#169 Build Your Brain Using Food with Dr Uma Naidoo

Episode guests

Michelin-starred chef David Bouley described Dr. Uma Naidoo as the world’s first “triple threat” in the food as medicine space: She is a Harvard trained psychiatrist, Professional Chef and Nutrition Specialist. Her niche work is in Nutritional Psychiatry and she is regarded both nationally and internationally as a medical pioneer in this more newly recognized field.

Featured in the Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Harvard Health Press, Goop, Healthline, and many others, Dr. Uma has a special interest on the impact of food on mood and other mental health conditions.

In her role as a Clinical Scientist, Dr. Naidoo founded and directs the first hospital-based clinical service in Nutritional Psychiatry in the USA. She is the Director of Nutritional and Lifestyle Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) & Director of Nutritional Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital Academy while serving on the faculty at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Naidoo graduated from the Harvard-Longwood Psychiatry Residency Training Program in Boston during which she received several awards, some of which included a “Junior Investigator Award” (American Psychiatric Association); “Leadership Development for Physicians and Scientists” award (Harvard), as well as being the very first psychiatrist to be awarded the coveted “Curtis Prout Scholar in Medical Education”. Dr. Naidoo, has been asked by The American Psychiatric Association to author the first academic text in Nutritional Psychiatry.

In addition to this, Dr. Naidoo is the author of the upcoming title, This Is Your Brain On Food to be released August 4th, 2020. In her book, she shows the cutting-edge science explaining the ways in which food contributes to our mental health and how a sound diet can help treat and prevent a wide range of psychological and cognitive health issues, from ADHD to anxiety, depression, OCD, and others.

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