The surprisingly simple thing that can shape how we feel all day

What we're often missing when our mood shifts for no clear reason

Have you ever had your mood shift for no clear reason you could point to?

Maybe you were perfectly fine just a minute ago, and then somehow everything started feeling like too much.

Perhaps you got a bit short with someone over something small, or felt a wave of anxiety with nothing obvious behind it.

And maybe you went looking for a reason afterward.

Perhaps you even wondered what was actually bothering you, or whether something deeper was going on that you hadn’t dealt with.

But sometimes there doesn’t really seem to be anything there to find.

And then maybe it happens again a few days later, in more or less the same way.

So perhaps you start putting it down to stress, hormones, or just being someone who sometimes struggles for no particular reason.

Except none of those explanations ever quite seem to fit either, do they?

If you have ever experienced anything like this, it might be worth wondering:

What if these moments have less to do with how we’re feeling emotionally than we tend to assume? And what if some of what we experience as an emotional state is actually starting somewhere far more physical?

Photo by Alejandro Piñero Amerio on Unsplash

What might be happening underneath

Our brains run on glucose, and they tend to be fairly demanding about it.

So when the amount available in our blood drops below what our body is comfortable with, it doesn’t necessarily treat that as just a minor inconvenience.

Rather, it often seems to treat it as something worth reacting to.

Which usually means adrenaline and cortisol get released to help bring those levels back up again.

And those are more or less the same stress hormones that show up when something genuinely threatening is happening.

So our body can sometimes end up in a stress response simply from a drop in blood sugar, even when nothing stressful has actually occurred.

Meanwhile, we’re often just sitting there wondering why we suddenly feel so on edge.

Why this tends to get missed

The tricky part is that low blood sugar doesn’t always present itself as hunger.

Or at least, not always in a way that’s easy to recognize.

Instead, it often shows up as irritability, anxiety, or a strange sense of urgency about nothing in particular.

Sometimes it might show itself through trouble concentrating, feeling a bit shaky, or a headache that turns up during the day.

And because none of that really presents itself as a food problem, most of us often go looking for psychological explanations instead.

We might assume we’re stressed about work, that our anxiety is flaring up again, or that we’re simply someone who gets snappy in the afternoons.

Which can carry on for years without anyone connecting it to what we did or didn’t eat earlier that day.

Why the ups and downs matter

There’s another part to this, which is that the drops often follow the rises.

When we eat something that sends our blood sugar up fairly quickly, our body tends to respond by bringing it back down again.

But that correction can overshoot a little, so we sometimes end up lower than where we started.

Which might be why a sugary breakfast can leave us hungry and irritable before lunchtime, while something with a bit more substance to it often seems to carry us through until lunch without much drama.

So it’s probably less about avoiding sugar altogether, and more about how sharp those rises and falls are across the day.

Because every one of those drops can be another small stress response our body has to deal with.

And when that happens several times a day, most days, it can add up to a system that struggles to regulate properly.

Why this hits harder when we’re already depleted

If our nervous system is already running low, these blood sugar swings do tend to land harder.

Probably because there are fewer resources and less capacity there to absorb them.

Which is why a blood sugar dip on a good day might just leave us a bit grumpy.

But that same dip during a difficult stretch can feel much more like genuine anxiety, or like things are genuinely falling apart.

Which is part of why eating regularly seems to matter so much during hard periods, even though it’s often one of the first things to slip when we’re overwhelmed.

After all, we often skip meals because we’re busy, or because we haven’t got the energy to make anything.

And that’s understandable, really.

Because cooking (and eating) takes time and energy we might not have much of, and thinking about food is often the last thing we’ve got room for when we’re already stretched thin.

So we often end up eating less exactly when our bodies could probably do with more.

Which can be a difficult loop to be caught in.

But it does tend to help if we can have some awareness of it and catch it a bit earlier, before things have got too far along.

What blood sugar balance tells our bodies

There’s another side to all of this, which is what happens when our blood sugar stays fairly balanced.

After all, our bodies are always checking whether we’re safe.

It goes on underneath everything else, without us ever really noticing it.

And food is one of the things they’re checking.

Because having enough energy available is one of the oldest signals of safety there is.

So when our blood sugar stays fairly stable, and there’s enough coming in through the day, that’s one thing our bodies don’t have to worry about.

But when the levels keep dropping away, they tend to read it as a sign that something’s wrong.

And they respond the way they respond to most things that feel unsafe, which is by initiating a stress response.

Which is probably a big part of why blood sugar affects how regulated we feel.

Because the safer our bodies feel, the more easily they let go.

And the day tends to feel a lot more manageable when we’re not carrying that low hum of alarm underneath it.

So how can we begin giving our bodies these signals of safety?

A gentle place to start

Fortunately, none of this needs to become another thing to keep on top of.

You could simply start by noticing whether your harder moments tend to cluster around particular times of day.

Maybe late morning, mid-afternoon, or that moment before dinner when small things seem to get to us more than they usually would.

And if you do spot something like a pattern, you might try eating a little earlier than usual, rather than waiting until it’s already happening.

Or you could simply try noticing in the moment instead.

So the next time your mood shifts for no clear reason, maybe consider whether it might have something to do with what you’ve eaten (or haven’t eaten).

Perhaps it’s been a while since your last meal, or maybe there wasn’t much to it.

And if that seems like it could be part of it, you might just try having something to eat and see whether things ease off a bit or not.

After all, it’s a pretty small thing to try, and it tends to fairly quickly give you an idea of whether blood sugar was involved or not.

And once you have that awareness, it can hopefully make it a bit easier to know what your body’s actually asking for.

Some people also find it helps if meals have a bit of protein and fat in them, rather than being mostly carbohydrate, since that seems to smooth out the rises and falls.

That goes especially for breakfast, which seems to set the tone for the rest of the day for a lot of people.

But honestly, the main thing for many of us seems to be simply eating enough, and often enough.

Which sounds almost too simple to make much difference.

Except that our bodies do seem to notice, and they tend to feel a lot safer when they’re not left waiting.

Remember: Some of what feels like anxiety or irritability might have started with something as ordinary as not having eaten in a while.

Our bodies are physical things, and they tend to let us know when something’s missing, even if the message sounds like an emotional crisis.

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