Day: November 12, 2018

November 12, 2018 at 01:00PM As much as I want pristine skin, I also want to stay up late watching an irresponsible amount of the Sabrina reboot on Netflix and sleep in the next morning for as long as humanly possible. The 10-step Korean skin-care routine has cult status and adoration for obvious reason (ahem: results) but it also feels like it requires you to be a very chipper morning person, with plenty of time at hand (which to be clear, I am not and do not). Thankfully young Korean skin-care gurus have heard the lazy girl’s cry for a routine that delivers the same results but with less of a time investment, and it’s cleverly been named “skip-care.” Skip-care, explains Byrdie, is all about streamlining your routine and removing steps without sacrificing any of the ingredients or properties that are imperative to your hydrated and supple skin goals. “Skip-care is a skincare method that allows you to identify the essential ingredients for your skin and avoid the use of unnecessary products for a simpler, yet proper, skincare routine,” a member of the Amore Pacific team told Byrdie. AKA: It’s about asking your products to do more so you can do less. Ahhhh, the lazy girl’s dream! To do this, beauty brands, especially those in the K-beauty space, are consolidating offerings: For example, they’re offering an essence (step 7) that is also a moisturizer (step 8), or a moisturizer that also has your vitamin C serum in it.  This is a burgeoning part of the

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November 12, 2018 at 11:31AM Odds are, if you’re reading this right now, you’re probably really, really stressed. No, I’m not psychic, but I’ve got the receipts: Recently, Well+Good conducted a survey of nearly 2,500 readers about stress and anxiety and—spoiler alert—almost every single person who took it experiences both. Ninety-five percent of survey takers say they’re stressed out, and 91 percent say they experience anxiety. But here’s the thing: While a lot of people said that they talk about their stress and anxiety, a fair amount (nearly 20 percent!) said they did not. And of those people who choose to stay silent, one in five said it was because they felt their struggles weren’t “a big deal.” Many others said they were too “embarrassed” to talk about those issues as well. It seems that when stress and anxiety are talked in general, it’s obvious that they’re serious issues. (How many times have you heard that stress can literally kill you?) But when it comes to our own personal experiences, a lot of us just assume it’s something everyone just has to deal with on their own. What’s up with that? Photo: Stocksy/Lauren Naefe Fear of opening up “One reason why I think people minimize stress and anxiety is because it feels better—at least initially—to downplay it rather than acknowledge it,” says integrative psychotherapist Alison Stone, LCSW. “We have grown, collectively, to use avoidance and distraction as preferred coping mechanisms to actually sitting in our discomfort.” Another reason why many people

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November 12, 2018 at 11:15AM What if I told you that there was a food that could help you fight stress and depression, boost your energy, and possibly make your sex life mind-blowing—with almost zero side effects? If you’re feeling a little skeptical…yeah, you should. That’s essentially what people are saying about the superfood maca (no, not matcha), a cruciferous vegetable native to Peru that’s classified as an adaptogen—one of those buzzy herbs that are said to help your body fight stress and achieve homeostasis. People roast it, add the powder to smoothies, or make it into a fermented beverage called “maca chicha.” But there’s one catch… There hasn’t been that much research on maca, period, including its benefits, and a 2014 review of maca benefits found that more clinical study is needed to definitively know and understand the root’s perks. Many of the studies that do exist have been really small (as in, only performed on a handful of people) or were only performed on mice or rats (meaning the results can’t necessarily directly relate to people, since our bodies are very different). So all of that is to say: While maca has some promising benefits, take all of the below with a grain of salt. Keeping reading for the purported benefits of maca—and to see how the science stacks up Getty Images/Solstock 1. It may boost your libido (and help with fertility) Maca shows a lot of promise in the bedroom. Researchers from the psychiatry department at Massachusetts General

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November 12, 2018 at 10:44AM Doing your skin-care regimen twice a day—once in the morning and once before bed—is pretty standard. But having a regular workout routine shakes everything up and adds more to the equation. After sweating for a full hour, you’re left figuring out how to keep your pores clean without over washing or over stripping skin. After dealing with the issue for ages, personal trainer and fitness guru, Massy Arias has some tricks under her belt—namely, keeping things clean from the inside-out for an everlasting glow. “I used to have acne-prone skin, and it wasn’t until I changed my entire nutrition plan until I saw a major change in my skin,” says Arias, who’s the face of CoverGirl’s new Active Collection, a line of sweat-proof makeup (the Lash Blast Active Mascara is out today while the rest of the products will launch in January). “I found that I got acne due to poor eating, so once I changed my eating habits everything changed and I just started glowing.” “I make this concoction every single day, which consists of 8 ounces of lukewarm water, ACV, a half lemon, quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper, a teaspoon of turmeric, and two teaspoons of raw honey.” —Massy Arias Besides stocking up on greens and other skin-friendly foods, Arias swears by a certain drink recipe that fights inflammation and feeds her complexion. I make this concoction every single day, which consists of 8 ounces of lukewarm water, ACV, a half lemon, quarter

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November 12, 2018 at 10:43AM Earlier this year, a data report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that only 23 percent of the population is compliant with the federal prescription for exercise benchmarks. (Yikes, right?) But in an attempt that seems designed to make these fitness #goals more widely accessible (*especially* for the crazy-busy among us), the recently released second edition of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion’s (ODPHP) Physical Activity Guidelines features a slightly tweaked exercise Rx. “Exercise snacking” (as it’s sometimes called) now totally counts toward your weekly workout gains. While the government still recommends that adults rack up 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity (plus two sessions a week focused on strength training) each week, there’s no longer a mandate in place for doing so in increments of 10 minutes or greater. “The second edition removes this requirement to encourage Americans to move more frequently throughout the day as they work toward meeting the guidelines,” the report notes. “Exercise snacking” (as it’s sometimes called) totally counts, so go ahead and consider your lunchtime stretches a fraction of your weekly workout gains. Apart from this super freeing development, the second edition presents a few other need-to-know updates. First, the ODPHP really (like, really) wants you to stop sitting so much. “This recommendation is based on new evidence that shows a strong relationship between increased sedentary behavior and increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, and all-cause mortality,” the guidelines read. And perhaps more significantly, the office now acknowledges a whole new body

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November 12, 2018 at 08:03AM “Dude, I think something is out of whack with my hormones,” I tell my workout buddy, as I walk towards my CrossFit box for the second time in one day. Some time in the last three months—after I’d left my 9-to-5 cubicle for the much-more-flexible schedule of a WFH writer—I’d gotten into the habit of working out twice a day. I’d do my Olympic weightlifting or a “Workout of the Day” (WOD) in the morning, and then take a 7 p.m. CrossFit class at night. My body was definitely sore, but two-a-days were my time to socialize. After all, who needs coworkers when you’ve got workout buddies? All was well until a subtle shift started happening inside my body. I felt off. Even after 8 or 9 hours of sleep, I’d wake up wiped and craving coffee. Workouts that usually left me glowing, instead turned me into a washed-up blob on the floor. I phoned a doctor friend, who suspected that all the high-intensity exercise was messing with my cortisol—you know, that pesky stress hormone—levels. She was right. Here’s the low-down on the hormone, how exercise impacts it, and what to do if flare-ups leave you feeling…off. Photo: Stocksy/Rob and Julia Campbell What exactly is cortisol? Cortisol is in charge of regulating changes in the body that happen in response to anxiety and tension, and it plays a role in managing our bodies fight-or-flight response. “Cortisol is secreted by the adrenal glands, which are little glands on

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November 12, 2018 at 07:49AM Fish oil is widely known for promoting overall health because of its anti-inflammatory properties. A recent government-funded study, however, has found that in addition, it can also significantly reduce the chances of heart disease for African Americans. The research, which was published last weekend in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that African-American participants who took one gram of fish oil daily, for an average of five years, were 77 percent less likely to have a heart attack than those who were given a placebo, reports NPR. Of the 26,000 healthy adults studied (all of whom were age 50 and older), twenty percent—or about 5,200—were African Americans. To conduct their study, researchers broke the large group into four smaller ones to see how both vitamin D and fish oil might affect overall health. The first group took both the fish oil and 2,000 international units of vitamin D on the daily. The second took the vitamin D and a placebo. The third took the fish oil and a placebo. And finally, the last group took a double dose of placebos. “Overall, [the results] showed that neither fish oil nor vitamin D actually lowered the incidence of heart disease or cancer,” says Lawrence Fine, MD, chief of the clinical application and prevention branch of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Understandably, the findings were considered disappointing…until researchers started looking at smaller segments of the study’s population and discovered that both African Americans and people who didn’t eat fish on a daily

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