ATHE_Transcript_Ep 626_Amazon Finds for Self-Care
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] I’m JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four time New York Times best selling author. Yes, I’m a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe, but I’m driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can, and that’s why I created the Well Beyond 40 podcast. To synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive.
In each episode, we’ll talk about what’s working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100.[00:01:00]
Let’s get real. It’s all too common for us women to put our self care on the back burner, right? I mean, we’re always on the go. We’re always taking care of everyone else, taking care of them, except for us. Now, here’s the thing, self-care is selfless, not selfish. So we gotta make our self-care number one on the list, not the last priority.
All right? So what I’ve done to make this easy for you is I’ve got some of my favorite Amazon finds that can make you have a little bit of calm in the chaos. So I’m going to start out with my favorite thing of all. And I will tell you that I have created an entire like bathtub sanctuary. Like I love, love, love baths.
And what I love to do with my bath is throw in Epsom salts. So this is just some regular old Amazon Epsom salts. I did get the lavender ones because that can be great at night, right? But why do I love Epsom salts so much? Well, first of all, [00:02:00] your skin’s a sieve. So Epsom salts are a rich source of magnesium.
They’re detoxifying, magnesium is really relaxing and soothing to the muscles, plus you got the lavender in there. But here’s another thing you can do. Dump in your bath, save a little bit, and then scrub your skin with it too. So I will get in there, do a super hot bath. This is great too if you don’t have a sauna at home, do some heat therapy, get in a super hot bath.
Bonus points! If you do the hot bath, cold shower, hot bath, cold shower. I know, but it’s really helpful. Okay. So that’s the first one, Epsom salt, easy enough to do. And if you’re traveling, you can just have some shipped over to your hotel room if you get a bathtub in there. Now, the next one, and speaking of traveling, I have two of these.
This is my MantaSleep sleep mask. And I have one in my travel bag, cause this goes everywhere with me. And also I have one in my nightstand table. At home. I don’t use it for sleep. I use [00:03:00] it for meditation, but when I travel quite often, I cannot get the room dark enough. And what I love about this one is it has these little pads on it.
So it will not mess up your eyelashes and it will completely black things out. This is important because I’ve been using eye masks for years. And one summer I had to use one and I ended up with like eyelashes going sideways, right, from not having these little cups. So these are great. They also pop off so that you can wash them.
And I also have for you my best rest sleep sheet. So I’ve got, this is one of my hacks for great sleep. I’ve got more at jjvirgin.com.bestrest. But this is also, again, what I use every morning, wake up, go to the bathroom, get on my scale, come back, and I do meditation using this mask. The other thing that I travel with, I don’t normally need these at home unless the next door neighbors are having a party, is these little earplugs.
Now I’ll tell you what, these ones are [00:04:00] called Wayne Sueno. I have tried a lot of earplugs. I do not like things in my ears. I probably, no one probably does, but I especially, I don’t know if I have little ears or what have you, but these things work amazing. They actually have multiple little heads on them.
So you can find the one that fits best for you. So I’ve been super happy with these. And man, you know, maybe you’re on a long flight and you want to sleep, or again, the neighbor decided to have an impromptu party, or you are at a hotel that’s noisy, earplugs for the win. So these are the ones that I love that don’t bug me.
Now, this next thing I think is possibly one of the coolest things ever. And there’s two of different choices here. So at home, this is a Philips Hue light bulb. I know this just doesn’t, you’re like, really? This is super exciting. Yes, this is that exciting. Here’s why. This is like 60 bucks. It’s not crazy expensive.
But what this Philips Hue light bulbs let you do is change the [00:05:00] lighting based on the time of day. So at night, we turn this to red and the whole room is now just a soft red. And in the morning you can mimic natural sunlight, which is what you want. So this is the super coolest thing that I found because what we were doing prior to this is unscrewing the light bulbs at night and putting in the red light bulbs.
I mean, that’s just a hassle. So this just allows you to do this with an app. Now here’s what’s super cool. When you travel, they have a little travel light that you can take with you and you can do the same thing with it. You can make it go red at night. You can have it go in the morning, do natural sunlight.
And this is important because sometimes you’re traveling and changing time zones and you need to shift the lighting a little bit, and this allows you to do that. Finally, I had a couple years ago, it was about 10 years ago, I had some thyroid issues. The, one of the first things that I noticed was that my hair was falling out, but I didn’t notice it fast enough.
And so all of a sudden I’m having [00:06:00] my hair fall out coupled with like, you know, a couple issues with hair color and bam, my hair was not what I was used to and I had to bring it back. And what I found to help with this hormonal hair loss was this product, Xenogen. Now, you know, what do we know? We know that thyroid can impair hair function, cortisol, estrogen, testosterone, but there’s specifically an issue with something called DHT, which is dihydrotestosterone.
And so dihydrotestosterone is a natural hormone that’s present in hair follicles. And what happens is, you know, we all have a little bit, but if you have too much DHT, cuts off the vital blood flow to the follicle, which then makes it weaken. And then it stops producing hair. And it’s this buildup of DHT that’s the most common cause of men’s and women’s hair loss.
This, Xenogen, has this proprietary blend of plant based nutraceutical ingredients that removes the [00:07:00] existing DHT from the hair follicle and blocks further production of it. Now it takes time. When I first started using it, first I went, oh, my hair’s not falling out like it used to. It took about three months to really start to notice difference and then really took a good nine months.
So it takes time to get totally back, but wow, what a difference. So this is Zennogen for the win. This is the big at home. It’s pricey, I’m going to tell you, but you know, it’s your hair, it’s worth it. And I have a little travel one for on the road as well, because you don’t want to be using those hotel crappy shampoos, right?
So these are like simple, easy tools. Again, I travel with these as well because when I have my routine, I just make sure my routine goes with me everywhere I go. And most importantly there, of course, is that sleep mask and the ear plugs, because you want to be making sure you’re getting a great night’s sleep.
Now, if you’re. Still having trouble getting going in the [00:08:00] morning. Watch this next video on three things you can do for peak energy all day long. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great. And more importantly, that you’re built to last.
And check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. And my website, jjvirgin.com. And make sure to follow my podcast so you don’t miss a single episode at subscribetojj.com. See you next time.
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