Musician Jessica Drue began giving up eggs and dairy within weeks of her daughter Kayla-Ria being born in October 2013
Musician Jessica Drue began giving up eggs and dairy within weeks of her daughter Kayla-Ria being born in October 2013.
‘Kayla was born severely allergic to milk and eggs,’ says Jessica. ‘It was so bad that I had to stop consuming dairy, as it passed into my breast milk and made her very ill.’
Jessica, 24, who lives in North London, decided to remove all trace of dairy from her home. ‘I was terrified of cross-contamination, so I got rid of it entirely and stopped eating it myself. Initially, I still ate meat and fish, though.’
But then she made the decision to swap to a vegan diet. ‘More and more people I knew were trying it,’ she says. ‘I thought: “I’m already dairy-free, I may as well stop meat, too.” ’
So, last April, Jessica gave up eating animal products overnight. ‘At first, I felt better and more energised. But then things changed,’ she says.
Within a few months, she started feeling lethargic and needed several alarms to get herself up in the morning. Worryingly, she noticed vast amounts of her hair coming out in clumps, too.
‘I’ve always had thick hair — healthy with bouncy curls,’ she says. ‘But, a few weeks after turning vegan, it began to fall out. Not in obvious bald patches, but a definite thinning all over.
‘It came out in huge amounts on a brush and I’d “moult” all over the house, leaving me with thinner areas, especially at the front of my head, which made me self-conscious. I felt as if I looked old, but I’m only in my 20s.’
The protein keratin is a key component of hair — to produce keratin, the body needs amino acids, the building blocks of protein found in meat and fish. These can also be found in a vegan diet — from sources such as beans, lentils, chickpeas and soya alternatives to milk and yoghurt — but Jessica admits she had not done enough to replace the animal sources of amino acids.
She’s since been diagnosed with telogen effluvium, a type of hair loss characterised by shedding all over the head, and is trying to improve her vegan diet.
Although hair loss is typically perceived as a man’s issue and an ‘inevitable’ part of ageing, it’s a significant problem for women, too, with as many as eight million in the UK having experienced some degree of hair loss, according to a 2015 survey by trichologist Philip Kingsley.
More than 80 per cent of trichologist Steve O’Brien’s clients are women. And he says hair conditions that cause baldness are more common in women than men — whereas almost all male baldness has one genetic cause, ‘there are many more reasons women lose their hair,’ he explains. ‘Medication, low iron, poor diet or thyroid conditions, to name a few.’
‘Kayla was born severely allergic to milk and eggs,’ says Jessica. ‘It was so bad that I had to stop consuming dairy, as it passed into my breast milk and made her very ill.’ (pictured together)
Stress can also be a factor, says Dr Martin Wade, a consultant dermatologist at The London Skin And Hair Clinic. ‘While there is not always a clear trigger for hair loss, with one form, telogen effluvium, a precipitating cause is often found, such as illness.’
Diets very low in amino acids can result in hair loss or thinnng, adds Iain Sallis, director of the Institute of Trichologists. Hair loss can occur when a person suddenly eradicates these sources from their diet.
Dr Wade adds that, in the past 18 months, he has seen many female patients with hair loss due to a lack of iron, and often finds that recent adoption of a vegan diet is to blame. He says: ‘When some of my patients remove meat protein from their diet, they are not replacing it with sufficient plant-based protein and, as a result, they are
