Lucy Marks Nutrition and Dietetics

01/03/2024

🥑🥕🥦🍎🫑 hello autumn..

23/08/2023

More of these foods, less packaged foods 👊🏻

What we eat is one of the biggest levers we have when it comes to driving or reducing inflammation.

Industrial food drives inflammation, oxidative stress, hormone and neurotransmitter imbalances, overloads your detoxification system, depletes your energy, damages your microbiome, and changes your gene expression to turn on disease-causing genes.

Real, whole, nutrient and phytonutrient-rich food does the opposite. It turns off inflammation, increases antioxidant systems, balances hormones and brain chemistry, boosts detoxification, increases energy, optimizes your microbiome, and turns on disease-preventing, health-promoting genes.

A few other things you can do to fight inflammation outside of diet is exercising regularly, managing stress, getting good quality sleep, and spending time with loved ones.

07/07/2023

The facts about ACV 🍏

03/07/2023

29/06/2023

A great visual of what actually constitutes a serve of veg 🥦

12/08/2021

Happy Friday 👏🏻☕️🤸🏻‍♀️

Coffee-lovers I have good news... you absolutely don't need to cut it out for good gut health! 🥳 New review suggests ‘coffee could have similar benefits to fruit and veg’... 🍏 🌽

Okay, suggesting coffee matches up to other plant foods is a bit of stretch, even if it does make for a great headline... Let's not forget about the all-important fibre that we don't get in coffee!

BUT there are science-backed benefits linked to drinking coffee on the regular (1 or 2 each day) - from lowering the risk of type 2 diabetes, liver disease and certain cancers.

And that includes extra health-promoting effects happening in the gut too, as coffee may have a prebiotic effect (remember a prebiotic is food for beneficial microbes!) 🦠

Disclosure: the caffeine in coffee may cause chaos with some. How? It can increase the stress hormone cortisol as well as interfere with your gut movements. So if you’re prone to anxiety or diarrhoea predominant IBS, it’s best to opt for decaf coffee.



📸 when Archie was in my belly I continued to have my one single shot each day + two additional decaf coffees 👌🏻

07/08/2021

Fermented foods (think yoghurt, kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut etc.) help to promote gut health AND reduce inflammation in our bodies. I’m going to go and have some yoghurt for brekky 🏃🏻‍♀️

We are still learning about the effects of diet on the gut and how this impacts the immune system, and a recent study helped us learn a little bit more of this puzzle!

This 17 week study in healthy participants used two dietary interventions where participants either ate a high fibre diet or a diet high in fermented foods.

Those in the high fibre arm increased their diet from ~21g/day to ~45g/day at the end of the study and those in the fermented foods arm increased their diet from ~0.4 servings/day to ~6.3 servings/day. That's a lot of fibre and a lot of fermented foods!

Diversity is a measure that is used in gut microbiome studies, and although we don't truly know the definition of a 'healthy' gut just yet, we know that diversity of bacterial species helps!

Interestingly, in this study the high fibre diet did not increase microbial diversity, unlike other studies that have shown this. When looking at the immune system, they found individuals on the high fibre diet to have individualised effects.

Unlike the high fibre diet, the high fermented foods diet increased the diversity over the course of the study and also decreased markers of inflammation when looking at the immune system.

In summary, we know that chronic diseases are driven by inflammation, the immune system, and in recent years, have identified the gut microbiome to play a role. While we continue to learn more, you might like to try increasing your fibre intake or try a new fermented food if you haven't already!

Read the study here: http://ow.ly/47Zp50FJ13V

23/07/2021

The new multivitamin

The mouth plays a significant role in digestion, are you making the most of its super powers?

05/07/2021

Can’t believe I get to do this as a job 🙏🏻

27/06/2021

Layers of benefits 🧅

20/06/2021

The benefits of eating the 🌈

15/06/2021

It’s time to put 💰 and politics aside, and put the health of the public first 🙏🏻

The Australian government is currently redesigning our food regulatory system for Australia and New Zealand. This reform will impact how food is made, sold and marketed long into the future.

Nutrition Australia and other public health and consumer organisations are calling for the Australian Government to prioritise the health of Australians and New Zealanders. We must put public health front and centre to ensure the system is equipped to effectively prevent diet-related disease, protect the health of the community, and promote a resilient population to support economic growth, now and into the future.
Previous proposed reforms favour food industry profits over protecting public health. We must prioritise public health if we want to address the growing prevalence of diet-related diseases in Australia and New Zealand.

Support our call for action. Read our open statement to the Australian and New Zealand governments here: https://buff.ly/35lPzPC

08/06/2021

My fave oil ever 🫒

04/06/2021

Are you getting your daily dose of vitamin C?

We’ve finally hit winter, also known as cold & flu season.

A simple strategy you could be doing to keep on top of your health and immunity is getting more Vitamin C in.

Ever wondered how vitamin C works in supporting immunity…

🍋 Vitamin C encourages the production of white blood cells- white blood cells help to protect the body against infection.

🍊 Vitamin C also helps these white blood cells to function more effectively – forming a stronger barrier to protect us.

🥝 Vitamin C is also a powerful antioxidant which strengthens the body’s natural defences.

Scientific evidence indicates that Vitamin C is most effective when taken daily; ‘taking 200mg of vitamin C daily can reduce the frequency, duration and severity of a cold.’ Whereas taking vitamin C after the onset of cold and flu symptoms has a lesser affect.

When we think about dietary sources of vitamin C, we naturally reach for citrus fruits, but there’s plenty of other great sources & I’ve listed them below.