It's Not All In Your Mind...

The bacteria in our bodies greatly outnumber the cells, with the largest bacterial community (i.e., the gut microbiota), performing a range of functions crucial for our survival and wellbeing. This talk will cover the ways in which gut bacteria influence mental health, what goes wrong in the gut during mental illness and how we can intervene to improve mental health outcomes. I will also discuss the recent research we performed in this area, as part of my PhD at King’s College London.

If you were asked to make a list about how urban living was affecting your mental health, would you include air pollution? From asthma to heart attacks, headlines and articles have revealed the wide ranging effects of air pollution on our physical health. Now, there is emerging evidence that it could be impacting on your mental health. In this talk we’ll be exploring this link, from birth to old age, and looking at potential underlying mechanisms. To top it off, we'll go through the actions we can all take to create a healthier and happier future for ourselves and our communities.

The emphasis put on weight by society is a constant that is hard to ignore when talking about obesity. Obesity is often considered a ‘condition of the body’, but what about obesity as a ‘condition of the mind’? In this talk I will highlight how there is more to obesity than the simple formula of ‘eating too much and moving too little’, discussing the psychological mechanisms behind it and showing how obesity is a burden way beyond personal control.