Watching a loved one’s gradual decline from Alzheimer’s Disease is no easy feat. My family experienced this first hand as we watched my beautiful Nan – Dorothy – live with this torturous disease for years before she peacefully passed. Along with memory loss, people with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) dementia...
Fermented foods are increasingly recognized as beneficial for health due to a myriad of demonstrated health benefits. They are also considered to be ‘functional foods’, which means they have additional health benefits beyond supplying basic nutrition. A large array of fermented foods and beverages are becoming more and more...
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 their prebiotic-like effect can influence...
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...
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 5...
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,...
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. Interestingly, long-term starvation also led to disordered eating behaviour,...
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 with positive health outcomes, whereas an unhealthy diet,...
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...