From Healthy Life, Great Looks, Healthy Hair

Part I: DIET AND NUTRITION | The Building Blocks of
Health for You and Your Hair

THE SAYING, “YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT” is more than a mere catch phrase or cliché. The reality is that what we become physically is significantly influenced by what we put into our bodies, and this relates directly to our hair in ways that might surprise you. Proper nutrition is getting what you need, the right amount of macronutrients, such as protein, carbohydrates and safe fats, plus micronutrients, including vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids. By supplying our body each day with the elements of which it’s composed, we can attain complete health—provided that due attention is alsogiven to our mind and spirit.

Hair is fed and develops from the food we eat, food being nature’s original remedy to activate our body’s natural healing force. Food fads may come and go, but the importance of a well-rounded diet and nurturing your body through healthful food never goes out of style. We can see this for ourselves; those who possess thicker, fuller, more naturally beautiful heads of hair in most cases follow more wholesome diets, exercise regularly and follow a healthier lifestyle. People who are health-minded look it! They take responsibility for their lives and their choices, and it usually pays off with bright, clear eyes, glowing skin and full and healthy hair.
Recording artist Johnny Rivers, a longtime friend, is a good example of someone who has maintained a healthy lifestyle, eating wholesome, healthy foods. Recognizing when he was very young the value of becoming responsible for one’s own health, Johnny gave up meat years ago and eats organic produce. It has really paid off for him. After decades of intelligently following the laws of nature and personal hygiene and complying with other health practices, he looks great and his health is robust. It’s hard to believe he’s already had his sixtieth birthday.

Conversely, those people who consume junk (processed/lifeless) foods and live unhealthy, sedentary lives are the ones who usually suffer from various health and hair problems and are prone to premature aging. Of course there are people who are dealt a genetic royal flush. They can break all the rules in the book and nothing seems to affect the condition of their health or their hair. Since life isn’t fair, most of us are not part of that blessed minority.

We’re all human, and what we don’t understand we tend to criticize or ridicule. Most of us are like that, aren’t we? I know I was leery and maybe even judgmental when I first heard about eliminating meat from my diet, cutting out junk food and eating plenty of fresh organic fruits and vegetables. I can just imagine how I appeared to Elvis’ group when I entered his world in 1964. To begin
with, I was a Hollywood hairdresser, and to top it off a vegetarian into health foods and “spiritual stuff.” A far cry from the diet, eating habits and thinking of people from Memphis, Tennessee, in those days. I certainly don’t blame them for branding me as weird and “far out.” Hot dogs, soft drinks, fried food, candy and fast food were their staples—the more fat, sugar and salt the better.

I remember one night in particular aboard Elvis’ plane, the Lisa Marie, on the way to our next tour stop in Florida. Our staff stewardess Carol always made sure that Elvis’ Convair 880 jet was well stocked with food, and she knew everyone’s favorites and quirks. One of the guys had asked for foot-long chilidogs to be on board. As usual, Carol was kind enough to keep plenty of fruit yogurt available for me.

Around two in the morning, I was sitting at a table eating my yogurt when one of the guys walked over with a mouthful of chilidog, with orange grease running down his chin. He looked down at me: “Hey, Geller, you really eat that garbage? Man, I don’t know how you can put that crap into your body!”

Not everyone in Elvis’ entourage was a junk food “junkie.” While Jerry Schilling wasn’t a vegetarian as I was, he has always empowered his life by making the health of his body a top priority. He was innately aware from an early age that having a vibrant, supple, healthy body is a joy and can vastly improve one’s quality of life. Lifting weights back in the sixties and watching his diet, Jerry was a good role model for health—for Elvis and all of us in the group. Jerry’s balanced lifestyle has paid off; his body and his hair don’t look much different from when we first met back in 1964.

The body in many respects is like a delicate and precision-made automobile and responds to expert care and treatment. If we neglect our car (or our body), not furnishing it with the necessary requirements, the various systems will malfunction. There are exact and precise laws and principles that govern and operate both vehicles. If we supply them both with the basic indispensable fuels and oils, we can be confident they will perform smoothly and safely as they were originally designed. The automobile was constructed with a built-in warning system: the dashboard, with its gauges to warn us if the engine is overheating or signal us if the battery is low. The same is true of the body. The eyes alert us if something iswrong; the pupils dilate and dark circles appear. If our temperature rises, it’s nature’s notification of trouble.

Hair also is a measuring stick of our general state of health. For example, when an animal is sick, its fur loses shine and luster and, in some cases, even falls out. Our hair, if examined under a microscope, will reveal where
we are nutritionally deficient, and those deficiencies manifest themselves in the overall condition and appearance of the hair. Adele Davis, one of the earlier proponents of health, wrote, “Even a partial lack of almost any nutrient causes hair to fall out. To rectify such a condition the diet must be completely adequate.”

The way to achieve healthy hair begins with our internal health, so it’s critical to examine what sort of nutrition is most beneficial to the germination of hair, as well as what substances will most likely destroy it. According to Dr. Irwin I. Lubowe, one of the world’s most respected hair and skin authorities, “There is no doubt that an unbalanced diet will sharply affect the growth of hair, as it will all other parts of the body.” In the natural food classic You Are What You Eat, Victor Lindlahr explains, “The far-reaching importance of your daily menus becomes apparent when you stop to consider that what you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner is converted into your hair, eyes, nose, mouth, lungs, fingernails and the many, many other tissues of which your body is composed.” My philosophy is very simple: Good health is the foundation of authentic beauty. Health and beauty are inseparable, intimately related to the balance of the body’s internal and external well being. The protection and preservation of our health is vital to enhance the beauty, health and growth of our hair, and to prevent unnecessary loss.