Julia Rucklidge
Julia Rucklidge is a Professor of Clinical Psychology in UC’s Department of Psychology and the Director of the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Group.
Disasters, both natural (e.g., earthquakes, floods) and human-made (e.g., terrorism, civil strife), affect communities worldwide, often causing immense disruption and suffering, and lasting psychological injuries.
Living and working in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand has meant we have had our fair...
Are NZ fish oil supplements safe, true to label and can they provide a health benefit?
I recently co-authored an article in the New Zealand Medical Journal looking at whether omega-3 fatty acids contained in 10 fish oil supplements sold...
Do people who suffer from specific psychiatric symptoms, like those associated with ADHD, have a different bacterial microbiome than those who don't have these symptoms? Are our bugs making us impulsive? Therefore, what if we changed out these bugs? What's the role nutrition plays? Professsor Julia Rucklidge explores some exciting connections.
Pregnancy is a time where many physiological and psychosocial changes occur. It can bring feelings of excitement but also apprehensiveness and stress and is a period of increased vulnerability for the onset or relapse of mental illness. The most...
When we are under high stress, we can often reach for foods
that are “comforting” (like biscuits, donuts, cake, pastries, and chocolate
bars), but these foods may not be the best choice for feeding your brain under
stressful and demanding circumstances. Comfort...
Last week, Mariska Bot and colleagues published a clinical trial in JAMA whereby they randomized overweight or obese adults with subsyndromal depressive symptoms to placebo, micronutrients (400 mcg folic acid, 800IU vitamin D, 30 mcg selenium, 100 mg calcium,...
There has been a small explosion in research using nutrients for the treatment of mental illness over the last decade. The general premise is that our brains need nutrients to function and chemicals that are essential for good mental...
I have noticed a growing number of companies offering to measure nutrient levels and then offering a personalized treatment approach to address deficiencies identified. For example, I was asked by a member of the public what I thought of...
The idea that there might be a link between smoking and nutrition is one that is probably not thought about very often. We do know that smokers typically have poorer diets than nonsmokers but to date no one has...
The notion that good nutrition is good for the brain is not a new idea. What is relatively new is that, until recently, there were very few well conducted studies examining whether a broad spectrum approach using doses of...
