Empowering Better Health With Real Food

This is the third Scottish Conference of the Public Health Collaboration Charity. This year we are focuing on empowering individuals to improve their own health and those of others. This is a chance to engage in a conversation with expert patients and practitioners interested in improving metabolic health using food as the main prescription. We will be talking about diabetes, food addiction, menopause and mental health. As well as taking a fascinating look into our evolutionary diet history and exploring how the ketogenic diet works. All of which will provide interesting insight into our epidemic of chronic disease and what we can do to reverse it.

We bring you the up to date science along with practical things you can do to make a difference. Whether you are a professional or a member of the public, we want to empower, inspire, and educate you, so that you can change your life and those of the people around you.

08.30 Doors Open with Tea & Coffee on Arrival

09.00 Opening by Moira Newiss, PHC Ambassador

09.05 Dr David Unwin - 'Learning from history: Do we? (Also how N=1 matters)'

10.00 Kate Swaine - 'Beyond Hormones: The Metabolic Shift of Menopause'

10.45 Break with Tea/Coffee provided

11.15 Ellen Bennett - 'Liberate: Empowering Recovery From Ultra-Processed Food Addiction'

11:45 Hannah Sutter - 'The Different Types of Keto Diets and How to make the Right Choice'

12.15 Real Food Low Carb Inspiring Stories Panel chaired by PHC Ambassadors Laura Scrutton & Sascha Grierson

13.00 Lunch Break - please bring your own - tea & coffee available

14.00 Mike Keen - 'Living in Evolutionary Diets - one man's extreme quest for the simple food'

15.00 Iain Campbell, Ally Houston & Moira Newiss - 'Metabolic Mental Health: Where The Research Is Taking Us'

16.00 Speakers Panel & Audience Q&A

17.00 Close

Moira is a former NHS manager turned nutritional therapist and health coach who specialises in ketogenic diets for mental health with a passion for brain energy and mitochondria. She has been an Ambassador for the Public Health Collaboration for the past 5 years, joined the Scientific Committe in 2025, and has organised the Scottish Conference since its inception.

Dr David Unwin works at the Norwood NHS Surgery in Southport near Liverpool, UK where he has helped care for a practice of 9700 people since 1986 as a family doctor. To date 141 of his patients with T2 diabetes have achieved drug-free remission. This gives a remission rate of 50% at 30 months duration of those choosing a lower carb diet. This equates to a remission rate of over 20% of the diabetic population of the entire practice. One of the best results for any clinic in the world. For the past few years, he has been a UK Royal College of General Practitioners expert clinical advisor on diabetes. David was also elected to fellowship of the college for his work in the training of trainee general practitioners.

As a result of his interests in both better communication with patients and Type 2 diabetes he was made Royal College of General Practice National Champion for Collaborative Care and Support Planning in Obesity & Diabetes in 2015. In 2016 he was the proud UK National winner of the NHS Innovator Of The Year Award for published research into lifestyle changes; working with patients’ personal health goals as an alternative to drug therapy in type 2 diabetes –so that his GP practice spends £68,000 per year less than expected on drugs for diabetes. As part of this he has also published research into improving blood pressure, lipid profiles, renal function and liver function by reducing dietary carbohydrate, especially sugar. In 2019 he was shortlisted by NICE for a prize for his teaspoon of sugar infographics which have now been translated into seventeen languages (including Malaysian). In 2021 one of his papers published in BMJ Nutrition was voted as ‘paper of the year’ by the International Academy of nutrition educators. Dr Unwin’s work has been covered by both BBC, C4 & C5 television, The New Scientist, The Times, The Daily Mail and The British Medical Journal. As @lowcarbGP he has over 100,000 followers on Twitter.

Kate is a Registered Nutritional Therapist, having graduated from the Institute for Optimum Nutrition in London in 2007. She is also one of the few IFM Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner (IFMCP) in the UK, so incorporating a Functional Medicine and therefore incorporates a systems biology based approach to her work. She has worked with over 2500 individuals to improve their health, and has a particular interest in and women's health and digestive wellbeing.

Ellen is a Registered Dietitian and is the Operations Manager at Liberate, the Public Health Collaborations pioneering online education program for addressing ultra-processed food addiction through evidence-based interventions and peer support.

Hannah is the Founder of three specialist keto food companies using just whole foods. Natural Ketosis (a delivered ready to eat keto diet), Ketocarefoods (aprescription range for drug resistant epilepsy) and FATT, a range of super clean super low carb snacks). Hannah is also author of “BIG FAT LIES is our government making us fat?”. Everything she does is designed to help the chronically ill use a therapeutic ketogenic diet and help restore metabolic health.

Mike is a chef turned arctic explorer and evolutionary human diet researcher. He will be talking in Edinburgh after returning from his latest expedition in Greenland where he has been pulling a pulk sled over the ice with his dog team, dragging a seal as his only source of sustenance. He is collaborating with a research team and over the course of a year is testing out the three main human diets that we’ve evolved with over the last 2 million years to see how his body and microbiome respond.

Dr. lain Campbell is the Baszucki Research Fellow in Metabolic Psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh. His primary research interests focus on the role of metabolic dysfunction in the brain and central nervous system and how these relate to symptoms of serious mental illness. Dr Campbell has a PhD in Global Health from the University of Edinburgh and is a principal investigator on a pilot trial of a ketogenic diet for bipolar disorder; a co-investigator on the UKRI MRC Metabolic Psychiatry Hub and a co-investigator leading lived experience workstreams on Wellcome Trust funded projects Helios-BD and Ambient-BD. Dr. Campbell has lived experience of Bipolar Disorder Type 2 which has informed his research.

Ally is a former physicist who recovered from ADHD, anxiety, and seasonal depression on a ketogenic diet. He is now a PhD researcher at Oxford University studying the ketogenic diet for ADHD and depression in a world first RCT. He is a member of the PHC scientific committee. He is also tending a digital garden, creating the cosiest wellness app, nourished by an expert-verified knowledge base.

Please bring your own lunch or nip out to buy something locally. The venue is positioned close to cafes and is opposite the Real Foods health food shop. We will be providing tea and coffee for which we are asking for a small donation if possible (no cash required).

There are excellent transport links to the venue which is directly on bus and tram routes and is approximately 12 minutes walk from Edinburgh Waverley train station.

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