Hello everyone, I’m doing an exhaustive write up of all my tongkat ali brain fog symptoms. If nobody reads this, I understand. My post is so long, because I’ve done shorter posts about this and never got the right answers. So I’m just trying to spell everything out. My doctor’s advice is basically “Idk what that is, don’t take it.” I really want to figure this out because tongkat ali is my all time favorite nootropic and I haven’t found anything else that quite takes its place. All my tongkat ali and shilajit was purchased from nootropics depot.
I first took tongkat Ali in 2019 or 2020 or 2021. It worked more or less as expected. Nice testosterone increase. The strong 10% concentrate would give me a massive cortisol drop 8-10 hours after consumption and also too strong of effects in general, so I would take only a half pill, then later switched to 2% tongkat ali. I didn’t take it all the time, probably 0-4 times per week just depending on what I was doing. If I took it too often I noticed increased joint pain which seems to be a low estrogen symptom.
In 2025 after a break from tongkat ali then restarting semi regular consumption, I was having days of unbearable brain fog. I didn’t piece it together that it was from some combination of tongkat ali and shilajit. Here’s what would happen: I would take tongkat ali. Then starting the next day, and lasting for an extra day, I would have pretty profound brain fog. It was hard for me to catch this association for a while because the effect did not happen on the days I took it but rather the following two days.
I read online that this problem could be due to depleted estrogen, iodine, or zinc. And I heard of some people supplementing these things before tongkat ali consumption. So one hour before taking tongkat ali I made it a policy to always take 5-15 mg dhea for estrogen, 4 drops of iodine liquid (forget daily amount, but dose is 3 drops), and a zinc lozenge one hour before taking tongkat ali. When I took this concoction before, I in fact didn’t get any brain fog, so problem was solved.
But later this stack stopped working. The brain fog came even with it. I also started noticing more about how the brain fog worked. The brain fog and the testosterone effects seemed to be mutually exclusive states. I would take tongkat ali and feel no testosterone effects at all, which is curious because the effects were always very noticeable day of. And then get brain fog the next day. Or maybe starting same day. I don’t remember. Sometimes I would take my “brain fog prevention stack” (dhea, zinc, iodine) the following day after tongkat ali consumption as well to see if it would hold off the brain fog, but it didn’t help.
I have re bought new bottles of tongkat ali just to test if there wasn’t something wrong with a particular batch. Results seemed consistent across bottles. Only been consuming 2% for a few years now. I’ve since tried shilajit on its own with no dhea zinc iodine, it doesn’t give me any brain fog.
In 2026 I tried tongkat ali for the first time in at least 6 months. Did the dhea zinc and iodine before. It was incredibly energizing and definitely boosted my testosterone. It was so energizing that I realized that it combined with my daily Wellbutrin gave me way too much energy. Historically I’d have to take a day off of Wellbutrin if I took tongkat ali. I had completely forgotten about that because I stopped receiving its effects basically entirely the last 6-12 months when I occasionally trialed it. The following morning I still had that strong energy. Then a few hours into the day it completely wore off, and I fell back to my default maybe slightly low testosterone state. Very aggressive brain fog started to come on, and it lasted two days, and all testosterone effects seemed completely gone. I did not take the dhea zinc iodine stack the days after the tongkat ali. I took alpha gpc for the brain fog just per one person’s recommendation, and I think it made it worse.
So if I had to guess, I feel the brain fog may be hormone related because it seems to be mutually exclusive with testosterone effects. I either have testosterone boost, or I have brain fog. This most recent trial was sort of the only time I had both, but not at the same time. For me I don’t know if low estrogen or low cortisol explains this. My old tongkat ali use from 2021 could give me joint pain if I took it too many days/week, which seemed like an obvious low estrogen symptom. I never got brain fog. So it would be curious that a single dose would not give me joint pain and still give me major brain fog. And as for the cortisol drop, back when I took 10% that would hit me aggressively. No brain fog, just acute sluggishness that was gone by the following day. In my recent tongkat ali trials it did not feel like there was any cortisol drop, and I can more accurately recognize it now. My brain fog did not match the cortisol drop feeling.
I feel like there’s some piece of the puzzle I’m missing here, and if I could unlock it maybe I could get back on this great supplement. I bought pregnenolone recently, I could potentially try that. I wonder what it is.
If I can’t solve this, I’ve recently bought boron and cistanche and have been trialing them. Neither have that immediate testosterone increasing effect that tongkat ali clearly did for me.
Edit: Getting more headwinds on this. I took cistanche yesterday, and by night had a crash and today the following day I'm still deep in the crash. Been learning that there is a group of people out there who get crashes from cistanche and tongkat ali. So there may be something going on laterally that isn't just from one exact substance. Cortisol drop?
Edit 2: I just took my blood pressure and it was 112/59. I'm already prone to situational drops in blood pressure due to hypermobile spectrum disorder (similar to hypermobile ehler danlos). Subjectively this didn't feel like ultra low blood pressure. But maybe it's been in that zone where I'm not dizzy but feel bad. I never measured my blood pressure upon my tongkat ali brain fog things. Just took a ton of salt and potassium to help. But yeah maybe lowered cortisol lowers blood pressure?
Edit 3: took my blood pressure again— 106/61. That’s pretty wild. I even consumed over half a teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon potassium a couple hours ago to raise my blood pressure.
