Day: March 8, 2019

March 08, 2019 at 11:46AM by CWC More than a century has passed since the celebration of the first International Women’s Day in 1911. Since then, women in the United States have gained the right to vote, fought for basic healthcare on multiple fronts, and bravely declared #MeToo. However, I think we can all agree that the equality we seek is still out of reach 365 days of the year. Let’s not sugarcoat it: The task of remedying a gender imbalance as old as time is daunting. It’s natural to forget that every time we open our wallets, we have the power to move the needle every-so-slowly in the right direction with a mighty force called purchasing power. Since women contribute $29 trillion to global consumer spending, using the disposable part of your paycheck to support women-owned businesses is basically the equivalent of saying “I want more of that.” If you ask me, one of the easiest places to spend cash is at the bookstore. Recently, the Women’s Prize for Fiction announced its long list nominees, including Anna Burns for The Milkman, Pat Barker for The Silence of the Girls, and Tayari Jones for An American Marriage, among other wordsmiths. These nominees are all female, but it’s important to remember that’s simply not the norm for this kind of award. Women represent fewer than 13 percent of the Nobel Prize laureates in literature (and that’s the category with the highest representation!) since 1901. Only 16 percent of Pulitzer Prize winners in the past 100

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March 08, 2019 at 11:00AM by CWC Learning how to do a box jump seem pretty self-explanatory. As in, you jump…onto the box. But it’s a more advanced movement than you might think. While static squats are great for building strength, Emily Samuel, a trainer at New York City’s Dogpound gym, says box jumps help build and develop explosive power. “The power you develop from plyometric moves like box jumps will increase your vertical jump, improve your athletic performance, and enhance your overall functionality,” she says. “The dynamic movement also helps increase your heart rate, which adds a cardiovascular component.” The only problem? If you don’t perform them correctly, you could wind up really hurting yourself. “A lot of people, rather than jumping high, they jump and then tuck their knees up really fast,” says Julia Avery, an instructor at The Fhitting Room. “They land in this low-squat, hunched-over position. They’re not jumping high enough to shift their mass.” Many people also let their knees collapse in when they land, which can put them at risk for injury. Since you’re likely to come across the move in a class at some point, there’s no better time than now to master the technique. And don’t forget: If you can’t nail the proper form from the get-go, switch to a lower box or start with easier exercises—like a single-leg step-up—to build strength in the lower body first. Here’s how to properly perform a box jump. Photo: The Fhitting Room 1. Prepare to jump Stand in an

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March 08, 2019 at 10:39AM by CWC I haven’t taken a formal hearing test since elementary school, but I like to think that I have pretty good hearing. I rarely wear headphones and I clean my ears regularly. And I only occasionally blast music from the stereo. (I’m sorry, Drake is just not the same at low volumes.) Unfortunately, as we get older, hearing ability fades. According to ASAP Science, your inner ear isn’t able to regenerate like your skin. As you age, continued exposure to loud noises damages and destroys the cells that enable you hear different frequencies. And the highest frequencies are usually the first to go. A thorough hearing test conducted by a trained audiologist is easy and painless. But this video is fun and might be an indicator as to whether you should get your hearing checked. It starts by playing frequencies that can be heard at any age and transitions into others you might only be able to hear if you’re under 20 years old (or have freakishly good hearing). [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxcbppCX6Rk] Pretty wild, huh? Under perfect conditions, the human audio spectrum ranges from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. You can listen to the full range of human hearing to find out what you can and cannot hear. In any case, it’s important to treat your ears gently. While your hearing abilities will diminish with time, there’s no upside to hastening the inevitable. Find out if your earbuds are permanently damaging your hearing. And here’s what you should do if

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March 08, 2019 at 10:00AM by CWC No matter how many luxury oils, creams, and sprays you’ve got in your arsenal to help up the shine factor of your strands, the true secret to gorgeous hair is protection. It’s why hairstylists are constantly singing the praises of pre-hot tools heat protectants, and urging you to rinse your hair with cold water at the end of every wash. And while these are important steps for keeping your hair healthy, what you may not realize is that your strands actually have a built-in protective layer of their own, and true defense against damage relies on keeping it in-tact. Think about it like this: You’ve likely heard the phrase “microbiome” as it applies to your skin, which is essentially an ecosystem made up of an invisible layer of microbes that acts as an extension of your immune system and helps ward off infection. Well, just as your skin has this shield of armor around it, your hair also has a sheet of protection. “The protective layer of our skin can be likened to the protective layer of our hair in terms of function,” explains dermatologist Whitney Bowe, MD, author of The Beauty of Dirty Skin. “Healthy human hair is coated by seven layers of cuticle cells. The outermost layer is called the epicuticle and it helps to protect the hair from damage.” This is the layer that all of those products are working to keep healthy, in order to ensure that the strand underneath keeps doing its

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