Presenting my research project at the Nutrition Society Student Conference

I recently travelled to Reading (like a proper adult on the 7am commuter train) for the second Nutrition Society Student Conference. (Last year it was in Chester – Last years blog)

This year I had entered my abstract and been accepted to present my final year research project in a lightening session. These are quick 2 minute presentations! with a minute for questions.

^ My abstract in the conference programme.

I was nervous about presenting (it’s still a skill I am developing – I ) and I relied too much on my notes but I can just keep trying to improve and build my confidence in front of an audience.

It was a busy day filled with interesting talks and lots of student presentations so we got to hear about a wide variety of great nutrition topics and research.

My project was a systematic review looking at risk of cardiovascular disease in offspring of women with gestational diabetes. I included 12 studies in my review. I enjoyed the logical process to completing my study. I found links with certain cardiovascular risk factors in the studies but overall I couldn’t conclude a clear link.

No doubt i’ll be at another nutrition event soon. But for now it’s time to start work!

I’ve finished uni !!!! and graduated !!!!

So, I’ve finished my degree!! and graduated!! woooo!!

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It’s been a journey.

I’ve learnt a lot.

• Lots of science – human biology, biochemistry, molecular level nutrition, behaviour change, lab techniques, physiology, endocrinology, immunology, nutrition and health through different age groups… and more.
• More about how the world works
• More about how people interact
• What I’m passionate about
• Where my values lie
• Cities are amazing (I do still love my home in the countryside too though!)
• There are so many opportunities out there
• I can do things I initially tell myself I ‘can’t’ do

Now I’ve got to go into ‘real life’ and I’m ready!

I’m nervous because education gives structure and it’s always been part of my life but I’m ready to explore. I want and need to get out into the real world. I am grateful for my education and I am proud of myself for working so so so hard. Now I’m ready to transfer my passion into making a difference.

I’m excited for the future of food.

I think it’s important to rebuild our food communities. Eaters, growers, buyers, sellers. By creating an understanding of food an increase in nutrition will come.

I want to get out into the community and help make a difference there. I also want to gain more knowledge and experience of public health. I want to try and use my knowledge and passion to make a difference to peoples lives.

I had a lovely day celebrating at graduation (which i’d be waiting for the day to arrive for a loooooong time), I’ve said good bye to Nottingham and for now I’m searching and applying for jobs and going for interviews …

 

A week in the life of a Final year Nutrition student

Monday: 

Made porridge for breakfast and grabbed by lunch and snacks from the fridge/cupboard and prepared a flask of tea for the bus. (Trying to be as organised as possible helps cause i’m not a morning person!)

Two buses to uni then half an hour in the library to sort myself out! Printed off the lectures for the day and tried to organise my research to meet with my supervisor about my final year research project.

10-12 Changing behaviour, promoting health module. Today we were looking at ethics in health promotion. We had group discussion of some examples of Obesity advertising and looked at shock factor etc. Taking time to get our heads around the concepts as it’s not normal biological pathways science that we are used to! It’s very interesting though and I’m enjoying the real life links of nutrition.

1 30 Research project meeting with supervisor – My Initial research search showed I can’t do my initial title so need to broaden my search and refine it. I wanted to look at maternal diet and fat in particular but there isn’t enough studies so I will look at maternal obesity and/or gestational diabetes.

Careers fair – Wasn’t much relevant to nutrition specific jobs but Danone have a good graduate scheme which I’ve already started my application for. I spoke to some members of staff about more volunteering opportunities too.

Library – Writing up lectures and attempting to organise all the extra reading and start doing some… I brought snacks!

Yoga 6-7 30 – A bit more intense class than I expected but felt very stretched after.

Tuesday:

No lectures! (Most time off is the time allocated to our research project)

12 30-1 30 yoga – a calmer class this time.

Library – Researching for my dissertation and looking up studies to see how many there potentially is for my systematic review

6 – Meeting with STEM outreach. Science meets art! We are helping out at the big draw which is an event happening across the country. We are putting on science activites to go alongside art activites. This was our initial meeting to put forward ideas and find out the details about what we will be doing. The exhibition at the gallery is about the gut so me and my nutrition pal are thinking of doing an activity based on digestion. We fancy making a big diagram and getting the visitors to follow the journey of their food with interactive parts to learn what happens.

Wednesday:

No lectures again! Library again! Searching for studies for my research project and writing up lectures.

2 pm – Blog soc – meeting lovely people and learning about using social media to promote your blog. Especially with all the false nutrition claims and ‘health/fitness/wellness’ blogs around I think blogging and sharing information with the general public is so important for qualified nutritionists and dietitians!

Thursday:

Took my oats and yoghurt on the bus for breakfast as I had no time!

9-11 Molecular nutrition module. We were learning about gene organisation and structure.

Library – More searching for studies and then writing up lecture notes.

4-5 yoga – a good stretch on my way home.

Friday:

Headed to the library first thing after a bowl of porridge and flask of tea in hand to go over my CV and look at a job application.

11-1 Nutrition and health of populations module. We were looking at nutritional epidemiology. Nutritional epidemiology aims to describe disease patterns and prevalence, understand why some diseases are more common and which populations this occurs in and provide information to plan public health nutrition services. The general aim is to link exposure and outcome. We learnt about study designs to assess diet and disease.

1-5 coordinated physiological functions module. Today was exercise physiology labs again. (See previous blog post for more details!)

 

Exercise Physiology – Final year optional module for my nutrition degree

This term I am taking a module called coordinated physiological functions. It is actually based in the department of animal science so there is a variety of students on the module.

We will be looking at a variety of connected functions and behaviours and be focusing on the role of the hypothalamus and inter-connections with the nervous and endocrine systems. This is a key link between physiological function and behaviour.

‘The neural circuitry has a key role in providing central drive to the physiological changes underlying physical exercise. Increased activity has to be matched by alterations in cardiovascular and respiratory effort to meet the increase in metabolic demand.’ This is the description on our module handbook and introduces the area that we are currently looking at in our lab sessions.

In our labs we are comparing exercise economy according to predicted VO2max. We will look at the null hypothesis: fitness doesn’t predict exercise economy.

Exercise economy the energy cost of exercise at a particular work rate. Exercise economy can predict performance in aerobic events.

VO2max is oxygen consumption at maximal work rate. Fitness is characterised by VO2 max.

So basically we are going to see if fitness levels link to performance levels in the way we would expect. Using ourselves as subjects!

This is the equipment we will be using linked up to a computer.

We initially walked for a mile timed it and measured our heart rate after and then ran for a mile and timed it. We used these numbers and our weight and height to estimate our VO2max using an equation. We also predicted it using another equation based on non exercise data – using an exercise questionnaire and our BMI.

The next task is to predict our VO2max at sub-maximal work. So we will use the bikes to exercise to 75% of our VO2max and find the workload for each induvidual. Then we will use this to reate 4 workloads and then exercise for 3 minutes at each workload and record O2 consumption, heart rate and respiratory exchange ratio in order to predict VO2max.

Finally we will determine exercise economy by exercising for a short duration and measuring oxygen volume consumed. Subjects that consume less oxygen will be consumed by subjects that perform better.

Once we do all this we have to write up a group report of the findings.

Just shows how varied studying nutrition is!

Trying on the mask before I was linked up to the breathing equipment! It has to be completely tight so that all gas exchanged can be measured through the tube the mask is attached to.

 

A new nutrition module and a nutrition definition

I’ve been enjoying starting all my new final year nutrition modules over the last few weeks!

One of them is Molecular Nutrition which I think is going to be extremely interesting. In this module we will look at how cells respond to their environment and the mechanisms of this. We will also look at how nutrients affect the cell and understand the mechanisms involved. Overall – how the body functions!

When my lecturer was introducing the module he described nutrition as:

‘The most significant environmental stimulus that affects us day to day that we have choice over’

I thought this was a fantastic description. We all eat and drink every day. Every day we make choices about our nutrition and these choices affect us and interact in different ways in our bodies. We can control our day to day nutritional influences by what we eat and drink. Our nutrition is something that is constantly affecting our bodies.

How I got to nutrition and where I am now

In sixth form I studied Maths, Biology and Chemistry for A level and did AS art. I had always liked science and wanted to do something health related. I knew I didn’t want to do medicine but was interested in health and science and everything related to it. I didn’t how ever want to do a biology degree. I like biology but struggled with learning the volume of facts for exams. I liked the answers that maths had and working through a problem knowing it would be right or wrong. Chemistry was a kind of middle ground with more specific answers than biology in some ways and some more maths and calculations involved. I applied to university to study biological and medicinal chemistry – long name but essentially a mixture of core chemistry, biochemistry, some biology, and some medicinal chemistry. I’d read some books about drugs and their interactions with the body which I found interesting and I thought it could take me down the route of drug design possibly so still along the health line of science that I like.

To cut a long story short this course wasn’t the right one for me. I couldn’t relate to it and it was very theoretical science. So after a year it was time to find a new direction. I contemplated everything. Should I stay at uni? Should I get a job? Should I change course? What new course would I do?

This was the start of my journey to realise just how passionate about nutrition I am. I started on the joint Nutrition and Food science course which had the same first year modules and after that year I chose to continue with straight Nutrition as it is the human health side that really interests me as opposed to food chemistry and food manufacture. Nutrition is the gap that I wanted to study when I was in sixth form it was just a longer process to find it. But I have learnt a lot to getting to this point! (One of my mums favourite things to tell me at the moment is ‘life is a journey not a race’)

Nutrition combines science and human health. I feel like nutrition is that something I was looking for back in sixth form. I can relate it to real life which I love. I can apply the core science to health. I can see where nutrition fits into every day across the world and is only going to increase in the future. We study biochemistry, metabolism, diet in relation to disease, physiology, food science, human nutrition, animal nutrition, nutrition across the lifespan, public health nutrition, and nutrient gene interactions related to nutrition – just to name a few areas! I love it. I know this is the area I want to be in.

I have done work experience at cook and eat session with a nutritionist. I volunteer at a community meal where we provide a free vegetarian meal to the community in which many people are homeless, lonely and struggling with mental health. I have done a project with a windmill which mills flour to create information leaflets for them. There’s so so so much great nutrition and opportunities out there to make a difference.

So here I am now about to start my final year of my undergraduate degree. I’m about to start my research project in the area of maternal diet, dietary fat and cardiovascular disease. I’m asking all the questions all over again: what kind of job do I want? What careers are out there? Do I want to study more? Plus new questions: How can I get a clinical nutrition job? Should I do postgraduate dietetics? Can I afford further study? Do I want to work in industry? I want to work with people how do I do that? I would love to do dietetics, can I afford it? Should I apply now? Or work first? Which part of nutrition out of all the parts I love is a good area for jobs? What jobs can I do where I work with people?

I found out a lot during the Nutrition Society student conference (see other blogpost) so I need to start thinking, whilst also studying and starting applying. I also learnt a lot at the Association for the study of Obesity conference which I volunteered at. (blog to come)

I was told at a uni open day I was working at that I was the first person to sounds enthusiastic and passionate about nutrition she had spoken to at all the university’s she’d visited. My housemate used to laugh at me for always retweeting nutrition and food things and mentioning random facts. Hopefully I can continue this through my final year and interviews to the future of my nutrition.

Last week in my society T shirt at freshers fair.

Association for the study of Obesity – 3rd UK Congress on Obesity 2016

UKCO2016 19^th-20^th September 2016 Nottingham.

This year the ASO conference UKCO2016 was held on campus. I was lucky enough as a student to have the opportunity to volunteer to help. I really appreciated the opportunity and was able to listen to some of the presentations. I enjoyed tweeting from the conference too/retweeting everyone else’s interesting tweets.

DAY ONE:

ASO Symposium 1 – Should we be adopting a less weight centred approach?

Dr Judy Swift from the University of Nottingham opened this session discussing the challenge of weight centred practise. The weight centred outcome of interest is BMI. There is an assumption that excess adiposity negatively affects health and weight loss results in health gains. She then continued to outline the criticisms of the weight centred approach.

Professor Paul Aveyard from the University of Oxford talked about the importance of weighing as an outcome and as a behaviour change tool. He is a professor of behavioural medicine. Risk decreases in proportion to kg lost. The number one trigger of weight loss is to improve appearance. More women are losing weight even if they are a healthy weight compared to men.

Dr Rachel Pryke from the Royal College of General Practictioners discussed the risks of weighing children and adults.

Yemi Oluboyede from Newcastle University presented Innovations in measurements: Quality of life and economic values.

 

Plenary lecture 2 – The role of genetics and epigenetics in obesity. Professor Cecilia Lindgren from the University of Oxford presented such an interesting talk on this topic. There was complicated science but a fascinating area.

 

ASO Symposium 2 – Obesity and the environment

Carol Weir from MoreLife UK spoke about the role of Local Authorities in tackling Obesity.

Dr David Ogilvie from the University of Cambridge presented the Environmental and policy interventions for active living. Changing driving for walking/cycling has been shown to decrease BMI. For a long time the focus has been on advice for individuals to take and active approach – there is potential to increase population level physical activity through the creation of things like cycle routes. The Cambridgeshire community bus plan and connect 2 were discussed and they sound very beneficial. It has been shown that cycle commuting has health benefits including higher mental wellbeing, decreased sickness absence and decreased BMI. I told my dad this as he regularly does his 25 mile journey to work on his bike and hopes he is a good example.

Michael Chang from the Town and Country Planning Association discussed tackling obesity through planning and development.

I enjoyed the symposium as it was based on a lot of topics I didn’t know much about and areas of nutrition related interventions I hadn’t really thought about before. Incorporating healthy lifestyles by making healthy choices easily accessible into day to day life is really important for a healthy population.

 

DAY TWO:

Infant and toddler forum Symposium – The Obesity challenge: Prevention is action

Judy More a Paediatric Dietician (what a great job) and member of the ITF. She spoke about nutritional guidance in early life being a key public health prevention strategy in order to improve the health of the next generation. Over 1 in 5 children are overweight! I found the link with fetal development and weight really interesting. Over weight mothers/gestational weight gain and endocrine changes in the placenta have been discussed in research. Lifestyle affects weight too from a young age and is influenced by things like screen time and sleep. Getting used to large portion sizes or being encouraged to eat a lot and being rewarded by food can also lead to over eating and therefore problems later in life. During pregnancy it’s important to focus on keeping physically active, choosing nutritious foods not extra foods and healthy weight gain. Letting toddlers respond to hunger cues is important and not forcing food. Plus as for everyone physical activity and enough sleep plays a role.

Dr Clare Llewellyn a lecturer in Behavioural Obesity Research at University College London discussed why portion size and relation to appetite and weight gain. Growth rate differs right from birth. Increased meal size causes a faster growth rate.

Melanie Pilcher is a Policy and Standards manager at Pre-schools Learning Alliance. She talked about the practical implementation of best practice guidance in early years settings.

I love this symposium. I really like the area of early years nutrition and I believe its such an important area in order for everyone to grow up with healthy attitudes towards food and health and can contribute to decreasing health issues later in life. I enjoyed hearing Melanie’s case studies as I love putting science into real life settings. My mum is a primary school teacher so packed lunches and school dinners are a big deal. The IFT have fantastic resources and lots of fact sheets.

 

Member led symposium 3 – A critical perspective on the use of BMI to determine maternal obesity risks and interventions

Professor Judith Rankin for Newcastle University started by introducing the area of maternal obesity research stating that obesity is the biggest challenge facing maternity.

Professor Marian Knight from the University of Oxford discussed maternal obesity and risk of perinatal morbidity and mortality from an epidemiological perspective. The number one maternal death is cardiac disease. Obesity is associated with some specific causes.

Dr Nicola Heslehurst from Newcastle University talked about the effectiveness of antenatal behaviour change interventions among obese populations.

Peter Tennant from the University of Leeds explained the potential mechanisms behind maternal obesity and adverse pregnancy outcomes.

Dr Louise Hayes presented the role of anthropometric measure for maternal obesity epidemiology and intervention. She looked at BMI and alternative methods.

I enjoyed this symposium too. Maternal nutrition is another area I find very interesting alongside the link to disease. I am hoping to write my dissertation on the maternal diet in relation to fat in the diet and links to the offspring developing heart disease.

 

Plenary lecture 4

Professor Susan Jebb finished the conference with a fantastic talk about supporting weight loss in primary care.

I love coming to conferences and listening to a variety of talks. I love getting to find out new areas of nutrition and science I didn’t know much about. I love seeing how scientific research develops and is presented. I love the interaction between all the delegates and the mixed opinions and questions that come out. I love finding new areas of interest and passion within nutrition. I love finding out about companies, charities or other groups where there are potential jobs and research areas for the future.