was stable. But she sat across from me and said something I couldn't shake afterward.
"I can't drag the word back that I just used in the same sentence. And nobody can tell me why."
She wasn't angry. She was exhausted. The kind of exhausted that goes beyond tired. The kind that comes from fighting something invisible every single day and being told by every doctor you see that there's nothing to be done about it.
I sat in my car in the parking garage for a few minutes after that appointment.
I couldn't stop thinking about the way she said it. Not angry. Not dramatic. Just worn down in a way that fourteen years of medical training had not prepared me to answer.
I went home that night and did something I hadn't done since residency. I pulled up every paper I could find outside my normal reading. Not the standard neurology literature I already knew. Everything. Including research I would have dismissed earlier in my career as outside my lane.
I told myself I was just being thorough. But honestly I just couldn't sit with that appointment anymore and do nothing.
What I found changed how I practice.
The energy failure in Parkinson's brain cells is not a side effect of the disease. It is one of the earliest and most consistent features of it. The brain cells most affected by Parkinson's are also the most energy hungry cells in the body. When their ability to produce energy breaks down, which happens before almost anything else, everything downstream suffers.
The medication doesn't touch this. It was never designed to.
So I started looking for something that did.
Why I Almost Dismissed This Entirely
I want to be honest about my bias here.
I spent fourteen years as a conventionally trained neurologist. I have seen patients spend thousands of dollars on supplements that did nothing. I have watched desperate families get exploited by products making claims that had no basis in real science.
My instinct when I started researching natural compounds for brain energy was deep skepticism. I expected to find marketing dressed up as research.
In most cases that's exactly what I found.
But there was one compound that kept appearing in the literature in a way I couldn't dismiss. Not in supplement catalogs. In peer reviewed research. In studies on brain energy failure and neurological disease.
Shilajit. Specifically its active compound, fulvic acid.
I want to explain why this is different from everything else I looked at. Because the difference is specific and it matters.
The brain has a protective wall called the blood brain barrier. Its job is to filter out almost everything in the bloodstream before it reaches the brain. This is why most medications have to be specifically engineered to cross it.
And it's why most supplements, even ones with legitimate ingredients, never actually reach the brain at all. They get filtered out before they get in. You take them. They circulate. They do nothing for the brain specifically because they can't get there.
Fulvic acid is one of the very few natural compounds that actually crosses that barrier and gets directly into the brain.
Once inside it goes to work specifically on the energy problem. On the cells that are running out of fuel. Research has shown it can significantly reduce the kind of energy loss happening in the brain cells of Parkinson's patients.
This is not a general wellness supplement. This is not an energy drink. This is a compound with a specific documented mechanism that addresses the precise gap that standard Parkinson's treatment leaves open.
When I understood that I stopped being skeptical. I started being curious.
What I Did Before Recommending Anything
I want to be honest about what happened next because I think it matters.
I didn't read one study and immediately start telling patients to take something. That's not how I practice. But I also didn't file it away and move on. I kept thinking about the schoolteacher. About the parking garage. About fourteen years of the same answer.
So I spent three months going deeper into the research. Then another two months evaluating every shilajit product I could find.
Most failed before I got past the label.
Dosage too low to have any real effect. No third party testing, just claims with nothing behind them. And product after product that buried the active compound under so many other ingredients it couldn't possibly do what the research suggested.
But the thing that kept stopping me was something most people wouldn't think about.
Many of my Parkinson's patients have trouble swallowing. It's common and nobody talks about it enough. The idea of handing them another capsule to add to the eight or ten they already take every morning, that's not a real solution. A supplement that sits in a cabinet because a patient can't face another pill does nothing for anyone.
I needed clinical grade fulvic acid at a dose that actually mattered. Third party verified. And in a format that patients would genuinely take every single day without dreading it.
Most of what I found went straight in the trash.
Xara was the one that didn't. Clinical grade fulvic acid combined with nine other compounds, CoQ10, Ashwagandha, NAD+, B12 among them, all working on the same energy problem from different angles. Independently tested. And a gummy that my patients actually look forward to.
That last part sounds small. It isn't. I have watched patients stay consistent with this for months who couldn't stay consistent with capsules for weeks. Consistency is what produces results. Format is what produces consistency. I've learned that the hard way with enough patients to know it's true.
What I Have Observed
I want to be careful here because I am a doctor and I don't make promises.
What I can tell you is what I've seen consistently across the patients I've recommended this to over the past eight months. Not one or two. Enough that I felt I had no good reason to stay quiet about it.
The fog doesn't disappear overnight. The disease is still there. The medication still does what it does. None of that changes.
But within three to four weeks something starts to shift.
About five weeks in one patient came for a follow up. Sixty eight years old. Retired engineer.
He'd stopped driving the year before because he didn't trust his own thinking anymore.
He sat down and told me he'd read two chapters of a book the night before. First time in over a year.
He said it like he was reporting the weather. Very matter of fact. But his hands were shaking slightly when he said it and it wasn't from the Parkinson's.
A few weeks later I got a call from a daughter. Her father was my patient not her. She wanted to know if I'd changed anything in his treatment because he'd started finishing his sentences again at dinner and she didn't know what to make of it.
I told her I hadn't changed his medication.
She went quiet for a second. Then she said, and I wrote this down because I wanted to remember it,
"I feel like I got a few more hours of my dad back every day. I didn't think that was possible anymore."
I've been practicing neurology for fourteen years. That phone call is the reason I'm writing this.
Why I'm Writing This At All
I want to be honest about something.
Recommending something outside standard treatment protocol is not a comfortable position for a neurologist.
I have colleagues who would raise an eyebrow at this article. I understand that. I've raised my own eyebrow at articles like this before.
But I keep thinking about the schoolteacher. The way she nodded when I told her we couldn't do anything about it. The way she didn't argue because she was too tired to argue.
And I keep thinking about how many people are sitting in waiting rooms right now hearing that same answer. Walking out with nothing. Going home to families who are watching them disappear and don't know what to do about it either.
I'm not telling you to replace your doctor. I'm not telling you to change your medication. The medication does what it was designed to do and it matters.
What I'm telling you is that there is a gap. A real documented gap that affects the majority of Parkinson's patients every single day. The fog. The fatigue. The words that disappear mid sentence. The feeling of being present in body but somewhere else entirely in mind.
That gap has a biological explanation. And there is something specifically designed to address it that I am now confident enough in to put my name behind publicly.
I wish I had found it three years ago. Before that appointment. Before I told a tired schoolteacher there was nothing we could do.
I can't give her that time back.
But maybe this is worth something to someone else.
See If This Could Work For Your Loved One →
What To Know If You Want To Try It
Xara is not available in stores. It's only available through their official website.
They offer a 60 day money back guarantee. If you or your family member doesn't notice a meaningful difference you get every dollar back.
For a neurologist recommending something outside standard treatment that guarantee matters to me. It means the company stands behind what they're selling.
They do run out of stock. I've had patients tell me they waited six to eight weeks for a restock and noticed the difference during that gap. If you're considering it don't wait.
I recommend starting with the three month supply.
The first two to three weeks are the adjustment period. Most of what I've observed in my patients starts showing up between weeks three and eight.
They're offering the third month free right now so the timing is good.
Give it the full three months before you decide.
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Comments
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Dr. Sarah Chen (author)
I've received more messages about this piece than anything I've written publicly. The one I keep thinking about is from a woman who said her mother described the fog as feeling like her brain went on vacation and left her stranded. I used that line because I've heard versions of it more times than I can count. You are not imagining it. And you are not alone in not having been given an answer for it.
Like · Reply · 👍47 · 6 min
Margaret B.
The part about the blood brain barrier is what got me. I never understood why the supplements I tried before did nothing. Now it makes sense. Most of them were probably never reaching the brain at all. Just ordered the two month supply for my husband. He was diagnosed four years ago and the fog has been the worst part by far. The tremors we can manage. The fog is what's taking him from us.
Like · Reply · 👍38 · 52 min
Diane R.
Margaret this was exactly my experience too. Four different supplements over two years. Nothing. Understanding the blood brain barrier piece made me realize why. It's not that natural things can't work. It's that most of them never get where they need to go. Three weeks in with my mom and something is shifting. Not dramatic. But real.
Like · Reply · 👍24 · 41 min
Margaret B.
Diane that's exactly what I needed to hear. Not a miracle claim. Just something real. Thank you.
Like · Reply · 👍19 · 33 min
Robert K.
I'll be honest. I came into this skeptical. My dad has Parkinson's and we've been down the supplement road before. What made me keep reading was that she admitted she was one of the neurologists giving the wrong answer. That's not something you say if you're trying to sell something. That's something you say if you're trying to be honest. Ordered tonight.
Like · Reply · 👍51 · 1 hr
James F.
Same. The credential didn't convince me. The honesty did. A doctor admitting they were wrong for fourteen years is either very stupid or very trustworthy. She doesn't seem stupid.
Like · Reply · 👍33 · 48 min
Robert K.
Exactly. Will report back in a month.
Like · Reply · 👍14 · 39 min
Patricia L.
My mother has been describing her brain fog for three years as a fuzzy head she can't clear. Every doctor she's seen has told her it's just the disease. Reading this I felt two things at the same time. Relief that someone is finally explaining it. And anger that it took this long. Sharing this with my sisters tonight.
Like · Reply · 👍44 · 2 hr
Susan M.
Patricia the fuzzy head description stopped me too. My dad says almost exactly that. And yes, every doctor, same answer. Part of the disease. I stopped pushing because I didn't know what else to ask for. Now I do.
Like · Reply · 👍27 · 1 hr
Patricia L.
Susan I hope it helps your dad. Going to give it the full two months like she said before deciding anything.
Like · Reply · 👍16 · 52 min
Thomas W.
Quick question for anyone who's tried it, my father is on Carbidopa Levodopa currently. Any concerns taking this alongside his existing medication?
Like · Reply · 👍21 · 2 hr
Carol H.
Thomas we had the same concern for my husband. Ran it by his neurologist before starting. She had no issue with it since it's a natural supplement not a pharmaceutical. She actually said the energy mechanism made sense to her clinically. That was enough for us. Six weeks in now.
Like · Reply · 👍29 · 1 hr
Linda P.
Same experience here. His movement disorder specialist actually knew about fulvic acid research. Said there was no interaction concern with his current medication. We were surprised she'd heard of it honestly.
Like · Reply · 👍18 · 48 min
Thomas W.
Both really helpful. Going to bring it up at his appointment next week. Thank you.
Like · Reply · 👍11 · 41 min
Anne Marie D.
I am a retired RN. I worked in neurology for twenty two years. The blood brain barrier explanation in this article is accurate and it is genuinely the reason most supplements fail for neurological conditions. I was skeptical of the product recommendation but the mechanism she describes is real and documented. I ordered it for my husband last month after doing my own research. Four weeks in. The fog is not gone. But there are more clear hours in the day than there were before. For anyone living with this disease that is not a small thing.
Like · Reply · 👍63 · 3 hr
Beverly T.
Anne Marie thank you for this. Coming from someone with your background it means a great deal. More clear hours in the day is all any of us are hoping for.
Like · Reply · 👍31 · 2 hr
Anne Marie D.
Beverly that's the honest truth of it. We're not looking for miracles. We're looking for better days. Some days are still very hard. But some days are better than they were. That matters.
Like · Reply · 👍41 · 1 hr
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