"EMENU opened the door for me to investigate the impact of lifestyle and per diem expenses on the obese population."
After graduating in Human Nutrition and Dietetics from the University of Granada in 2015, Ana Ojeda decided to continue with her training and looked for a Master's Degree that would bring her closer to the most updated knowledge on the relationship between nutrition and health, specifically in the field of personalized nutrition.
"Despite the 800 km distance from my home, I decided to do the Master's Degree European in Food, Nutrition and Metabolism (EMENU) of the School of Pharmacy and Nutrition. Of the two orientations offered by the Master's Degree (academic or clinical and research), I chose the academic orientation, in which subjects such as 'New trends in Food and Nutrition' or practical workshops in the different environments in which the dietitian-nutritionist can practice his profession were taught," she explains.
However, this orientation also allowed him to develop research activity during the work fin de Master's Degree at department of Food Science and Physiology, when he joined the group of the Navarrese study of Childhood Obesity (GENOI) at partnership with the Clínica Universidad de Navarra and the Complejo Hospitalario de Navarra.
"Thanks to the advice of my tutor, Professor Amelia Marti, Professor of Physiology and Director of GENOI, I learned about association de Amigos and the predoctoral grants they offered. After finishing the Master's Degree, I was lucky enough to be able to carry out my doctoral thesis in this same department with the goal to evaluate the influence of lifestyle factors such as the quality of the per diem expenses and the levels of physical activity on adiposity and telomere length (a marker of cellular aging related to oxidative stress and inflammation) in two populations: the elderly of the SUN Cohort and the obese infant-juvenile population", she says.
Thus, for 4 years she has been part of the team multidisciplinary GENOI as dietician-nutritionist in the lifestyle intervention IGENOI (Intervention of the group GENOI), treating 121 children from Navarra with abdominal obesity subjected to a comprehensive intervention, including per diem expenses, increased physical activity and family involvement.
In addition, in order to obtain the accredited specialization from doctorate International, she spent 3 months at the National Nutrition Surveillance Centre (NNSC), University College Dublin (Dublin, Ireland). "Thanks to the aid of the program promoted by the University with the partnership of the Obra social La Caixa and Fundación Bancaria Caja Navarra, and with the scholarship ERASMUS+ internship, I was able to participate in one of the European projects led by the WHO, based on the surveillance of childhood obesity in an international environment, allowing me to obtain data of more than 63,000 European children included in my doctoral thesis ".