June 03, 2019 at 12:57PM by CWC The minute June weather hits, styling hair becomes a totally different ball game. I can barely stand outside for five minutes before my ‘do poofs out with no abandon. And while the style looks adorable on my mom’s toy poodle, Gigi, let’s just say it isn’t so cute on me. I’ve tried seemingly everything to deal with frizz, which makes itself right at home on my strands regardless of whether I decide to wear my hair blown out, natural, or somewhere in between. Based on the comments in the Well+Good Beauty Geek Facebook group (like! share! subscribe!), I’m not the only one, either. But recently, I realized that there’s one very important part of my routine that could actually make a difference in keeping frizz at bay, and that’s my conditioner. First things first: It’s important to understand why frizz actually happens in the first place. While some people just have naturally frizzy hair (#itme), if you’re more of a seasonally frizzy kinda girl, it’s likely due to a lack of moisture in your hair. “When your hair is dry, damaged, or chemically treated, the outer layer of the strand—otherwise known as the cuticle—becomes raised, as opposed to laying flat and smooth, allowing moisture from the surrounding air to enter, causing it to swell and turn into frizz,” explains Hien Nguyen, co-founder and chief science officer at Function of Beauty. “Therefore, the more hydrated your hair is, the more the cuticle layer will
Month: June 2019
These conditioners will fight frizz no matter what type of hair you have
June 03, 2019 at 12:57PM by CWC The minute June weather hits, styling hair becomes a totally different ball game. I can barely stand outside for five minutes before my ‘do poofs out with no abandon. And while the style looks adorable on my mom’s toy poodle, Gigi, let’s just say it isn’t so cute on me. I’ve tried seemingly everything to deal with frizz, which makes itself right at home on my strands regardless of whether I decide to wear my hair blown out, natural, or somewhere in between. Based on the comments in the Well+Good Beauty Geek Facebook group (like! share! subscribe!), I’m not the only one, either. But recently, I realized that there’s one very important part of my routine that could actually make a difference in keeping frizz at bay, and that’s my conditioner. First things first: It’s important to understand why frizz actually happens in the first place. While some people just have naturally frizzy hair (#itme), if you’re more of a seasonally frizzy kinda girl, it’s likely due to a lack of moisture in your hair. “When your hair is dry, damaged, or chemically treated, the outer layer of the strand—otherwise known as the cuticle—becomes raised, as opposed to laying flat and smooth, allowing moisture from the surrounding air to enter, causing it to swell and turn into frizz,” explains Hien Nguyen, co-founder and chief science officer at Function of Beauty. “Therefore, the more hydrated your hair is, the more the cuticle layer will
How to make a healthier PB&J sandwich for grown-ups
June 03, 2019 at 12:27PM by CWC A classic PB&J is one of the only things that tastes just as good now as it did straight out of a brown paper bag in elementary school. So pour yourself a tall glass of ice cold milk—you’re going to need it while you’re chowing down on a healthy peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with fresh berries. Most popular jellies/jams/marmalades/preserves are made with a mix of fruit and high-fructose corn syrup, and several varieties just add sweetness and flavor to the spreads with fruit juice. Using just a few tablespoons to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich means you’ll be consuming a lot of sugar. But Amanda Meixner, the food blogger behind the popular Instagram account @MeowMeix, has a healthy recipe to recreate the childhood favorite with wholesome ingredients that cuts the sugar by 90 percent. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Amanda Meixner (@meowmeix) on Jun 1, 2019 at 4:07pm PDT //www.instagram.com/embed.js A healthy peanut butter and jelly sandwich takes just seconds to make. First, swap store-bought jelly for mashed berries. According to Meixner, all you need to do is take a 1/2 cup of washed raspberries (or strawberries, grapes…whichever you prefer!), put them in a bowl, and mash them with a fork. Then, spread your homemade jam onto the bread with your favorite nut butter. A typical sandwich might call for 2 tablespoons of raspberry preserves from Bonne Maman, for example, which contains 26
How to make a healthier PB&J sandwich for grown-ups
June 03, 2019 at 12:27PM by CWC A classic PB&J is one of the only things that tastes just as good now as it did straight out of a brown paper bag in elementary school. So pour yourself a tall glass of ice cold milk—you’re going to need it while you’re chowing down on a healthy peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with fresh berries. Most popular jellies/jams/marmalades/preserves are made with a mix of fruit and high-fructose corn syrup, and several varieties just add sweetness and flavor to the spreads with fruit juice. Using just a few tablespoons to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich means you’ll be consuming a lot of sugar. But Amanda Meixner, the food blogger behind the popular Instagram account @MeowMeix, has a healthy recipe to recreate the childhood favorite with wholesome ingredients that cuts the sugar by 90 percent. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Amanda Meixner (@meowmeix) on Jun 1, 2019 at 4:07pm PDT //www.instagram.com/embed.js A healthy peanut butter and jelly sandwich takes just seconds to make. First, swap store-bought jelly for mashed berries. According to Meixner, all you need to do is take a 1/2 cup of washed raspberries (or strawberries, grapes…whichever you prefer!), put them in a bowl, and mash them with a fork. Then, spread your homemade jam onto the bread with your favorite nut butter. A typical sandwich might call for 2 tablespoons of raspberry preserves from Bonne Maman, for example, which contains 26
The Women’s World Cup uniform finally—finally!—includes a sports bra
June 03, 2019 at 10:23AM by CWC Twenty years ago, soccer champion Brandi Chastain kicked the winning goal for Team USA, ripped off her shirt to bare a swish across her chest, and opened her arms to greet sports legends like Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Billie Jean King, women whose down-to-the-wire, overtime efforts punctuated history with a jaw drop and a fist pump. While the defining moment of the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup final was hopped up on all kinds of girl power, what remains most pronounced is the one piece of equipment that wasn’t repurposed from the men’s line that day: the sports bra, an essential garment for women who participate in any form of fitness. In the decades since, we’ve updated silhouettes, we’ve adapted performance technology to women’s bodies, and yet recent research out of Australia finds that women with larger breasts opt out of higher-intensity activities, noting how breast size negative impacts their ability to work out. We can do better, and a handful of brands know it. The market is dotted with size-inclusive start-ups like Good American (sizing to 4X), Superfit Hero (sizing to 5X), or Girlfriend Collective (sizing to 3X), all of which offer pieces that are equal parts performance-driven and playful. At the athlete level, Nike is leading the charge. This week, the Nike Flyknit Sports Bra ($80) becomes an official component of the Women’s World Cup Soccer kits. “I remember back in ‘96, and leading up to ‘99, there was a lot of
How to keep your energy up when trying an elimination diet, according to doctors
June 03, 2019 at 10:00AM by CWC If you suspect that you have some kind of food allergy or intolerance, there’s one thing that basically every doctor will recommend: an elimination diet. The whole process of nixing popular irritants such as eggs, dairy, gluten, corn, soy, sugar, alcohol, coffee, and nightshades (phew!) and slowly adding them back in one at a time is one of the few widely-accepted methods to determine food-related issues. And it often comes with a major unwanted side effect: fatigue. “An elimination diet is a short-term eating plan with the goal of pinpointing exactly which foods are causing the uncomfortable, painful, or mysterious reactions you are experiencing that could be the result of an undiagnosed food sensitivity,” explains functional medicine doctor and The Thyroid Connection author, Amy Myers, MD. “This is not a life-long diet; it’s a strategy to help you uncover which foods you should avoid and which you can enjoy.” Meaning that low-energy feeling as you nix certain food groups should be temporary, not a constant companion. However, considering that Dr. Meyers says the whole elimination diet process can take three to six weeks, that’s quite a long time to feel sluggish and low-energy, period. So if your doctor recommends that you go on an elimination diet, how do you pull it off without feeling drained? “Normally, people shouldn’t feel tired when doing an elimination diet,” says integrative and functional medicine doctor Sommer White, MD. But she adds that there are a few common
Not only is laughter super-contagious, but it also boosts endorphins
June 03, 2019 at 09:12AM by CWC There are few things I love more than a good, senseless giggle epidemic—you know, the contagious laughter that starts when one patient zero pronounces quiche as “kweesh” at brunch. And that cackle fit, though unquestionably silly, makes sense—something objectively funny-ish happened. But what about the case of when, say, your co-worker starts snickering at at something on their computer screen, and though only they can see it, the whole team ends up in hysterics? It seems that sometimes we start laughing simply because someone else is laughing—which might make it the most joyful communicative disease around…could it be? The short answer here is a loud, cackling yes that the giggles are contagious. One 2006 study by researchers from the University College London and Imperial College London found this is because positive sounds, such as laughter, tend to trigger a response in the premotor cortical region, i.e., the part of our brain that reacts to sound. When we see our toddler niece giggle while watching Moana, for example, the premotor cortical region tells us to smile, and smiling makes us think we’re about to laugh. That phenomenon then compounds with an innate, primitive urge reflex to mimic each other’s emotions. But wait, there’s more: “Another [person’s] laughter can certainly jump-start one’s own seemingly uncontrollable laughter when you are on the same page as someone (same sense of humor), need a release yourself, or enjoy the inappropriateness more than the actual humor,” says clinical psychologist
Not only is laughter super-contagious, but it also boosts endorphins
June 03, 2019 at 09:12AM by CWC There are few things I love more than a good, senseless giggle epidemic—you know, the contagious laughter that starts when one patient zero pronounces quiche as “kweesh” at brunch. And that cackle fit, though unquestionably silly, makes sense—something objectively funny-ish happened. But what about the case of when, say, your co-worker starts snickering at at something on their computer screen, and though only they can see it, the whole team ends up in hysterics? It seems that sometimes we start laughing simply because someone else is laughing—which might make it the most joyful communicative disease around…could it be? The short answer here is a loud, cackling yes that the giggles are contagious. One 2006 study by researchers from the University College London and Imperial College London found this is because positive sounds, such as laughter, tend to trigger a response in the premotor cortical region, i.e., the part of our brain that reacts to sound. When we see our toddler niece giggle while watching Moana, for example, the premotor cortical region tells us to smile, and smiling makes us think we’re about to laugh. That phenomenon then compounds with an innate, primitive urge reflex to mimic each other’s emotions. But wait, there’s more: “Another [person’s] laughter can certainly jump-start one’s own seemingly uncontrollable laughter when you are on the same page as someone (same sense of humor), need a release yourself, or enjoy the inappropriateness more than the actual humor,” says clinical psychologist
Do you have a “sticky mind?” Psychologists explain how to stop assuming the worst
June 03, 2019 at 08:55AM by CWC The soundtrack to my mind is a never-ending loop of catastrophizing, planning, regrets, and fantasies about my next meal. Up until now, I’ve considered the cyclical nature of everything that happens between by ears as par for the course of being human, but there’s an official term for characterizing a brain like mine, according to two psychologists. Apparently, my mind (and perhaps yours) is too “sticky.” Like a cinnamon bun drenched in sweet, heavenly icing clings to your fingers on a Saturday morning, a mind like this grips onto certain though patterns, write Martin Seif, PhD, and Sally Winston, PsyD, in Psychology Today. “Stickiness of the mind is the term we use for a biologically based trait that is experienced as repetitive looping thinking, a sense of getting mired in worry, a talent for imaginative flights into catastrophic images and thoughts, and a tendency for junk channels of the mind to get loud and insistent instead of simply flowing by,” they write. Those who’ve dealt first hand with this particular plight know that it’s not nearly as fun as other sticky things (like cotton candy or the aforementioned cinnamon roll). However, the experts warn that trying to buck a grueling inner-monologue won’t help. In fact, it might do more harm than good.”[R]esisting these thoughts by arguing with them, distracting from them, trying to substitute other thoughts, seeking reassurance about them, recoiling in horror, or admonishing oneself simply results in their return or the
Do you have a “sticky mind?” Psychologists explain how to stop assuming the worst
June 03, 2019 at 08:55AM by CWC The soundtrack to my mind is a never-ending loop of catastrophizing, planning, regrets, and fantasies about my next meal. Up until now, I’ve considered the cyclical nature of everything that happens between by ears as par for the course of being human, but there’s an official term for characterizing a brain like mine, according to two psychologists. Apparently, my mind (and perhaps yours) is too “sticky.” Like a cinnamon bun drenched in sweet, heavenly icing clings to your fingers on a Saturday morning, a mind like this grips onto certain though patterns, write Martin Seif, PhD, and Sally Winston, PsyD, in Psychology Today. “Stickiness of the mind is the term we use for a biologically based trait that is experienced as repetitive looping thinking, a sense of getting mired in worry, a talent for imaginative flights into catastrophic images and thoughts, and a tendency for junk channels of the mind to get loud and insistent instead of simply flowing by,” they write. Those who’ve dealt first hand with this particular plight know that it’s not nearly as fun as other sticky things (like cotton candy or the aforementioned cinnamon roll). However, the experts warn that trying to buck a grueling inner-monologue won’t help. In fact, it might do more harm than good.”[R]esisting these thoughts by arguing with them, distracting from them, trying to substitute other thoughts, seeking reassurance about them, recoiling in horror, or admonishing oneself simply results in their return or the