| COVER STORY
by Lyle Hurd, editor of totalhealth
Lisa Petty
Writer, nutritional consultant and health advocate, Lisa Petty is a woman on a mission.
Graduating with a university
degree in English
literature into a recession
in 1989, Lisa took
a job in finance—it was
the only industry that was
hiring—and she stayed
there for the next decade.
After the birth of her son
in 1999, Lisa realized that
she could no longer force
herself to work everyday
in a career that sapped
her energy. She was able
to parlay her experience in
sales into a job in public
relations at a local health products company, and it
was there that Lisa discovered her path. When her
job at the company ended, Lisa finished her studies
in holistic nutrition and soon was writing for
some of North America’s top health companies and
magazines.
Finding a niche for herself in the health community
was as simple as combining her passion for health
with her understanding of the role of beauty in our
lives. As a nutritionist, Lisa quickly learned that vanity
is a powerful motivator for people to make healthy
changes in their lives, and she began to encourage
people to change their diets and lifestyle as a means
to achieving their appearance goals. Knowing that
our bodies tell us a lot about the state of our internal
health through the quality of our skin, nails, and hair,
Lisa also began to recommend that people pay more
attention to what their mirror was telling them.
However, Lisa also understood that there was another
factor in the health and beauty equation: the
North American beauty business rakes in billion of
dollars in annual sales. Yet, many skin care products,
cosmetics, shampoos, and sun care products contain
harmful chemicals that are not only related to
conditions that age us, but also have proven links to
diseases, including cancer. She addresses all of these
major issues in her new book Living Beauty (Fitzhenry
& Whiteside, 2005) to be released this fall.
Lisa believes that beauty equals health, and she hopes to
share this philosophy with people who don’t often set foot in a
health store. To prove that she doesn’t expect women to throw
their beauty products out with the bath water, she’s enlisted the
help of NYC celebrity make-up artist Rose-Marie Swift to teach
women professional tricks to help them look their very best.
Because Lisa understands that change is hard, she encourages
people to take small steps toward their health goals—and
doesn’t expect us to give up everything we love. In the foreword
to Living Beauty, supermodel Angela Lindvall writes: “It’s possible
for everyone to live well while at the same time respecting
our bodies and our planet. We can be in fashion and still find
ways to divert garbage from the landfill. We can have great skin
now without paying for it with our health later.” Lisa wants people
to know that our choices are not always between extremes.
But Living Beauty—the book and the philosophy—isn’t just
about our looks. Creating a healthy body inevitably leads to the
wish to create a healthy mind and spirit, which ionally opens you
up to perceiving the beauty of this wonderful life. As Lisa writes
in the ional chapter of her book, “As you become more healthy
your respect for and appreciation of your body will escalate, and
this respect will eventually extend beyond your physical body to
touch the world that surrounds you. From a starting place of
wanting to improve your own personal beauty, you will come to
appreciate, again, all the beauty that surrounds you.” And that
is the starting place for living beauty.
Far from being a superficial pursuit, Lisa believes that the
pursuit of beauty might be the ultimate goal. She feels it is simply
time to redefine beauty.
Lisa introduces her book Living Beauty with the following
quote by Sam Levenson:
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his/her fingers
through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never
walk alone.
People, even more than things, have to be restored,
renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never
throw out anyone.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find
one at the end of each of your arms.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have
two hands; one for helping yourself, and the other for
helping others.
Nancy Cheeseman, a mutual friend of Lisa’s and mine, the
individual who suggested Lisa contribute the article following
this interview, believes that Mr. Levenson’s words
pretty well describe Lisa. I heartily agree.
th: In the book you make the statement, “While our pursuit of
beauty through health is far from superficial, our approach to
the quest for health is sometimes shallow.” Please elaborate.
LP: Consider for a moment the methods we used to treat
health issues. In the West, we constantly focus on making our
symptoms go away. Got a headache? Take a pill. Got a skin
problem? Put cortisone cream on it. We barely scratch the surface
of the problem and put little effort into investigating what
caused it.
Many of us have grown up thinking that we don’t have to
worry about our diet and lifestyle choices because modern
medicine will fix us if we break. As our waiting lists grow for
diagnostic procedures and treatments for disease, however,
it has become obvious that we need a new health philosophy.
Our focus should change from “cure” to “prevention.” Taking
a painkiller for a headache is like responding to the alarm
from your home’s smoke detector by removing the batteries:
you get rid of the immediate discomfort but you haven’t
addressed the source of the problem. To protect your home
and family, you should also make sure that the loud, obnoxious
ring of the alarm isn’t warning of a hidden fire that you
haven’t yet noticed. To protect your body, you should investigate
whether the “symptom” alarm is a warning that your
health is in danger.
If you suffer from chronic headaches, instead of being
on the constant lookout for the next great pain reliever, you
should focus your energy on discovering what triggers the
throbbing. Head pain is often a symptom of dehydration, and
many of us simply don’t drink enough water. Headaches are
also frequently a symptom of food sensitivities—sensitivities
that may not be detected through standard laboratory allergy
tests. It’s worth your while to find a professional who can
help you isolate your headache triggers and remove the pain
at its source.
The same philosophy holds true for skin conditions. Most
of the time, a skin condition is not simply a skin condition. As
you will discover in the pages of this book, acne, eczema, and
other concerns are often symptoms of a larger issue. Problems
with skin frequently indicate a dietary deficiency or nutrient
absorption problem. Skin eruptions may simply be the
silent alarm, letting you know that all is not right in the inner
workings of your body. While medicated creams might work
to make the most recent outbreak of a problem vanish, they
do not address the cause of the trouble. The rash, spot, or
eruption might disappear when you use your fancy creams,
but make no mistake, it will be back. Just as in the case of
the recurrent headache, you must also shift your focus away
from treating your skin symptoms to treating the cause of
the problem.
th: Right on target. What are some of your other goals as a
health advocate/nutritionist?
LP: I want to encourage people to open their minds to new
ideas about health, the environment and all forms of beauty.
We don’t have to give up everything we love in order to look
better, feel better and live better. We also don’t need to be
fanatical to make a difference. Remember the butterfly effect:
small changes can have huge results. If I can get people to realize,
first of all, that they have choices and then show them what
some of them are, then all I have to do is encourage them to try something new. Living Beauty is an ongoing
process, not an end result.
For example, I let people know that
the choices they make on a daily basis really
do impact their looks and their health.
Our modern convenience foods aren’t the
best source of nutrients to give us glowing
skin and a healthy body. The aches and
pains we take for granted as a normal part
of aging aren’t necessarily related to aging
at all. Morning stiffness and sore muscles
might be telling you that your body just
isn’t getting the right kinds of fuel. Just
like a car, if you give your body the right
fuel, it will run better. So what I’m saying
is that you don’t have to feel old. You
can wake up with energy in the morning.
And, again, you don’t have to completely
change the way you live your life today in
order to feel the results.
And it’s the same with body and
beauty care products like shampoo,
soap and eye shadow. Many of these
products contain ingredients that are
toxic. And our bodies are not immune
to toxicity. Eventually our systems will
show signs of wear and tear, and some
of these ingredients are proven to cause
cancer. Yet we slather them on our bodies
everyday to make us look “beautiful.”
It’s an ugly irony. But it doesn’t have to
be that way. There are safe choices that
work just as well as the toxic ones.
But if you love a certain lipstick color
that might not be the safest choice and
you’ll ignore everything else I’m saying
if I even suggest that you get rid of that
lipstick, then by all means wear your favorite
lipstick. Feeling good about yourself
is part of what makes you beautiful.
I want to add to that feeling, not take it
away. Just make a few other changes in your
shampoo or your shaving cream to reduce
your toxic load. Life is about balance.
th: You’re a nutritionist. Let’s talk about food.
LP: Obviously, the cells in our bodies
are made up of the foods that we eat.
But we can’t forget that are bodies are
designed to eat food from the ground,
fruits from the trees, nuts and seeds,
and lean protein. Our digestive tracts
haven’t changed much in the thousands
of years, yet we expect them to figure
out what to do with a man-made transfat
or a pesticide. The truth is, our body
doesn’t know what to do with these substances
so it stores them. It stores them
until it can’t store anything more, then
they start to break down and we get sick.
And, by the way, a long time before we
are really sick, our bodies start to tell us
that something is going wrong by sending
us signals, like a skin rash or soft
nails, or a cut that won’t heal. We need
to pay attention to the signals.
As a parent, it scares me that there are
so many toxins in our food because we
have to eat. It’s not as if we have a choice
in the matter. So it’s really important that
we choose the best food that we can. We
need to be sure that our food is cleaned
properly to get rid of surface chemicals.
We need to drink clean water. We really
have to pay attention to our food supply.
Make purchasing decisions that let growers,
suppliers and the government know
what we expect in our food. Never underestimate
the power of the dollar!
However, it is not only the food. Our
bodies are inundated with toxicity. Our
water, the air, industrial chemicals, pesticides,
polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and
a litany of other insidious substances
poison the environment wherever we
are to the extent that a recent survey
showed an average of 287 chemicals in
tests of the blood of newborn babies.
My goal with Living Beauty is to help
you find a new perspective which can
guide you to optimum health. My plea is
to encourage all of us to become proactive
in helping to reverse the cascade of
insults which may someday, even soon,
take our destiny out of our own control.
th: Thank you, Lisa. We look forward to
your becoming a frequent contributor
to totalhealth. Before we sign off, please
tell us where to acquire a copy of Living
Beauty and your Web address.
LP: You’re welcome, and I accept your
invitation
 Living Beauty
by Lisa Petty
(Fitzhenry &
Whiteside, 2005)
is available on
www.amazon.com
and at other fine
booksellers. Visit
www.iamlivingbeauty.com.
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