Month: November 2018

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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November 12, 2018 at 07:25AM As a person who writes about sex and relationships for the internet, I tend to get a lot of questions to my inbox from young women (and some men) looking for advice. A few weeks ago, one such email landed in my inbox; it was from a woman who had ended things with her boyfriend just a few months ago. “I ended our relationship because we’d been together since we were 18. I’m 23, and I thought that I should experience single life,” she wrote. She went on to share that while the first month was fun, after awhile, her decision filled her with regret. “I made a mistake. Why did I think I needed to be single? How do I get my ex back?” While I’m definitely unclear about her second question, since getting an ex back is a nuanced, hardly scientific skill that’s unique to every situation, she’s not the first person I’ve heard of who had dumped a partner for no other reason than believing she should be single. There’s a stigma in some communities and environments around the fairy tale sich of two high school sweethearts going the distance. Many believe that if you met your partner young and have been dating for a while, it’s beneficial to take some time off to experience life as a single person and “find yourself.” (Cue to Ross Geller lamenting “we were on a break!” broken-record-style on Friends.) “Oftentimes, we think we ‘should’ do something

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November 12, 2018 at 03:00AM Kristin Farrell was 36 when she met Seth at a bar in San Francisco. A 24-year-old artist with a big personality, he had a talent for charming people—including Farrell, who was smitten right away. The early days of their relationship were care-free and fun; Seth would often share the projects he was working on with Kristin, like the comic book art he did just for kicks. She loved that he had such a strong creative side. Farrell didn’t know Seth was a heroin addict when they started dating, but some scary signs started tipping her off as their relationship progressed. “He’d be in the bathroom too long, and there would be blood on the floor,” she remembers. “I think I didn’t want to believe that his problem was so severe. When we fell in love, I thought maybe I could save him.” For years, she supported Seth’s attempts to quit using, and weathered the disappointment each time he failed. “It was a constant fear that something was going to happen to him. You live in that terror; it’s so hard to love someone like that,” Farrell says. She got used to seeing blood splatters on the carpet and finding needles around the house. “That was my reality: blood and needles,” she says. She’d swear she’d leave, but then cave, crying and telling Seth how afraid she was that he was going to die. Partially because she felt dating an opioid addict was a shameful secret, and

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