Category Archives: LIFE + STYLE

Are Your Workouts This Hot Tough?

July 19, 2021

With all of the exercise fads that have come and gone over the years in Los Angeles, few have withstood the test of time. Heated Room, however, is here to stay and innovate. This new fitness studio located in West Hollywood will be sure to blow your mind and change the way you work out forever with its state-of-art infrared heating system that will help you feel that sweet muscle burn that will make you feel your best! 

Some of the benefits offered by this infrared heat system include: 

  • Clean heat helps to reduce the presence of any dust and allergens. 
  • Allows for pain relief while also reducing likelihood of any injuries during physical activity. 
  • Maximizes fat burn while boosting blood plasma and metabolism.
  • Sweating out toxins allows the skin to improve its own elasticity while also working as a natural antibiotic. 
  • Generally reduces stress and tension (both mentally and physically). 

At Heated Room, all of the classes focus on three main goals; core, strength and alignment. The classes are centered around many of the main principles of Pilates, with the intention of lowering the risk of injury or muscle strain, improving balance, control, stability, flexibility and more. Owner and founder – Raamy Fares spared no expense in bringing his vision to life. The sound system is world-class and has been imported from the UK and the machines are top-of-the-line. 

The goal of Heated Room is to offer an experience from each individual the moment they enter the building. With the help of architecture studio 64North, Fares was able to execute the design of the studio beautifully creating an immersive experience from the moment you walk in.

Lucky enough for Angelenos , the studio is now open and memberships can be purchased today. Here are a few different options for exercising at Heated Room: 

  • Monthly memberships starting at $300 USD
  • Heated Room class pass for $36
  • Rent a private Reformer Room for just $100/hr

Sculpt your body to its core. Energize and transform your front, side, and back with a rigorous class designed around traditional Pilates Principles.

Retrain your body and mind to work as one with targeted core movements and upbeat tracks in the heated room. You’ll leave feeling hot—and definitely not bothered.  

Light up every muscle with their heated, high-intensity mat pilates class. Move through concentrated sequences to tone and define legs, arms, shoulders, and seat.  These full body workout demands everything you’ve got to strengthen as you lengthen.

Connect movement with breath as you flow through Vinyasa sequences in their heated room. Stabilize your core and build fire. This isn’t exercise; this is body art.

Heated Room delivers structured classes that focus on your core, strength and alignment with the help of world class trained instructors. Fully equipped with all the necessities, the heated mat pilates room and their private Reformer room has everything you need to start sweating and transform your body!

Check out Heated Room’s website to see more pictures or view the class schedule! 

 

Is It Time To Deepen Your Practice This Much?

July 17, 2021

The prestigious, newly expanded Interprofessional Fellowship in Integrative Health & Medicine from the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM) is now accepting Applications for admission and scholarships to the October 2021 session.

The Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM) Interprofessional Fellowship in Integrative Health & Medicine, a 1000-hour hybrid program for clinicians who aim to become leaders in integrative health and medicine, has expanded its program and is accepting applications for October 2021. Rooted in evidence-based research, the Fellowship was launched in 2016 and blends online learning with clinical immersion experience.
Scholarships are available on a limited first come first serve basis in these areas as well as others: licensed providers working with the underserved; allied healthcare professionals; and licensed providers from and/or working with BIPOC communities.
Fellows are licensed clinicians or licensed healthcare providers most of whom have their MD or DO or a masters degree. Participants typically become Fellows for continuing education and a meaningful connection to a deeper mission, often helping to address provider burnout and a desire to broaden their sense of purpose.
The curriculum includes a focus on integrative disease management, clinical immersion and self study, nutrition, botanicals and supplements, environmental and global health and more with courses building on the learning foundation in a progressive manner. Three retreats focus on the community and connection and reinforces the curriculum through experiential sessions in the beginning, middle and end of the program.
One clinical immersion experience offers virtual input from expert faculty on actual patient case studies to help address patient needs. More affordable than similar Fellowship programs in Integrative Health and Medicine, AIHM’s Fellowship tuition is approximately $26,000.
They offer equitable pricing through scholarships, institutional support, and match programs. Approximately fifty percent of Fellows are eligible for scholarships, with over $1 million awarded to date. Scholarships are based on financial need, work embedded within underserved communities, the cost of living in the state where the applicant lives as well as other factors.

The Verywell Mind Mental Health Tracker

June 26, 2021

Verywell (www.verywellmind.com) just announced the launch of The Verywell Mind Mental Health Tracker, a monthly report that measures Americans’ stress, moods, and the mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first wave of results revealed that nearly twice as many young adults (Gen Z and Millennials) are stressed compared to Boomers (62% vs. 35%), particularly about jobs, finances, and re-entering the post-pandemic world. They also struggle more with feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, and the potential stigma associated with seeking professional help.

As states begin loosening restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic, Verywell’s monthly Mental Health Tracker monitors attitudes and behaviors around the mental well-being of 4,000 Americans, representing a range of demographics including gender, race, religion, age, and political views. The Verywell Mental Health Tracker is one of the industry’s first ongoing studies measuring specific mental health indicators like self-esteem, sleep, and stress each month.

“What we’ve discovered with this first wave of results is that the pandemic has taken a serious toll on Gen Z,” said Amy Morin, Editor-in-Chief, Verywell Mind. “So while it’s important to focus on the physical health of the older generations, we also need to start paying more attention to the mental health of the younger generations.”

Key findings of the first monthly tracker include:

Younger Americans are stressed out:

  • Less than half of Gen Z said their mental health is “good”
    • Two thirds (65%) of Americans overall rated their mental health as “good” or “better” over the last 30 days, but this number dips below half for Gen Z (42%).
  • Older adults are significantly more likely to say their mental health is “good” or “better”:
    • Silent Generation: 86%
    • Boomers: 76%
    • Gen X: 65%
    • Millennials: 59%
  • Similar trends can be seen in stress, with Gen Z and Millennials (62%)  nearly twice as likely as Boomers (35%) to say they’ve been at least moderately stressed in the last 30 days.

Work and financial problems are stressing younger Americans the most:

  • COVID-19 and parenting are the most common sources of stress. Nearly half of Americans said much of their stress is related to both COVID-19 (49%) and parenting in general (48% among parents). However, when it comes to the single biggest source of stress over the last month, COVID-19 jumped to the front of the line with 27% of Americans, followed by financial problems (24%).
  • For Gen Z, financial problems (24%) and work (23%) are the top two sources of stress. While the COVID-19 pandemic ranks either first or second among all other generations as the single biggest source of stress, for Gen Z, it ranks fifth at just 16% compared with:
    • Silent Generation: 44%
    • Boomers: 37%
    • Gen X: 26%
    • Millennials: 21%

For more information on The Verywell Mind Mental Health Tracker and to read the full findings visit here.

 

Dr. Stacie Stephenson On Up-Leveling the Vibrant Triad

June 25, 2021

A primary focus of my work as the CEO of VibrantDoc and the author of the book Vibrant is to empower people to take back control of their own health by adjusting their lifestyles for maximum health optimization. Many of my followers and readers are beginning at the beginning, which is why I developed the Vibrant Triad. The principle behind this concept is that before you try advanced health interventions, you need to get three basics down: eating, exercising and connecting with other people in meaningful ways that build health rather than destroy it. For many, this is the perfect place to begin.

However, in this day of widely accessible health information, I find that more and more people want advanced information, and I love that. It means people are becoming more health-empowered, and what many of these people ask me about is exercise. What does it do, beyond the obvious benefits of aiding weight loss and building lean muscle?

I call exercise my fountain of youth and my elixir because exercise does so much more than tone muscles and burn fat. It triggers a cascade of positive changes throughout the body that can reverse many of the signs of aging. Specifically, it cues mitochondrial biogenesis, metabolic shifts, and hormonal recalibration:

  • Exercise generates more mitochondria. As you may remember from high school biology, the mitochondria are organelles inside cells that are responsible for generating energy, in the form of adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. Mitochondria are highly responsive to lifestyle. If you are sedentary, your mitochondria get the signal that you don’t need much energy, so they don’t make as much. If you are active—doing cardio, lifting weights, practicing yoga—your mitochondria get the signal that you are using energy, so they start producing more energy. The mitochondria you already have, increase their energy output, and the cell produces more mitochondria to meet the demand. This is why exercising gives you more energy and makes you stronger—and can help fuel even more exercise.
  • Exercise changes your metabolism. Your resting metabolic rate (RMR) is a measure of your body’s energy needs when you aren’t doing anything, i.e., the calories you burn just to live. Breathing, thinking, manufacturing hormones, digesting, etc., all use up energy. Exercise, or just moving around doing anything at all, uses energy on top of your RMR. You may think that the exercise you do makes up most of the calories you burn, but actually, your RMR probably exceeds your exercise burn most of the time. However, one of the great things regular exercise does is increase your RMR, totally apart from the calories you burn during exercise, so you’re burning more calories even on your rest days than you would if you were a sedentary person. In other words, exercise speeds up your metabolism, and that can translate to a healthier body with less excess body fat and a lower risk of the chronic diseases of aging. Not only does increased muscle mass increase RMR, but every time you exercise, your RMR goes up for about 2 hours, and then goes down a bit but still stays higher than before for 48 hours. This is why I advise rest days, but never going more than 2 days without exercising again (unless, of course, you are unable for some reason—if you do take more time off, you can get your RMR back up once you resume a regular exercise routine.)
  • Exercise triggers the release of BDNF: BDNF (that’s brain-derived neurotrophic factor) is a protein that makes the brain work better by protecting existing neurons and generating more neurons and synapses. This improves memory and learning ability as well as mood, and can head off neurological conditions like depression and dementia, while also reducing your chances of developing chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and cancer. Every time you exercise, but especially when you do cardio (especially if you work in burst training, or HIIT), your brain releases more BDNF. This may be a factor in why people tend to feel less stress and have a better time remembering things and concentrating after exercise.

Even if you exercise mainly for the strength, fitness, and/or weight loss benefits, it’s nice to know that you are changing things all over your body, from your brain all the way down to your mitochondria, in ways that will make you healthier, more resilient, and even smarter than you are right now.

Let’s Get Out There! Summer Fun For The Whole Fam

June 10, 2021

Summer 2021 is looking a lot different from last year. Who cannot wait to get out there? As a family, we’ve already shared two super fun experiences. My kids,11 and 15, had a blast doing both of these things perfect day outings.

We are huge Legoland fans. Yes, even my teen loves the nostalgic fun of it all. They replaced the Lego Friends area with a new LEGO® MOVIE™ WORLD extravaganza with new rides and attractions based on the Lego Movie.  The day was a blast. Clean as a whistle and Covid protocol all the way.

We went nuts for the Triple Decker Flying couch ride.  The Unikitty Disco Drop was hilarious and cute.

Next up we hit our favorite 60 Out Escape Room. We missed heading to our favorite summer activity to get us out of the heat, off our devices and using our brains and were thrilled when 60 Out was back up and running. We did the Jumanji room – hard as heck – with my son and a bunch of his friends and it was the best ever. We even went back last night to try Alice And Wonderland. Our goal is to do one room a week all summer! It’s truly the most wholesome and hilarious family fun. Excellent bonding time, communication skills mastery and fantastic for brain health to work immersive puzzle games like this.  60 Out Escape rooms are all over town from DTLA to Hollywood. Each has different games so be sure to study what is happening at each location!