The Future is Personal: Nutrition Beyond One-Size-Fits-All

An exploration of how precision nutrition is reshaping metabolic health through data-driven insights, individual biology, and precision lifestyle interventions.

Not Just Hot Flushes: Cardiometabolic and anthropometric changes in perimenopause

Women undergoing the menopausal transition know to expect the hot flushes and the night sweats. What they might be less prepared for is the impact on their cardiovascular health and their metabolism. Join Rebecca Edwards to explore the impact of declining oestrogen on the heart, bones, body shape, and more. You'll walk away well-equipped to guide your perimenopausal patients through this time of change with evidence-informed nutritional knowledge.

AI in Health: What to Trust, What to Avoid, and How to Use It Well

AI is everywhere in health right now, and it is hard to know what to trust. This session is an honest look, for practitioners, at what AI is genuinely good at and where it goes badly wrong. Scott Pyke walks through the good (AI reading scans and screening for disease better than ever), the bad (chatbots that get health advice wrong about half the time), and the ugly (the diet and supplement scams that target this profession directly). Then the part every practitioner needs: what the rules actually say in Australia about using AI with client information, and how to stay on the right side of them. Finally, in plain language: what is an AI agent, what is an AI skill, and how do you actually use them in a real practice? You will leave knowing the difference and knowing where to start. Expect a straight, practical picture of AI in health today, from a computer scientist with thirty years in tech who builds AI and works with the practitioners who use it.

Optimising Weight Loss with GLP-1 Medications and Nutritional Support

Heather will overview using Metabolic Balance with GLP1 support and how the two can lead to optimal results for complex clients ensuring optimal nutrition and minimum side effects via a case based presentation. Including supplementation used and monitoring tools to manage muscle preservation and successful addition and reduction of medications ensuring ideal results.

Nutrition for Longevity: Translating the Science of Healthy Ageing into Clinical Practice

Longevity medicine is rapidly emerging as one of the most exciting frontiers in the health and wellness industry, fuelled by breakthroughs in ageing biology, precision nutrition, and preventative medicine. As patients increasingly seek strategies to not only live longer but remain healthier for longer, clinicians are being challenged to translate cutting-edge longevity science into practical, evidence-based interventions. In this thought-provoking presentation, Dr Michelle Musca will explore the powerful intersection between nutrition and longevity, unpacking the biological pathways that drive ageing and the dietary strategies capable of influencing them. Topics will include the role of nutrient-sensing pathways such as mTOR, AMPK, and insulin/IGF-1 signalling, the impact of chronic inflammation and epigenetic modifications on biological ageing, and the emerging evidence supporting dietary interventions including intermittent fasting, calorie restriction, and Mediterranean-style eating patterns. Drawing on the work of leading longevity researchers, Dr Musca will examine the role of key micronutrients, metabolic health, and personalised nutrition in extending healthspan. Attendees will leave with practical, clinically applicable frameworks to help patients optimise healthy ageing and harness nutrition as a powerful tool for longevity.

The Future of Allied Health Nutritionists and Nutritionist Regulation

The future of primary care allied health Nutritionists in Australia is being shaped by broader reforms in workforce utilisation, digital health, aged care, disability services and professional self-regulation. Within this changing environment, the central regulatory challenge is how to ensure clinically trained Nutritionists are recognised in a way that supports public safety, professional accountability and appropriate access to care. This presentation explores the emergence of Certified Practicing Nutritionists (CPNs) as degree-qualified, clinically trained allied health professionals operating within a profession-specific, competency-based framework. It considers how allied health recognition is becoming increasingly important across national reforms concerned with workforce utilisation, digital health participation through My Health Record and Healthcare Provider Identifier pathways, disability and aged care service design, and broader allied health workforce planning. The presentation also examines the ongoing challenge created by the unprotected title “Nutritionist”, particularly where nutrition language is used in quasi-clinical ways by non-health professionals, commercial education providers, and coaching and fitness pathways. It discusses why degree-qualified, clinically trained Nutritionists must be clearly visible and identifiable to consumers. That this outcome requires clear public-facing distinctions between professional Nutritionists and adjacent non-clinical roles, such as health, wellness and lifestyle coaches. It also identifies that while adjacent non-clinical roles may contribute to a person’s broader nutrition journey, they should be understood as supportive and non-clinical and are not substitutes for care provided by a clinically trained Nutritionist. The central theme presented is that the future of Nutritionist regulation should be constructive, proportionate and public-protection focused. AARPN’s development of the CPN credential, professional standards, competency frameworks and ongoing advocacy provides a pathway toward clearer recognition of clinically trained primary care allied health Nutritionists within Australia’s health care systems.

The triad quietly shaping gut ecology and inflammation: movement, hydration and motility

From Dysbiosis to Diet: Rethinking the Microbiome in Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Autoimmune disease is driven by modifiable environmental and lifestyle factors, not genetics alone, and few are as responsive to diet as dysbiosis. This presentation centres on dysbiosis and its role in gut autoimmunity. Using inflammatory bowel disease as the clinical model, we take a deep dive into the microbial signatures that characterise Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis: the loss of butyrate-producing species, the expansion of oral and pro-inflammatory taxa, and the fall in microbial diversity that together sustain intestinal inflammation and barrier breakdown. From there, the focus shifts firmly to the plate. Consistent with a food-first philosophy, this session explores how personalised nutrition can reshape the microbiome, positioning food as the first-line intervention rather than supplementation. We examine the dietary levers with the strongest evidence in IBD, from fibre and prebiotic foods that feed butyrate producers to dietary patterns that lower inflammatory load and rebuild diversity, tailored to the individual rather than applied as a one-size-fits-all protocol. By turning the latest microbiome science into practical dietary strategy, this session equips nutrition professionals to move beyond symptom management and address the microbial roots of gut autoimmunity, starting with the plate.