Picture a scientist – a gender imbalance in science
If you ask children to draw a scientist, they will probably picture a white man. There are less women than men in science, and thus female scientists are less visible for children [1]. The name of a 2020 documentary movie comes from that phenomenon: Picture a Scientist [2]. The documentary tries to answer why there is a gender imbalance in science. A leaky pipeline and implicit bias The main reason for this imbalance is called the ‘leaky pipeline’. The number of female/male science students are quite balanced. But women are facing difficulties when trying to get higher positions in science...
What are the challenges for people with ADHD eating healthy?
During the annual meeting of the EU project Eat2Benice, Hans van de Velde, vice-president of ADHD-Europe, talked about the challenges for people with ADHD to eat healthy. We all know that we should eat healthy. But putting this knowledge into practice is often very difficult. And for individuals with ADHD this might be extra difficult, due to the symptoms of inattention, impulsivity and lower self-control. This is an appeal for scientists of how they can help individuals with ADHD to eat healthy What are the ADHD-challenges to eat healthy? Here are some examples from the ADHD community: People with ADHD...
Obesity: Don’t Stress About It
Were you ever fat shamed? If yes, It must have not felt good to hear that. I am sorry this happened to you. This is not another blog on how unhealthy and life-threatening it is to be obese. Instead, I will focus on recognizing stressful situations and explain what stress is and why it is related to obesity. Most importantly, at the very end I’ll tell you some techniques on how to handle the fuss that comes from being obese. No one can deny the health issues related to being overweight, as no one can deny the effect of stress...
Are your gut bacteria sex-specific?
Numerous biological differences exist between men and women. This seems to be even true for the make-up of our gut bacteria. Researchers have found that the communities of gut microbes look different in adult men compared to women. This leads to new questions about when these sex-related differences arise during development. To study gut microbiota differences between men and women, researchers investigated thousands of poop samples, mostly from healthy adults [1 – 3]. They found that on average, women had higher levels of the bacterial genus called Bacteroides, and lower levels of Prevotella. Interestingly, both bacteria types can play both...
Accumulating Evidence for the Benefit of Micronutrients for Children With ADHD
I am more excited about a recent publication than I have been of some of my own work. And that’s because Johnstone et al conducted an independent randomized placebo-controlled trial (RCT) as a replication of a study my lab published in 2018 using micronutrients as a treatment for ADHD in children and they found very similar results to those we reported in our paper. Replication in science is vital and this study, along with our 2 studies, one with adults and one with children, is sufficient to making micronutrients as a treatment for ADHD more mainstream. Indeed, 2 independent RCTs...
Life of a PhD Student
Four first year students of Biomedical Sciences at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, spent a full week shadowing PhD-student Babette Jakobi. In this blog they tell you what they found out about ‘life of a PhD student’ and their discovery on the relationship between sleep and ADHD. What does a PhD-student do? A PhD-student is someone who is doing a large research project that can take 3 to 6 years. At the end of this period, the PhD-student has to defend his or her work to a committee of senior academics, and is then promoted the PhD degree. We followed...
Easy Easter Recipes Your Brain Will Thank You For
Easter is around the corner! What pops into your mind when you think about Easter? In many cultures families eat together for Easter, either for dinner, lunch or brunch. Have you thought about what you are going to cook yet? For me, Easter is all about celebrating fresh spring flavours. As Easter is late (or high, as Italians call it) this year, we have more fresh produce to enjoy! If for this Easter, you want to focus on food that not only tastes good, but is also good for your health, check out the recipes below! For this menu, I...
How lack of sleep leads to unhealthy eating
Inadequate sleep does not only make you grumpy and causes you to perform worse at school or work, but also imposes a risk on your physical health. When it comes to nutrition, research shows that a lack of sleep leads to unhealthy eating. Short sleeping time may be related to obesity as it makes you eat more, because changes in hormones ghrelin and leptin lead to increased appetite and hunger [1]. This has been shown in a controlled laboratory study involving sleep-restricted participants, who were not allowed to spend more than 4 hours in bed for 5 consecutive nights. These...
Why everyone should know about type 2 diabetes and co-occurring psychiatric symptoms
You might know someone, or be someone, with type 2 diabetes. But did you know that type 2 diabetes often co-occurs with psychiatric symptoms, such as depression or ADHD? Often, however, these psychiatric complaints are attributed to diabetic symptoms, and therefore the mental health issues remain untreated. Besides the direct effects these issues might have on daily life, psychiatric issues can also lead to problems with the management of diabetes. Therefore, it’s very important to increase awareness of this co-occurrence, so that this can be recognized sooner by health care professionals, but also by people with diabetes themselves. The sooner...
There is no time like the present – cognitive biases and the need for real-time data
Imagine, you are randomly picked to take part in a study. The researchers aim to investigate some of your daily behavior. For this purpose, you need to fill out a questionnaire in which you are asked to report on positive and negative events that have occurred during the past four days. Furthermore, you have to report on your food intake, including the exact amount and time of your meals. While you might easily remember what you had for breakfast today, you probably cannot perfectly reconstruct all meals and snacks from the past days. This kind of forgetfulness might lead to...