Saanichton-based Theio Vitality sheds light on the connection between hair and nutrition

It was while working on a PhD in toxicology at UVic that Jennie Christensen’s personal and professional worlds collided. 

At six years old, Christensen was diagnosed with trichotillomania—a compulsive urge to pull out hair. “I had extremely low self-esteem well into my 20s, and it kept me from doing a lot of things,” she says. But her struggles with the disorder remained relatively separate from her career until 2003, when she started studying B.C. grizzly bears as a part of her PhD research. She began to understand the different factors that influence hair chemistry and learned to use hair as a tool to examine diet in mammals. 

“I literally became obsessed with hair science and its use in health and toxicology,” she says. 

Hair, according to Christensen, is an incredible treasure chest of information. In her 20 years as a toxicologist, researcher and environmental consultant, she has seen labs collect biological tissues of various types and sizes, using methods that can often be lethal for organisms like fish. “A lot of the environmental monitoring that we do is to protect fish and fish habitat. But in order to protect them and monitor them, you have to kill them,” Christensen explains. “It was really counterproductive, and I’ve always been anti-violence and anti-death in my toxicology work. So a lot of my research is focused on developing new methods to try to be less invasive but not compromise on the quality of the data.” 

In 2016, she launched TrichAnalytics, a lab on Vancouver Island, to analyze microscopic samples of biological tissues using laser technology—meaning fish didn’t need to be killed to be studied “because now we can collect really tiny pieces of tissue, non-lethally, and then let them go and not impact fish population,” says Christensen. 

This method of using laser technology opened the door to exploring all kinds of questions that couldn’t have been answered before, notes the scientist-turned-entrepreneur. She started studying creatures guilt-free and looked into how contaminants like metals are transported in the environment—including, for example, whether bugs pass on certain metals to their offspring.  

But she was also interested in advancing human health. And she created a sister company, Theio Vitality, to do just that.  

“As it’s growing, your hair is recording everything that’s going on in your blood over time,” Christensen explains. By mailing a few strands of their hair to the TrichAnalytics lab, Theio customers will receive a report that, among other things, breaks down 20 different minerals and metals found in their body and states whether the concentration of each is “normal,” “elevated” or “depleted.” 

“They’re so tiny, these lasers, that we can go to a size that’s like a fraction of a hair strand,” Christensen says. “Imagine your hair strand laying there. We’re burning it along the strand, and as we’re burning it in real time, we’re collecting the gas, which goes to a mass spec and then shows us all the elements in your hair over time.” 

The access to (and development of) this laser technology helped Christensen get her hands on 170-year-old hair and nail tissues of a crew member from the Franklin expedition, which took place in the mid-1800s. For a long time, it was believed that the crew died of lead poisoning. But studies by TrichAnalytics showed that the cause of death was likely zinc deficiency, not exposure to lead.  

From a difficult childhood experience to a profession in which she uncovers the stories that hair can tell about our health, Christensen’s work on health and nutrition marks a full-circle moment. “After many years of research, I realized that I could offer ‘more’ to hair science than other scientists as a result of being obsessed with hair from such a young age,” she says. “That is a rare combination. I began to see that trichotillomania was not my biggest flaw after all, but rather my superpower that made me see the world differently and made me the scientist I am today. Plus, with Theio Vitality hair analysis, now the whole world is pulling out their hair!”