Ep. 65 The Food-Mood Link: Why Teens Feel Up, Down, and All Around

In this episode, I’m talking about something we don’t talk about enough—how food affects your mood. Teenagers often struggle with stress, low energy, and feeling down. But did you know that what you eat can play a big role in how your brain functions?

I break down 5 powerful ways that food affects mental health, share key nutrients like folate, magnesium, and omega-3s that help your brain, and explain what foods to eat more of (and what to skip). Plus, I review a research study published in the American Journal of Public Health that shows just how connected food and mental health really are.

O'Neil A, Quirk SE, Housden S, Brennan SL, Williams LJ, Pasco JA, Berk M, Jacka FN. Relationship between diet and mental health in children and adolescents: a systematic review. Am J Public Health. 2014 Oct;104(10):e31-42. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2014.302110. PMID: 25208008; PMCID: PMC4167107.

This is a must-listen if you want to feel better, think more clearly, and understand how your food can fuel your brain!

I’m Dr. Jenny Gourgari—pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine and a health coach.
After helping hundreds of teens struggling with their weight and hormones, I’ve created a whole new path by doing what most programs miss: balance puberty hormones naturally and create habits that actually last.

Here's what makes this different:
✅ No dieting. No calorie counting. No shame.
✅ No more food fights between parents and teens.
✅ No weight obsession—just healthy habits
✅ Real science behind how puberty hormones affect weight
✅ A safe, supportive approach that prevents eating disorders

Because when teens understand their hormones and get the right support, they don’t just lose weight—they gain strength, energy, confidence, and freedom!

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Transcript

Welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle and Weight Loss For Teens podcast. This is Dr. Jenny Gourgari, and on today's episode, I wanted to present a topic that I don't think we talk about enough, and that is what is the relationship between what we are eating on our plate and how that affects our mood and in particular, I wanted more to focus on the association of what teenagers eat, and how that affects their mental health. 

We know that teenagers that have unhealthy weight, tend to be more stressed and more depressed, they tend to not like their body and all those things. However, there is also an inverse relationship, like what we are eating, how that affects the brain functions, and I'm gonna go into more details and I will give you five main reasons that food selection can affect the brain and the mental health.

One of the research articles " Relationship Between Diet and Mental Health in Children and Adolescents"  was published in American Journal of Public Health in 2014, and I'm gonna give you the main key points of this study. 

So these researchers put multiple studies together and they're trying to find out whether there is a relationship between what teenagers eat and whether unhealthy food is associated with mental health.

And what they found is that yes, indeed there is a direct relationship between unhealthy food and poor mental health outcomes . What are the main mechanism and how is that possible and how does food affect our mood?

One main reason is that constant dieting can make people overall very tired, very anxious, very grumpy. They feel restricted, and that turns into having a lot of stress and  they're very mad, they're upset and that stress can directly affect the brain function, right? So if you are in a constant dieting mode, your body shuts down and also your mind can shut down because oftentimes if there is not enough sugar, which is the main ingredient, the main fuel that your brain is using. I dont know if you have noticed, if you have not eaten for a long time, how you can be upset. You don't know what's going wrong. Or your friends can be grumpy and you're like, Hey, have you eaten anything? That is actually true.

If you don't eat anything from prolonged period and your body is not adjusted to burning fat which means like there are some people that do, let's say intermittent fasting and their body is fat adjusted then they break down fat., but people that are not fat burners and they go for prolonged periods of diet they don't eat anything they can have poor concentration, which, particularly teenagers that can affect their performance at school. So number one is extreme dieting that can make you upset and also prolonged periods of fasting that can drop your blood sugar.

Another mechanism by which the food and the dieting in general can affect your mood is what I mentioned about the stress and the cortisol levels when somebody is stressed for whatever reason, Dieting and restrictive options can make you feel stressed. That increases your cortisol level, high cortisol levels can stop your body from burning fat. in terms of your mental health, higher cortisol levels have been associated with depressed mood and mood swings. that's why it is very important when we Talk about a healthy lifestyle we talk about regulation of hormones, particularly hormones that take into puberty, we already know there is high stress level because of going through all those changes in puberty, all these things that happen in your body, and that makes you uncomfortable, that creates a certain level of cortisol. On top of that, you add extreme dieting that increases your cortisol level and that can make your brain feel more depressed.

A third mechanism by which poor choices can affect your mental health is by directly affecting hormonal imbalances between the brain and the blood. in simple words, there's a substance that is produced in the brain. called BDNF. we know that low levels of BDNF have been associated with depression, an anxiety with Alzheimer's disease, with poor memory and we know that there is an association between high sugar levels and low BDNF factors. So in other words, when you have too much high spikes of sugar, that could potentially affect your brain directly by affecting all those chemicals and the way the chemicals interact in your brain to restore a good memory and a good concentration. 

Number four, anytime you eat high fat food, and actually not just high fat food, even like high carb food or any unhealthy food that you know it's gonna have  this immediate sensation of you feel better. That's because there is an increase in the dopamine. So dopamine is this hormone that, makes you feel immediately better, and it's also the hormone that can lead to food addiction. And therefore, because you feel this rapid surge of the dopamine, because you eat this high fat, high carb food that makes you wanna eat more of this food. Why? Because you have this high dopamine secretion in response to high fat and high sugary food. So you are fighting against your urges, like the more you have high fat, high sugar food the more your body wants to create, the more your body wants to have more of that. 

And finally, another reason that this can happen is because  you are having this big up and down alterations in the sugar when you're having high carb foods. That can give you mood swings so what happens when you eat something that is very high carb, processed carbs, you get a huge spike of insulin that brings your sugar down, but it may drop it too much to a level that is relative hypoglycemia or relatively lower blood sugar than what it was before. So your sugars up and down, Alterations of sugar because you are getting huge alterations on the insulin and the sugar and the cycle continues. That can give you also mood swings. 

So now that you have a basic understanding of how food can affect your brain and how food can make you more depressed, can make you less concentration, can make you feel more moody have less memory the question is, can we do something about it Improve that.  Definitely yes. Instead of going for those high carb processed foods, you can go for natural food that is not processed. You can go for whole grains. You can go for healthy fats that is not junk food. You can go for food that is healthy,  that can improve not only your metabolism, but it can improve also how your brain functions so you feel better mentally.

And if you feel better mentally, you are also more likely to exercise. You are more likely to sleep better, and those are also additional benefits you get because both exercise and good sleep also help boost up your metabolism. So next time you put your foot on the plate, you look at the options and decide whether that can affect your mood or not.

And don't forget also that extreme diets can also affect your brain function by not getting enough of the nutrients and the vitamins and the minerals that are in healthy foods. For example, we know that your body needs enough magnesium, zinc, folate, and Omega-3 fatty acids to feel better, right?

So if you are not having food that is high in those minerals, then your body is not gonna get those minerals and that may affect your parental development. For example food that is high in folate includes spinach, avocado, lentils, black beans, oranges, asparagus.

And so if you are getting that, then you get enough f or which is also known as vitamin b9 what are foods that are in zinc? That includes chickpeas, cashews, oysters, Greek, yogurt. So if you are not having those, then you're depriving your brain from this essential function. What are foods that are high in magnesium, almonds, bananas, spinach, dark chocolate, peanut butter, black beans, whole grains. If you're not getting enough of those foods, then you're likely to be magnesium deficient. And what are some foods that are high in Omega-3 fatty acids that are absolutely necessary for great brain cell function and for reducing inflammation and also reduce your bad cholesterol. Some tuna, chi acids, flax seeds, walnuts are also foods that are high in Omega-3 fatty acids.

So choose what you eat carefully so that your brain functions better and subsequently you can also feel better. That's all I had for you for today. I'll talk to you next week.