Under Review: Face Masks

One of my favorite ways to wind-down after a long week is with a nice, 15-20 minute face mask. It’s one of those easy activities that makes you feel good because you’re doing something nice for your mindset and your body through making time for yourself AND doing your skin a favor!

Face masks are also something I’ve done a lot of experimenting with, since there are a wide variety to choose from. And, depending on what you want your skin to physically get out of the experience, it’s a good to have a general intention with your face mask practice going into it.

I wouldn’t have enough space in one post to talk about every face mask I’ve ever tried, especially between homemade and store-bought kinds. So here I’ve picked a few purchased masks that I’ve tried out to share my thoughts with all of you, hopefully to make the selection process easier for you the next time you’re looking for a treat at the end of a long week.

Image courtesy of amazon.com/…ent-Oil-Control/dp/B071WBXXSR

The Charcoal Mask (“Detoxifying”)

This one was all over the internet for a long time, so obviously I had to give it a shot! I tried the Cidbest Suction Black Mask. The hype around this mask was that it would actually rip the dirt that causes blackheads out from pores, and this concept made for really crazy looking videos that became crazy popular on Facebook and Instagram.

My overall opinion of this mask was confused. I thought it looked cool to have on, and it’s definitely a mess-free experience since this is a peel-off mask that dries glossy and smooth. I didn’t get the insane cleaning results promised in the viral videos, which I didn’t totally mind since I care more about the feeling of having a face-mask on. Sometimes just having one on makes you feel like you’re doing something good for your skin, and I’ve found this placebo effect to be pretty effective for maintaining a clear complexion.

My other issue with the mask was that, though having it on was a cool experience, taking it off was physically painful. Peel-off masks cling to your skin pretty tight, but it’s my understanding that I’m not alone in comparing taking this mask off to waxing. It’s not the most comfortable experience, but definitely a way to hit two birds with one stone if you’re thinking about kind of clearing your skin and DEFINITELY removing any hair on your face!

Image courtesy of anjou.com/anjou-dead-sea-mask

The Dead Sea Mud Mask (“Nourishing”)

This one actually came in a really big container, and I have to say I’m not disappointed! I’ve used my Anjou Dead Sea Mud Mask almost every week for the last year, and I really enjoy the experience every time I use it.

The only thing to get over about this mask is that there aren’t any fancy floral smells that accompany it. It doesn’t smell bad, but it doesn’t smell glorious either. It just kind of smells like a face cream. The good news about it this is that I totally believe the claim that they do not put any artificial scents into their masks, which is a plus when it comes to trying to maintain a mostly nature beauty routine.

Smells aside, this mask is very rich and creamy to apply, which I love. It’s not a peel-off, so it’s very gentle on your skin and doesn’t leave any bizarre residues after you take it off. These masks tend to fall under the “nourishing” category of face masks, and this one always leaves me feeling exactly that! There are also lots of fabulous brands out there to experiment with, and all with very consistent skincare benefits!

Image courtesy of ulta.com/cucumbers-soothing-calming-sheet-mask

The Cucumber Mask (“Calming”)

Finally, I’ve tried the Yes To Cucumber Calming Sheet Mask a few times, and overall it’s a fun mask to change things up every once in a while. I like the way it smells, but while the scent that accompanies it is pleasant, it’s also very strong. The strength of the smell can be a little overwhelming, which is why it’s not a regular part of my skincare routine.

Otherwise, this mask was great to use right before bed. Sheet masks tend to be damp and leave a shiny, sticky residue on your face, and this mask is no different. If you let the residue sit on your face overnight, though, you wake up the next morning feeling like a princess. By the next day the smell is also just a lingering scent, which is much more manageable and very calming to experience throughout the day.

Breakfast for Your Best Self

I’ve always been a grand advocate of eating breakfast. There are lots of benefits to starting your day early, and there are even more benefits to powering your early start with a good breakfast.

It’s so important to me, in fact, that I am dedicating an entire blog post to the benefits and importance of breakfast, as well as how to convert yourself to a breakfast-person if you’re not one already!

If You’re “Not a Breakfast Person”

First, I totally understand where you’re coming from, especially if you’re expected to get to work or class early. Eating at 7am doesn’t always sound exactly appetizing, especially if the night before you had a hard time sleeping or if you’re feeling under the weather.

The good news is, there are lots of ways to ease your body into enjoying food in the morning. For starters, don’t eat dinner super close to when you go to bed. The more time you give yourself to digest your dinner before you sleep and then through the night, the more likely you are to be hungry the next morning. So stay away from the late-night snacks, and who knows, you might even find yourself craving a good breakfast the next morning!

Also, if food in the morning generally is difficult for you to stomach, there are both supplements and baby steps you can take to getting to a point that food in the morning is a digestible concept. Blessed Thistle is a fantastic herb to put in tea that can help regulate digestion, along with bringing tons of other health benefits like improving your wound healing abilities and overall respiratory health. I would also recommend starting your breakfasts’ light, such as with Naked Juice smoothies or over-night oats.

Breakfast Combats Jet-lag

Not only does breakfast help you jump-start your day, it can actually help you combat jet-lag when you’re traveling! I recently had the pleasure of sitting down to talk with Dr. Jerome Menet, who does research on circadian rhythms in mice at Texas A&M University. Many of his recent studies have shows (along with countless others) that mammalian circadian rhythms are not only dictated by when we wake up, go to sleep, or what type of light we are exposed to, but also when we eat and how much we eat.

He explained to me that actually eating in the morning allows our bodies to start our metabolism at the same time that we have to start functioning, both mentally and physically. He then told me that this was why, on international flights, guests are often served meals according to the time of their destination city, not where they were coming from.

“It helps get your body on track. Even if you have to wake up to eat food at the right time in a new time zone, do it! It will help your body better understand when it is supposed to wake up and go to bed,” Menet explained.

I also asked him if he thought that, overall, breakfast was an important meal.

“Obviously!” he responded. “People are not lying to you when they say, it is the most important meal of the day!”

Breakfast Aids in Weight Loss

As many of you have probably heard, breakfast can also help aid in weight loss. Breakfast helps your body turn-on metabolism faster, which means you have more hours of the day that you body is looking for calories to burn!

Breakfast also replenishes the supply of energy you lost during the night before. In order for your body to start burning fat, you need carbs or glucose to start your body on the using-energy-train so that eventually it will start using some of your fat stores to keep you going as well.

Breakfast also helps keep you feeling full throughout the day, and when you feel well-fed from the start of your day, you’re more likely to make good choices as the day goes on about food and exercise practices!

Breakfast Food is Fun

Honestly, this section is just going to be tempting photos of breakfast food because TRULY there is something for everyone!

A Guide to “Minerals” Part 1

One of the reasons why I got into writing in the first place was to be able to communicate science to a wider audience. My degree is in molecular and cellular biology, and through my writing my goal has always been to reassure people that science is around to do more good than bad.

A big thing that took me a long time to understand about nutritional science was the concept of “vitamins and minerals”. I thought this phrase was so vague. In school, they teach you the basics, like the way we get vitamin D from the sun and vitamin C form oranges. But the second half of that statement (“minerals”) is barely ever addressed, and all the way from my high school education through my undergraduate program, STILL no one has really explained what this means to me.

So I decided to investigate myself, and the results have been very interesting! Thus, I’m going to try my best to relay what I’ve learned here. And since there are so many great things to talk about here, this is sort of a part one to a saga of posts aimed at answering the questions: what are minerals, and why do we need them?

Methyl Folate: Happy Blood

Methyl folate is a compound that people take with the goal of providing their bodies with folate. Folate is found naturally in lots of foods, like asparagus, beets and Brussels sprouts. It’s super important to get enough folate in our diets because it’s important for the healthy formation of lots of cell types in our bodies, but specifically, it’s required to make red blood cells.

Folate helps red blood cells form to the correct size and shape. It sounds like no big deal, but if red blood cells don’t come out round (instead of oval shaped) and the right shape (not too big, not too small) they can’t carry oxygen to the muscles the way that they are supposed to. The outcome of not having enough folate in our diets can actually lead to a type of anemia!

So folate is important, and methyl folate is the form in which our bodies can get supplemental folate as well as what we get form our diets (like the ones made by Douglas Laboratories, which is a great company for more informative vitamin and mineral facts!).

Calcium Citrate: Happy Bones

I’m sure it’s not surprising to anyone to hear that calcium is very good for your bones. I had no idea just how good though! Studies have found that bone diseases such as osteoporosis can be treated with a base of vitamin D and calcium citrate, which is great because both of those things can easily be found in our diets and lifestyles already!

Specifically, calcium is in foods like milk, figs, broccoli and kale.

Calcium plays a key role in a process generally called “bone remodeling”. Our bodies constantly remove small amounts of calcium from our bones, and replenish it with fresh calcium. It does this because, while calcium helps our bones out probably the most by keeping them structurally sound, it also has a lot of other roles in the body like helping our muscles contract and our blood clot.

Our bones act as a sort of storage area for calcium so that we always have some if we need it, so it’s important to give the body enough calcium to replenish our bones with to also keep them strong. Calcium citrate happens to be the way, through a supplement, our bodies can get the calcium it needs.

Magnesium Oxide: Happy Everything

Finally for this post, I’m going to talk about a rockstar mineral: magnesium! Again, magnesium oxide is the way to get this element into your body if not through foods like dark chocolate, smooth peanut butter, and brown rice.

It’s kind of insane how much magnesium does for our bodies. It’s a multitasking mineral that shows up in our hearts, immune systems, bones and nerves. In addition, it plays a role in regulating blood glucose levels, and because of this can help with diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure.

It does so many things in our bodies, it’s actually involved in over 300 chemical reactions that take place throughout our cells every singe day. That fact alone was one of the ones that convinced me that not only should I know about all these things my body needs to stay healthy, but actually that it’s super cool to get to read about and learn more about.

So if you’re ready for more science-y posts like this one, get ready! I’m ready to learn more and I can’t wait to tell all of you all about it!

The Keto Diet: Facts and Fallacies

2019 is already revealing itself to be a year of people bettering themselves, which is wonderful! As I watch my college peers decide what they are going to focus on improving about themselves in this new year, I’m blown away by the number of people taken by this “keto” diet.

I had never heard of this diet until the very end of last semester. A friend of mine and I were talking about eating habits and he starting raving about the keto diet and how it’s helped people drop 20 pounds in as little as a few weeks! Naturally, I didn’t believe this for a second. But, as soon as I started investigating, I got to read lots of great success stories of people loosing lots of weight and making it look seamless and easy with this new diet! I was impressed, but skeptical.

My next question was: how does that even happen?

This post is meant to help answer that question, and many others I had after investigating the keto diet. Hopefully, if any of you are looking to go on this new diet in this new year, this post is helpful in letting you know what’s in store for your body!

What We Know

The scientific backing to this diet is surprisingly sound. Basically, ketosis is what your body goes into when you’re starving, or at least when your body perceives that you’re starving. This diet tricks your body into thinking this by lowering the amount of carbs you intake and replacing those lost calories with high-fat foods. The absence of carbs leaves your brain looking for a different energy source, and the only other one available is ketones stored in fat.

This switch in energy sources has actually been found to help soothe lots of chronic illnesses, such as epilepsy and diabetes. It can also provide the brain with more efficient ways of producing energy, by using less oxygen to produce more energy when the source is BHB (one of the major types of ketone bodies!). Ketones can also help our bodies produce more antioxidants, which help keep us from getting sick!

On the other hand, the keto diet has been shown not to be a great long-term lifestyle to keep up. Originally, this diet was created for people with epilepsy to help minimize their seizures. As patients who have tried to use keto as a long-term solution for their epilepsy have shown, things get complicated as keto goes on for too long. Some crazy side effects that have been found include things like kidney stones, hair loss, an inability to concentrate and acid reflux.

This isn’t to say for sure that all of these things will happen if you try a keto diet, but they are reactions your body may have, and therefore things to be aware of going in.

What We Don’t Know (Yet)

The tricky thing about a diet like keto is that there are still a lot of things we don’t totally know. I was surprised to discover that, while there are a lot of great anecdotal benefits to keto, a lot of the stories aren’t backed by science yet.

Additionally, there are lots of claimed health benefits that come from keto diets. These are real benefits, with real studies to back them. The problem is: almost all of them have been done only in mice. While the clinical trials in relation to seizure management have been moved into humans, no other clinical tests related to keto diets have been done to know exactly what happens in humans’ bodies on such a diet.

One of the best articles I found about the keto diet in general was published by UCSF, and the author makes the argument that even the euphoria that people feel on the keto diet can’t be scientifically backed yet. She follows this claim with the comment that, while it could be the way the body is changing functions under ketosis, this extreme happy feeling might just be an outcome of keto dieters getting better sleep, being conscious of what they’re eating, and maybe getting compliments as they start shedding pounds!

Hopefully this post hasn’t deterred anyone too much from trying out the keto diet. While there are lots of questions left unanswered here, and science hasn’t had the opportunity to investigate them all yet, it’s indisputable that the keto diet has brought lots of people happier and healthier lifestyles.

 

Being a Clean Queen

I’m happy to say that I’ve started my last semester of college today, and this final “first day of school” has brought with it a lot of thinking about things that are important to me. As I’ve started thinking about what I want to do with my life after being a student, I’ve considered things that are important to me more and more, and have started to really focus on those things as a way to sort out the chaos that feels like my future.

One such thing that is high on my priority list is something I didn’t even realize was important until I came back to school yesterday. I was chatting with one of my housemates (I live with four guys, just to put this story in context), and we were talking about how I left for my winter break about a week earlier than everyone else in the house because my exams finished early. He mentioned that the entire house got noticeably messier and dirtier after I left, and I was astonished. I always knew I was cleaner than the guys, but I didn’t know it was by that much!

Once my housemate described to me just how dirty things got without me around, I realized how important cleanliness is to me. It’s something I always thought I defaulted too doing rather than prioritizing it, but in it’s own way, doing something just because you feel that it needs to be done is a method of prioritization!

There are a lot of cleaning products out there, I’ve found, that work wonders but have a lot of negative health effects associated with them. I’ve been working on a bathroom floor or a kitchen counter and suddenly had to stop due to headaches from the chemicals in the products I was exposing myself to. So, here are some suggestions for how to keep your space nice and clean without sacrificing your health.

Pets and Pests

Pets can bring so much joy and love to a household, but also a lot of dirt and bugs. To keep a space clean while living with a pet, it’s important to pick out cleaning products that are healthy for them and for you, while also helping to get rid of pesky insects and dirt that might be harmful to your furry friend. Wondercide makes lots of plant-based pet-cleaning products that will make sure your pets are clean and healthy without exposing them to chemicals that may end up harming them in the long run.

Fresh Floors

It’s basic, but I have to talk about how much I appreciate Swiffer as a brand. I was hesitant to buy a Swiffer because I figured for a product to work so well on all different types of floors, it had to be full of terrible things that would make our bodies feel terrible too. However, I’m pleased to admit I was completely wrong. I use a Swiffer for all the floors in my house and it’s never once made me feel sick, and it’s super effective in a house full of guys who walk around with dirty snow on their boots!

As an alternative to Swiffer, though, I also like to use Aunt Fannie’s products for floor cleaning, since they’re also very effective and smell absolutely incredible! And, the foundations this company was built on was creating cleaning products safe for families, excluding harsh cleaning agents that can have adverse effects on child development.

Spotless Sheets

Really what should have revealed to me that cleanliness was important to me was how much I enjoy clean sheets. I love the smell of clean sheets, and the way it feels to get into bed when you have freshly washed sheets. Honest is a company that makes mostly baby products, but I have no shame in admitting that I use the detergent they make because it’s not too fragrant, and it’s gentle for skin (obviously, it’s made for babies!).

Clear Counters

Clean counters include not only the counter tops themselves, but the things that get placed on them often like dishes and appliances. For all of these things, Mrs. Meyers cleaning products are tough on stains and not on skin. I tend to forget to put gloves on before I take on a cleaning endeavor, and lots of products for countertops will leave you with dry, aching skin without a little protection. With Mrs. Meyers, that definitely isn’t the case. The smells are also nice and light, so no worries about headaches or harsh scents with this brand!

Happy Hydration (and 2019!)

As my first post in the new year, I thought it only fitting to include in this post my two new years resolutions. I know a lot of people don’t believe in new years resolutions, especially skeptical college kids (which describes most of my peers currently), but it’s been shown that people who actually talk about their resolutions and ask for support are more likely to keep those resolutions! So here I am, hoping to keep my two little resolutions by writing about them.

I decided on two resolutions because I felt like just one wouldn’t be enough to help me improve both my mental and physical well-being, both of which I would like to work on in the new year. The first is that I’m going to focus on saying “no” more to things that I genuinely do not want to do. I’m hoping that being deliberate in the things I choose to do with other people versus the things I do for myself will help me feel more grounded and relaxed, as well as enjoy the people I do decide to hang out with. This one will probably be the more difficult resolution for me, and I’ll come back with an update eventually about how it ends up going for me!

The second is something more for my physical health, and definitely more within reach for me, personally. My second resolution is to drink more water and/or stay hydrated. This is something I am conscious that I am terrible at, since most of the time I just forget! And I know on this front I am certainly not alone. Here is my game-plan for staying hydrated in the new year, including creative ways to keep myself on-track and why hydration is important to me.

“Little Breaks” and Balance

Aside from simply not thinking about it, one of the reasons I’ve found I don’t usually drink enough water is because I simply don’t like having to get up to go to the bathroom every 15-20 minutes. It’s such a ridiculous reason to deprive yourself of the competent that makes up ~70% of our bodies, but it’s stopped me nonetheless. When you’re busy, when you’re on a roll, it’s hard to have to stop to get up to go to the bathroom constantly.

I brought this up to my roommate, who happens to be a hydration goddess. She’s been described as a “sponge” on more than one occasion based only on the amount of water she drinks. I asked her for advice about how to combat my dislike for water-based bathroom-breaks, and her reply was so priceless I had to share it.

Upon telling her that I found it annoying to get up to go to the bathroom often after drinking a lot of water, she said:

“Why?! Getting up to go to the bathroom is great! You know what that represents? You taking a few minutes to step away from your work, getting your daily steps in walking to the bathroom, and a reason to give yourself a mental break from whatever or whoever you’re dealing with! It’s a reason to take little breaks! So think about it like that: you’re not getting up in an annoying way. You’re getting up because you’re worthy of a little break!”

So, it’s not getting up to go to the bathroom for the 3rd time in an hour. It’s the third “little break” I’ve gotten to take for myself this hour. It’s amazing how just changing the phrasing in your head suddenly makes something that felt like a nuisance now a treat!

The funniest part about this mentality shift for me was also that I was getting irritated by the part of drinking water that is so wonderful for your body, the part that provides you with balance: water’s job is to flush your body out. It’s meant to help cleanse your body, and part of that is the getting up and going to the bathroom. Speaking of flushing-out and cleansing, it’s fitting that most of the easiest, quickest, and most natural detoxes out there are water-based.

Water’s health benefits, of course, don’t stop at balance. Water helps protect your vital organs, keep your body temperature constant, and just helps you feel better.

Fashion and Complexion 

A wonderful thing about deciding to focus on drinking water now is that, I’ve found, it’s a fashionable thing to do. I mean this in two ways: people actually admire you for purposefully drinking water, and that it visibly looks cool.

It’s fashionable because it serves as a conversation starter. Drinking lots of water is a reason to ask where a water fountain is, or to ask if you can get your water bottle filled up. It’s also fun as someone who never usually drinks water to suddenly be a person who does, because people close to you will usually notice the change and congratulate you.

On a similar note, you start to notice how many people around you prioritize drinking water. It’s as though you’ve joined this secret club of people who care about taking care of their bodies enough to do things like carry around water bottles and constantly refill them. This club of people who are big on hydration are also great for moral support and keeping you on track with drinking enough water.

This leads me into the second part of the fashionability of hydration: the friends I have who have inducted me into their cool-kids-drink-water mentality first let me in because they noticed my shiny new water bottle. Mine happens to be a no-name that I bought on sale at Urban Outfitters because it had peaches on it and keeps my water very cold, but there are lots of other great brands out there like S’well (my sister swears by them), Contigo (which I use for coffee), and Nalgene (my hydration goddess roommate ONLY uses Nalgene!).

The glamour that comes with water-drinking also doesn’t stop there. Staying hydrated is probably one of the easiest ways to keep your complexion clear and gorgeous by doing things like reducing the size of pores and wrinkles. Your skin is an organ, and organs are made of cells, which require water to function at their very best. Water also helps these cells remove toxins and unnecessary compounds that can keep your skin from glowing as radiantly as it possibly can.

Water- Alternatives and Extra Benefits

A final challenge I’ve faced with trying to get myself to drink more water is simply that I’m not interested in the taste of water. Some people can tell the difference between different types of water, and I hope to get there someday. For now, though, it all just tastes like water to me.

To get myself to continue to be hydrated even when I can’t take the taste of water anymore, I’ve started using water-alternatives to stay on-track. Things like tea (pretty much every variety of Mountain Rose Herbs tea is wonderful!), aloe water, and Starbucks Refreshers are some of my favorite hydration-treats that give me a break from water without giving my body a break from hydration!

The nice thing about occasional alternatives is also that there are lots of benefits to be retained by drinking other hydrating beverages that aren’t water. For instance, the refreshers I mentioned earlier can have coconut milk in them, which provides your body with electrolytes that help combat dehydration even more than water does alone! Or different types of tea can have huge health benefits, from green tea boosting metabolism to raspberry tea calming mood swings to lavender tea helping you sleep.

New Year, New Me: Thoughts About Change

I just finished my last final exam for the semester, which means I can finally start focusing just on this incredible time of year. It’s full of so much tradition yet so much change, and it’s so exciting to get to be a part of.

There’s tradition that comes from whatever type of winter holiday you celebrate with your family, even if it’s just enjoying a new days off of work to hang out an enjoy each others’ company. Yet, there’s change just around the corner at the start of the new year. And that second part, the potential for change, really got me thinking.

Change is intensely exciting, in my opinion. It offers you the world at your fingertips, change means something beautiful is happening completely out of your control, and how wonderful is that? Good things can just happen, we don’t have to force them, and thats what change tends to mean to me.

Of course, a lot of people decide the changes they like to make around the start of a new year involve changes in lifestyle: eating, habits, exercising routines. They’re all fabulous changes, but it’s important to think them through before making any drastic changes to your routine that might have adverse effects on your body. I know some of my friends have decided to start their new lifestyles a little early this year, so I thought it would be fitting to write a bit about things to consider when completely altering your lifestyle to try out being a better version of you!

Beauty Routine Changes

As you try out new glow-up methods this year, make sure to test skincare products in smaller doses (if you can) before making an investment in an entire bottle of, say, brand new foundation. Sephora and Ulta are both usually really good about letting you try a sampler-size of a new product before you buy it. You never know how something might impact your skin, and you don’t want to end up with a lot of something that you just can’t use!

On a similar note, make sure that the changes you make to look better keep your skin and face and hair FEELING better too. Even if you’re changing the products you use, how often you use them, or what time of day you use them, keep the parts of your current routine that make you feel healthy kind of the same.

For instance, if you’re using new St. Ives moisturizers and exfoliators for your face (I highly recommend, by the way), stay consistent in how often you use each relative to your old products. Or, if you’re changing up the type of make up remover you use, make sure it’s still actually removing all the make up on your face.

Workout Routine Changes

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: workout “routines” should never really exist. I’ve discovered through lots of experimenting that truly, the best way to workout your whole body regularly is to constantly change up your routine.

On that note, if in the new year you’re making some BIG changes to your regular week of workouts, I have a few suggestions to make sure you’re taking care of your body and getting to enjoy working out. For one thing, a little bit of burn at the gym is totally normal. A little discomfort in parts of our bodies we don’t regularly use is to be expected, and probably means you’re working out the way you’re supposed to be. However, you have to make sure you don’t cross the line over from discomfort to pain. As soon as you can describe something as “hurting”, it’s time to take a break and maybe try something different.

If this does happen, make sure you pause your workout, stretch a little (Sportneer muscle rollers truly work wonders) and maybe even call it a day. The worst thing you can do for a gym injury is keep working out on that injury.

As a preventative measure against this type of thing, I also recommend taking especially new activities slow, and increasing the pace of your workout gradually. If the new year presents you with one of the first time you’re going to the gym in a while, for example, maybe start with something like jogging or running and work your way over to the weight machines. Or if you’re crazy into the gym and you’re ready to up your squat weight, just make sure you go slowly and in increments, have a spotter, and listen to your body! Again, if it ends up being too hard on your body at that time, take it slow and let yourself rest before trying it out again.

Dietary Routine Changes

Dietary changes are always fun, and often a little less intimidating that workout or beauty routine shifts. It’s a little bit more subtle, but often so much more rewarding! There’s lots of possibilities to make yourself feel and look so much better as you move through the new year.

As you move into new styles of eating, the biggest thing to remember is to ensure that you’re still getting your body all the nutrients it needs. Maybe this year, you’re looking to take down your carb intake. Completely realistic goal, but maybe don’t cut them out all together. This can put your body into a kind of shock-mode, and can lead to drastic mood swings!

Or, if you’re trying to stray away from sweets, still allow yourself to enjoy things that you crave. I’m a big supporter of the idea that cravings are your bodies way of telling you that there’s something you’re missing. Not to say constantly craving triple-chocolate cake means you NEED that cake, but that if you’re craving something a little sweet or a little salty, let yourself indulge every once in a while! These little treats will make your new lifestyle feel manageable and more realistic to maintain over a long period of time.

Lastly, if you’re trying out a total dietary change like vegetarianism or veganism, be absolutely certain that you’re still getting the nutrients and minerals your body previously found in meat or other animal products. Thorne Research has tons of great supplements that can help you stay on track with your new lifestyle while still keeping things like your iron intake at a normal level. Being aware of what your body needs will also help you figure out if this new lifestyle is something realistic for you in the long run.

Ayurveda: More Than A Mouthful

I like to believe I’m full of surprises, and consider myself to kind of be a jack of many trades: I write, I paint, I study art, I study science, I do genetics research, I’m a plant fanatic, the list goes on. I forget sometimes that interacting with people over the internet doesn’t only hide little things like that, that may otherwise come up in little day-to-day conversations, but also things about me that are obvious in my appearance…but maybe not so obvious when I’m just a person writing words online. For instance, some of you might have guessed based on my name, but I’m half Indian.

My dad grew up in New Dehli, and my mom grew up in upstate New York. It’s been cool getting to learn about things from each of them, and it’s amazing to me how seamlessly their ideals about taking care of ones body align sometimes. My mom is a yoga instructor, and my dad grew up in the country of yoga’s origin. It’s crazy cool, and has taught me a lot about ways of living that I might have never otherwise been exposed to.

Today, I want to talk a little about a practice commonly called “yoga’s sister science” : Ayurveda. While yoga is a Vedic science focused on movement and breathing, Ayurveda is a Vedic science focused on lifestyle and eating.

What is Ayurveda?

Ayurveda emphasizes that the way that a person looks reflects the way they take care of themselves, in a physical, mental, and spiritual sense. This reflection is referred to as one’s dosha, and it can be impacted by the same things that impact the Western world’s idea of health: sleeping patterns, eating patterns, and even the climate/environment a person live in!

When it comes to food and eating practices, Ayurveda encourages focusing on what you eat in correspondence with the seasons. Similar to the way that birds migrate in the winter to escape the cold, it’s important for humans to pay attention to what our natural rhythms are in alignment with seasonal shifts.

For instance, people classically ate foods like watermelon, berries, and cucumbers in the summer when they were in season. These foods also have a high water content, helping keep our bodies hydrated during the dry summer. In winter, on the other hand, humans would eat grains that were harvested in the fall and stored, and these grains would help keep our bodies warm.

How you eat is just as important for practicing Ayurveda as what you eat. It’s important to eat with intention, and to eat what you want because you want to eat it. Rather than eating whatever the latest diet trend tells you you’re allowed to eat, it’s important to eat things that your body can handle, and often even things you’re craving. For instance, often people who experience extreme salt cravings (myself included!) need the extra sodium to keep bodily fluids properly balanced, and to help keep mood swings to a minimum.

Why Should I Care About Ayurveda?

Ayurvedic medicine is actually one of the worlds oldest medical systems. It’s been practiced for over 3,000 years, and relies on natural methods of healing rather than artificial chemicals and drugs. And while I don’t have any qualms with the miracles of modern medicine, I think natural alternatives are always a great option, especially for people looking to treat multiple ailments or symptoms at once.

Ayurveda is based on the idea that there are three main doshas, and each one has different properties and thus target different specific health problems.

For example, the Vata dosha focuses on blood flow, and should be the center of treatment practices gearing towards blood clotting, stroke, or heart issues, as well as things that have to do with heart rate, such as anxiety.

The Pitta dosha has to do with energy and metabolism, and the one to focus on for dietary or digestive track problems. Finally, the Kapha dosha focuses on the strength of the body, and this encompasses many types of strength: immunity, physical might, weight, and even sense of stability. This dosha should be the focus of people concerned with obesity, asthma, cancer, and other autoimmune deficiency disorders.

Treatment practices in Ayurveda involve things like shifting eating habits, massage routines, and variety in forms of exercise.

How Can I Practice Ayurveda?

Practicing Ayurveda mostly involves being mindful of what, why, and how you’re eating. It’s about making sure you have balance in both your diet and your life, and allowing your body to fall into natural rhythms that nature has set for us.

Keeping this balance up is something that can be challenging, but ultimately rewarding. The way I try to do this is by actively keeping my mind, body, and conscious on the same page. I try to constantly improve my body and mind, while keeping my conscious positive to cheer the other two on in their journeys!

It might sound kind of flighty, but I promise it’s a wonderful practice, especially in parallel with meditation and yoga. If it seems a little crazy and out-there right now, I would recommend checking out online guides about practicing Ayurveda regularly (there’s a ton out there too, and they explain the entire concept even more in-depth than I have!) as well as brands like Banyan Botanicals, who’s company practices and ideals are based in Ayurveda itself.

Holidays, Herbs and Health

December is finally here ladies and gents! And we all know what that means – its completely and totally the holiday season. The wait is over- cinnamon everywhere, red and green everything, GLITTER, and lots of joy and love and giving!

Something I love particularly about the holidays – no matter which ones you celebrate – are the interesting flavors that surface during the holidays. A huge variety of spices and herbs get their chance in the spotlight this time of year, and this once-a-year chance shouldn’t stop at the dinner table.

Rockin’ Rosemary

Herbs have a variety of uses, and the best part of about them is that they can be grown easily in your home. Rosemary, for instance, is nearly indestructible as far as plants go. It’s small, woody, and will stay happy as long as you water it at least once every two weeks.

It’s also insanely good for you in a variety of forms. Cooked into foods, it provides you with more than 16% of your recommended daily intake fo vitamin A, which helps keep your skin tight and your eyes keen. It also contains iron and potassium, which helps bring oxygen to your muscles and control blood pressure spikes.

On a related note, rosemary’s ability to help with blood circulation can help aid in hair growth when applied topically. Massaging Gemmotherapy rosemary oil into your hair after washing it can help stimulate your hair follicles, while simultaneously protecting your scalp from potential dryness and infection.

Boppin’ Basil

Basil is another plant that, once you get it growing in your home garden, it just won’t quit! Basil plants can be tricky to transfer into a larger pot and keep happy, but once they become acquainted with their new home, they’ll grow like crazy!

Basil is also a fabulous supplemental herb, taken orally or applied topically. When ingested, basil is an anti-inflammatory agent, contains lots of antioxidants, and is a natural adaptogen. An adaptogen helps our bodies deal with stress, and basil has been shown to have properties that allow our bodies to more readily adapt to the world around us. And, we all know the holidays never lack in the amount of stress they bring, so this is an especially fitting herb for this time of year!

Basil is also super useful for fixing problems like itchy, dry skin. This tends to come up after washing lots of dishes or produce, which is another frequent happening in the kitchen around this time of year. And we all know theres almost no avoiding cuts and burns at least once between holiday meal preparations. Herb Pharm basil essential oil can help ease the pain of all of these too when a few drops are applied to the irritated skin!

Poppin’ Parsley

Finally, parsley is another key player in the world of herbs. Another easily grown plant which will fill a kitchen with a fresh aroma, this herb can be used for so many wonderful things this holiday season.

Nutramedix parsley essential oil can not only help kill microbes that can infect open wounds, it can actually inhibit their growth. That makes it a great alternative to other antibacterial agents that are usually applied with bandages, and it comes with significantly less stinging!

Parsley is also loaded with vitamins C and K, which can help with boosting our immune systems (holiday season tends to align with flu season, sadly!) and promoting blood clotting to help heal wounds. Parsley also contains volatile oil components, which sounds bad but actually helps neutralize carcinogens!

Mediation and Meditation

The holiday season is practically in full swing. This time of year comes with lots of love, joy, and time spent with family and friends. It’s beautiful! But there’s a lot going on, all the time! It can be hard to mentally navigate this time of year when there’s so much constant stimuli.

In addition to minimal amounts of “you-time”, this time of year brings together families, often those who don’t normally get to see each other. This can bring out a lot of joy, and a lot of tension. And if you’re anything like me, you might find yourself trying to propagate holiday cheer while simultaneously mediating matters between friends and family members.

Mediation requires a lot of mental capacity, and I find the easiest way to muster this type of positive mental energy is through mediation. However, this time of year gives you very little time to recuperate from this mediation through meditation, what with the constant celebrating and all!

And really, you owe it to all those wonderful people you get to see for the holidays to be the best you can possibly be. It’s hard to be this best-possible-version of yourself if your constantly mentally exhausted.

So, here are some tactics for keeping your holidays merry and bright, and allowing you to mediate AND meditate.

Placing Mediation

This is the most important step, I think, when becoming a type of mediator in your family or friend circle. It’s important to acknowledge who you are mediating, why you are taking on this role of mediator, and how you feel about your role as the mediator.

Acknowledging all of these factors allows you to understand why you are taking on the role you are. It will keep you removed from whatever the issue at hand is, by placing you in the middle of the two parties as opposed to on one side. It will also keep you from getting angry with the two people or groups that are experiencing the issue, again by distancing yourself just enough to know that you are helping someone else out with a problem, not working through a problem that is your own.

It’s also very important to ensure that you are mediating for the right reasons. Mostly, it should just be in an effort to help the people who are facing a difficulty in their relationship. It shouldn’t be a responsibility you feel you have to take on or that someone forced you into. It also shouldn’t be something you do because you have a particularly high stake in an argument, or because you expect some kind of kind gesture back from the people you help. Put simply: if you don’t want to help just for the sake of helping, then don’t do it.

Making sure you’re in the correct frame of mind to help your friends or family members work through their issues will also end up making you a much better mediator. At least in my experience, if I don’t set the whole thing in my mind the right way, I feel it start to gnaw away at me, which only contributes to my mental capacity (and ability to effectively mediate) declining.

This placing is also, on it’s own, a start to meditating. It allows you to think about the issue at hand distantly and calming, while still keeping everyone’s best interests in mind, including your own!

Practicing Meditation

Now that we’ve put our mediation efforts in the proper frame in our minds, it’s important that we don’t simply hang these frames on a mental wall for them to stay for all of eternity. It’s good to frame it, hang it up for a while, acknowledge and accept how you feel about it, and then take it down and allow it to disappear. This is where meditation comes in.

When I say meditation, I don’t mean locking yourself in your room for an hour in the middle of Christmas dinner so you can sit criss-cross-applesauce and just breath. While this would be the best possible option, its hardly conducive for this time of year. So, rather than making a scene out of a meditation, it’s possible to do on your own, quickly, and quietly.

My favorite tactic is to go into the bathroom in a part of the house (or apartment or wherever!) that is not super close to where everyone is gathered. If there’s a downstairs and upstairs bathroom, for instance, and everyone is downstairs, go to the one upstairs. Whatever is just a little out of the way.

Next, stand in front of the mirror and just enjoy the quiet. It might not be totally quiet, but it’s certainly more quiet than wherever everyone else is hanging out. Make sure to breathe in and out slowly and deliberately; feel every breath go all the way into and out of your lungs.

Think about the way you’re feeling about the issue first. Understand what emotions you’re feeling. You don’t have to get into why, there isn’t time for all of that. Just know what they are. Feel them as wholly as you can as you breath. If this means shedding a tear or clenching your teeth for just a moment, do it! Get it out of your system, then let it go.

Next, think about the people that you are mediating for. Think about all the wonderful reasons you care about them and want to help them, and this will give you the strength to return to the group confident and mentally prepared to help your friends and family again.

Hopefully you won’t need any of these steps this winter. Hopefully your family and friendly gatherings are full of fun and laughter rather than tension and disagreement. But on the off chance you find yourself a sudden mediator, hopefully this will be helpful to you!