BANT Launches its Nutrigenetic Counsellor Register

INTRODUCTION

Advancing knowledge in nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics heralds a new era in the contribution of personal nutrition advice to promote and maintain optimal health through all life stages. The new paradigm of personalised nutrition demands wider competencies and an increased capability from nutritional therapists to encompass areas such as genetics, genomics, toxicology, risk assessment and communication, and an appreciation of the ethical, legal and social issues surrounding the use of genetic information.

Nutritional therapists have followed a complex model for some time which underpins the difference in approach to the nutritional influence on health from that of current dietetic practice. Nutritional therapy recognises that complex systems adapt over time, and that up-to-date emerging scientific advances must be incorporated into practice in a timely manner.

WHAT IS A NUTRIGENETIC COUNSELLOR

Professional dietary and nutritional advice tailored to individual genotype – where complex interactions between diet, nutrition and other lifestyle practices, as well as age, gender and current health status, are translated into protocols – may be termed ‘Nutrigenetic Counselling’. Nutritional Therapists wishing to incorporate Nutrigenetic Counselling into their practice need to assimilate new knowledge, skills and attitudes for enhanced performance. Core to this knowledge is ‘genetic literacy’. Members of the public wishing to benefit from nutrigenetic counselling can then be assured of appropriate standards of quality assurance.

NUTRIGENETIC COUNSELLOR REGISTER

BANT Council is pleased to announce the launch of its Register of Nutrigenetic Counsellors. This fulfils BANT’s commitment to the Human Genetics Commission that it would set up an advanced practice register covering nutrigenetic counselling following the HGC’s ‘Genes Direct’ reports in 2003 and 2007.

Initial registration will be based on experience and training in the use of genetic profiles/tests. The Nutritional Therapy Education Commission (NTEC) will be consulting on standards for training and an advanced practice framework during the summer. This register is only open for Nutritional Therapists who are members of BANT and registered with the CNHC.

APPLY FOR ENTRY ONTO THE NUTRIGENETIC COUNSELLOR (NgC) REGISTER

BANT Announces New Vice Chair

BANT has appointed current director Catharine Trustram Eve as its new vice chair.

Catharine, who has been on the BANT Council for more than a year as the director overseeing its programme to raise awareness of nutritional therapy among GPs, will take up the post immediately.

Mother of two, Catharine, who is a practising nutritional therapist with a focus on poor cognitive function and fatigue, replaces Niki Gratrix who stepped down in April.

Catharine, whose background is in market planning and strategy and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, is also a health analyst – computerising cognitive function tests for screening for mild cognitive impairment – and is about to be published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

BANT Chair Miguel Toribio-Mateas said: “Catharine has brought strong strategic planning, market research, modelling and analysis skills to the BANT Council, which have been invaluable in changing the way BANT works for its members in recent months.

“Working with Catharine for the last 14 months has been very exciting. I value her ability to think outside the box and to see the bigger picture whilst keeping her feet on the ground. I can honestly say that I couldn’t have done my job as Chair without her, which is why I am really looking forward to working more closely with her.”

Catharine said: “The healthcare environment in the UK is very exciting at the moment; we have a growing degenerative and chronic disease burden, substantial scientific evidence supporting the role of nutrition in health and increasing awareness of the role of nutrition amongst both the public and clinicians.  BANT has established a good position to respond to these opportunities and I am honoured to continue to contribute from within our vibrant and committed council.”

BANT Members Celebrate Research Success

Two BANT members have been published in an international obesity journal.

Marina Mastrostefano and Nicola M Pearson’s research projects on obesity and night eating syndrome and obesity and fertility have been published in Obesity Facts: The European Journal of Obesity.

Marina and Nicola presented their research at the European Congress of Obesity last month. Their studies investigated complex networks to understand mechanisms between obesity and night eating syndrome, and obesity and male fertility, respectively. Abstracts of their work have been published in Obesity Facts. 2013:6:1:1-246

[http://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/170983]

Night Eating Syndrome (NES) is a distinct disorder precipitated by stress and manifested by a delayed circadian rhythm. Marina’s work describes the potential link between NES and obesity, focusing on the alteration of circadian rhythms.

Nicola’s work investigated evidenced mechanisms between obesity and male fertility focusing on hormones and the hypogonadal obesity cycle, oxidative stress and inflammation, and environmental toxins.

The research projects were undertaken as part of their BSc (Hons) Nutritional Therapy and BSc (Hons) Nutritional Science course at the Centre for Nutrition Education and Lifestyle Management (CNELM), Wokingham, under the supervision of Dr James Neil.

BANT Makes Continued Professional Development (CPD) Mandatory in 2013

Why is CPD Important?

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is important for the individual Nutritional Therapist and for the profession as a whole. BANT is working to achieve the recognition the profession deserves. With an ever increasing amount of research being conducted in the field, BANT members can help this process by committing to updating their knowledge on a regular and structured basis, thereby making CPD part of best practice of nutritional therapy.

BANT CPD is now mandatory for all full members, including non- practising members, and all CPD will need to be entered onto the online BANT CPD Logging System. From January 2014 full members will not be able to renew their membership unless they have entered their CPD on the online BANT CPD Logging system.  Members must enter a minimum of 30 hours CPD of which a minimum of 8 of these hours must be Active CPD.

BANT launched its online CPD Logging System in 2011 and this excellent system makes it easy for members to log their CPD hours.

To understand more about how to complete your CPD and why it is now mandatory go to the link here: www.bant.org.uk/bant/jsp/member/CPDandconferences.faces

Quantum Biology Video

Selected videos at the cutting edge of science. Genetic diversity reflects evolutionary pressures from environmental changes, principally climate and diet. These drivers explain why populations and individuals vary and why one-size-fits-all dietary guidelines and public health nutrition approaches derive from out-of-date reductionist science. Nutritional therapy is person-centred, recognising individuality and the complex network of environmental factors which influence health status.

Remember to subscribe to the BANT You Tube Channel - http://www.youtube.com/BANTNT

Quantum Biology

1) Quantum Life – Prof. Seth Lloyd

Seth Lloyd is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT.

Prof. Lloyd is interested in information and the role it plays in physical systems, particularly systems in the quantum regime. Specific questions are: How do physical systems register information and move it about? How is information transformed and processed? And, most importantly, how do the ways in which a system transfers and transforms information determine its behavior?

He has worked on the definition of complexity using insights gained from the work of Rolf Landauer on physics of information processing and of Charles Bennett on computational measures of complexity. The definition of complexity he developed is related to the amount of thermodynamic resources required to perform a given task. Subsequently, he became a collector of measures of complexity: despite the proliferation of apparently disparate methods for quantifying the complex, he has been able to show that most such measures are closely related to each other. The definitions measure either information — the difficulty of describing a thing; or effort — the difficulty of accomplishing a task; or both.

The realization that information processing and physics are intimately related lie at the heart of Prof. Lloyd’s current work on quantum computation. Quantum computers are in essence complex quantum systems. In collaboration with Murray Gell-Mann he is working on a theory of quantum complexity. He hopes to use quantum mechanical computers to test methods by which the highly detailed, complex world that we see around us arose out of a highly symmetric, simple quantum world in the early universe.

As part of learning his current job as a professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, he has discovered the importance of work on complex systems for society as a whole. When the operation of a new car relies on the proper functioning of twenty microprocessors, when fear of a computer glitch inspires a global apocalyptic movement, when electronic devices from VCRs to toasters act as if they had minds of their own, it’s clear that our future welfare depends crucially on understanding how complex systems get information, and what they do with it.

1) The Nature of the Sense of Smell – Dr Luca Turin

Turin earned his Ph.D. in physiology at University College London. From 1982 until 1988, he worked in France as a researcher for the CNRS at the Villefranche Marine Station near Nice. He was then employed at the Pasteur Institute from 1988 until 1990.

After leaving the CNRS, Turin first held a visiting research position at the National Institutes of Health in North Carolina before moving back to London, where he became a lecturer in biophysics at University College London.

As of 2010, Turin is currently at MIT, working on a project to develop an electronic nose based in part on his theories, financed by DARPA. From April 2011 on, he will be working at the Fleming Biomedical Sciences Research Centre in Vari, Greece.

Turin is the author of the book The Secret of Scent (2006), which details the history and science of his theory of olfaction, and an acclaimed critical guide to perfume, Parfums: Le Guide, with two editions published in French in 1992 and 1994. He is also the subject of the 2002 book The Emperor of Scent by Chandler Burr, as well as of the 1995 BBC Horizon documentary “A Code in the Nose.”

 

Nutritional Therapy in the British Medical Journal Open

In November 2012, the work of nutritional therapists at the Optimum Health Clinic (www.FreedomFromME.co.uk),  a private clinic in London specialising in the treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME was recognised in the British Medical Journal Open in an observational study looking at both nutritional and psychological interventions for the illness. The patients in the nutrition-only treatment group were found to have a statistically significant improvement in self-reported CFS/ME symptoms. The full study can be viewed here: http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/6/e001079.full

We believe this kind of work from The Optimum Health Clinic represents a call to action for our profession for more research, and is proof that human trials can be done. We support and greatly encourage more such research trials as a way to continue to legitimise the profession and embrace evidence based medicine in clinical practice.

We congratulate CEO Alex Howard and Director of Research Dr Megan Arroll and the entire team at the Optimum Health Clinic for all their commitment and hard work, and look forward to reporting on the next stages of their research.

For further information and discussion about the findings in the research paper see http://freedomfromme.co.uk/blog/2012/11/19/ohc-research-published-in-british-medical-journal-open/

Nuffield Health Recruits Nutritional Therapists for 20 of their Top UK Sites

Nuffield Health has just recruited 20 Nutritional Therapists to work in a clinical setting alongside other healthcare providers supporting the delivery of Nuffield Health’s unique wellbeing membership packages, and helping manage a range of health conditions. Nutritional Therapists will also be offering expert-led nutritional touch points, in line with Nuffield’s excellent service standards and clinical guidelines. The roles have an important education component, with both Nuffield’s members and employees in mind. Roles range from 1 to 3 days a week at different sites, on a self-employed basis.

Nuffield Health is a private non-for profit integrative healthcare provider, serving up to two thirds of the UK population at over 200 locations – including hospitals, health and fitness clubs, health assessment centres and client workplaces. Their mission is to provide safe, affordable and accessible healthcare.

BANT believes this is a step forward in the recognition and integration of our profession, and one that will set the precedent with other private healthcare providers. We note that BANT membership and CNHC registration were mandatory requirements for applicants. We would like to think that the commitment to raise and support standards of excellence in the nutritional therapy profession will have had some influence in Nuffield’s decision to demand these professional credentials, and would encourage all nutritional therapists to become members of BANT and register with the CNHC so that more health providers will begin to recognise the profession is committed to voluntary self-regulation and maintaining standards of excellence in all aspects of professional practice.

BANT would like to congratulate all 20 BANT members for their achievement and wish them all the very best in their new jobs.

The Human Microbiome Project

Selected videos at the cutting edge of science. Genetic diversity reflects evolutionary pressures from environmental changes, principally climate and diet. These drivers explain why populations and individuals vary and why one-size-fits-all dietary guidelines and public health nutrition approaches derive from out-of-date reductionist science. Nutritional therapy is person-centred, recognising individuality and the complex network of environmental factors which influence health status.

Remember to subscribe to the BANT You Tube Channel - http://www.youtube.com/BANTNT

Please watch the videos in the order they appear starting at number 1.

The Human Microbiome Project

The year 2008 saw the launch of the Human Microbiome Project, sponsored by the National institute for Health in the United States, a project with the goal of identifying the microorganisms in the human gut. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Microbiome_Project

Seen as a natural extension of the Human Genome Project, the Human Microbiome project was launched as a result of the understanding that the health of our gut microflora profoundly influences the human immune system and is linked with inflammation, which is associated with most of the major chronic complex diseases today.

This understanding has lead the worlds leading science journals to start to recognise the profound importance of nutrition and how it may interact with the human microbiome and health.

An example is the paper in Nature in 2011, called “Human nutrition, the gut microbiome and immune system: envisioning the future” the authors state: “ systematic changes in overall dietary consumption patterns across a population might lead to changes in the microbiota/microbiome with consequences for host nutritional status and immune responses.”

Click on the highlighted title above to read the full paper.

1) GoldLab Symposium 2012 – Professor Jeremy Nicholson

Jeremy Nicholson a Professor of chemistry and systems biology and is head of the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London.

Even as a young biochemist in the 1980s, Prof. Jeremy Nicholson brimmed with new ideas. In a decade when molecular biology and the human genome project had riveted the attention of the scientific community, Prof. Nicholson was one of the first to embrace the importance of metabolic profiling, and is now Head of one of the largest clinical academic departments in the world.

For his work, Nicholson has received numerous honors, including The Royal Society of Chemistry Gold Medal for Analytical Chemistry, the Pfizer Global Chemistry Prize for Chemical Biology and the Semmelweis University – Budapest Prize in Biomedicine.  Professor Jeremy Nicholson was also a guest speaker at the 2010 BANT AGM.

2) Human Gut Microbes – Dr Jeff Gordon

Dr Gorden is the Professor and Director, Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology at the University of Washington.

BANT Continues to Raise Professional Standards for the Nutritional Therapy profession

Last month, BANT issued an update on key aspects of the new five-year strategic plan for the British Association for Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Therapy (BANT).  This month we take a look at the work going on in the area of “clinical governance” and “professional practice” both of which support and promote the standards of the profession.

Part of this work has involved BANT researching aspects of clinical governance in many other professional bodies to ensure that our procedures match, or are “ahead of the pack”, with reference to our peer groups.  These included the British Dietetic Association, the Association for Nutrition, The General Osteopathic Council, the Health Professions Council, the Royal College of Midwives and numerous other associations for complementary and alternative medicine.

Clinical Governance – Overseen by BANT Director, Jane Nodder

The Department of Health defines clinical governance as: ‘a framework through which NHS organisations are accountable for continuously improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care by creating an environment in which excellence in clinical care will flourish’. (A First Class Service, Department of Health, July 1998).

From BANT’s perspective, clinical governance includes at least six workstreams that have, in some cases more than one project attached to them. The diagram below summarises the key areas of focus:

Some of the projects within these work streams include:

Clinical Supervision Project (Project Leader – Jane Nodder, BANT Director):  This project will define and implement a system of clinical supervision for the nutritional therapy profession in the UK as part of BANT’s ongoing commitment to improve standards of practice and patient care across the profession, and to meet standards of best practice that exist in other healthcare professions with differing regulatory bodies.  So far, the project team has defined a detailed proposal for a possible approach to clinical supervision.  The next step is recruit a Project Manager to take the project into an implementation phase starting with a ‘pilot’.

Jane Nodder says: ‘as a professional body it is vital that BANT provides the tools, processes and procedures practitioners need to deliver the highest quality of care to their patients.  In addition, we absolutely need to focus on continually improving standards of clinical governance for the longer-term future of our profession’.

CPD Audit of Logged CPD (Project Leader – Elisabeth Foot, Chair of BANT CPD Committee):  This project is developing processes to ensure that all BANT members meet the mandatory requirement to complete an annual quota of CPD from January 2013.  The project will also define action(s) that can be taken with any members who do not meet the requirement.

Practitioner Website Audit (Project Leader – Louise Carder, BANT Director and Head of BANT Communications):  This project will develop and implement an approach for auditing the websites of BANT members to ensure they are compliant with the relevant EU Rules and Regulations, CAP code/ ASA rules, the BANT Code of Professional Practice and BANT guidelines.  The project will also define action(s) that will be taken with any members whose websites are ‘non-compliant’.

Another aspect of this project is to consider ways to improve members’ understanding of the complexities of the CAP code/ASA rules and foster a greater appreciation of the importance of compliance in general to reduce the risk of the nutritional therapy profession becoming a target for criticism.

Practice Standards The Practice Standards workstream covers three projects: Fitness to Practice, Return to Practice and Scope of Practice.  One of these is discussed below:

Fitness to Practice (Project Leader Deborah Colson, BANT Director):  This project is considering measures to ensure that all current, and future, BANT members are fit to practice.  Fitness to Practice means that BANT members:

• are of good character
• do not have a health condition that would affect their ability to practise
• adhere to standards of professional conduct, performance and ethics
• meet standards of proficiency
• maintain (and record) required levels of appropriate CPD.

Professional Practice – Overseen by Project Leader Catherine Honeywell, Chair of the PPC Committee)

Working closely with the projects in the Clinical Governance workstream, the Professional Practice Committee (PPC) sets standards for nutritional therapists in the BANT Code of Professional Practice and monitors their implementation to help members practise safely, effectively and legally.   The PPC also maintains a clear focus on all aspects of professional practice including essential links with BANT’s other core objectives relating to training, education and research.  Its overall strategy covers:

• advising members, where there is uncertainty, on how to apply the Code.
• investigating complaints against BANT members by another BANT member or from members of the public against members who are registered with CNHC where the complaint falls outside the scope of CNHC.
• investigating all complaints from members of the public against BANT members who are not registered with CNHC.
• liaising with BANT Council to make sure that all projects tie in with the Code.
• raising awareness amongst BANT members of the professional standards required for all NT consultations.
• ensuring that the Code remains relevant and reflects advances in professional practice

Catherine Honeywell, says ‘BANT needs to improve transparency within the nutritional therapy profession and provide the public with a better understanding of the high standards of professional conduct and proficiency they can expect when they consult a BANT member practitioner’.

As you can see, BANT is continuing to champion the nutritional therapy profession as a primary healthcare option for the future. If you are a nutritional therapist and are committed to the future success of your profession, we urge you to show your support and join BANT if you have not already done so.

See the Benefits of Joining BANT

See the profiles of Jane Nodder and Catherine Honeywell who are responsible for Clinical Governance and Professional Standards

Epigenetic Videos

Selected videos at the cutting edge of science. Genetic diversity reflects evolutionary pressures from environmental changes, principally climate and diet. These drivers explain why populations and individuals vary and why one-size-fits-all dietary guidelines and public health nutrition approaches derive from out-of-date reductionist science. Nutritional therapy is person-centred, recognising individuality and the complex network of environmental factors which influence health status.

Remember to subscribe to the BANT You Tube Channel - http://www.youtube.com/BANTNT

Please watch the videos in the order they appear starting at number 1.

1) Epigenetics: How Genes and Environment Interact – Randy Jirtle, PhD

Professor Randy L. Jirtle heads the epigenetics and imprinting laboratory at Duke University in Durham, NC. Dr. Jirtle’s research interests are in epigenetics, genomic imprinting, and the fetal origins of disease susceptibility. He has published over 170 peer-reviewed articles, and was a featured scientist on the NOVA television program on epigenetics entitled Ghost in Your Genes. He was invited to speak at the 2004 Nobel Symposium on Epigenetics. He was honored in 2006 with the Distinguished Achievement Award from the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2007, Dr. Jirtle received an Esther B. O’Keeffe Charitable Foundation Award and was nominated for Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” He was the inaugural recipient of the Epigenetic Medicine Award in 2008, and received the STARS Lecture Award in Nutrition and Cancer from the National Cancer Institute in 2009.