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There’s reason for antibiotics to be revered. For decades, these wonder drugs have stamped out formidable infections that can otherwise prove deadly. But their lifesaving potency comes at a cost. In killing off dangerous bacteria, antibiotics kill off the good, too. In a report published last year in Gut journal, researchers cataloged a host of adverse antibiotic effects on the gastrointestinal system, immune system, and metabolic system, even finding correlations between antibiotic use and rises in obesity and stress....

The size of the wick is also important: A larger wick means a larger flame, which will burn through your wax faster. (This is why it’s important to trim your wick before every use, but more on that later.) “One job of a candlemaker is to ensure that a wick is large enough to melt the full surface of the candle, but not too large that it’s drawing up more wax than necessary,” Stephen Tracy, the co-founder of Keap, explains....

While it’s important for all of us to support our methylation cycles for whole-body health and well-being, individuals with an MTHFR gene variation (i.e., 50% of the U.S. population) have methylation cycles that require a little extra help. This is because the MTHFR gene codes for the MTHFR enzyme, which critically activates folate to enable healthy homocysteine levels, optimal methylation function, and a number of other physiological processes.* When it comes to your environment, Carnahan recommends filtering the air and water in your house and eating foods that support detoxification....

In codependent relationships, your partner’s well-being becomes fundamentally entangled with your well-being. You may find yourself confused as you try to make choices and decisions. Putting attention on your partner’s real or imagined reactions and responses feels safer and easier than putting attention on yourself, especially during key, emotionally charged moments. This can make it hard to set, respect, and recognize your own and other’s boundaries or to know and honor what you want when your desires are distinct from your partner’s....

And as we get older, mature and settle into our own choices and routines, we often tend to think That’s just the way I am, without remembering how much of a role our childhood observations played in the equation. I’d argue that we all ought to take a moment to think for a bit, and ask where we stand. Think of your career, your love life, or things you want in the future and consider this: what do I really want?...

Now for the good news: Acupuncture and Chinese medicine have effectively treated anxiety for centuries due to its ability to individualize treatment and address the “Shen” (the Chinese word for “spirit”), which is a large part of the puzzle Western medicine often misses. In Chinese medicine, anxiety can be due to a number of different factors, like blood deficiency (think dizziness and anemia), stagnation in your liver or blood (think about when you’re so angry you could cry), or a deficiency in the chi of your heart (think heart palpitations, nothing serious but still ruins your day)—just to name a few....

With pregnancy comes many choices regarding your lifestyle and health. (These, of course, are between you and your doctor—and as long as your health care practitioner thinks you and the baby are healthy, that’s all that matters.) But a big part of this is diet: As there are many challenges with conducting studies on pregnant women, the research regarding what diet is best limited. However, the scientific consensus is that if you are otherwise healthy, sticking to a nutritious vegan diet is fine1....

So, why not take a note from an expert who’s mastered the perfect morning routine himself? “Spending that first part of the day focusing on insanely selfish things ultimately converts into selfless things,” Chernow previously shared with mindbodygreen. “I believe you are a far better human being to the people around you. So I don’t look at those things as chores. I see them as critical to success in life....

It involves skipping food for the majority of the day and eating all your meals in a shortened time frame. As an integrative physician, I’ve spent the last decade working with thousands of patients, many of whom were women going through menopause. Here’s a brief look at how menopause changes your body and how intermittent fasting might help with many of the common symptoms. During this time, the ovaries stop producing estrogen and progesterone, which, in turn, stops menstruation....

You have only 30 minutes before your next meeting, so you head to the office kitchen to heat up your curry. Right as you’re about to throw it in the microwave, you quickly glance to make sure the container is microwave safe. And then you hesitate because you aren’t sure you actually know what “microwave safe” means. Or even more of a head-scratcher, how about “microwave safe, patent pending.” According to Trasande, the best way to avoid ingesting those plastics is to keep them out of the microwave altogether....

Based on my experience as an esthetician who trained in Korea (also licensed in the United States), founder of and curator of Peach & Lily, and a K-beauty expert, I’ll share everything I know about the background, beginnings, and story behind Korean beauty below. Instead, there’s an emphasis on gently nurturing the skin toward your desired results, whatever they may be, with consistency and a highly personalized skin care routine....

Here’s everything you need to know to get started with the technique. Similar to how the ingredients of a traditional pasta dish become warm and flavorful in the oven, these organic materials “cook” over time thanks to the heat generated by the soil. This is a no-till (aka no-dig) technique that requires hardly zero maintenance. All you have to do is build the layers and let nature take its course, hence the nickname, “lazy gardening....

Reprinted with permission from The Vegetarian Reset by Vasudha Viswanath, The Collective Book Studio, January 2023. Photos by Alexandra Shytsman.

But this way of thinking is detrimental. In fact, I couldn’t disagree more with these assertions: money does not inherently breed greed and materialism. In my view, money and spirituality actually go very well together, and together can bring abundance into your life. If we feel (even slightly) that money is bad, we’ll have a hard time creating financial abundance in this lifetime. In this article, I’ll give you four examples of why wealth and spirituality are highly-compatible....

Cosmetic and general dermatologist at Marmur Medical Rachel Maiman, M.D., says nodular acne affects deeper layers of the skin than the average breakout and has a higher risk of scarring coupled with a tendency to persist for weeks to months. Maiman says this type of acne, “often feels like firm knots under the skin and can be found on the face and body.” Engelman adds that nodular acne is firmer than cystic acne and is also more widespread than typical pimples....

But the reality is, yoga and Pilates share many qualities and benefits. In fact, many people see these as complementary practices—and choose to do both yoga and Pilates for optimal mental and physical fitness. Today, there are two main forms of Pilates, reformer and mat. Both are low-impact and focus on building the core while strengthening the whole body. A reformer class uses a machine with spring resistance while most mat classes, as the name suggests, only require a mat to incorporate body-weight resistance....

Suboptimal gut flora opens the door for unfriendly microbes to step in and disrupt balance. Think of probiotics as little helpers that restore order and help maintain harmony in the gut ecosystem.* You want them to outnumber and antagonize the unwelcome bugs, including unfavorable bacteria, yeast, and parasites.* Probiotic bacteria actually compete against unfriendly flora for bacterial binding sites on the inside lining of your intestines, further protecting you.* One way to populate your gut with probiotics, to promote or restore harmony and get all their many benefits, is with the right foods, which support the growth and proliferation of the good bacteria that crowd out the bad ones....

Yet, propanediol is thought to be safer and generally less irritating, so it’s frequently used as an alternative in clean cosmetics. But is it actually any better? In terms of chemical makeup, propanediol is an alkanediol, which consists of an alkane and a diol. A quick chemistry lesson: An alkane is a chain of carbons with hydrogens attached. A diol is any compound that has two alcohol groups. Finally, the prefix prop- refers to three carbon atoms in that chain....

In other words: Resveratrol could be the secret to having your baguette and eating it too (with butter and a glass of merlot, of course). Here are seven ways resveratrol promotes whole-body health: Additionally, resveratrol has been found to support healthy aging by activating sirtuins2 (i.e., regulatory genes and key players in cellular aging and longevity), and maintaining telomere length and integrity3.* “Is resveratrol the fountain of youth? I wouldn’t go that far, but these findings sure are interesting and make me think about how I can increase my exposure to this powerhouse compound,” integrative gastroenterologist Marvin Singh, M....