Ever wondered why you feel low or lethargic after eating certain foods and invigorated and energised after eating others? I breakdown why certain foods affect your mood and how changing your diet can improve your mental health. When we eat foods high in refined carbohydrates and trans fats and don’t look after our gut health it has detrimental effects on our mood and mental health. Whereas traditional diets high in vegetables, fruits, unprocessed grains, fish and seafood lower the risk...

Ever offered up what you thought was an inspirational solution to you teenager’s problem, only for it to be dismissed as annoying, irrelevant or even stupid. I breakdown why teenagers don’t want parents’ advice and prefer a sounding board not a solution. When we offer a solution too quickly, teenagers often feel like we’re not really listening to them or understanding what they’re going through. And it turns out that listening and understanding is what teenagers...

We often give teenagers a hard time for being impulsive, emotional outbursts, taking risks, too much screen time, or just because they can’t get out of bed in the morning. But I want to talk about a teenage super-power: their extraordinary capacity for learning. The growth of new brain connections and shedding of unused ones make teens sensation-seeking, learning machines. They learn much faster than adults and what they learn is retained for longer. This make the teen years an ideal...

Why are teenagers so susceptible to depression? And what can they do to thrive and be emotionally healthier? I share why the adolescent years are a window of heightened risk for depression and three tips to improve teenage emotional wellbeing. These simple strategies have helped thousands of parents to support teenagers to cultivate positive emotional wellbeing. Watch this video to learn these wellbeing tips to start using with your teenager today.

 Sleep offers new hope for both predicting and preventing Alzheimer’s disease. Sleep quality deteriorates as we get older. And this is linked to a decline in memory. But in people living with Alzheimer’s disease, the disruption of sleep is far worse, and sleep disturbances start many years before the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms. This could mean that sleep problems are actually an early warning sign of this disease.

Recent research has gone a step further and shown...

Do you forget why you went upstairs? Fail to put a name to a familiar face? We’ve all done it. And, as we get older, we often worry that these small memory mistakes will lead to dementia.  Today I share why dementia is NOT an inevitable part of ageing and how to change your lifestyle to prevent the symptoms of dementia from appearing/

Do you feel your memory and thinking are not as good as they used to be? Or that your brain is slowing down as you get older? I share how exercise can reduce both your brain age and risk of developing dementia. Ageing shrinks the brain, affecting memory and thinking, even in healthy older adults. But slowing down this process could be as simple as regularly going for a run or doing an aerobics class. Watch this video to learn how to use exercise to slow down the mental decline caused by...

Do you worry that your teenager is smoking cannabis, drinking alcohol, having sex or getting in with the wrong crowd? I discuss why teenagers take risks and share my top tip for managing their risky behaviour. Risky behaviour has been the hallmark of adolescence for millennia, but today’s world perhaps poses greater challenges than at any point in human history. Increased access to stressful, inappropriate, even dangerous information on social media and the internet is part of every...