Ep 381 – The Immune Authority Report with Kiarra Smith

Summary

ASCP Esty Talk – Ep 381: The Immune Authority Report with Kiara Smith

Date: March 18, 2026
Host: Associated Skin Care Professionals, Ella Cressman and Maggie Stasik
Guest: Kiara Smith

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on becoming an “immune authority” esthetician—leveraging not just academic study but also deep personal and clinical experience to navigate complex immune issues as they relate to skin health. Kiara Smith shares her firsthand journey with immune dysregulation, allergies, and how those experiences inform her professional approach. The discussion emphasizes how a nuanced understanding of immune health (even within scope of practice) can elevate the quality of skin care consultations, treatments, and client support.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Importance of Immune Awareness in Esthetics

• Personal Experiences Fueling Professional Growth:
  • Kiara describes her journey growing up with asthma, developing new and worsening health and skin issues in adulthood, and fighting to have her symptoms taken seriously by medical professionals.
  • Her path to a diagnosis involved a food allergy test revealing reactivity to over half of 80-100 foods tested, including common “healthy” foods like almonds, oats, bananas, and cabbage.
  • This personal health battle led Kiara to recognize similar immune-related skin patterns in her clients (e.g., chronic inflammation, slow healing, unexplained reactivity).
  • Quote: “I experienced how an overreactive immune system really created a hostile environment for my body and myself. And it brought a lot of skin issues that I never had gone through to the surface.” — Kiara Smith (08:46)

2. Hidden Triggers: Histamine and Dietary Surprises

• Leftovers as a Histamine Source:
  • Discussed how bacterial breakdown in refrigerated leftovers raises histamine levels, potentially triggering symptoms in histamine-intolerant individuals.
  • Quote: “Leftovers, they’re a major source of dietary histamine. As bacteria breaks down the proteins in the stored food, causes histamine levels to rise.” — Kiara Smith (04:38)
  • Takeaway: Sometimes clients’ symptoms have subtle contributors beyond the obvious (e.g., not just the foods themselves, but how they’re stored or prepared).

3. Translating Personal Lessons to the Treatment Room

• Parallel Experiences With Clients:
  • Kiara observed clients with recurring, stubborn skin issues that did not respond to standard protocols. She credits her own journey with boosting empathy and thoroughness in her consultations and treatments.
  • Example: A client with rosacea discovered an intolerance to olives, a common ingredient in her skincare products, after careful detective work.
  • Quote: “Why would a client not know how to do that, too? And as an esthetician, I thought it was really important to help clients that…maybe don’t even know what’s going on and need somebody to help guide them.” — Kiara Smith (09:16)

4. The Role of the Esthetician: Beyond the Skin

• Being the Bridge, Not the Diagnostician:
  • Emphasized the value in being a supportive link between clients and other healthcare practitioners, rather than diagnosing.
  • Kiara and the hosts discuss the importance of being persistent with medical professionals and empowering clients to “keep going, keep going, keep going” to get the answers they need.
  • Quote: “We can’t diagnose anything, but we can be a bridge for people to go seek somebody to help them...just be that bridge for a client to a professional doctor.” — Kiara Smith (11:25)

5. Real-Life Example: Critical Thinking in the Treatment Room

• Host Ella’s Case Story:
  • Shared a story of spending two hours with a client suffering from hormone-induced cystic acne (after testosterone pellet implants and subsequent androgen blockers were prescribed as a “band-aid”).
  • Instead of a standard aggressive acne protocol, Ella opted for a gentle, barrier-repair facial tailored to the unique context—inspired by Kiara’s client-centered approach.
  • Quote: “Also, what we were taught was, ‘oh, you have this type of acne, this is the type of approach you’re going to take in treatment room, which is usually something kind of aggressive.’ Yeah, she did not need that. She 1,000% did not need that.” — Ella Cressman (13:35)
  • Key lesson: Listen deeply, ask thoughtful questions, don’t assume “one-size-fits-all.”

6. Reframing the Esthetician’s Scope

• Whole Body, Whole Health:
  • Echoed the need for estheticians to view health holistically and go beyond product and protocol, integrating lived experience, deeper questioning, and collaboration with other professionals.
  • Maggie points out that the industry is finally moving toward genuine whole-health approaches, not just as trends.
  • Quote: “Estheticians are in a good position to do just what Kira is doing and adapting that into the treatment space and truly helping their clients on a whole body level.” — Maggie Stasik (10:37)

7. The Immune Authority Project

• Kiara’s Mission:
  • Kiara is developing educational resources based on her “immune authority” framework for estheticians who want to strengthen consultations, treatment planning, and overall inclusivity.
  • She invites listeners to connect via her Instagram (@rootedserenity) and announces upcoming collaborations and educational collectives.
  • Quote: “I want to save professionals the time and the resources that I spent years digging…In turn, I’m also advocating for the clients who are going through this.” — Kiara Smith (14:59)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Histamine in Leftovers:
  • “Leftovers, they're a major source of dietary histamine...So if you're histamine intolerant, leftovers can kind of flare up and trigger you.”
    — Kiara Smith (04:38)
• Professional Empathy:
  • “It’s important to keep going, keep going, keep going...But also understanding you're learning from your clients that you can pass that information. You learn from your own experience, your lived experience, and then it was compounded with your client experience.”
    — Ella Cressman (13:58)
• Expanding Professional Awareness:
  • “This will benefit professionals to bring more inclusivity to the treatment room. We always want to evolve, and that comes with awareness for everyone that walks into our space.”
    — Kiara Smith (14:59)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:45] Introduction to the theme and guest: Kiara Smith’s immune journey
• [04:08] Histamines, leftovers, and food triggers
• [05:35] Kiara’s personal health story and fight for a diagnosis
• [08:46] The impact of personal experience on client care
• [09:55] Diet, gut-skin health, and the consultation process
• [11:25] Being the bridge: Scope, advocacy, and client empowerment
• [12:30 – 14:40] Real-life complex acne case and shifting protocols
• [14:42] Kiara’s educational mission and the “Immune Authority” project
• [15:39] How to contact Kiara and participate in her network

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a must-listen for estheticians striving to evolve beyond protocols and become true client advocates. By integrating personal experience, critical thinking, and a broader health perspective, you can “be the bridge” for clients facing complicated or overlooked health issues manifesting in the skin. The Immune Authority Report is a call to listen, learn, and raise the bar for care in the esthetics industry.

Kiara’s Instagram: @rootedserenity
Contact ASCP: [e-mail]

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hello and welcome to ASCP Esteetalk. I'm Ella Cressman, Licensed Esthetician, Student of the Skin and Content Contributor for Associated Skin Care Professionals.

[C]

I'm Maggie Stasik, licensed esthetician and ASCP's program director.

[B]

Today's so good. I'm so pumped up about it. It's about becoming an Immune Authority esthetician not just through study but through experience, observation and even real life problem solving in the treatment room. Super pumped to have Kiara back who has entered this industry with firsthand experience navigating allergies and immune misfunction really in her own body. Over time she began to recognize really similar immune related patterns showing up in her clients anywhere from reactive skin and chronic inflammation to slow healing and recurring conditions that didn't respond to standard protocols Very interesting.

[C]

Kira shows how her personal health journey shaped the way she works with skin professionally, how that awareness translated directly into her treatment room approach, and why understanding immune function can elevate how estheticians assess, treat, and support their clients, all while staying within scope.

[B]

And I am really so excited to talk about what happens when personal experience meets professional practice. I think this is so important and really how that intersection can create more thoughtful, informed, and effective estheticians. It's going beyond just what we're learning in books and also what brands tell us. Kira, thank you for being here.

[D]

Yeah, thanks for having me back.

[B]

Before we get into it, I do want to start by asking Maggie a question. Maggie, did you know leftovers contain histamines?

[C]

I did, because. Spoiler alert.

[D]

You told me before I told you.

[B]

Did you know that they can. Isn't that something?

[C]

I never knew this song so interesting. I'm really excited to dive into the topic.

[B]

I never knew either until Kiara mentioned it to me. So, Kira, tell us how you figured this out.

[D]

So, histamine is a natural active chemical released by the body's immune system. So this primarily from mast cells and other cells in the body when encountering allergens or injuries. And then histamine intolerance occurs when the body can't properly break down down that ingested histamine. So leftovers, they're a major source of dietary histamine. As bacteria breaks down the proteins in the stored food, causes histamine levels to rise. So if you're histamine intolerant, leftovers can kind of flare up and trigger you.

[B]

So not to say nobody should eat leftovers, but if you're histamine intolerant, you might experience symptoms that are like, what is this? I don't know, but it could be my chipotle burrito from yesterday.

[D]

Yeah. And I encourage people to look into it because it's really fascinating because different fruits and other vegetables and stuff have histamine in it as well. So it's fun to look into.

[B]

How did you find this out?

[D]

Yeah. So a little bit about me. I grew up asthmatic. I was only sick when I was a child and it would only flare up then. And in my early 20s, it started to get progressively worse where I had trouble breathing more often, which led to getting sick more and more. When I got sick, it was worse than the average person. So that had more hospitalizations than a normal person would when they would get sick. And then I started noticing changes in my body. I felt really puffy and inflamed my skin felt really irritated and flushed and red, and my acne got really bad. And I never had that growing up. So it just kind of all started coming at once, it felt like. And I tried changing my diet to eat better. So I switched to the oat milk, into the almond milk, and, you know, cut out dairy. I ate bananas and kimchi for my gut health, and I just wanted something to feel better. So I started with food. And Fast forward to 2024. I got the flu really bad, which led to sepsis, and then I had a miscarriage. So I sat with everything and I was like, okay, like, something is going on in my body. It's not just what I look like, what's going on outside, it's happening internally, too. So I just felt like my body was really weakened. And I just started researching everything. I started trying to listen to other people's lived experiences if they had similar symptoms than me, and looking online. And I was trying to get into all these doctors and pushing for them to hear me. And it seemed like everybody kept dismissing it was just my asthma. But I knew it wasn't because after I eat something, I didn't feel good. So I'm like, that's not. It's not just my asthma. And I really kept pushing. And one specialist decided to really listen and acknowledge my symptoms and acknowledge how I was feeling. So we decided to run a food allergy test. And I was reactive or allergic to more than half of the foods. And there was about, like 80 to 100 foods we tested for in the past two years. So almonds, oats, and bananas and cabbage are some things I'm allergic to. Yeah. And that explains why for the past five years, I was so inflamed and everything was just internally coming out and not just in the physical symptoms, but my skin just looked dull, it looked lifeless, it looked irritated. And so finding those answers really just acknowledged what I was going through. And all these weren't happening for no reason.

[B]

It's crazy. It's hard when you. I have a similar experience not. Not with allergens, but with hormones, where I'm trying to get a medical professional to just hear me. And what we have to do is we have to do a lot of the research. We're finally on a really cool path right now. But it took. I'm a Gen X. I'm old. I'm old, and I. I'm finally now, you know, in midlife, discovering wit. But getting someone to listen to is so important.

[C]

How did that translate to the treatment Room for you, Kira?

[D]

Yeah. Well, I experienced how an overreactive immune system really created a hostile environment for my body and myself. And it brought a lot of skin issues that I never had gone through to the surface. And I was really seeing a parallel with some of the clients that I treat. They were going through similar experiences, but had no idea why. And I specifically think to a rosacea client of mine who tried and did everything internally, but she didn't have the tools to find the best skin care to help her inflammation on her skin or her disrupted skin barrier. And we found out together that she has a possible intolerance to olives because that was one specific ingredient over multiple products of hers that was triggering her skin. So I have to now look at every single ingredient that I put on my face. So why would a client not know how to do that, too? And as an esthetician, I thought it was really important to help the clients that are also experiencing this and or maybe don't even know what's going on and need somebody to help guide them.

[B]

Isn't that interesting, Maggie, to think about? I mean, I know we talk about in our consultations or we learned in school to have the diet connection. It's really big, the gut health skin axis, as they call it. But to think that there's. To understand that that's not it, that's not it. Meaning there's not. That's not the period. It's more like a semicolon and word to dig a little bit deeper to find answers. Plus, like, having a lived experience may make you a little bit, obviously it's really important to you, so you're changing your approach to your clients, Kiara. But like Maggie, it's almost one more thing that we have to think about and consider. It's outside of, you know, what we've been taught. What do you think?

[C]

Yeah, I think that even, you know, back when we were in school, we're always saying that, but estheticians are always taught and it's framed that, you know, do your consultation, your analysis, ask all those important questions, lifestyle and medication and all the things. But I feel like it's only now that esthetics is looking at whole health and wellness and whole health are really being accepted, and it's more than just a trend and people are truly living it. And estheticians are in a good position to do just what care is doing and adapting that into the treatment space and truly helping their clients on a whole body level.

[D]

And I feel like it's important too. Like, even within our scope, you know, we can't diagnose anything, but we can be a bridge for people to go seek somebody to help them and. Or maybe if that doctor didn't listen to you, maybe try, like, a naturopathic approach and kind of just be that bridge for client to a professional doctor.

[B]

It happened. And an important. Like, it's important to keep going, keep going, keep going. You're talking about being the bridge. So last Saturday, I had a client come in. I've known her for a long time. I've. She's similar in age, but she had a child in her early 40s, like six years ago or something. And since then, her hormones have, you know, been trying to level out. And then we're also in the perimenopause, you know, era, if you will. And she came in, you guys, on Saturday with purple, purple cystic acne all along her jawline and her neck. Rewind to, like, a couple months ago. She had come in with closed comedones that were, like, all over, and she had these testosterone pellets implanted in, I don't know, maybe second quarter last year and then another one in third quarter. I'm just saying, you know, to space it out, like, she had these testosterone implants which are different than, like, a pill or whatever. So one of the side effects that she got from the. The implants were pimples. And the doctor, the nurse practitioner she was working with says, oh, we'll fix it. I'm gonna give you spironolactone, which is an androgen blocker. So she gave her testosterone and then something to block the testosterone, which was very interesting to me, just as an outsider. It makes sense, the clinical reasoning, you know, the short amount of time that. That a lot of medical professionals spend with their patients. Oh, symptomatic. Band aiding. Band aiding. Band aiding. But I. I came with her. I spent two hours. I didn't have any. She was my last client of the day, and I spent two hours with her. And I'm, like, asking questions to provoke her into thinking in a different way. And the resolve was, when did you start your period? When did your migraines come? She has migraines. When? What happened when you. You were on birth control? What happened when you got off? These are just, you know, to initiate thought process or clinical reasoning in her own mind and hopefully get her to find a different doctor. I said, I think you need to really talk to someone about this. X, Y, and Z. So to your point, Kira, that bridge is super important and Also, what we were taught was, oh, you have this type of acne. This is the type of approach you're gonna take in treatment room, which is usually something kind of aggressive. Yeah, she did not need that. She 1000% did not need that. She needed something calming and soothing. So I did a barrier repair facial for her. And, I mean, it hurt her to smile. Like, just the moving of the cheeks and the jaw. She was like, ah, ah, ah, ah. I'm like, I don't want anybody to be have a painful smile in my place. Yeah, it's gotta be fun. So we ended up doing the barrier, and her skin was so much less irritated when she left. So it's thinking and being the bridge and provoking and being a safe space to ask those questions too, but also understanding you're learning from your clients that you can pass that information. You learn from your own experience, your lived experience, and then it was compounded with your client experience.

[D]

Right, yeah, exactly.

[B]

So you're actually working on developing, like, a little education of what you've learned along the way to encourage other estheticians to learn from your lived experience and so on. Right. So how does this kind of information benefit professional estheticians?

[D]

Yeah, this will benefit professionals to bring more inclusivity to the treatment room. We always want to evolve, and that comes with awareness for everyone that walks into our space. And it will be a guide for those who want to strengthen their consultations and treatment plans while going beyond just the skin and looking at the body as a whole. And I have the immune authority because I want to save professionals the time and the resources that I spent years for digging. And in turn, I'm also advocating for the clients who are going through this.

[B]

So, Kira, how do people get in touch with you if they want to know more about the immune authority?

[D]

Yeah, you can follow me on my Instagram rooted serenity. And I'm also a part of a collective with other professionals and other opportunities to learn about this. And if you want to get involved with that, you can feel free to find it on my Instagram or message me directly.

[B]

Now, listeners, we really want to hear from you. Did you know leftovers contain histamines? And what are some other out of the box allergies you discovered along your professional path? Reach out via Instagram, Facebook, or send us an [e-mail] we want to know all the details. In the meantime, thank you for listening to ASCP STTalk for more information on this episode or for ways to connect with Maggie or myself. Or to learn more about ascp, check out the show notes and stay tuned for the next episode of ASCP SD Talk.