Trish

Hello listeners. It’s Trish Hammond here from the Transforming Bodies podcast. And today, I’m actually at the NSS. And I’m really excited to be interviewing Anita East. Now we’ve actually done a podcast a few years ago, so things have changed so much in her life. So today, we’re talking about Anita East. She’s a nurse practitioner. She’s also on the scientific committee for the nonsurgical symposium. And today, we’re gonna talk about number one, how she got to where she’s gotten. And also, we’re gonna talk about a bit of an insight of what’s happening at the NSS and the talk that you’ve just been to and why it’s so great. So welcome, Anita.

Anita

Oh, Trish. Thank you so much. It’s so lovely to see you, but it’s so lovely to be back on your podcast. I’m absolutely delighted. So thank you. 

Trish

Oh, look at my pleasure. And how good is that we can even like, we live here, we can even touch each other, not that we would, but we couldn’t even touch each other. 

Anita

I know. It’s so lovely because we’re not doing this virtually over a screen. We’re actually physically like literally thirty centimeters away. The old thirty centimeter rule isn’t it, but it’s so lovely. 

Trish

Exactly. So I met you virtually. When you’d written your first book because I’m sure there might be more. So tell me first of all, tell us a little bit about you, how you got to well, why you chose to become a nurse practitioner and where you are now?

Anita

Okay. So basically I did my nursing degree. Okay. This is testing the old matter. I finished my nursing degree in 1995. And that was at QT. In Brisbane. So I’m a Brisbane girl born in Brad. And I worked in the area of cardiac. I worked my first job outside of graduating was at the Prince Charles Hospital, which was actually where we did our AFI MURF training yesterday. The pre NSS AFI dissection, could harbor dissection. 

Trish

So what’s AFI? 

Anita

Anatomy for injectors. It’s a course that is always run before the NSS starts. And it’s an essential thing for all injectors of all levels of experience. So I did my nursing degree through QT, and then it was interesting when I was at high school. I had teachers saying to me because I’ve always been interested in the human body, but I’ve also always been interested in the arts and acting and singing and dancing and so forth. And when I was at high school, my teachers were always saying you’ve got to go straight to drama school. Now nothing against drama schools in Australia at all because we’ve got you know, we’ve got some really really good ones, but my aim was always to get a proper one (one that sounds terrible). A proper degree or a degree that would get me working regardless of where I was in the world. So I decided to do my bachelor of science in nursing at QT. After I’d been working for a few years in the cardiac cath lab at Prince Charles, I was like, the desire to do acting, the desire to explore the creative side of things, was even greater. And my mum’s English I’m half English. I was desperate to move to the UK. And the UK has exceptionally reputable drama schools. So I moved to the UK and I worked a little bit with English National Upwork because I like to sing, singing is my other thing. And then I got accepted into drama school. So my colleague said, Oh, sorry. While my fellow acting friends were working in retail or waiting tables between acting gigs. I was actually working in the lab or also I was working with dermatologists. So that’s where my love of skin has always been there. I suffered quite badly with acne. When I turned I didn’t have good skin while I was a teenager, but certainly when I turned about, oh, twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, I developed really quite bad acne. So as an actor, you can imagine that’s a very debilitating condition to suffer from. So I remember seeking advice from a dermatologist in the UK who put me on a medicine that literally changed and saved my life. So once I finished drama school, I actually got my first acting gig on a film. And that film was the catalyst. Remember, I was still working as a nurse and I still had this love of healthcare, love of the human body, biology and so forth in science. And on that first film shoot, the lead actress turned up and her face was completely different to what it had been during the audition process. And she’d had her face completely filled, overfilled, and over frozen. Now we’re talking so this was in two thousand and four. That’s 20 years ago when the seed was really planted for me that this is a field of medicine that I really need to explore further. And as a result of what she had done to her face, it wasn’t her. She hadn’t done it. She’d sought advice from someone who treated her with probably the skills and the knowledge they had at the time. Because remember this was, you know, the time when the Kardashians were doing things and keeping up with the Kardashians. And so by having the treatment that she’d had, she wasn’t able to portray the story of the character that that lead actress needed to portray. I was actually sitting in the hair and makeup department having my hair and makeup done for my scenes. When the director of the whole film came in, you know, very big tears. And he said to the lead makeup artist and he said, what are we going to do with her face? What can we do? We need to make her portray emotion, show the emotion of the character whose child had been kidnapped. Right? That’s they’re big emotions that needed to be shown. And he was basically begging that lead makeup artist saying what are we going to do to her face? And she said, I can, you know, I can create lines, I can try and create some wrinkling here, but there’s not a lot I can do because she’s had a treatment that has frozen her face. And seeing that kind of devastation, don’t get me wrong. I was so flipping devastated because it was my first film shoot, professional film shoot after drama school, and it was being jeopardized because of a decision that someone had made, thinking that that would make them look better, not worse. And that’s where the catalyst for me exploring the whole area of why are people doing this? What are they seeking? Why are they getting it so wrong? And so that’s where it started twenty years ago. And I’ve kind of been in the arts, being creative, being an actor, loving story. I’m always looking for the story in things because I think that story helps human beings to understand concepts. 

Trish

And hence your book…Changing faces. 

Anita

Exactly. So that was the catalyst for getting into finding it all out. And so it was actually and, you know, I developed into the career, and I moved into the area of nonsurgical cosmetic medicine. And then I wrote my book in 2019, 2020. And that’s called Beautiful Unique Faces. And basically, my book explores the whole concept of why are people doing what they’re doing to your faces. When in actual fact, again, leading, you know, hopping back to the outside of things, we have one lead actor on our face. We don’t have multiple. There’s one lead actor on our face, which is our unique facial feature. What we should be doing when we seek treatment and when a practitioner does a treatment to us is they should be looking at the face assessing and saying, okay, this is their lead actor. Their lead actor might actually be the shape of their eyes. It might be the color of their eyes. It might be the way that their lips and their chin meet. There’s something really specific about someone’s face that is their unique facial feature. Now if you go treating their face, by trying to remove things that you perceive as flaws. So you’re like, oh, I need to remove those wrinkles. I need to lift up that volume. And then you’re not considering what their unique facial feature is, you actually end up making one of their supporting actors or more of multiple supporting actors. Other features, their lead actor, and you’re detracting from what’s most beautiful about their face. So a classic story, there is having a patient. I had a patient many years ago who’d had a treatment done. And she came to see me. She’d had the treatment done around her eyes. And she had crow’s feet that kind of sparkled upwards. And she’d had a treatment done because she was at a dinner party and a friend said, oh my gosh, she needs to have it. This particular treatment was done. You need to have an anti wrinkle medicine done around your eyes so that we can, you know, you need to have that done. So she wouldn’t have it done. Yes, absolutely. She was a great candidate in terms of looking at every single wrinkle as a problem. If you think that the face if you break the face down into areas and kind of look at every wrinkle and every bit of loss of volume as an issue as a problem, then you’re doing injustice for your patients. She’d had the treatment done, and then for the next three months, while she waited for that treatment to wear off. Everyone said to her, what’s wrong? You look so sad. What’s wrong? You don’t know what’s going on and her partner was very much. Are you okay? What have I done? Or have I done something again? Dada dada? You know, this kind of thing happening, all because her naturally kind of uplifting crow’s feet, sparkle of her eyes had been eradicated. As a result of the way that people’s attitudes changed to her. She felt differently about herself. She was really, by the time she came to see me, she was really quite depressed. 

Trish

How much she loved. In a way.

Anita

 Absolutely. And again, that’s someone who didn’t understand what her unique facial feature is. The clinician who treated her didn’t understand what her unique facial feature was. They just basically said, oh, there’s wrinkles there. They’re a problem. And he got rid of them. I need to soften them. No. Not every wrinkle is a problem. Not every little bit of volume loss is a problem. So I wrote the book because I felt like I was talking to a lot of my colleagues and it was going in one ear and out the other. I didn’t feel like they were receptive to the idea of, hey, hey, hey, hey, hold back. Stop what you’re doing. Stop chasing lines. Stop chasing wrinkles. Stop, we are not talking about a disease here. The face is not…There’s nothing wrong with the face. Sit back, really assess your patient because our unique facial feature is always congruent with our personality. Always. And if we make it incongruent, then our personality offers and it changes and we don’t feel like ourselves anymore. So I decided to write the book to go directly to the people who were interested in knowing what was most beautiful about their face. But it’s interesting because a lot of clinicians have picked my book up and they have it in their clinic. I had tagged. Someone tagged me this morning. 

Trish

Yeah. 

Anita

And they had it in their clinic. And I was like, oh my goodness. That’s beautiful. So I think as a result of being a voice for patient safety and being a true patient advocate in terms of don’t get sucked into the hype that there’s something wrong with your face. Never get sucked into that hype. That’s how I’ve kind of found myself doing presentations at different things. And then the way I kind of got on to NSS was it was Gina Samuels who’d seen me present at a meeting in Melbourne, and she came up to me after that particular presentation, she said, I need to, I need to get you to present elsewhere. And the next thing I know the following week, I got a call from Navin, and he said, would you be interested in being part of the NSS Scientific Advisory Committee? And that was what we know now too, isn’t it? That was 2022.

Trish

 Amazing. That’s so good. I love a good success story. But also, I totally relate to what you’re talking about the fact that you know, we we get fixated on certain areas thinking, oh my god, I have got those wrinkles or or like, for me, it’s the lines above my forehead, but I know for a fact that I can’t have any Botox up there because it makes me drop because I’ve had that experience that you’re that that lady told me I had where I’ve had it done. And of course, my whole forehead dropped to my husband’s you know, what’s wrong? You know, you said, I’d be like, I just don’t feel well, hon. It’s like, you know, because of course, I don’t get anything done. And I was like, yeah, I just don’t feel well. So it took me weeks to get over that. And I started to feel like, shit. 

Anita

Yeah. Absolutely. You see? And then that’s a thing, you know. We’ve and look, thankfully, what we do in our profession and in our practice is they’re relatively temporary, you know. And there there’s things that can be done if we do a treatment that we can wait it out so it wears away or we can, you know, try to remove the product and forth. However, the impact of that, you say, was for a couple of weeks. That’s a huge thing. You know, behavior breeds behavior, and if someone’s if someone is approaching you like there’s something wrong with you in a negative way like are you okay? You’re really sad. It doesn’t take if someone was to come up to me, out in the corridor out here and say, oh gosh, are you okay? You don’t look well? I’d be like, oh, gosh. I don’t feel well actually. You know, it’s straight to the mirror.

Trish

 Straight to the mirror. Straight to the mirror with me.

Anita

 That’s right. So so again, making sure that the treatments that we have are best for us, not only in the way we look, but best for us psychologically as well. Yeah. I’d agree one hundred percent. 

Trish

And so tell me, So that takes you to the NSS scientific committee. What’s that being like? What’s that being like? And like, I because I know you’re you’re going, hello? Tell me, tell me. 

Anita

See, that’s good. It’s always nice to get someone a positive thing about how they look they, you know, and then literally that little bit of endorphin, that little bit you know you know, that that’s lovely. And and suddenly, yes, I feel like I’m glowing. You know, it’s really interesting. 

Trish

Well, I was gonna say, what if you had done it? But it’s like, no. No. What are you doing? 

Anita

Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. So being part of the NSS Scientific Advisory Committee has, by far, been my career highlight the pinnacle of my career. I am literally on that committee with other members who to me are gods. These members that that might the people that I’m stood alongside, like I pinched myself daily saying, look at who look at who they’ve put me in the, you know, it’s like you get it’s like you get, you know, when you get picked in a in a sports team at school. You know, it’s like, you look at the people around you and that’s what helps to elevate you.

Trish

 Yeah.

Anita

 It’s been incredible. We start working on each NSS two weeks after the previous one finishes. So when NSS 2023 finished, we had a two week break. Mhmm. And then we started planning for this NSS. We do a great debriefing session. So we, the amount of work that goes into planning, the NSS is huge. And we’re all the committee members. I’m the nurse practitioner, and I’m the if you like, the nurse represent. Mhmm. The majority of people that do, you know, injectables in this country are nurses. Mhmm. So I am literally I’ve got the responsibility of making sure that I represent my fellow nurses in the light that shows them to the high standard that they are in Australia. 

Trish

Yeah. 

Anita

You know, so these are huge, huge responsibilities that I don’t take lightly. Yeah. And I know that I I want all nurses in Australia to understand that I am there for them. 

Trish

Yeah. And you know it’s funny because what you’re saying, I think it looks, because I believe since this has happened it has started. It actually has elevated the nurse’s level sorry. Not even the level, but it’s elevated the perception of nurses out there because before people would think, oh, you know, no, I just go to a doctor, but that’s changed and it’s changing because it’s true. You guys are just doing that stuff all day. 

Anita

Yeah, we are. And we’re doing it all day. We have amazing collaboration. We should always have amazing collaborations with cosmetic doctors, with dermatologists, with plastic surgeons. Some of the NSA scientific advisory committee committee, the other members on it have become some of my best friends. Like, literally, I was late coming up to speak to you today, Trish, because I was listening to James Vivienne do his talk on inclusivity, and I completely lost track of time. And normally, I’m like, I’m here. I’m on it. You know, I wouldn’t be late at all. And it’s like and then prior to James, I listened to Agnes. Doctor Agnes, this, do her her talk. And then prior to that, I listened to Dr. Liz Dorshorpe doing her talk. Mhmm. And honestly, we are privileged to have such a well rounded breadth of professionals. We’ve got dermatologists. We’ve got surgeons. We’ve got therapists. We’ve got myself –  a nurse. We’ve got a dentist. We’ve got cosmetic positions. And we’ve got an incredible team of marketing people as well as event organizers and media who are helping us along the way. And of course, with Naveen being our convener, he’s, you know, he’s next level. He’s what we call him. I don’t think he knows this. But he’s like our principal. 

Trish

Yeah.

Anita

 And none of us, so he’s chosen us Mhmm. Very well because we’re all people that would never ever ever want to get in trouble with the principal. 

Trish

Yes.

Anita

 And so he’s like our principal and it’s like, is the principal happy with us? I was at school and, you know, I’m sure that probably if you look at the other members of the committee, I would be surprised if they’re if they won’t be school captains or prefect. 

Trish

Yes. And so funny because so was I. 

Anita

There we go. So we want to we wanna do the right we we wanna do the right thing, which is which is so important, especially that there was when we had doctor Anton come last year. Do you remember Sunday? 

Trish

Yeah. 

Anita

The last day? So she’d come from Apro. And she was talking about the new regulations that Oprah had introduced. And one of the things she said was, do the right thing. Just don’t try and find loopholes. Yeah. And I think we’ve having people who are leading the way in the.. No. She was very much, like, don’t don’t try and beat the system. The leaders in the field, yes, you can look to them. Like, I’m I’m I am getting my interpretation of the regulations and the changes and so forth. But don’t necessarily believe me Mhmm. Go to APHRA and the TGA directly. Go to their website. There is so much information on those websites. 

Trish

Yeah. That’s so true. That’s so true. And tell me where to go from here. I mean, I guess, you don’t know what the future holds, and it sounds like you’ve got a lot of stuff that you, you know, that you can take to the next level. But like like, I mean, without saying it, like, you as I feel like you’re becoming more and more famous every time I meet you. But, like, where like, where do you see yourself? Like, in the next like, do you have any plans from here or is it just what happens next? 

Well, on Sunday, I’ll go home and sleep for two weeks. 

Trish

For two weeks.

Anita

 No. I’m so busy in the clinic because it’s like, it’s funny, isn’t it? You you take a week off. And it’s like the the panic in my practice has been has been very funny. It’s been like panic for a month before and then, you know, a month after it’s like I was gone for, you know, like, five days. 

Trish

It’s okay. Alright. Tell us about your clinic too. 

Anita

Yeah. It’s it’s great. It’s lovely. It’s I’m I’m again very blessed to have a beautiful little clinic with a wonderful team. Yeah. That that who work with me. Yeah. The people that come and seek out services, we’re very very skin orientated. Skin is one of those things, especially in Queensland, in Australia. We need to be focused on improving the function of the envelope of skin. 

Trish

Mhmm. First and foremost. Yeah. I agree. And and on that, I listened to James’ talk last year, and I loved it as well just because like, I feel like, you know, like, because it wasn’t about dental clinicians to start with. You know what I mean? It was, like, at a different level, whereas Everyone’s combined at the NSS, and that’s what I love about it. The fact that it’s an inclusive community, and everybody’s there to just help each other to be better at what they do. 

Anita

Absolutely. Because guess what I am even though the way I actually first got into non surgical cosmetic medicine was via like I was doing I was working with dermatologists. But my knowledge of skin is nowhere near James’ knowledge of skin. Mhmm. You know? So we can learn from each other. All the time Mhmm. And therefore, it’s in that respect, it’s all about improving the standard of care that we offer to our patients. And first and foremost, it’s about improving as well the professional standards of the field that we’re in. If we’re there going, oh, that’s oh, this will do. That’s okay. This will do. That’ll be fine. It’s not enough. Because how would you want? And I think with all the regulatory, you know, changes and so forth. It’s all about ethical treatment. It’s all about. If you’re treating your patients and your the practice that you do on a daily basis. If it’s ethical, then you’re going to be okay. You’re going to have a long healthy rewarding career. And the difference between ethical behavior and unethical behavior in the profession of medicine and healthcare is if you are first and foremost considering commercialism, if you’re thinking about the bottom dollar first, most definitely your back your behavior is unethical. 

Trish

Yeah. 

Anita

So we should always be considering the health of the patient first. Not the health of the bank balance. And on that, so you’re talking here about, you know, stuff that’s for new injectors and also injector complications. So that’s kind of the stuff that you cover as and it’ll likely be because someone that’s due to injecting, you wanna make it clear that if you’re in it for the money, you’re in the wrong job because you’re not gonna get it’s gonna be people know. People can sniff it out. I’ll tell you that now. They can. And I think that’s something that certainly would be you know, with the social media changes. You know, the idea of I’ve Trish, to be honest, I hadn’t posted before and after photos since 2016. And the reason was was because I my belief was that before and after photos, where by the before photo, you know, showed a less happy, you know, deflated, more wrinkled looking person compared to the after photo, which showed, you know, less wrinkles, more more volumized, and so forth. That after photo was always a happier photo. The lighting was always, you know, people always post it with a more flattering lighting. And there’s a caption attached to that that might say, you know, look at this babe after her treatment. She’s now a hottie. Whereas before she wasn’t or she was a hottie, but afterwards, and beforehand, she was knotty. You know, that’s what there was always there’s there was also a hashtag going around that was my patients are hotter than yours. Now, that’s that kind of thing way from way back when? Because I’ve got two daughters as well. Ten and twelve. That kind of thing sat very uneasily in my gut. Yeah. Like, I would sit there and go, that is wrong on so many levels because you are most definitely enticing the uptake of a schedule for medicine to the general public. So you’re deliberately trying to violate someone who feels not so good about themselves and go, oh, gosh. Yeah. I look like the before photo. I need to have my lips treated, my jaw, my chin, my cheeks. Yeah. Everything done for me to look better and therefore feel better. And I always felt that that was wrong. And especially, you know, think about kids now. You know, they’ve got all this access to and they don’t think they’re enough until they’ve had something done, which is not true. 

Trish

Absolutely. And and and what I’ve noticed over the years as well, like, because I started in the century in 2013, so I come from a digital background, but I actually started in the aesthetics industry in 2013. And I just remember when I first started there were a lot of, like, the over like, you knew when you were at an aesthetic conference. There was a lot of, you know, the filler and and the puffy faces and all that. But that’s changing now? Can you tell us, like, give us a bit of a background as to why because people are like, I’m seeing people that I looked at ages ago and I thought, oh, yeah, because you do you become judgmental. You just oh, I have anyway, because I’m judgmental myself and others as well the way they look. But anyway, I remember thinking, you know, oh my god, like, that’s just too much or or saying, oh, you could really do this, not that whereas now, I like, only a few weeks ago, I saw someone who had seen a few weeks ago, I thought, wow, you’re in this industry, why wouldn’t you look, you know, why wouldn’t you do something? And then I saw a couple of weeks ago, I thought, man, you look amazing. You know, miss, so it’s almost like she’d lost ten years of her age, but she didn’t look like she’d had anything done. 

Anita

I think we’ve got something at the moment that’s called perception drift. Mhmm. And what that means is that where that stems from is basically looking, thinking of, like I said, any wrinkle, what’s the volume on the face as the enemy. So going essentially, you know, if you’ve got someone who you treat, for example, their lips. And then they come back and they’re like, well, what else can I have done? And you go, well, actually, yeah, you could have something done in your cheeks. You could have a little bit of volume replacement you know, done in your cheeks. And then they come back and you’re like, oh, well, actually we could do a bit more in your chin. We could do some in your jaw. We could do this. So we’re almost separating the face into sections and trying then to give them the inverted commerce, the ideal chin, the ideal set of lips, the ideal cheeks, and jaw, and so forth. But that doesn’t suit that person’s face. It doesn’t even suit, you know, a textbook that is talking to you about these ideal proportions on a face. So we have to be really mindful that when we see our patients, that we still enable them to look like themselves, it is refreshing to walk around and see people frowning and raising their eyebrows and getting little crinkles when they smile and having the odd tear drop here and there, it’s like, it’s so refreshing because we have these facial emotion muscles to do one thing, and that’s to portray emotion. So in my book, I call them our fems. And if we over freeze our fems and we’re like, what is this person feeling? I can’t interpret what they’re feeling, so I can’t get the feeling back. So if someone tells you a really harrowing story, but yet they’re showing they’re not. They’re not showing the emotion that portrays that story. Two things happen to you. You either don’t trust the person, or you think that they’re lying and they’re having a go at you. So you’re there going. And then therefore, you don’t have a connection with that person. You can’t have a connection because you can’t build that empathy with that person. So by having movement here and there, where we’re supposed to have movement, but yet still looking refreshed and healthy in our skin. That’s what that’s all people want. That’s all the general public want. They don’t. There’s not many people out there. I certainly don’t have people coming into my practice saying, I want to look really odd and bizarre and alien like and unable to express any emotion. 

Trish

Yeah. I’m sure there are some that do because I met them. 

Anita

Yes. Be honest. This is the look that they’re like, and I’m like, more power to you if that’s what you want. But I like the fact that people don’t look like they’ve had, they just look like they’ve kept. 

Trish

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. I agree. Awesome. What did I gotta say? That’s been so good. I really enjoyed talking to you. What a difference to our chat now than our different? Because I reckon it would have been Actually, it was just when you just released it. Was that five years ago since we did the last twelve months? 

Anita

It was 2020 when I released and funnily enough because for you. Because of COVID, of course, my book touring plan was changed because COVID kind of threw a spanner in the works there, but it’s interesting because everything happens as it’s supposed to happen. I I believe. And, you know, my book is still getting traction and it’s still making differences in people’s lives and that’s important. 

Trish

And before we go, just tell us, give us the name where we can buy it from, and is it an audiobook yet? 

Anita

It’s called beautiful unique faces. And it’s available on all online bookstores. You can also purchase it from our clinic. So I’ve got an online store, which is AnitaEast.com/shop . And I’ve created some affirmation cards as well. So fifty two affirmation cards, so I’ve released that recently and they’re lovely again because they’re all about improving. It’s kind of based on giving you pepsi throughout the day, but also if you choose one card at the start of the week and you keep that for the whole week because we’re so we’re so into doing things, you know, quick fixes and doing more and more and more and more and something doesn’t suit us doing the next thing. Whereas my plan with the cards is you pick one on a Sunday because that’s the start of the week, and that informs your whole week. You can relook at it every day of the week Mhmm. But it informs your whole week. Okay. And so that’s also available on online stores but also through our online shop. It’s not yet an audiobook. 

Trish

Oh, can I have an exhibition? You need to do an audiobook Yes. In your voice. You know .

Anita

Yeah. Like, we have a passion because, like, when I’m addicted to audiobooks, I really struggle to read Yeah. Because I love to listen to things. All I need is to always be listening to something. So I would love nothing more than your book in an audio with your voice showing the passion Yeah. That makes sense. So I tell you what, when I finish my sleep from and it says finishing. I’ll definitely yeah. 

Trish

Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us today. 

Anita

Thank you for having me Trish. It’s so lovely to be here. 

Trish

My pleasure. Listen to it, and do go and check it out. So just go to anitaeast.com.au/shop and buy the book. You will not be sorry because I’ve read it, but I’d love to listen to it again. Thanks so much, Anita. 

Anita

Bye.