March 13, 2020 at 04:00PM by CWC Having a healthy immune system ready to fight off any nasty germs that come in its path is a top concern for people now more than ever. We are living in a world where washing your hands is being talked about even more than that wild The Bachelor finale. (Still can’t get over Hannah Ann tearing Peter apart, TBH.) With immunity on everyone’s minds—and social feeds—doctors are being confronted with lots of questions from their patients about how to boost their immune system, and have encountered many misconceptions in the process. First, a little PSA: When it comes to anything health-related, it’s essential to get your facts from trusted medical experts, not from randos on your Instagram feed. To help set the record straight, Arielle Levitan, MD, the co-founder of Vous Vitamin and author of The Vitamin Solution, and Erika Schwartz, MD, the founder of integrative medicine practice Evolved Science, correct the common misconceptions about immunity they hear on a regular basis. 3 immune system facts and myths everyone should know Myth 1: If I don’t get regular vaccines Like as the flu shot, I will build natural immunity Despite being backed by decades of very solid science, vaccines have become…controversial. Many people who avoid vaccines claim that they can naturally build their immunity on their own. But that strategy comes with a fair share of risks. “If you don’t take vaccines, you will build immunity but only by getting sick—and in certain cases,
Month: March 2020
This simple kale salad will actually fill you up—and takes just 20 minutes to make
March 13, 2020 at 03:30PM by CWC [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXvGEkr2XEs] Tossing a bag of greens in your cart is an automatic part of your weekly grocery shop. Another mainstay of your meal-prep routine? Throwing away that same bag of greens after letting it sit untouched in the bottom of your fridge all week. In the spirit of Kroger’s Zero Hunger Zero Waste initiative (and to help you clean out your refrigerator before letting your produce go to waste), senior food and health editor Jessie Van Amburg teamed up with cookbook author and recipe developer Rachel Mansfield on the latest episode of Cook with Us to show you how to turn your neglected greens into a filling, nutritious, and delicious meal. Van Amburg challenges Mansfield to make a healthy, vegetarian dinner in 30 minutes or less using three ingredients you’ve likely had left over before: sprouted grain bread, kale, and tahini. This salad proves that you can still make a healthy dinner even when your fridge is nearly bare. Proving that you can still make a healthy dinner even when your fridge is nearly bare (sorry, takeout), Mansfield pulls together a recipe from her cookbook Just the Good Stuff using the challenge ingredients, all of which you can get from Kroger. “I love when a store is stocked up with all of the goods I need to fuel my family and myself,” Mansfield says. “Kroger has so many healthy and organic options to keep on hand at such affordable prices.” And with
Meet the tantric exercise that boosts intimacy in 30 seconds flat, according to an intimacy expert
March 13, 2020 at 03:00PM by CWC A decade ago in 2010, performance artist Marina Abramović dazzled the public with her MoMA retrospective, The Artist is Present. For 736 hours total, Abramović invited any and all human beings to stare into her eyes for as long as they so desired. And, as awkward as it sounds, the practice led to some majorly intimate moments (think: people literally bursting into tears). Abramović isn’t the only one who knows just how powerful eye gazing can be; somatic psychologist and certified sex therapist Holly Richmond, LMFT, recommends it to every single couple who walks through her door for its intimacy-boosting potential. I first learned about this at a recent mindful sex workshop hosted by pleasure brand Dame, where Richmond asked a room full of strangers (myself included) to eye gaze—not in the name of performance art, but as a tantric practice in intimacy. “I have my couples clients do this all the time when they’ve just been disconnected, they’re not having sex, or they’re fighting all the time,” Richmond says. “Do this before you have sex and even after you have sex. Really, what comes up can be profound. You might laugh, you might have gas, your stomach might flip.” “”I have my couples clients practice eye gazing all the time when they’ve just been disconnected, they’re not having sex, or they’re fighting all the time.” —Holly Richmond, LMFT, sex therapist But since this was a mindful sex workshop, though, so it focused on
SoulCycle is my favorite workout class—here are my honest thoughts on the new at-home bike
March 13, 2020 at 02:00PM by CWC I will never forget my first SoulCycle class. I was 22, in the midst of my first “adult” breakup, and I let my friends convince me that spending $36 to cry on a bike would make me feel better. They were right. Riding in a dark, grapefruit-scented studio, alongside 60 other people was the closest thing I’d ever had to a religious experience. Not only did it make me feel better for the first time in weeks, it also helped me to fall in love with exercise for the first time in my entire life. The cycling studio—which launched as a single brick-and-mortar in New York in 2005 and now has 93 locations across the U.S., UK, and Canada—built its brand on sweat as a sanctuary. And this week, the brand announced its first-ever, at-home bike linked to on-demand classes. The only question that remains: Does at-home spin have the same soul? As of today, the bike, with a $2500 price tag, will be available for pre-order in select cities: Austin, Dallas, Houston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. In addition to the bike, SoulCycle’s parent company, Equinox, will also be launching its first foray into digital fitness through an app called Variis. The additional $40-per-month app—which includes content from a number of Equinox-owned brands—gives users access to on-demand SoulCycle classes through their phone, tablet, or a built-in screen on their shiny new at-home bike. In addition to SoulCycle, Variis also has running
How to make a week’s worth of gluten-free meals using 2 protein-packed staples
March 13, 2020 at 01:00PM by CWC Meal prepping is the not-so-secret hack for making eating healthy during busy weekdays a cinch, but it’s a lot easier said than done—even with the best intentions and a Pinterest board full of ideas. Enter Prep School, Well+Good’s new series that makes meal prep simple. Each month, we’ll focus on a different eating style, with four weeks of different delicious plans to try at home. This month, we’re all about gluten-free meal prep; this week, we’re sharing a guide to making high-protein, gluten-free meals. When Sally O’Neil, aka The Fit Foodie, sat down to write The Fit Foodie Meal Prep Plan, she had two rules for herself: One, that it could be a go-to resource for busy women without much wiggle room in their schedules, and two, it wouldn’t preach any BS diet plans that made mealtime feel more like a hurdle to overcome than a time of joy and nourishment. Mission accomplished. The book is a practical guide, giving thought-out plans and ideas for healthy staples that can be used in a whole slew of different ways, keeping meals from getting repetitive or boring. The key, according to O’Neil, is prepping a couple versatile proteins that are ready-to-eat all week—and planning out what you’re going to pair them with. This not only eliminates the stress of figuring out what to eat, it also reduces food waste because you’re being purposeful about the foods you’re prepping. Here, O’Neil shares recipes to two flavorful proteins, as well as
Does living like a rom-com lead guarantee happily ever after? I tried it to find out
March 13, 2020 at 12:00PM by CWC After watching the highly-anticipated second installment of Netflix’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (TATBILB), cheekily entitled P.S. I Still Love You, I started thinking about what makes romantic comedies the satisfying viewing equivalent of biting into a piece of 10-layer chocolate cake. They’re full of predictable tropes like implausible meet-cutes and guaranteed happily ever afters, but they somehow always make you ravenous for more and more bites of the same. And after watching that movie’s bookish protagonist Lara Jean Covey once again find herself in the arms of high-school heartthrob Peter Kavinsky, I started to brainstorm ways to bring that movie magic to my IRL love life. Because I, much like Lara Jean, love love and refuse to believe that it’s “nothing like how it’s portrayed in the movies.” Thus began my off-screen romantic comedy dating experience, led by lawyer-turned-relationship-therapist Rachel DeAlto, JD. DeAlto sent me a list of five rom-com assignments to complete throughout the week (think: sprinkling rose petals on the bed) so I could see just how romantic I felt both toward myself and my boyfriend. Would the clichés of this romantic comedy dating style stand their ground under the harsh lights of reality? I tried it for a week to see what happened. Here’s what happened the week I tried romantic comedy dating to manifest a happily ever after. Task 1: Create a lovesick soundtrack for my life The TATBILB sequel really (and I mean really) leans
Literally glide through you next intense workout with these slider disc exercises
March 13, 2020 at 02:00AM by CWC Sliders are one of my favorite toys to use at the gym. Adding a little sliding disk under your foot make moves like lunges and planks a bajillion times harder. Sam Tooley, performance coach and founder of Alpha Fit Club in New Jersey, says the sliders are all about introducing instability. “I am a huge fan of utilizing the sliders, specifically with my endurance athletes in the weight room,” he says. “It allows them to work in all directions and focus on the control of their movement as well as their range of motion. My personal favorite is to perform reverse lunges with one foot placed on the slider.” When you’re gliding back into a lunge instead of stepping back, you’re forced to control your muscles on the way down so you don’t just fall over. Bonus: They’re easy to travel with. Feeling inspired? Step 1: Buy a slider SYNERGEE CORE SLIDERS, $10 These sliders are double-sided, with one side you can use on carpet and another you can use on hardwood. The set also comes in black, neon green, red, and yellow. Step 2: Get to sliding with these slider disc exercises for your core and lower body Below, Ash Wilking, Nike trainer and Rumble instructor in NYC, and Ka’imi Kuoha, personal trainer, martial artist, actress, and the owner of Othentik Gym in San Diego, share their favorite slider moves. Slider Prone Snow Angels This is one of Kuoha’s favorite moves to include during
Yes, stress makes your hair greasier
March 13, 2020 at 01:00AM by CWC If you’ve ever had a pre-presentation pimple, you know all too well that stress can have a major effect on your skin. But as if those breakouts before big events weren’t enough of a pain to deal with, there’s yet another annoying, beauty-related thing that stress brings about: It can also make your hair greasy. Stress triggers a spike in your body’s level of cortisol—aka the stress hormone—which causes your skin to produce more oil. Considering your scalp is also skin, the same thing can conceivably happen up there, too. “Stress can increase oil production throughout the entire body, and just as your face can get greasy—and potentially break out in pimples—the same can occur on the scalp,” says board-certified dermatologist Joshua Zeichner, MD. In addition to causing run-of-the-mill grease up there, stress can also lead dandruff. “Stress can exacerbate seborrhea—the red, itchy rash and white scales that you know as dandruff—and an overgrowth of yeast,” says board-certified dermatologist (and star of our Dear Derm series!) Mona Gohara, MD. “This seborrhea can also leave you with a greasy scalp.” So what’s a greased-up gal to do? Aside from taking some deep breaths and investing in the Headspace app to help you remedy the situation internally, there are a few products that can help you handle the oil. Stylists suggest using a clarifying shampoo, which is designed to help get rid of any gunk and residue on your scalp without disrupting the oils you actually
I tried heart-rate variability training to help my anxiety—here’s what happened
March 13, 2020 at 12:00AM by CWC In the six years since I was diagnosed with both generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder—what can I say, I’m an overachiever—I’ve tried just about everything to manage my symptoms. I’ve been in and out of therapy and took medication for a year, but ultimately decided to taper off the medication because I didn’t like the side effects. I’ve tested just about every CBD brand on the market. I’ve inhaled essential oils and experimented with all kinds of meditation styles, and I make it a point to work out daily, practice breathwork, and get on my yoga mat at least once a day. (That’s not even an exhaustive list.) While most of these strategies have helped to some degree, I still have months where I’m plagued with heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, and unexplainable feelings of terror. So when I heard about a new tactic for soothing the nervous system and reducing anxiety from within—heart rate variability training, or HRV for short—I had nothing to lose by giving it a try. HRV has been buzzy in the fitness world for the past few years, with devices such as the Apple Watch and Whoop tracking it as a measure of fitness. “Heart-rate variability is the fluctuation of the length of heart beat intervals,” says cardiologist Roshini Malaney, DO, of Manhattan Cardiology. (Translation: It measures the variation in time between heart beats.) A higher heart-rate variability score means that there is more variation in
In the battle of broccoli vs. cauliflower, here’s the verdict on which is healthier
March 12, 2020 at 11:00PM by CWC When cauliflower versions of rice, pizza crust, and gnocci first entered the food scene, it was downright revolutionary. After all, we’re all on a never-ending quest for more fiber, right? But healthy eaters are always on the hunt for the Next Big Thing. And what’s next is broccoli, a cousin of cauliflower and a fellow cruciferous veggie. Broccoli is getting the same treatment as cauliflower, morphing into rice, crusts, and tots. But in the battle of broccoli vs. cauliflower, which is the healthier choice? “I think I’m ready for a change! Both have a lot of nutritional benefits to bring to the table, but I’m ready for a change in color,” says Melissa Rifkin, RD. Before getting into the key differences between the two veggies, it’s worth pointing out the benefits they have in common. Both broccoli and cauliflower have about 2 grams of fiber per cup. And if you’re counting carbs, each contains roughly 5 grams per cup (cauliflower has slightly more than broccoli, but not by much). Both have the same amount of iron and magnesium, too. Here’s where things get interesting: “Broccoli is rich in calcium, vitamin A, C, and K. But cauliflower does not contain vitamin A,” says Rifkin. While cauliflower does have a decent amount of calcium (23 grams per cup), it’s less than the amount in broccoli (35 grams per cup). Similarly, cauliflower does contain vitamin C, but it has a lower amount than broccoli. “Broccoli also