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Food for Thought: Culinary Medicine and Mental Health

17 May, 2023

Take a holistic approach to your wellbeing!

KAUST Health provides a nine-lecture series on using your kitchen pharmacy – foods, herbs, and supplements – to boost mental and physical health. By joining the lectures, you will enjoy improving mood, enhancing productivity and focus, and supporting good health and well-being all while applying concepts of the art and science of food.

About the presenter

Dr. Leslie Korn is a renowned expert in integrative medicine. She has provided over 65,000 hours of integrating psychotherapy and somatic therapies with nutritional, culinary, and herbal medicine. She opened a free natural medicine clinic in the Mexican jungle, which she ran and funded for more than 25 years by training health professionals worldwide.

About the program 

Dr. Leslie will present this lecture series via Zoom every Wednesday starting on May 18 and until June 22. Each lecture is 45 minutes, with 25 minutes for Q&As.

Attendees will get:

  • Certificate of Attendance signed by Dr. Leslie Korn
  • PDF book of self-care, recipes, and nutritional and herbal protocols, here
  • PDF version sent weekly of each lecture presentation

Attendance of a minimum of eight lectures is required to receive the certificate. 

Topics for each week

1. Exploring the Connection Between Digestion and Mental Health

 Explore how mental health and digestion are impacted by how we chew and swallow, the stress we experience, and foods that affect our digestive tract and microbiome. 

2. Get Some Rest: Foods that lead to insomnia – or better sleep

Look at how different types of insomnia respond to different foods and herbs and learn about nutrients that aid deeper sleep. Learn about special sleep issues that occur at different life stages, children, adults, elders.

3. In the Flow: How to use foods to decrease stress levels and counter fatigue 

Learn how to use food to boost energy levels and mitochondrial functions. We will also explore the impact of viruses, the stress response “the HPA axis”, and the wonders of stress-busting herbs and supplements. 

4. Nourish Your Way Out of Depression and Anxiety

Learn how inflammation, sugar, and other foods contribute to depression and anxiety, while other foods can significantly reduce them. These can be complemented by mood-boosting herbs in the kitchen.

5. Fighting Back: Food and Our Immune System 

Discuss foods that support the microbiome and its function as the second brain, how to help innate and adaptive immunity with foods, and identify additional methods for immunity. Additionally, you will survey protocols for virus prevention. 

6.  Pay Attention, Children: Kids, Hyperactivity, and Food

Dietary behavioral and exercise-based tools for enhancing focus and attention and methods to eliminate risky medications.

Registration

For registration, please click here 
Program dates: May 18 to June 22
Days: Thursdays of each week
Time: 6:00 p.m. – 6:45 p.m. followed by Q&A: 6:45 p.m. – 7:10 p.m.
Zoom webinar link here

Information and Program material

Cookbook Food for Thought: Culinary Medicine and Mental Health

For more information, please contact us at fatmah.hadadi@kaust.edu.sa