Why Was Puberty So Difficult for Me? Divorce, Genetics, and Brain Chemistry

I had a rough adolescence. Not rough in a way anyone could see from the outside — I was big, I was athletic, I looked fine. But inside I was a mess. Obsessive thoughts that wouldn't let go. Anxiety that had no obvious cause. A darkness that would settle in and just sit there. Sleep that didn't come. A mind that ran loops on scenarios that hadn't happened and probably never would.

I didn't have a name for any of it. Neither did anyone around me.

What I know now — after building foodZipper, after running my own DNA through focalScan™, after spending a long time thinking about what actually happened to me — is that a significant part of what I was experiencing had a biological explanation. Not a psychological weakness. Not a character flaw. A clearance rate.

My sample report is on this site. You can look at it. Here are two of the gene variants that matter most for what I'm describing — pulled straight from my results:

Both homozygous. MAO-A is the enzyme responsible for breaking down serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. When it runs slow, those neurotransmitters linger longer than they should. The signal stays active. Emotions hit harder and take longer to fade. Thoughts loop. The mind won't quiet down at night. That's not a metaphor — that's the mechanism.

But what if that's only half of it? What if there's something else going on during those years that makes everything worse?

The brain is starving while the body builds

Think about what the body is doing from about age 10 to 22. Bone. Muscle. Organ. Brain. All of it being built simultaneously. Where does the body get the raw materials for that? Magnesium. Zinc. B vitamins. Folate. B12. And where does it pull them from first — the growing skeleton, or the brain?

What if the enzymes that run your neurotransmitter system need those same nutrients to function? And what if those enzymes are already running at reduced capacity because of your genetics? What happens when the cofactor supply gets diverted to building tissue — six inches of height in eighteen months?

And then what happens when you skip a meal on top of that? Blood sugar drops. Cortisol spikes. Cortisol competes for the same pathways. The brain isn't getting fuel, it isn't clearing its own chemistry, and it's flooded with stress hormones.

I was twelve. My parents had just divorced. I'd been in the hospital back in Michigan for two weeks with pneumonia. And then I moved to Florida — left my father behind, carried the guilt of that with me, and landed in a small condo with my mom in a place I didn't know. Everything familiar was gone. I had a lot of emotions going through me at that time.

That's when the panic attacks started. Close to 400 in a single day. It sounds impossible. It wasn't. Intense, physical, terrifying — my body shaking, fight or flight locked wide open and it wouldn't shut off. I felt completely unsafe in every direction.

My mom didn't take me to a doctor. She went to the store and bought celery and peanut butter. No testing. No research. She just knew. And it helped when nothing else did.

Here's what my report says about MAO-A — the gene that was running on fumes during all of this:

Look at that symptom list. Every single one of those was me — and I didn't know why until I was in my forties.

And here's the second one — MTHFR A1298C. This is the methylation piece that compounds everything above:

Two slow systems. One breaks down the neurotransmitters too slowly. The other doesn't produce enough of the raw materials to begin with. Stack those on top of a body that's pulling every available nutrient toward growing six inches in a year — and you get what I lived through.

What I did about it

I ate. A lot. Consistently. Looking back, the days that went sideways were almost always the days I skipped a meal or let too many hours go by without eating. The days that felt manageable? I'd eaten well. Every time. Is that a coincidence?

Snacks were a bigger deal than I realized at the time. The gap between meals was where things fell apart. Protein, healthy fat, something with magnesium — not chips, not sugar, not nothing. My mom figured this out before I did. She handed me celery and peanut butter. I didn't ask why it worked. It just did.

For anyone dealing with the same thing, here's what I kept around — especially stuff you can take to school where nuts aren't allowed:

The other thing that made a difference

I moved. Every day. Walking, running, working — it didn't matter what it was, as long as I was moving. The days I didn't move were worse. Every time. Why? Physical movement increases catecholamine turnover — it helps clear the neurotransmitters that slow enzymes can't clear fast enough. Is it about fitness? No. It's about chemistry. Even a 25-minute walk changed the baseline for me.

I didn't understand any of this when I was going through it. I didn't have a report. I didn't have the science. I just did what felt right and kept doing what worked.

I made it through. Food and exercise helped — but I don't make it through without my mom caring and loving me. Did I mention hugs? That's a big one. To hear "I love you, it's going to be ok." That matters more than any gene card.

Today there are other options. You can look at your own DNA and see what's actually going on under the hood. You can see which enzymes might be running slow, what nutrients they need, and which foods provide them. That's what foodZipper does. It doesn't tell you what to do — it shows you possibilities and lets you decide for yourself.

— B+

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