The nutrition community is made up of individuals with diverse experiences, perspectives, and ideas. This diversity is the fundamental strength of our professional society. Through this member spotlight series, we celebrate our diversity and the vast achievements made by our members in the field.
Meet Dr. Leanne Redman, currently a Professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center within the LSU System and Director of the Reproductive Endocrinology and Women’s Health Research Program. In this conversation with ASN’s Member Engagement Coordinator, Sara Genell, Dr. Redman shares her passion for nutrition and women’s health, as well as her role as session chair for Chasing the Fountain: The Role of Diet in Achieving Optimal Aging at NUTRITION 2025.
Sara Genell: Thank you, Dr. Leanne Redman, for participating in this session spotlight interview. I’m hoping we can get our readers fired up for the high-quality and valuable content to be highlighted throughout the NUTRITION 2025 program! To begin, please introduce yourself and share what sparked your interest in nutrition and women’s health.
Dr. Redman: Thank you, Sara. I began my career working with elite female athletes to optimize performance around the menstrual cycle. This turned into a physiological and endocrinological investigation into why athletes would lose the integrity of their cycles during high performance situations. I then made a giant leap into investigating why the female reproductive system loses its functionality in people experiencing obesity. I have stayed focused on this topical area with research on polycystic ovary syndrome. A large focus of my research lab over the past fifteen years has been to study obesity in pregnancy and to design studies that seek to understand how to optimize maternal nutrition to support healthy weight gain and prevent obesity progression during the reproductive years.
Genell: Those are some very interesting research topics, Dr. Redman. Moving now to your NUTRITION 2025 session, can you please tell us what you have planned for your featured session?
Dr. Redman: Chasing the Fountain: The Role of Diet in Achieving Optimal Aging is going to be an awesome session! I will dub as Barbara Walters and lead an interactive Q&A with the investigators of two NIH planning grants. These grants were conducted with the intent to design future 5-year dietary interventions focused on promoting healthy aging in either a young or older adult cohort.
Genell: Why is this topic important? What exciting new research or insights will this session highlight?
Dr. Redman: In animal studies, nutrition interventions have profound effects on the preservation of health span and lifespan extension. In these models, in addition to calorie restriction, newer approaches including time restricted eating or intermittent fasting also show promising results. A comparison of these approaches in humans with a focus on aging biomarkers, and, for durations longer than six months remain to be studied. Each eating pattern offers differing strengths and weaknesses which we will discuss in this session in the context of the two planning projects and the future RCTs.
Only at NUTRITION 2025
Chasing the Fountain: The Role of Diet in Achieving Optimal Aging → View in the Schedule Planner
Saturday, May 31, 2025
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM ET
Genell: What do you hope the attendees will gain from participating in this session?
Dr. Redman: I hope that attendees will enjoy an interactive session and will take away the different challenges associated with designing and conducting nutrition interventions focused on aging biomarkers in young compared to older adults. Factors such as recruitment, the type of nutrition intervention, role of physical activity, safety considerations and generalizability will be covered during this featured session.
Genell: As a past GEM Chair of ASN’s Maternal, Perinatal, and Pediatric Nutrition RIS and speaker at NUTRITION, what has been most rewarding for you when attending ASN’s annual meeting?
Dr. Redman: ASN is the true mecca of nutrition research in this country. I love the strong support for early career investigators and the vast array of topics — from public health discussions on dietary guidelines to nutrition intervention trials and mechanistic studies in pre-clinical models.
