Episode 18 - With Nikola Howard

In this episode I'm chatting to Nikola Howard about her grey hair journey and thoughts on ageing.

Transcript

Happier Grey with Nikola Howard

Helen: Hello and thanks for joining me, Helen Johnson, for the Happier Grey Podcast. I'm pro-ageing and love my grey hair, but I know it can be quite intimidating to take the plunge, so each week I'll be chatting to other women who've chosen to embrace the grey in the hope of inspiring and supporting you, whether you already have silver hair, in the process of going grey, or just considering ditching the dye.

Today I'm joined by Nicola Howard. She's a life transformation specialist and the UK's leading low carbohydrate and ketogenic lifestyle expert. She helps women over 40 struggling with low energy, brain fog, changing levels of belly fat and other perimenopausal symptoms to regain clarity, mentality and vitality. Hello, Nicola. How are you?

Nikola: I do well, how are you?

Helen: I'm good. Thank you. Yes. A nice sunny day for a change.

Nikola: Yes. Although I have been debating putting the heating on the last couple of days. It's like, this is the middle of June. What is that all about?

Helen: It's actually quite warm here today, which is cool. I'm going to start by asking you, when did you find your first grey hair?

Nikola: Oh gosh. Probably In my thirties, but it's been a very slow sort of transition towards being grey, and my mum went grey very young as well. 

Helen: Okay.

Nikola: So, I was sort of expecting it.

Helen: And how did you feel when you got that first grey hair?

Nikola: It’s just a thing really. Yeah, it didn’t really bother me. It was just of thing of, well yeah, mum's grey, so I'm probably going to be grey, so yeah, let's go for it. And I dyed it for a while, and then I actually dyed it weird colours for a while as well. I spent about three years just being bright purple, which was fantastically fun.

But unfortunately, my partner's parents are very conservative and he was very, I don't really want to take you home to meet my parents with purple hair. So, I haven't dyed it for a while.

Helen: Do you think you started dyeing it in the first place to cover up the grey or just to have a bit of fun?

Nikola: I think, I've always dyed my hair anyway. I've been blonde. I've been red. I've been various other bits and pieces. I think I'm blue for a while as well. So, it wasn't to cover it up at all. It was to have fun with what, what's going on my head.

Helen: Okay, and, when did you decide that you were going to stop dyeing it? 

Nikola: I don't think I've dyed my hair in eight years or so. 2015, I suppose. Part of that was my parents don't want to meet someone with purple hair, which is an external force and me respecting them, but also the whole, so much faff 

Helen: Okay. So, 2015, kind of ahead of the wave in terms of the trend for going grey.

Nikola: People pay for, for hair my colour. 

Helen: Well, they do now, but whether they did in 2015, not so sure. I guess the question is in 2015, what sort of reaction did you get from family and friends?

Nikola: It really wasn't an issue at all. As I say, mum went grey really early. So, I don't think it wasn't at all a thing. I don't have kids or whatever. So, I didn't have any pressure from underneath. My partner was accepting, he didn't have any problems with it at all, and sort of likes the greys anyway.

So, in terms of my experience with it, I don't think I've ever had any issues. Work never said anything there either. I think I've been very fortunate. And also, I've never been one to wear makeup or be fashionable. I've never succumbed to all that. You have to be a certain way to be a woman thing. Because it's all rubbish. 

So for me, it's never really had any pressure on me. I'm just me, and my hair happens to be grey, and that's awesome. And some people find that attractive, and that's also awesome. 

Helen: A couple of questions for you coming out of that first of all, how old were you when you went grey? That's not too rude a question.

Nikola: I said, probably about 35 is when I started, as I say, my first grey hair. Solidly started 41, 42, where, when you have a haircut, and you notice that's more salt than pepper. 

I've had quite short hair most of my adult life. But when it, cause it grows out, it was growing out to be sort of mousy brown. But when you get the sides cut off and the top cut off, it revealed the grey that was underneath.

Helen: Yeah.

Nikola: And, and so that was, oh, okay, that's a little bit greyer than it was. the last time I had a haircut three months ago. Fair enough. Okay, not a problem at all. 

I can probably have some fun with some hair dye because of course, once you've got grey hairs, the grey pops hair dye really well. The grey pops colours really beautifully. 

So having the fun with, red, purple, blue, whatever was going on. I think I also did some semi-permanent hair waxes as well. So that was all fun. You like, you put it in, it pops off lovely and then you just wash it off. That's fantastic as well. It was, it was just a really great template to have fun with my head.

Helen: Okay, and, and when did you stop doing that and just leave it grey.

Nikola: It would be about three or four years ago. 2019 I'd stopped because of mum getting iller and me just concentrating on looking after her. So not having as much me-centric focus, and doing a lot more caring and focusing on what was going on in, my mum's life, hospital appointments, all the things.

It just meant that there wasn't as much time to spend on, going out, being funky and whatever. 

I'm definitely sort of browner at the back than I am at the front.

Helen: Yeah, I have that in common with you.

Nikola: My mum went very white, so she went white, when she was about 55, 60.

So, I've probably got a couple more years of being salt and pepper. And I would imagine I will get solid grey, between 55 and 60. And then I might choose to go and throw some more colour at it, because that'll be really fun at that point. 

Helen: I had not thought about it like that.

Nikola: But, it's not because I want to look younger. It's not because it's the need to comply. It's literally because it's fun to have fun with your hair.

Helen: Yeah, yeah. So, in terms of looking after your hair, do you use a special shampoo or anything? 

Nikola: in terms of my hair colour, I do nothing, but I use Nutrigena T Gel, cause I have quite dry skin and flaky scalp. But I don't do anything to enhance or detriment or whatever the colour of my hair. And I put conditioner on as most people normally do, but it's nothing, I don't think I do anything special to it.

Helen: You don't use any of the purple shampoos or anything?

Nikola: Although I suppose at some point, when I go solidly whiter. I might well do, because I'll want it to be, as I say, people pay for hair colour, this colour. So why wouldn't I want to play with being bright white for a while?

Helen: You obviously have quite short hair and you said it's never been long. It's always been the length that it is.

Nikola: A partner back in sort of the 2010s or so, he really liked longer hair. But my hair unfortunately is very, very fine, baby fine. So, if it gets length on it, it just goes flat. It's not got the bounce at the front at all. 

I got caught in a COVID lockdown haircut. I decided, let's just try a little bit of a bob. Let's just grow it out. Just a little bit and then COVID, and then I couldn't get the haircut. So, I ended up with a chin length for a while.

Helen: Uh huh.

Nikola: It literally, it drove me up the pole because it did nothing but be flat.

And it also goes really greasy really quickly when it's long. For me, having short hair makes me feel a lot happier. And again, when I've had it then cut off, yes, that's me again, I feel much more happy now.

Helen: A slightly different question then, do you think the fact that you're comfortable with grey hair is because you're comfortable with where you're at in the ageing process?

Nikola: I think so. It's just life. I'm 53, I'm not ashamed of my age at all. I've never lied about it. I'm helping women my age and a bit younger to start to deal with the transition that we all have, because it's not just about getting older.

It's about for us, hormonal changes. There's a change in life, change of expectations. And for me, I feel because I'm so solid in where I am, and what I do, that in itself can help me to help others to also feel that solid. And to get rid of this guilt and shame, that we have just because we're women, and just because we're getting older and just because we're expected to always look the eternal teenager. It's a thing I've got a big soapbox about that one. 

But yes, for me, I feel very solid with I'm 53. It's just a number. And that's cool.

Helen: I think I have a slightly smaller soapbox than you, but I do have the same sort of soapbox in that, I think there's too much emphasis on avoiding the aesthetics of getting old, without thinking about how am I going to prepare myself for the best life I can live in my 60s, 70s and 80s. 

Then the focus is more on. What am I eating? Am I exercising? What's my mental health like? Rather than, how can I look 25?

Nikola: Yeah. Women have a much bigger pressure to stay young than men do. Men are allowed to have the grey over their temples and be distinguished, whereas a woman goes grey and she's a crone, it's a very negative spin on it. And I don't accept that at all. This is where I go back into some of my own work, if there was an evolutionary advantage to us having babies and then just dying, which is what happens with most mammals. You have a reproductive life and then you die. Literally, it's very sad. Whereas us humans, and also some of the other great apes, we have the army of grannies and grandpas that are around to help rear the children.

So, there's an evolutionary advantage to us having that army of older people hanging around to bring up the younger generation. There is obviously a reason why we're here. So, let's enjoy it for crying out loud. Let's just lean into this graceful age, graceful wisdom. It's not like acting your age. Cause I swear I'm a generation X, so I feel like an eternal teenager. 

But it's that whole just leaning into this is now the stage of life I'm in. Why am I trying to be younger when this part of my life is fantastic? Whereas when I was younger, I was much more confused. I didn't have a proper identity. I was very much a doormat. I let people walk all over me. 

Now I'm much more assured. I'm much more self-centered. I know what I'm doing, how I help. I know I'm an intelligent person. If I do get myself in trouble, I can get myself out of it. There's a whole bunch of benefits to being older, that I'm now leaning into. And I'm hoping to then engender that in the people I work with as well.

Helen: One of the things I was going to ask you is obviously your clients are in their forties, maybe early fifties, hitting perimenopause, do you find they have a lot of confusion around the change in identity with ageing at that point?

Nikola: I think there's a lot of confusion about why am I suddenly changing? Because it's one of these conversations we're not having to the point of, I've changed my language slightly. I was encountering people didn't know what the words perimenopause meant., But everybody knows if you're over 40 or not, which is why I slightly shifted the language.

And that means that we aren't doing a good job of educating women about this very natural thing that is gonna happen to all of us.

I had a conversation with my mum, before she died, she broke her collarbone, and we're in the hospital. I had very itchy nipples for whatever reason, and I said to mum, is that a normal thing, yes, completely, I went through about a year and a half, where I just wanted to rip them off, but we don't talk about things like that.

We’re all it’s very much no it's a very taboo. You can't talk about these changes that are going on. You can't talk about your hair getting grey, your waist getting thicker bits of you, like your skin changing. So, there's this whole bunch of stuff that we, as a society are only just starting to, talk about this stuff that's going to then benefit our children and our grandchildren going forwards, because they're not going to be afraid of becoming older.

I hope. That's one of the things I really hope.

Helen: Another question then, are you seeing more women who are starting to be accepting of the going grey part of ageing?

Nikola: I think so. But then the people that are in my wider Facebook communities are either, very rebellious like me and they're like going for it, or they are not yet in that mind space. They're just coming in towards, well, you know, I sort of want to change, but I don't know how.

Definitely one of the things I see when I work with people where they're starting to let go of these society expectations. That's one of the things that they stopped doing almost without thinking about it.

Helen: I think it's really interesting. I think people have to have the confidence that they really want to go grey, to go grey. 

Nikola: Yes. I think one of the beautiful things about what I do, because of course where I focus on low carbohydrate nutrition, one of the things that makes perimenopause worse is not having stable blood glucose. 

Helen: Yeah.

Nikola: Because that in turn then bumps out your hormones, and it gives you worse symptoms. And the symptoms don't go away entirely, but I’ve been low carb for a decade at least at this point, in terms of me my blood glucose is rock solid so my hormone profile is as it should be, and I can feel my oestrogen starting to drop, because I'm old, as it were, from that perspective.

I was given a medical menopause when I was 32. And I went overnight, no oestrogen.

And literally the whole things that I'm seeing in other friends, brain fog, depression. Looking back on it now probably clinical depression without asking for any help at all.

Mood swings, tears through to rage, just a whole horrible year or so. Of those sorts of symptoms. As I'm now getting to it officially, I get the ghosts of what I was feeling then. 

And I do have my days where I just cry and it's like, oh, okay. It's obviously a day where I'm going to cry and I just let them come, because it's obviously a thing. Am I crying because of my mum? Am I crying because I'm having a hormone swing? Am I crying because of what's going on? So, there's a whole bunch of other stuff there, but again, because I've done a lot of work on myself, I'm very more accepting of it. 

But, it's just a sign of, these are my hormones shifting. I don't really get hot flashes. I don't have brain fog. I have lots of mental clarity, I have no issues thinking, and I think some of that, as well as me accepting where I am, is keeping my blood glucose stable.

Helen: Yeah.

Nikola: And then that as well leads me to be more accepting. The things I teach my clients is accepting yourself just as you are right now, because there's no point in waiting to be happy in some mythical future that may or may not happen. Now. Now is the only thing we have. So, accepting where I am right now and loving myself anyway, it's just logically sensible.

And being grey, is part of where I am right now. So yeah, I'm going to accept it and be joyful of it.

Helen: I find the menopause, so fascinating because, I basically had a few hot flushes and that was it. And then I know other people who have just been totally floored by it and you kind of go, how can it be so different for different people? It's weird.

Nikola: I want to do a bit of unscientific science. Basically, all of my friends that have had children are having a worse time of menopause or perimenopause than my friends that haven't had children. And I'm wondering if that hormonal change of matrescence, then has an effect when you get to the third change, effectively, at that point. Whereas for me, I've only had the puberty straight up to perimenopause. I've not had the middle change.

Helen: Ah see, I've had the middle change. Sorry.

Nikola: So yeah, but it's that whole, you gather data, you find out what your themes are, but yes, that's a black swan that for that proves that not all swans are white. But it's that whole, it's an interesting thing that I want to do some science, there's some science y questioning around in my audience to go, are you feeling menopause more? Have you had kids or not? 

Helen: I think there's probably a lot of factors that play in how it turns out for you.

Nikola: Totally. So, well again, it's environmental, it's how you feel about it, how you're sleeping, how you're resting, how you're eating, how you're moving. 

Helen: And genetics, I think. And

Nikola: Yes. Well as I say my mum, I reckon she was proper grey when she hit her fifties. I don't really remember, me and my mum were very different people, so I didn't spend as much time with her as looking back on it, I could have done.

So, I didn't notice when she went, and again, she dyed her hair quite a lot. For her that, retaining, that brownness up until her sixties, she definitely dyed her hair for at least 15 years. I know she did. And again, that's just where she was. I can't be definitive as to when her stuff happened, so I don't have my own proper roadmap, if that makes sense.

Helen: Yeah. 

Nikola: But I remember her being greyer than I was at 35.

Helen: Okay.

Nikola: There's only 19 years between the pair of us. She had me very young. I have a very close model of her ageing, if that makes sense.

Helen: Yeah

Nikola: So, I can make my observations based on what I saw in her as well. 

Helen: Okay, so I'm going to ask you a couple of different things. Now, first of all, given what you do, any very quick pieces of advice for women in their 40s and 50s, things they should be doing.

Nikola: Things that should be doing, definitely eating real food. I think a lot of the problems that we are having right now is because we've been distracted away from meat, fish, eggs, cream, cheese, leafy green vegetables, and things that come from a farm, not a factory. 

I also think that we need to do one thing every day that gives us joy. That thing in itself can be reading a book for five minutes, having a bath, having a shower, going outside when it's sunny. Just finding that one thing every day that gives you joy, and eating real whole food that came from a farm.

 If you do those two things, you can't go far wrong. I think.

Helen: Okay. And then the other question specifically related to grey hair. If somebody came to you and said, I'm thinking about going grey, what would you say to them?

Nikola: Do it. Why not? It's part of you, and accepting you as you are, is the path to joy. Because when we're fighting against ourselves and denying ourselves, denying parts of us, we aren't whole integral humans. So yeah, if you're going grey, lean in, go for it.

Helen:  Brilliant. Well, thanks for chatting to me. It's been really interesting. Bye.

Nikola: Bye. 

Helen: Thanks so much for joining me for this week's show. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. I'll be back again next week, but in the meantime, you can follow me on Instagram at Happier.Grey. Have a great week.