Julia Rucklidge - Mental Health & Nutrition Research: Te Puna Toiora

08/12/2025

Continuing our Food for Thought series, today we’re sharing a video by Olivia Lonsdale, who explores the issue of how food is marketed to children in Aotearoa.

Like, comment and share to help these amazing ideas reach a wider audience!

04/12/2025

Here at Te Puna Toiora | Mental Health & Nutrition Research Lab, we’re trying something a little different.

For one of my postgraduate courses, Mental Health and Food, students were asked to identify a New Zealand issue at the intersection of nutrition and mental health, and propose a solution in a five-minute video. With the students’ permission, we’ve selected some of these videos to share with the public.

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be posting one video every few days in a new series we are calling "Food for Thought". We hope these ideas spark conversation, reflection, and meaningful discussion.

To launch the series, here’s an insightful video by Sophie Hill tackling the critical issue of food influencers on social media, and outcomes on mental health.

Please feel free to like, comment, and share far and wide - you never know who might see it and take action!

03/12/2025

A quick update on the lack of progress. I submitted objections to the decisions made by the Medicine Classification Committee (MCC) where they rejected my applications to declassifying lithium (≤3mg) and vitamin D (≤3000IUs).

Interestingly, the MCC determined that my objections to the lithium and vitamin D decisions were not valid!

So I continue to push our government to be held accountable.

In a letter to Hon Seymour, Hon Costello, Hon Hoggard and Hon Brown, I asked for the following:

1. Re-initiate a Review of Outdated Regulations

Direct MPI to prioritise updating (or even better replace) the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985, ensuring allowable limits for essential nutrients such as B12 and zinc reflect current scientific evidence and international best practice. Alongside, laws need to reflect 21st century discoveries that show therapeutic benefit can be achieved outside of pharmaceuticals that carry high risk. As such, Medsafe should not be the regulator of such discoveries as they immediately medicalise and inflate risks that simply do not exist.

Throughout this entire impasse, what appears to have been conflated is maintaining mental health with treating mental illness. That’s like conflating bone health with bone disease, or dental hygiene with dental treatment.

2. Address Systemic Barriers in Pharmac Funding

Instruct Pharmac to review its funding criteria for micronutrients, particularly where efficacy and safety are not in question.

Create a pathway for funding evidence-based natural health products that do not fit traditional pharmaceutical registration models, to avoid disadvantaging preventive health strategies.

3. Review the recent decisions made by the MCC

Request Ministerial intervention and review on the recent decision made by the MCC to reject the applications to declassifying lithium (≤3mg) and vitamin D (≤3000IUs). The decision made by Medsafe that my objections are invalid highlight Medsafe’s unwillingness to engage constructively with experts whose findings do not align with its views, preferring to use procedural reasons for disengaging.

Specifically, regarding lithium, it is important to emphasise that Medsafe was not asked to classify lithium as a medicine. I asked them to declassify lithium at doses ≤3 mg. This is a crucial distinction, because therapeutic use in psychiatry begins at 400–1,200 mg of lithium carbonate, with doses adjusted after blood tests taken over several days. The entire objective of psychiatric dosing is to maintain a serum lithium level of 0.5–1.5 mmol/L, depending on diagnosis. Levels above 1.5 mmol/L can be toxic. By contrast, the dose proposed for declassification is roughly equivalent to the natural intake of lithium from food and from drinking water in regions with higher geological lithium levels. New Zealand’s drinking-water standards do not monitor lithium, precisely because even at the higher natural concentrations it poses no health risk. I provided data that the levels of lithium in DEN (~1mg) have been undetectable in blood.

Regarding vitamin D, there are no safety concerns at the proposed level. Medsafe’s reliance on the fact that vitamin D is restricted under the Dietary Supplements Regulations simply highlights that MPI need to update the limit, not an excuse for Medsafe to block a harmless declassification.

4. Promote Public Health and Preventive Care

Develop and support initiatives that make safe, evidence-based micronutrients widely accessible as part of a national preventive health strategy. This includes that regulatory frameworks enable individuals to take proactive steps to maintain health and reduce the risk of chronic and mental health conditions. Prevention is not optional; it is essential to reducing healthcare costs and improving population wellbeing.

Please comment and share!!!

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25/11/2025

Here is a more positive experience to share - while in the UK I was interviewed by Rupy Aujla from the Doctors's Kitchen. If anyone wants some of the backstory to why I have been studying the micronutrients, listen here. Also on his podcast on Spotify.

Do multivitamins actually work? Coming into this podcast, my opinion was that they were pretty pointless, whether that’s for general wellbeing, cardiovascula...

11/11/2025

And another no to changing the current paradigm....

For those of you interested in the final outcome from the government in regards to DENs, the link is below:
https://selectcommittees.parliament.nz/view/SelectCommitteeReport/ea9ae78e-25e0-4e5a-7b28-08de12a2143d

08/11/2025

I have been intending to write a post for some time now, but unfortunately, none of my updates are positive.

A few months ago, I submitted an application to the Medicines Classification Committee to have lithium under 3 milligrams and Vitamin D under 3,000 IUs considered natural health ingredients. Although the decision was made at the end of July, the outcome was only recently released, and regrettably, the answer was negative.

The decision can be accessed through the link provided below, but in essence, the committee deemed it too risky for the population to purchase these nutrients without a prescription from a licensed prescriber. Consequently, Daily Essential Nutrients will continue to be unavailable for sale in New Zealand in the near future due to the minimal lithium content.

Hopefully, it is apparent how unreasonable these decisions are, as these nutrients are essential and can be naturally obtained. They claim that there's too much risk of toxicity but at these levels that risk is tiny. Indeed if you were to take lithium at that dose it would be completely undetectable in your blood. I can say that confidently because we've tested it.

Medsafe seems determined to restrict them because they may offer health benefits, and as soon as any therapeutic benefit is identified, they fall under the medicine category and cannot be included in non-prescription products.

Ultimately, this situation necessitates change, but I am uncertain about how to effect that change.

The bind is clear in that I couldn't write the application highlighting the benefits to a population to have a small amount of lithium in a supplement because if I did that then MCC would claim it was therapeutic. It just points to the long overdue need to regulate supplements in a different way in this country so that people can have the power to make decisions about their own health.

If anyone is inspired to write to the MCC, they are open to receiving objections in the next few days: committees@health.govt.nz

This submission (PDF, 219KB, 16 pages) proposes changes to the classification of lithium to introduce a recommended daily dose of 3 mg:

04/10/2025

Thank you for putting on such a fantastic conference with brilliant talks spanning microbiome, vagus nerve, nutrition and ADHD, mindfulness, ketogenic diet and resilience.

02/10/2025

What an awesome morning spent at the Doctors kitchen with Rupy. Can't wait for our conversation to go live.

27/09/2025

In NUTRIMUM, newborns ended up with fewer complications than even the newborns of women who didn’t have depression at all.

26/09/2025

Great summary on Mad in America on the findings from NUTRIMUM.

In NUTRIMUM, newborns ended up with fewer complications than even the newborns of women who didn’t have depression at all.

08/09/2025

If kids with ADHD stick with taking micronutrients for 4 months, two thirds have a substantial treatment response, with not just improvement in ADHD symptoms but in regulation of emotions as well. This is good news as it replicates an overseas study that showed very similar outcomes. And side effects are minimal, indeed kids grow on micronutrients! Link below for lay public review of the findings and link to open access article. Well done to Adarsh Chand for publishing this work as an honours student. ADHD NZ ADHD Kids Care - Support Group For Parents

Twenty weeks of micronutrient supplementation could support maintenance and continual improvement of ADHD symptoms. This study supports micronutrients as an alternative treatment for ADHD, especially considering their safety profile.

27/08/2025

A lay person summary of our research showing the protective effects of micronutrients during pregnancy in preventing the development of post partum depression. Implications for mums struggling with depression during pregnancy are substantial. And previous research has documented that they were safe for the developing infant.

Mothers who took micronutrients antenatally were monitored for symptoms of depression during pregnancy.