March 04, 2020 at 03:00PM by CWC At this point in the alternative milk revolution, almond milk and oat milk are about as basic as pumpkin spice lattes and bathroom mirror selfies. While many healthy eaters wouldn’t dream of giving up their fave alternative milk, many are still in pursuit of the latest and greatest. What can we milk next… The answer: Chia seeds. Chia-centric brand Mamma Chia recently launched a (you guessed it) Unsweetened Chiamilk in two flavors: original and vanilla ($4.99 each). “It was truly eight years in the making,” the brand’s CEO Janie Hoffman says. “It’s been a dream of mine for that long.” Now that the chia milk finally has the taste and nutritional profile Hoffman was aiming for, it’s on the market and ready to drink. Here, she shares more about what exactly is in the drink and a registered dietitian weighs in on how healthy it really is. Plus, the verdict on how it tastes. (You know you want to know.) What is chia milk, anyway? Curious about what goes into the making of chia milk? Here’s a run-down of what’s in the product (which is organic and GMO-free): coconut milk, chia oil, chia protein, pea protein, calcium carbonate, guar gum, sunflower lecithin, natural flavor, vanilla extract, gellan gum, vitamin A, vitamin D2, and vitamin B12. Wait, is that coconut milk on the ingredients list? Isn’t this chia milk? Well yes, in the sense that coconut milk is the base into which the other
Month: March 2020
I tried vibrating ‘Bond bracelets’ to bring a sense of physical touch to my LDR
March 04, 2020 at 02:00PM by CWC It’s Sunday night, and yet again I’m FaceTiming with my boyfriend (let’s call him, Joe) who resides 1,000 miles west of New York City, where I live. We’ve been doing the whole long-distance dance for a few months now, and while grateful that technological advancements have let us stay in contact to this extent, we could, well, use some extra help in terms of bridging the physical space between us using alternate methods. Enter: Bond Touch bracelets ($98 for a pair), the wearables that “mimic your partner’s touch” via mutually exchanged vibrations that you can exchange from anywhere in the great, wide world (using cell service or Wi-Fi, that is). “I can just tap the bracelet and your wrist will vibrate,” I tell Joe. “Isn’t that cool?!” The good sport he is, he agrees to at least try it out to humor me. So I order a pair and give him his during a recent weekend visit. We connect our two bracelets via the Bond Touch app and choose our digital color (which you can change at any time). The bracelet then registers my full tapping pattern and sends an exact copy to his, so decide to make up a language—our very own Morse code of sorts—for our vibrational combos. Here’s what we decide: One tap: “Hi!,” “hello!,” or some equivalent greeting Two taps: “Good morning” or “good night”—depending on when the tap comes in Three taps: “I love you.” Four taps: “I’m
Hate meditating? Here are 3 ways to reap the self-compassion benefits without sitting on a cushion
March 04, 2020 at 01:00PM by CWC Like cilantro, meditation is a divisive topic: When the practice comes up in conversation, people either offer words of enthusiasm (“It works wonders on my mental health!”) or dismiss it with the verbal equivalent of the shrugging emoji (¯\_(ツ)_/¯). The latter crowd may well be interested in the results of a recent study because it found that it’s entirely possible to reap the brain-boosting benefits of meditation—specifically the practice’s ability to boost compassion toward yourself and others—without actually sitting down on your cushion. How? Well, it turns out that self-compassion is something you can exercise and practice with your eyes wide open. Published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, the study of 828—only half of whom would label themselves as “meditators”—used a statistical technique called structural equation modeling (SEM) to study what, exactly, makes mindfulness so effective. Ultimately, researchers concluded that the brain benefits include finding deeper meaning in life, better overall mental health, and, yes, way more self-compassion. But even if you don’t meditate, psychotherapist Michele Burstein, LCSW says you can still get in on the goodness of that final particular benefit. Researchers found benefits of meditating include finding deeper meaning in life, better overall mental health, and more self-compassion. But even if you don’t meditate, you can still boost your self-compassion. “In order to have self-compassion, you have to give yourself understanding, acceptance, and, of course, forgiveness,” says Burstein. “We usually are our own toughest critics and give ourselves little room for
Fitness studios are taking precautions against COVID-19—and cancellation policies should reflect that
March 04, 2020 at 12:00PM by CWC In the last few days, fitness enthusiasts have seen their inboxes flooded with e-mails about the “medical grade hand disinfectants” and “extra precautions” that their go-to studios are taking to guard against COVID-19. Orangetheory is encouraging people to skip the high fives, Barry’s will add disposable wipes and hand sanitizers at studios, Equinox is sanitizing its gyms multiple times a day, and SLT is asking patrons to wipe down their machines before and after they use them. By and large, boutique fitness studios across the country are requesting that people “stay home if they don’t feel well,” but there’s one catch: Many cancellation policies aren’t reflecting that. To their credit, some are. Classpass and Solidcore will both be offering more leniency in waiving late cancellation fees for members who are feeling unwell, and Y7 is encouraging students to contact their studio if they’re too sick to come to class. “If you’re sick, you should have the ability to cancel and not be penalized for it,” says Jason Tetro, microbiologist and author of The Germ Files. “If gyms can provide the assurance that if you’re sick and have to cancel, you won’t be charged for a class, that can increase the confidence that people will only show up when they are healthy.” Understandably, studios financially incentivize people to show up to classes, but these hard-and-fast rules are contributing to the problem. As of Tuesday afternoon, 100 cases of COVID-19—and nine virus-related deaths—had been reported in
3 exercises that prove that a simple step can make your workout more explosive
March 04, 2020 at 03:00AM by CWC There are plenty of ways to make a workout more challenging. You can add a workout finisher to spike your heart rate at the end of an exercise or even increase the weights or resistance that you’re working with. But perhaps the simplest way to up your workout? Adding in an elevated step to the moves you’re already doing. Steps have been around since the era of, you guessed it, step aerobics. They’re essentially elevated platforms that you can step onto, or off of, to mix things up in your workout. These days, it’s also found in the form of plyo boxes, which are more square versions of the traditional step. But the idea is the same: A platform adds resistance and challenges the muscles that you’re using. “By implementing a foreign piece of equipment [like a step], the point is to increase the intensity of the exercise,” says Luke Milton, trainer and founder of Training Mate in Los Angeles. When you’re stepping up, Milton explains that you’re recruiting more energy from the muscles in use since the elevation works as resistance. “Plyo boxes and steps create variety and intensity, and are a great way to implement dynamic movements into the workout,” he says, pointing to Bulgarian split squats and incline push-ups as examples of exercises you could do with one. “A box step-up, for instance, strengthens the major muscle groups of the lower body, while a box jump is great to increase
Hydro-massage is the latest way to recover at the gym, and we’re *here* for it
March 04, 2020 at 02:00AM by CWC From dynamic stretching to percussive therapy, there are a lot of different things you can do after a particularly grueling workout for the sake of muscle recovery. But none of them are quite as enjoyable in that hurts-so-good kinda way as a good, old-fashioned massage. While old-school styles like deep-tissue and hot stone have long proven their body benefits on the recovery front, the most effective massage modality one ups them all by adding heat and water into the mix. Hydromassage—which has been popping up in brick-and-mortar gyms across the country—combines heat and water to ease tension in the body. It takes place on top of a bed filled with jets, and the combination of pressure and warm H2O helps to dissipate muscle knots caused by tightened fascia. According to Theodore Savage, the fitness training director at Planet Fitness, it does it even better than a set of human hands could. In addition to feeling damn amazing, hydromassage comes along with some legit benefits. First up? Alleviating muscle soreness. “As we work out, we are tearing down our muscle tissue continuously and, as a result, the muscles release lactic acid. HydroMassage works to break down that lactic acid and keep it from building up locally,” says Savage. This creates proper blood flow throughout your tissues, which aids in recovery time and offsets injuries. The warm jets are also said to relieve pressure in your joints, which helps increase range of motion. “This is
A psychologist’s advice on how to care for your mental health in a pandemic
March 04, 2020 at 01:00AM by CWC As evidenced by the dearth of hand sanitizers at your local drugstore, people are concerned about contracting COVID-19 as it spreads throughout the world. As of Monday, the disease has infected approximately 90,000 people in 65 countries. While it’s more important than ever to wash your hands, the emotional uncertainty health crises evoke is undeniably universal. And so it’s imperative to take care of your mental health if you find yourself afraid of coronavirus. When it comes to an outbreak of this nature, we typically see a rise in four components that impact our mental stability and security: fear, suspicion, hyper vigilance, and paranoia, says clinical psychologist Aimee Daramus, PsyD. Below, she shares four tips to strengthen your mental health. Fear: Don’t jump to conclusions from a headline alone Your newsfeed is artery clogged with breaking news about how we’re all doomed. It’s important to stay informed, you just want to be sure that you’re getting legitimate, helpful information. You might even consider eschewing social media altogether in favor of taking a free online course to learn all the facts about COVID-19. “Be picky about where you get your facts and avoid thinking with your feelings,” says Dr. Daramus. “Fear and hope are powerful motivators, but they give us very poor guidance a lot of the time. If a piece of information makes you feel scared or hopeful, double-check to see that it’s from a good medical source before you act on it.”
I got into a hyperbaric chamber to speed up the healing process—here’s what happened
March 03, 2020 at 11:02PM by CWC [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lvYjoV2tpA] What does a hyperbaric chamber do? Watch the video to find out. We know a thing or two about recovery here at Well+Good. We’ve tried everything from gymnast-led stretching classes to cold compression cuffs. In the latest episode of What the Wellness, host Ella Dove dives into a hyperbaric chamber for the ultimate recovery. A hyperbaric chamber is a big tube that kind of looks like a tanning bed, but instead of harmful UV rays, this machine floods your body with oxygen. What does a hyperbaric chamber do? “They speed up every biochemical healing process,” says Johnathan Leary, PhD, a chiropractor and CEO and founder of Remedy Place. “It doesn’t matter if its expedited recovery after surgery, recovery after a long fight or a late night out, this does everything.” Remedy Place is a social wellness club in West Hollywood dedicated to recovery. In addition to the hyperbaric chamber, the club offers an infrared sauna, a cryotherapy chamber, a meditation room, compression boots, IV drips, and movement therapy. Dr. Leary says the hyperbaric chamber is the most powerful tool their arsenal. “Fully saturating the body with oxygen, it just helps in speeding up every biochemical healing process,” he says. “Think of it as every single reaction in the body to maximize recovery is just being enhanced.” For the claustrophobic among us, the door is glass so you can see out. And for people who feel like they might have a hard
The world’s largest healthy product convention was just postponed—here’s how it’ll impact what you eat this year
March 03, 2020 at 10:49PM by CWC This week was supposed to mark one of the biggest wellness events of 2020. Every year, more than 3,500 health brands and over 85,000 attendees descend upon Anaheim, California for ExpoWest—the world’s largest healthy product convention—to showcase what they’ll have to offer in the coming months. Brands spend thousands of dollars to attend, and for many startups, it’s their major chance to pitch products to retailers. But as of Monday evening, the massive event got postponed indefinitely, after hundreds of brands starting pulling out from the show just two days before it was slated to start. Why? Organizers and brands hoped to keep those who would be traveling from all over the world safe from COVID-19, and reduce the risk of the illness becoming even more widespread. “Ultimately, we listened to our community, and the position of our community changed very rapidly over 24 hours, due to the COVID-19 situation and its mainstream media and social media coverage,” says Carlotta Mast, the senior vice president of content and market leader for New Hope Network, which hosts the event. “By the afternoon of March 2, it was clear that despite the city of Anaheim being open and operating as usual and the continued assurances from local Anaheim authorities that the city was prepared to host Natural Products Expo West, the majority of our community wanted the show postponed.” Mast says she recognizes the conflicting emotions many are feeling about the postponement. Many, she says,
The expert-approved products to buy at Dermstore’s Beauty Refresh Event
March 03, 2020 at 08:00PM by CWC When it comes to finding the best of the best skin-care products online, a great first stop is the expert-curated Dermstore. (It was founded by dermatologists, after all!) Because stocking up on everything on your wish list can add up quickly, it can definitely be worth waiting until the prices drop—and this week there’s a massive skin-care sale called the Beauty Refresh Event you can take full advantage of. Dermstore’s Beauty Refresh Event is currently in full swing, where you can score some of your favorite products up to 20 percent off through March 9. Now, I’m not going to lie—sifting through hundreds of products can be intimidating. Plus, who has time to read through that many product descriptions? That’s why we put together a list of the options skin-care experts can’t get enough of that you’re sure to fall in love with, too. The 7 best products to order at the Dermstore Beauty Refresh Event 1. Dr. Dennis Gross Alpha Beta Universal Daily Peel Packettes, $120 for 60 When half of the Well+Good editors use the same peel pads, you know they’re good. I mean, one editor said—and I quote—she’d sell her soul to get a lifetime supply. They contain alpha hydroxy acids and glycolic and beta hydroxy acids, which together provide all the exfoliation and brightening powers your skin will ever need. 2. Bioderma Atoderm Cleansing Oil, $16 If you’re not already using a shower oil, now’s the time to start.