By Staff of What's Up? Media
Spring is in full bloom. The sun is (hopefully) shining! We are renewed and anticipating the seasons ahead. We’ve emerged from winter denning. Our minds and bodies are ready to take on the world, so to speak. So, let’s give a little love to ourselves with some of our favorite aesthetic and wellness trends. We’ve culled treatments, activities, exercises, and concepts from our recent Health & Beauty coverage that we find intriguing. We hope you do, too!
Skin Fasting/Cycling
Skincare routines involve multiple steps and a variety of products, all with the goal of making your skin look smooth, healthy, and ageless. With so much involved, it’s hard to tell what’s working, what’s not, and what might actually be making your skin worse. That’s why skin fasting and skin cycling have become increasingly popular trends. In the case of skin fasting, you are taking a break from your skin care routine completely. For a week or more, you cleanse your skin with only water and avoid products like moisturizers, serums, or masks. When you’re skin cycling, you do a different step in your skincare routine each day, giving it a chance to have its full effect, instead of doing all steps at the same time every day. By taking a break from your skincare routine, or only doing one part of it a day, you’re giving your body a chance to readjust its natural oil production or pH. Remember, your skin is unique, so what works for a friend isn’t necessarily going to work for you. Your dermatologist will be able to give you specific advice on what steps you should take to maintain good skin health.
Intuitive Eating
There’s growing pushback to what’s often referred to as “diet culture,” the normalization of always watching what you eat and categorizing foods as good or bad. Instead, people are choosing the route of intuitive eating—an approach that encourages listening to your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues, as well as how foods make you feel physically, so you can have a positive relationship with food. As the Cleveland Clinic puts it, it’s about unlearning everything we’ve learned about food from dieting over the years. So, what does that mean? At its most basic, intuitive eating comes down to three factors: (1) eat only when you’re hungry; (2) no foods are off limits; and (3) get rid of the emotion. It’s about approaching food in a way that doesn’t involve stress or anxiety, and learning to make healthy choices because you want to, not because you feel as if you must.
Movement Snacks
Dreading the hour-long workout after a full day of work? Try movement snacks! Small “snack-sized” bouts of exercise (as opposed to a whole “meal” of a workout) that add up to sufficient physical activity throughout the day. The concept has been around for a while, but it’s only in the past two or three years—since the Covid-19 pandemic up-ended most schedules—that people have started to popularly implement it. Overall, it’s about shifting your mindset to embrace regular activity as part of your routine. Wondering what a sample day of movement snacks might look like.
Consider this:
5 minutes of yoga when you wake up in the morning
10 minutes of walking before you start work
5 minutes of light calisthenics midmorning
10 minutes of walking break to pick up lunch
5 minutes of light calisthenics mid afternoon
10 minutes of walking around the block when you get home
5 minutes of stretching while you watch TV in the evening
When it’s broken down like that, getting a sufficient amount of exercise no longer seems like an overwhelming item on your to-do list—it’s suddenly easy to make it part of your day.
Infra-Red Heat Therapy
If you’ve ever enjoyed a brief sit inside a sauna and left feeling refreshed and invigorated, there’s some science behind that—the short period of high heat is actually good for you, leading to improved circulation and muscle recovery. And there’s been a growing trend in how that heat gets applied to your body. Infra-red saunas, which use electromagnetic lamps to deliver warmth directly to the skin. This can warm up your body without warming up the entire room. The benefit to this is that it’s much more comfortable—the temps usually hit somewhere between 110- and 130-degrees Fahrenheit, versus the nearly 190 degrees Fahrenheit you might sit in with a traditional sauna—while still offering the therapy people look to get from heat.
Rucking
But if you’re in the mood for an endurance challenge, that carries more weight (literally and figuratively) than the lighter movement snacks of your day-to-day routine, try rucking. It’s simple. Rucking is walking or hiking wearing a backpack (rucksack) full of extra weight, which makes the chosen activity a more challenging workout. Rucking builds muscle, especially in the lower body, strengthens your core, improves endurance, and is said to help with back pain. It’s become a popular pick-me-up activity among weekend warriors who love to day-hike—there are even specialty weighted rucking backpacks on the market.
Microneedling…Your Body
You’ve probably heard of microneedling as a facial treatment to address acne and enlarged pores, mild scarring, wrinkles, stretch marks, and uneven skin tone. But did you know that the procedure—which involves ultra-thin needles pricking tiny, shallow holes that, although they won’t draw blood, will be enough to stimulate healing, prompting your body to produce collagen and elastin—can be applied to other parts of your body, including the neck, back, arms, and legs. This trend grew in dermatology offices in the past year and continues to be an effective treatment.
IPL Therapy
Technology is a beautiful thing—medical advances mean more and more noninvasive options for improving your health with impressive results, and the latest development in cosmetic procedures is a treatment called Intense Pulsed Light therapy, often called IPL for short. You might’ve heard of IPL referred to as photorejuvenation or photofacial. High-intensity pulses of light are administered quickly via a handheld device onto targeted areas of skin. Your skin’s chromophores—the part of your skin molecules that give your skin its color—absorb this light energy, generating heat and selectively damaging the targeted problem cells or structures while leaving surrounding tissue unharmed. The result is evened skin tone and improved texture, as well as reduced appearance of any blemishes or marks. As with other noninvasive cosmetic procedures, the success you have could vary—IPL won’t eliminate acne or rosacea, but it will provide significant aesthetic improvements.
Cold Therapy
At the other end of the thermometer is cold therapy for body/muscle recovery. While ice-packs or an ice-bath may be the most time-tested treatments for athletes recovering from intense workouts or injury, advancements in delivery of cold therapy now include what’s known as cryotherapy. The most accessible and popular form today involves visiting a clinic/spa at which you’ll sit in a cryotherapy booth, immersed in sub-freezing temperatures for about three to five minutes per session. Preliminary studies suggest that cryotherapy could help with pain relief and muscle recovery, reduce inflammation, assist weight loss, reduce anxiety, and potentially help treat several conditions including migraines, eczema, dementia, and even cancer.
*Healthcare Disclaimer: This is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute providing medical advice or professional services. The information provided should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, and those seeking personal medical advice should consult with a licensed physician.
