| Food and Mood Centre

Spice Up Your Diet with Polyphenols

By Helene Nauwelaers and Dr Wolf Marx We have previously discussed Polyphenols; a group of micronutrients with a range of healthy properties. In this previous article, Meghan Hockey talked about the potential beneficial effects of polyphenols found in dark chocolate and turmeric including how thei...

Alcohol and mental health: Have less, to feel a lot better

Ever reached for a glass of wine to help unwind at the end of a busy day? While you’re not alone, the temporary feel-good effects of a drink may be doing you more harm than good. Prolonged, excessive, alcohol intake may even have lasting impacts on your gut and brain. Studies show that a major re...

Is there really an app for that? The use of Smartphone Apps for mental health

For most of us, using a smartphone has become a normal part of modern life. Smartphones give us access to information, entertainment and services at our fingertips through internet connection and applications. There is a smartphone application, or “app”, for most tasks you can think of with over...

Body composition and mental health: healthy body, healthy mind

It’s well known that conditions such as obesity may lead to physical chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease, but what about their impact on mental health? The world of psychiatry once considered the functioning of the body to operate separately from that of the mind, ho...

Is there a role for the gut microbiome in the complexity of anorexia nervosa?

During World War II, the famous Minnesota Starvation Experiment in healthy young men showed that semi-starvation (loss of >25% of body weight) caused both physical symptoms, such as fatigue, dizziness and hair loss, and psychological symptoms, such as depression, and anxiety. Interesti...

Diet and Nutrition Infographic

Developed in conjunction with Mental Health America, this infographic is a handy resource summarising the current evidence in Nutritional Psychiatry in lay terms. ...

Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Gut Feelings

We have trillions of bacteria living inside us, with most residing in our gut. Until recently, it has been challenging to explore our gut bugs, but advancements in genetic sequencing have allowed us to discover these bacteria by sequencing their DNA. Over 1000 species of different bacteria exist in ...

Not getting enough sleep? It may be influencing how you eat.

An overwhelming amount of evidence supports diet as an integral factor for determining health and wellbeing. In particular, diet quality overall appears to largely influence health, with the consumption of a healthy diet, often characterised as a Mediterranean-style diet, increasingly associated wit...

Big data = big opportunities?

Here at the Food and Mood Centre, we aim to discover the ways in which what we eat influences our brain, mood and mental health. To do so, we conduct a broad range of research activities, referred to as ‘bench to bedside’. This refers to the translation of discoveries from research laboratories ...