Hi! You can call me Krystal or your TBI dietitian
Read to me here:
I help people with concussion & traumatic brain injury (TBI) find healing with food and nutrition. I help you build confidence to cook and eat WITHOUT restrictive diets. I aim to give you even better nutrition than you ever had before your injury.
I’m a registered dietitian and I’ve had multiple concussions (like…6?). Even though I’ve been working in healthcare for years, I had a hard time finding good help after my own injuries!
I know how hard it can be.
You want support and from someone who gets it. You want to eat healthy without meal prep taking up all your precious brain energy. You want to learn about nutrition in a way that’s EASY on your brain. You want clear answers about diets & supplements so you can be confident in your choices.
And this is exactly why I have created a TBI Nutrition Program that gives you all that & more!
I’ve combined all my years of experience working as a dietitian in hospitals, research, community centres, and sport nutrition with my personal experience living with a TBI. The result is a program that gives you the nutrition needed to exercise again, go back to work or school, relieve your partner from all the chores, and do the things you want to do!
If you want…
✔️ nutrition that helps you recover
✔️ meal planning & cooking made simple
✔️ to get what you need through food and only take supplements when it actually helps
✔️ all the research done for you
✔️ a kind approach to nutrition to help you get some of your life back…
Then get started with a FREE intro to your TBI Nutrition Program!
How can nutrition help in brain injury?
Read to me here:
Research is starting to show that certain foods and nutrients may help reduce symptoms while supporting recovery in Post-Concussion Syndrome (PCS). Research is even looking into how nutrition can help protect the brain and prevent future injury.
When the brain is injured, it has less energy. After injury, the brain’s chemicals and blood flow are disturbed. This leads to the damage caused by the injury. The body can’t heal from any injury if it doesn’t have the energy and nutrients it needs. Good nutrition after injury ensures the brain has access to what it needs to heal.
Strategies around foods and eating patterns can also be used to help improve symptoms of headache, fatigue and sleep troubles.
Mental health and mood disorders are also common in PCS. Nutrition research into mental health is also growing and starting to show that food can affect our mood. Enjoying food and eating well may help manage the mood side of PCS symptoms.
All of this research is very exciting, but it is just scratching the surface of a very complex issue. Currently, as there are gaps in the research, no standards of practice or guidelines for nutrition exist for concussion. Plus, creating one standard guideline would be difficult considering we don’t fully know everything that’s going on inside the brain after injury, though we do know that each injury can present quite differently. However, people affected by PCS are looking to nutrition, and we know that good nutrition supports a person’s health on so many levels. This shows the need for a Registered Dietitian to take the research we have and make it work for each individual with PCS.
My Credentials
Registration
- College of Dietitians of Ontario
Graduate
- The Ottawa Hospital Dietetic Internship Program
- BSc in Human Nutritional Sciences, University of Manitoba
- BSc in Biochemistry and Microbiology, Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface
Professional Development
- Sports Nutrition
- Health Education
- Community Health
- Research
- Mindful Eating
- Digestive Disorders
- Health At Every Size
- Trauma-Informed Care
References:
Armstrong, A. March 14 2018. Can Nutrition Play a Role in Protection & Concussion Management? Presentation to Manitoba Sports Nutrition Network.
Dufour, A & Jobin, S. Nutrition Recommendations During the Healing and Recovery Phase. coach.ca. Accessed online March 2019.
IOM (Institute of Medicine). 2011. Nutrition and Traumatic Brain Injury: Im- proving Acute and Subacute Health Outcomes in Military Personnel. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Jacka, FN et al. 2017. A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (the ‘SMILES’ trial). BMC Medicine 15:23.
Lang, UE et al. 2015. Nutritional Aspects of Depression. Cell Physiol Biochem 37;1029-1043.
Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation. 2018. Guideline for Concussion/Mild Traumatic Brain Injury & Persistent Symptoms, Section 8: Mental Health Disorders.
Rodriguez, RL et al. 2017. Impact of diet-derived signaling molecules on human cognition: exploring the food-brain axis. Science of Food 1:2, published online October 30 2017.
Scrimgeour, AG & Condin, ML. 2014. Nutritional Treatment for Traumatic Brain Injury. Journal of Neurotrauma 31:989-999.
Tipton K. 2015. Nutritional Support for Exercise-Induced Injuries. Sports Medicine. 45(S1):93-104.