Nutritional Psychotraumatology: The Science of Nutrition and Trauma (1 CME Point).
Speakers
Alice Benskin
BSc, MSc, RNutr
Alice has a BSc and MSc in Nutrition, and has worked over the past 10 years in the food industry, agriculture, nutrition education and research, most recently at University of Oxford where she was on placement pre pandemic, investigating breast and bottle feeding nutrition and nociception in neonates. She is a registered nutritionist with Association for Nutrition in the domain of Nutrition Science, and currently an MSc Psychology student at University of Wolverhampton. She has a keen interest and passion for research in the areas of nutritional psychiatry and psychotraumatology, and works in a freelance capacity as a Nutritional Scientist, doing consultancy work, as well as volunteering as a career development advisor for newly graduated nutritionists and dietitians looking to work in industry and research. Alice is head of partnerships for Nutritank, co supervises the university placement students with our lead dietitian and serves as a representative for the nutrition implementation coalition. She also volunteers as part of Nutritank’s writing and research teams. Aside from Nutritank, Alice is a vicar’s wife, a mum to three small children, a yoga teacher and plays for her local ladies’ football team. Overall, her ambition is to empower others to live healthier lives using nutrition and lifestyle strategies, contribute to the field of nutritional psychiatry as a researcher, and see more women empowered to pursue careers in research and education in the field of nutritional science.
Agenda:
- Evidence regarding trauma, particularly in early life, and long-term health outcomes
- Impact of chronic stress on eliciting structural brain changes, and impacting on key markers
- Biological approaches to trauma – HPA axis activation and interaction with other key axes in the body (i.e gut-brain axis)
- Psychological approaches to trauma survivors – stress as a maladaptive and adaptive experience; attachment styles and different responses to trauma; deficit vs positive psychology, and how this can impact on practitioner’s approach
- Nutritional deficiency in trauma survivors in response to chronic stress
- Supporting trauma survivors – 3 case studies exploring working with trauma survivors living with chronic illnesses
Learning outcomes:
- To understand the biological mechanisms and psychological theory surrounding trauma• to cultivate awareness of conscious and implicit biases towards trauma survivors and their health
- To understand how chronic stress depletes the body of key nutrients and increases risk of chronic disease, and how this creates health inequities for survivors
- To explore through three cases studies compassionate approaches to working with individuals using evidence based personalised nutrition, psychology and lifestyle interventions