JULIA RUCKLIDGE

Prevention is Cure: Developing a resilient brain with nutrition

What if we’re looking for solutions to mental health problems in some of the wrong places? What if instead we focused on prevention and considered the impact that the food environment is having on our resilience and ability to cope? What if we changed what we eat and how we feed our brains? This keynote will review the research over the past decade uncovering an alarming picture of declining food quality as risk factors for all kinds of mental health challenges. Prof Rucklidge will then describe practical ways to use nutrition and micronutrients to treat and prevent mental health challenges with the long term goal of developing and maintaining a resilient brain.

Bio: 

Professor Julia Rucklidge, a clinical psychologist, is the Director of Te Puna Toiora, the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Lab at the University of Canterbury. Originally from Toronto, Canada, she completed her PhD at the University of Calgary in clinical psychology, a post-doctoral fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Children, and then in 2000 she immigrated to New Zealand. She is internationally renowned for her research and clinical trials on nutrients and mental illnesses, having published over 150 peer reviewed publications and given hundreds of talks around the world. 

Julia is passionate about helping people find alternate treatments for psychological challenges like ADHD, depression and stress through translation of research to practice and making nutritional interventions mainstream by publicly advocating for healthy eating to optimise mental health. In 2021 she co-authored The Better Brain: Overcome Anxiety, Combat Depression, and Reduce ADHD and Stress with Nutrition; her 2014 TEDx Christchurch talk has been viewed over 5 million times; and her free online EdX course on Mental Health and Nutrition has been taken by over 70,000 students from 146 different countries. Through these efforts, thousands of people have benefitted from nutritional interventions. Julia is also the recipient of numerous local and international awards, including named as one of the top 100 influential women in New Zealand in 2015, 2018, and 2021, the Ballin Award in 2015 from the NZ Psychological Society, becoming a Fellow of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine in 2023, and a Braveheart award in 2018 for her contribution to making Christchurch a better place to live.

Julia Rucklidge’s keynote presentation is proudly brought to you by Tekapo Wellness