In Southern California, we learn early in life that it’s a good idea to use sunscreen. If we’re fair-skinned we learn because we burn, and if not we learn because everyone knows someone who’s had bits of cancer cut off. Ours is a sun-seeking culture. We love the beach and being bronzed. A lot of us even go to tanning booths when it’s winter. The Baby Boomers among us learned the hard way that sunscreen is an especially important element of any beauty regimen. Today we know that baby oil and sun reflectors are not doing us any favors. Most...
The average makeup box typically has quite a few brushes, but it really comes down to a few staples that get you accommodate a variety of styles and the perfect look you are trying to achieve. These five tremendously reliable options will get you through every situation you could ever think of. 1. MAC 224S Tapered blending Brush Quality speaks for itself, and you can always trust Mac to deliver a great product – the 224S blending brush is no exception. It is great for blending eyeshadow. Typically we use anywhere from one to four eyeshadows at a particular time.......
Boxing and kickboxing offer two of the most effective and empowering workout formats on the planet for anyone looking to tone up, develop their fitness, and generally improve their overall conditioning. With that said, they are in fact quite different in terms of the areas of the body they work – though they will both achieve all of the above end results, we want to highlight the differences between the two so that you can determine which one might best suit your fitness goal related needs. Boxing Boxing predominantly involves the upper body and requires the individual to perform frequent...
Belly bloat can be highly unflattering and uncomfortable. Sadly, we all suffer from it from time to time depending on our lifestyle and what we eat. But many of us do everything right and still suffer from food allergies or intolerances that we know little to nothing about. Arguably, these allergies could have always existed, but the evolution of modern science and medicine has allowed us to be more knowledgeable about this subject and to help us find ways to combat it. In hindsight, my observation is that often the symptom is treated not the problem. I am a person...
In 2004, National Geographic partnered with longevity experts to identify the five places in the world where people live longest. The result was a list of five communities where people live beyond 100, free of disease; later they were called Blue Zones. These are not the wealthiest places in the world with the easiest access to medical care; they are places where residents live by the same principles. One of them of which is paying particular attention to offsetting the damaging effects of chronic stress. Not all stress is unhealthy. Stress is a physiological response to an imminent threat and...
Dermatologists refer to two aging processes. The first they call intrinsic—it’s the natural slowing-down of collagen production, which makes your skin less elastic. The second is the one we have more control over. It’s called extrinsic, and it’s aging accelerated by exposure to external factors. Of these factors, the most culpable is sun. How does exposure to UV rays make you look older? Where do sunspots come from? How does sun affect people with a condition called melasma? (And what even is melasma?) These are questions that require a cellular-level understanding of how our skin gets color. Melanocytes are cells...
