The No Guts No Glory team did research at the Lowlands festival, performed at Paradiso, visited several Parkinson's Cafés and published a recipe book. These are just some of their activities. All with one aim: to inform diverse groups about their research into whether improving gut health through healthy eating has a beneficial effect on brain disorders. These include schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
The Communication Initiative Award honours initiatives that successfully engage and inspire a wide audience. According to Iris Sommer, the theme of this research lends itself very well to a variety of activities. 'Based on the literature, we were soon able to create nutritional advice, recipes and shopping lists. There are already many health gains to be made with these. The elderly sometimes suffer from malnutrition, while adults usually eat too much. And young people often choose ready-made meals because they don't have the time or inclination to cook. You have to feed everyone's brain with information in the right way. That is why we had such different activities for these different groups to draw attention to our study.'
The jury was very impressed and praised the team's enthusiasm, diligence and commitment. 'It turned out that each of our team enjoyed explaining the research in front of groups. Some are even real stage animals. We assigned everyone to the group they themselves belong to. They can best assess what does well for that group. And where possible, we incorporated the researchers' own experiences into the activities, practise what you preach.'
Through these activities, the No Guts No Glory team got enough participants for their research. 'We follow 107 participants with brain disorders. They receive a nutrition box with healthy food for 12 weeks. We visit the participants' homes six times over 15 months, going through various questionnaires with them and examining their blood and stools. I expect we will have the first results next year.'
Iris Sommer has some advice for other researchers. 'Start communicating prior to the study and continue with it until well after it is over. You then get very nice and useful feedback beforehand. Sometimes these are really eye-openers for the study. And deploy the entire team of researchers if it turns out that a team enjoys doing it. It is also very important to realise that each target group needs its own specific message'.
The team will receive €50,000 for new communication activities. They already have ideas for this. Sommer: ‘We will receive the prize on 28 May at an NWO congress. There we get to give a workshop on science communication. We are already looking forward to it. Furthermore, an exhibition in the University Museum on brain research will open on Valentine's Day. And we want to discuss some concrete research questions interactively. We are thinking here of a kind of Round Table Dinner. But we still need to work that out a bit.'
At Lowlands, the team conducted a sub-study where visitors could defecate for science. With this, the team wanted to find out how a person's gut bacteria affect their temperament. Sommer: ‘Quite a few Lowlands visitors use laughing gas or XTC, for example. We therefore have a lot of data on their effect on someone's gut. I expect we will be able to announce the result of that in 2025.'
