Hair loss, Cellulite, Water Retention: Could Australian soil be the cause?

Do you recognise yourself in any of these?

• Unusual hair loss, perhaps since arriving in Australia

• Cellulite appearing or worsening, even without any weight change

• Swollen legs, a puffy face in the morning, a feeling of water retention

• Persistent fatigue that doesn't improve with rest

• Feeling constantly cold, even in the Australian summer

• Weight gain with no apparent change in diet

• Drier skin, brittle nails, unstable mood

You've been living in Australia for a few months or a few years, and you have the feeling that your body has changed. More hair falling out than usual, cellulite appearing for no apparent reason, swollen legs at the end of the day, a fatigue you just can't explain.

I know exactly what you're talking about, because I've experienced it myself!

Hair Loss & Cellulite in Australia: Is the Soil to Blame?

Since moving to Australia, I noticed these changes in my own body. Yet nothing about my lifestyle had changed. I was eating well, moving, sleeping. Everything I used to do before, I kept doing here. And yet something wasn't right. It was this personal experience that pushed me to dig deeper and what I discovered changed the way I support my clients.

The key to our health is often our environment. Think of plants: if you uproot them from their native soil, they adapt, but they need to find the nutrients that match their needs. Our body works the same way. Changing continents means changing soil. And this soil doesn't nourish us in quite the same way.

A little bit of explanation :

Australia: A Geologically Unique Continent

To understand why Australian vegetables don't provide the same minerals as those you ate in Europe, we need to look at geology. In Europe and North America, soils have been regularly renewed through ice ages. Glaciers scraped away the surface layers, and as they melted, they left behind fresh mineral-rich rock. Volcanic eruptions also helped reintroduce nutrients from deep underground.

The result: relatively young, regenerated, and mineral-rich soils.

Australia never had that luck. It is one of the oldest and most geologically stable continents on the planet. Its soils were never covered by ice, nor regularly renewed by volcanic activity. Millions of years of rain, heat and erosion have gradually leached nutrients away into groundwater and rivers.

Australian soils are naturally very low in several minerals essential to human health, particularly selenium, iodine and zinc. This isn't an opinion: it's documented by serious scientific research, including a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition (2004) confirming that Australian and New Zealand soils have particularly low concentrations of selenium and iodine, with direct consequences for the nutritional status of local populations. A study published in Springer Science Reviews (2015) goes further, showing that the concentration of these minerals in soil directly impacts how much ends up in crops and therefore on our plates.

In my next article, I'll explain the exact mechanism and why the thyroid is at the heart of all of this.

Do you recognise yourself in these symptoms and want to talk about it? Book a discovery call if you'd like to talk about your needs.

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Sources

• Selenium and iodine in Australia — British Journal of Nutrition, 2004

• Soil → mineral → human health transmission — Springer Science Reviews, 2015

• Depleted Australian soils — The Conversation, 2025; Australian Academy of Science