Month: October 2018

October 17, 2018 at 01:06PM Unless you’re just now emerging from a no-Internet-allowed retreat, you already know the week’s royal news: Meghan Markle is pregnant with her first child. Among the many questions people are asking (like, say, where this kid falls in line for the throne), is whether the Duchess’s vegan-leaning diet is healthy for pregnancy. While it normally irks me that women are subject to intense scrutiny for, like, all of their choices from the second they make their joyful announcement to the day they give birth—and then some—fact remains that so many women aspire to be like Markle. (Her wellness résumé is goals-worthy.) Since other expectant moms are bound to follow Markle’s lead, I checked in with certified nutritionist and The Whole Pregnancy author Aimee Aristotelous, CN, to find out just how healthy a vegan diet during pregnancy actually is. Her verdict: “If someone adheres to the proper vegan diet, then yes, it is possible to be healthy while pregnant,” she says. That means, for one, not making bread and pasta the hero of your diet. “Those foods are high-glycemic, which means [the carbs are] going to convert to a lot of sugar. Gestational diabetes affects up to 10 percent of all pregnant women in the United States and leads to excessive weight gain,” she says. She also doles out the advice vegans have likely heard before: Get your nutrients through unprocessed, whole foods. The pros of a vegan diet during pregnancy There are  some benefits to eating vegan

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October 17, 2018 at 12:55PM These days it’s not unordinary for ingredients in beauty products to mimic those found in your typical botanical garden or on your dinner plate. But even born-in-nature items come with hefty a hefty list of things they’re comprised of (just check out this “ingredient label” on the banana). So, when I saw Coenzyme Q10 (or CoQ10 for short) start to show up not only in supplements, but also in beauty products, I wanted to get to the bottom of what it did and why it was used. It was originally discovered in 1957, but really began being incorporated into products in the 1990s. As with most things in beauty, what’s old is new again, and so here we are finding it in all sorts of products, including one Indie Lee CoQ-10 Toner, which I began to incorporate into my routine. The ingredient is said to be an antioxidant that is critical for your body’s collagen and elastin production. What else can it do? I contact the pros to find out. What is Coenzyme Q10? “Coenzyme Q10, or CoQ10, is an energy nutrient and antioxidant that is found in most foods and that’s made naturally by the human body in the liver,” says Jennifer Hanway, holistic nutritionist.  “It is classified as an ubiquinone, because it’s ubiquitous in human tissues and found throughout the body, the highest levels being in the organs of high metabolic function, including the heart, kidneys, and liver.” Basically coenzymes are compounds in the body

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