Fish oil supplements in New Zealand
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 in NZ are true to label, accurate with health claims and safe to consume. Overall, although likely to be safe...
Traumatic Brain Injuries and Nutrition
Not just a knock on the headA Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is caused by a trauma to the head that can cause damage to the brain. Data shows that the majority of TBIs are received from car accidents and falls. This makes children highly vulnerable.TBIs can be hard to diagnose. It is not uncommon for people to brush...
Pleading for accuracy in trial reporting
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, and 1412 mg DHA+EPA), micronutrients plus behavioural activation or placebo plus behavioural activation. Their primary outcome was cumulative onset of...
Preventing suicide: identifying risk and protective factors
Over the past four years, New Zealand’s suicide statistics have continued to increase. In 2018, New Zealand's suicide rate was at its highest at 13.67 per 100,000. Males made up 75% of this number. That's almost double the amount of people that died on our roads last year.These statistics just “touch the surface” of New Zealand’s serious social and health crisis. That doesn’t...
Can nutrients help people quit smoking?
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 investigated whether ensuring optimal nutrition levels when attempting to quit smoking might be relevant and even helpful in the quit...
Exploring the microbiome and its relationship with infant health
For the past several years, through the NUTRIMUM study, Te Puna Toiora | UC’s Mental Health and Nutrition Research group has been investigating the effect that micronutrient supplementation, and maternal depression and anxiety can have on infant development. One of the aspects of interest in this research has been the collection of microbiome samples from mothers and infants, in...
Sleep tips following stressful events
In the aftermath of major stress and exposure to traumatic events most adults will experience sleep disturbance of some kind. This may include difficulty in falling asleep when first going to bed, often accompanied by repetitive, intrusive thoughts that can’t be ‘turned off’, more frequent waking during the night with difficulty resuming sleep, and waking early in the morning....
