Hello, this is Jenna and welcome to the Elevate Yourself podcast where we can talk about beauty and self care without judgment. 

Jenna: So thank you so much today for joining us on Elevate Yourself podcast, Pamela. You've been such an inspiration to my nutrition journey, and I'm sure so many other people so super excited to talk about some beauty related nutrition things today.

Pamela: Thank you. Yes, thanks for having me.

Jenna: And so I as I understand you've been a Registered Dietitian for 20 years. Did you start as vegan? Have you been vegan the whole time?

Pamela: No, I was actually vegetarian when I was studying to become a dietitian. And I didn't actually go completely vegan until probably getting close to 10 years ago. Then I decided to transition to having a private practice and decided to focus my practice on plant based nutrition. So I see all types of eaters but the specialty of my practices, plant based diets.

Jenna: And so what gave you the final push to go fully vegan?

Pamela: I actually had been considering opening a private practice and I actually had when I did my PhD work, I was working on severe malnutrition and HIV in children. So very different work. And I worked in the field of international nutrition and HIV for about 10 years. And then because of family reasons, really I wanted to start my own practice. And so I started looking at, okay, what are the issues really facing Canadians in terms of nutrition and was really confronted by the chronic disease load that we bear as a population diabetes, heart disease, just so many conditions, which are actually very much related to nutrition? Nutrition is an important contributing factor. 

Pamela: And as I was reflecting on that and looking at the research about what we can do, because I've always been motivated by preventing disease, rather than waiting for disease to develop, and then reacting to it. I was looking at, you know, what can we really be doing with nutrition that can help to prevent disease from developing and I was struck by how important plant based diets are, at least a plant strong high fiber diet, very important. And so that inspired me to focus my practice on plant based diets. And I did more reading and more investigation and really became aware of the plight of animals, real animal agriculture situation, just the fact that animals are so often suffering in our agricultural system, and I really didn't want to have anything to do with that. I didn't want my money going toward that in any way. And I realized that dairy and eggs unfortunately, as well as not really being ideal for health are also unfortunately linked to cruelty and so I didn't feel comfortable with vegetarianism. I wanted to be completely vegan and not just mostly plant based, but completely vegan. However, I do understand that not everyone is quite in that place, but that was mine too.

Jenna: Yeah. I think we all are a little bit aware now that moving towards less meat is kind of the healthier way of living nowadays. Yeah. And I think also, I tried out a vegan program through Power By You.

Pamela: Yeah.

Jenna: Six week program - and I noticed also my grocery bills went down so much, 

Pamela: Right?

Jenna: Just by cutting those things out and how much more nutrition I was actually getting for like way lower grocery bill, which was fantastic, which also got me thinking about because I recommend, usually typically so many supplements in the studio for clients to maintain a healthier stronger lash line so that they get better lash retention and therefore saving money in their services. And it got me thinking about maybe there was a way to eat your supplements instead of taking them vegetables, for example. And so that's kind of why I reached out to you because I thought you would be the best person to talk to about that and how possibly we could replace some of our supplements to get better, stronger hair and nail growth.

Pamela: Absolutely, well definitely there are ways of eating that are going to better support healthier skin, hair, lashes, nails, and all of those beauty related issues and you know, real beauty comes from being healthy and being vibrant. And eating a balanced diet is certainly part of that and hydrating.

Jenna: Yeah. Are you familiar at all with like biotin supplements? 

Pamela: Yes. Absolutely. Yes. 

Jenna: Yeah. So that's the number one supplement that's usually recommended to grow longer, stronger lashes. And so are there ways that we can get is by to naturally occurring? Do you know more about what Biotin is or where we get this from naturally?

Pamela: Yeah, absolutely. So it's Biotin is certainly very important, but actually, B vitamins in general are important for growing stronger hair and lashes and there are B vitamins in whole grains, almonds, leafy greens, but also not there not only in plant based foods, meat, fish and seafood are also sources that you certainly can get Biotin on a plant based diet. However, I think even if you are eating a balanced diet, you can still benefit from taking a biotin supplement. You know, if you are finding that your lash or hair growth is a bit limited. It's certainly worth trying taking a multi like A B complex or a biotin on its own supplement to see if that's going to have an effect and helping your hair and lashes.

Jenna: Yeah. I also always I was wondering if you could talk to us also a little bit about collagen. So that's another really trendy supplement right now.

Pamela: Yeah, absolutely. So now collagen is just a protein. And there's actually nothing really magical about collagen in terms of how we eat or collagen that we would put topically on our skin. I know there are lots of creams and serums for hair or for skin that include collagen as an ingredient. And there's really, I'm going to say no evidence that is doing anything particularly special for your hair or your skin. It is really not going to be absorbed by your skin or taken up by your skin in terms of boosting your own collagen production. Yeah, collagen is a protein. Protein is certainly one nutrient that is very important in terms of having healthy skin, hair and nails. And so taking a protein supplement, particularly if you are not eating enough protein already in your diet may help with helping you grow your lashes better.

Pamela: I don't think collagen in particular is going to do more than another protein powder or other protein supplement or even just increasing the protein in your diet would do. However, there's no harm in taking collagen but just really think of it as a protein powder and there are no vegan sources of collagen. However you will see vegan collagen products and what they do actually is supply certain nutrients particularly Vitamin C, Vitamin A that helped to stimulate our body's production of collagen. So that's the concept behind vegan collagen products is taking the nutrients that encourage your body to produce its own collagen, which actually that's the very best thing that can happen is if your body produces its own collagen, that is you know going to be much more effective than actually eating collagen and certainly then putting on some kind of topical products that contains collagen. Some of those may give some benefits but it's probably not specific to the collagen.

Jenna: Yeah, I've taken a course in like Collagen Induction Therapy or Microneedling and they told us that the course collagen when it's taken orally basically the liver decides what it wants to do with it and it's like hair, skin and nails are usually at the bottom of the list. And usually it just gets used towards other building blocks of life.

Pamela: That's right because it's a protein I mean, that's absolutely right. It's going to be just broken down into amino acids in the body and used to build tissues like if you've been working out you know, then it's used to help repair muscles is going to be used for you know, organ maintenance and function and, and yes, our as, as important as it may be to us. Our body is not going to prioritize lash growth for survival. So unfortunately, it's actually perhaps quite important to survive well, however, yes, our body doesn't agree with us on that and taking oral collagen I agree with you is really not likely to do a lot for your nails except for and lashes except for as I said, if you haven't been eating enough protein and you start taking collagen, then you might see benefits but you would also see benefits if you just started like eating more tofu or taking a protein powder, you would probably see those same benefits.

Jenna: Yeah, that totally makes sense. So I have another question for you. One thing that I noticed in the studio and I've heard between lash techs is that Keto diets can make your hair growth not be as thick or consistent. And I was wondering if there you think there's any merit to that theory?

Pamela: Well, anytime that you follow a very restrictive diet, you do run into the risk of missing out on some key nutrients. So the Keto diet is unlikely to be low in protein because it does tend to be fairly high in certainly fat and also fairly high in protein. However, it does often tend to be low in a lot of other vitamins and minerals because it's I'm making a generalization here but it's it's generally almost completely absent of fruits almost completely absent of full grains. There will be some vegetables but that's not the primary focus of the diet. It is possible to eat a vegan keto diet which tends to include more veggies. Some people who eat keto do quite a few veggies, but oftentimes people who are following a keto diet are really leaning into fats, a little bit of protein and not a lot of carbohydrate, and they're missing out on a lot of key nutrients. So it's unsurprising to me that this could lead to hair loss, but that's true of any extreme diet. And I'll be like very honest and upfront. And if you were to be saved like a fruitarian or something like that, which is a person who eats nothing but fruits, I can also imagine you might run into problems because he might not be getting enough protein. You might not be getting enough iron and those are also nutrients that are very important for hair growth. So I don't want to just bash Keto coming here as a beginning bash keto that's like, you know, certainly a very common trope you'll see on YouTube or whatever, but it's actually true whenever you follow a very restrictive diet and start completely cutting out groups of food that you're running into a risk of also cutting out roots of nutrients. So I'm I'm not surprised that people, especially if anyone's following keto and really just cutting veggies out entirely, that they may run into a problem with their skin, hair digestion, body odor, all kinds of things that can happen. Yeah, if you're following a keto diet, that's especially if you're kind of doing I'm going to call it dirty keto, like where you're doing it and not doing it in a very healthy way at all.

Jenna: Yes, I actually have heard of a diet recently where all you do for I think it's like two weeks is all you do is eat bacon, and you're supposed to lose like 20 pounds, right? So  I'm guessing that's one of those dirty ones. Exactly. That's right. Yes. And then so another one of the challenges with lash clients is often hormonal shifts. So like I've noticed while there's there's lots of different hormonal shifts, but post pregnancy is a big one for women. And then you notice they have like the most gorgeous lashes through their whole pregnancy. And then they have the baby and like they go through this crazy lash shed and sometimes it takes them like a while to regrow their natural lash cycle after that, like in instances like that, are there diet tweaks that they can do to make that of look change in their hormones a little bit smoother?

Pamela: Well, I think really what happens in pregnancy is more that you're going to see more lustrous hair and lashes and things like that in pregnancy, but then the return afterwards is sort of more a stabilizing or kind of like returning to pre pregnancies state. So it's not so much that now they're losing all their hair. It's more just that that was additive. You know the hair dye side was due to the pregnancy. It may be that it feels like now they have lost a lot of lashes compared to how they were pre pregnancy. That might be how it feels. I'm gonna say probably they're more likely to be returning to their pre pregnancy lash experience. And I don't want to generalize here if you're listening to this and you're sure that your lashes were fuller before getting pregnant than they then they have been after then you know, I certainly don't want to discount your experience. Lashes are not my area of expertise but I would say that I would say that those hormones are going to be additive during pregnancy and then it will I would say stabilize afterwards, hopefully. So if you feel you've gone down to lower than pre pregnancy lash growth, and hopefully it should just stabilize and come back. I don't think there's really much you can do in terms of diet to prevent that shift that comes with when you lose your pregnancy hormones. There's we can't keep those pregnancy hormones once we're not pregnant anymore. It's just there's there's nothing we could do about that. So yeah, certainly following a healthy diet throughout pregnancy is going to be helpful and trying to maintain a healthy diet post pregnancy if you're struggling post pregnancy in those in those early days with a newborn when it can just be so exhausting. If you're struggling to maintain a healthy diet, then I'd encourage you to continue to take your prenatal and ask friends to help out you know, people who would like to be supportive. Maybe they can make a meal for you or give you a gift card maybe to Sprout - just shout out Sprout. If you're here in Nelson locally then that would be a great place to go and visit but I think making sure that you do maintain as much as possible a healthy diet that will help with maintaining as much as you can your hair and lash growth. But I think that those hormonal shifts, you can't stop them. That's just what happens. 

Jenna: Maybe couldn't be more stressed. That's how they like making the hair follow that. 

Pamela: Absolutely. And, you know, I want to say how much my heart goes out to people who have had babies in the last couple of years. Because already even before that, certainly Post Natal Depression was a very real and big issue something I know a lot of people personally who have encountered and I certainly have seen in my practice a lot of people who have encountered Postnatal depression, but now with all the you know, lock downs that we've experienced and COVID and people are much more isolated than they maybe have been in various periods in history. Like I can think when I had children. It's like you know, going to play groups and getting out with other moms having coffee and just like these more relaxed experiences going to the pool, like all these fun things that I got to do with other moms and stuff. And now we're just more limited and so absolutely, I could imagine you know, emotions playing a role as well as stress certainly plays a role in terms of skin, hair and nails.

Jenna: 100% Yeah. So in summary, if you could pick like three vegetables to put into your diet to give your self longer, stronger hair growth, hair and nail growth, what vegetables would you pick?

Pamela: I would pick kale. We can't go wrong with kale. Kale is a great source of iron as well as calcium and those are two nutrients that are important for hair growth also it's a good source of B vitamins including biotin. So I would say kale is at the top of the list. Rice a second, I would pick sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are also a source of biotin but they're a source of beta carotene vitamin A which is important for beauty. And then last it's not exactly a vegetable but it is speaking I would pick pumpkin seeds which are a great source of Zinc. And that is the sink is also very important for hair growth. And certainly if you are deficient in zinc, then you will have very poor hair growth and it's one to check in on if you do have poor hair growth to increase the zinc in your diet and potentially take supplements. 

Jenna: Wow - well that sounds delicious. Pumpkin seeds and kale and sweet potatoes.

Pamela: Yeah! You can just prepare a nice, you know beautiful with some quinoa at the bottom and then we'll have those toppings and then we'll make a nice tahini lemon dressing. And then we're going to be just glowing and have great lashes. 

Jenna: Sounds fabulous. And so I do understand that you just did you just finish writing a book now is it released now?

Pamela: I did finish writing the book. It's called Going Vegan for Beginners and you can buy it on Amazon and on other bookseller websites. And actually just today I met with my publisher and we're starting another book. So my second book is going to be about raising vegan toddlers.

Jenna: Oh, that's really exciting because that must be really tricky. I can imagine. 

Pamela: Yeah! You know, raising toddlers, I think is tricky, anyway. Yeah. And it's not that hard to be a vegan family raising young kids, but you do have to just know a few things about what you're doing. And so it is worth speaking to a dietitian if you are going to raise your kids vegan. And you know this book is going to be helpful. It's going to be nutrition information, and then also recipes. 

Jenna: And so if someone wants to reach out to you directly to get some more personalized advice, how would they do that?

Pamela: The best way to reach out to me is on my website. Pamelafergusson.com. And you'll find a tab there that says work with me. That's how you can book but if you just want to learn about me and maybe send me a DM I love getting DMS from followers and questions. So find me on Instagram at drpamela.rd.

Jenna: Perfect! Well thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to us about nutrition and beauty. I think a lot of people are going to find this so helpful.

Pamela: Love speaking with you Jenna, and thanks so much for including

Jenna: Loved this episode? Head over to iTunes to subscribe rate and leave a review. Don't forget to join us next week for another episode. Thanks for listening!