Fhb 2018

The Westside’s 2018

Fitness Health & Beauty Guide

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The Westside’s 2018

Fitness Health & Beauty Guide 6 H EALT H

The 411 on CBD

Cannabidiol is a cannabis compound that won’t get you high, but might improve your health 8 F i t n e s s

Data-Driven Fitness

MANAGING EDITOR: Joe Piasecki WRITERs: Lara J. Altunian, Sarah Ahern Art Director: Michael Kraxenberger DESIGNER: Kate Doll ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES: Renee Baldwin · Kay Christie Rocki Davidson · David Maury ADVERTISING DIRECTOR: Rebecca Bermudez PUBLISHER: David Comden CONTACT US Phone: 310.822.1629 Fax: 310.822.2089 5301 Beethoven St., Suite 183, Los Angeles, CA 90066

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Technology can motivate and measure, but don’t forget the human element

For information or additional copies, please call (310) 822-1629

16 B EAUTY

Westside’s 2018 Fitness Health & Beauty Guide is a special supplement of The Argonaut and © Southland Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

Be Sweet to Your Body

Gentler on skin than waxing, sugaring is riding a new wave of popularity in Los Angeles

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Fit ne s s H e a lt h & B e a u t y G u id e 2 0 1 8 • 5

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Health

The 411 on CBD

Cannabidiol is a cannabis compound that won’t get you high, but might improve your health

By Lara J. Altunian

R

ecreational marijuana isn’t just about having fun. As cannabis moves toward the mainstream, local consumers and some holistic health practitioners are exploring the possible benefits of cannabis-related compounds that don’t involve psychoactive or intoxicating effects.

For decades the conversation about cannabis has centered on THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the chemical compound that gives cannabis users their high. The yang to THC’s yin is CBD (cannabidiol), a non-psychoactive component of cannabis that users believe to have numerous therapeutic properties.

CBD is increasingly getting attention as a way to control anxiety, relieve inflammation, manage chronic pain and even battle depression. It also promotes deep relaxation without feelings of heavy intoxication.

“It’s becoming rapidly accepted for numbers of reasons.

Part of is it because doctors are beginning to believe in it, because they’re seeing patients get care,” says Dr. Allan Frankel of Santa Monica-based GreenBridge Medical Services, an early adopter of cannabis-based medical treatments.

Frankel started using cannabis in 1999 after being diagnosed with a terminal heart condition that he credits cannabis for reversing.

“I’m a huge fan of CBD,” says Frankel. “Before the first strains were being found, I couldn’t get your typical cultivator to really pay much attention to looking for CBD strands. It was all spread out because they were looking for the more psychoactive effects. Without knowing it, they [found] CBD.” While it occurs naturally in any cannabis strain, people who are only interested in CBD can now find it commonly sold in oils or creams for either oral or topical use.

Cannabis retailer MedMen, which operates dispensaries in Venice and Westchester in addition to its West Hollywood flagship store, helps its customers choose from its spectrum of cannabis strains based on the desired balance of CBD and THC content.

“High CBD strains with low THC are believed to provide optimal health benefits and promote body relaxation with minimal psychoactive side effects,” according to MedMen product information. Strains that contain more than 2% CBD are considered high-CBD strains, and some contain as much as 20%.

“Unless they’re someone who’s really into marijuana, you’re average person doesn’t really care about [names like] OG Kush or Blue Dream,” explains MedMen spokesman Daniel Yi. “They want to know: ‘What is it going to do for me?’ When they look at vaporizer pens, they now see names like likes ‘Relief’ and ‘Sleep.’”

Marijuana is still a Schedule 1 drug under federal law, which means you won’t find the Food and Drug Administration backing up claims of CBD’s health benefits. However, cannabis sold legally in California must be tested for pesticides as well as THC and CBD levels — which means that, at a reputable retailer, you at least know what you’re buying.

Cannabidiol can relieve anxiety, restlessness and chronic pain Fit ne s s H e a lt h & B e a u t y G u id e 2 01 8 • 7

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Fitness

Data-Driven Fitness Technology can motivate and measure, but don’t forget the human element

By Sarah Ahern

W

ith Alexa running our homes, Siri guiding us through traffic and Google assistant helping out in the office, it should come as no surprise that digital technology is also changing the way we stay fit.

Exhibit A: Wearables, like Fitbit. In an increasingly data-obsessed world, tracking and quantifying physical activity is not only helping people manage fitness goals, but also motivating users to meet those goals. If hitting your daily exercise target isn’t motivating enough, many wearables allow users to share and compare data with friends — providing extra motivation for hitting the gym.

Technology is also expanding our choices of how to stay fit. The relatively new ClassPass app, for example, enables subscribers to book classes at any number of participating (and otherwise competing) local workout studios for a flat monthly fee that typically costs far less than a membership and is way cheaper than paying for individual classes until you find a favorite.

For those who’d rather work out at home and on their own schedules, Peloton’s pitch (for those who can afford to own expensive equipment and pay a monthly membership fee) is streaming, on-demand fitness classes.

Peloton, which maintains an exercise bike showroom at the Santa Monica Place shopping center, incorporates Fitbit-style data feedback with elite instructors leading classes in real time.

But are real-time data and immersive virtual technology really the key to health?

Not without a human element, many fitness professionals say. Data can be misleading, and a trainer who can’t see you can’t tell you if you’re maximizing your workout potential or doing it wrong — setting the stage for frustration or, even worse, injury.

Mad Dogg Fitness, an exercise equipment and education company based in Venice for more than 20 years — they’re the real OGs when it comes to spin bike technology — makes the argument that most of the data you get from your workout doesn’t mean much, and without proper

training you’re not going to get the most out of your equipment. In other words, so-called “connected fitness” might actually leave people disconnected from proper instructional feedback.

Earlier this year Mad Dogg launched Industry — a spin, yoga and Peak Pilates studio in the former YAS Fitness location on Main Street — to expand its educational mission and showcase its new line of state-of-theart Chrono spin bikes.

“As we rush headlong into era of technological feedback and the whole connected fitness thing, the necessity for human interaction from an instructional point

(Continued on Page 10)

Machines can’t replace instructional human interaction Fit ne s s H e a lt h & B e a u t y G u id e 2 0 1 8 • 9

Fitness

Data-Driven Fitness (Continued from Page 9) of view still exists,” says Mad Dogg Fitness marketing VP Don Delzell. “You can have the best app in the world, but if you’ve never been on a spin cycle before, you’re not going to understand how to use the bike the way it was designed — and possibly throw your body out of alignment and use muscles the way they were not intended to be used.”

And when it comes to data, measuring the effectiveness of your workout has little to do with your weight or age or heartrate — in other words, the information that most people enter and receive from cardio equipment at the gym.

Mad Dogg’s perimeter-weighted flywheel spin bikes employ tiny censors in the cranks to measure actual wattage output — the amount of energy being expended with each push of the pedals.

10 • F i tne ss He alth & Bea u t y G u i de 2 01 8

“There has to be human interaction where an instructor can go in front of people and tell them, ‘Listen, this isn’t a competition between everyone in this class, this is about your ride,” says John Cook, Mad Dogg’s VP of Industrial Design. “The technology becomes really good for your average rider when you have a power signal on your bike, where you can use your own metrics to improve them, but also work with them — seeing how well you did this time versus last time.”

When it comes to getting exercise, people have more choices — and thus fewer valid excuses — than ever before. But if physical fitness is about mind, body and soul, having another body in the room makes sense.

Fitness, like anything else, is usually more fun with a friend.

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Beauty

Be Sweet to Your Body Gentler on skin than waxing, sugaring is riding a new wave of popularity in Los Angeles

By Lara J. Altunian

F

ew aesthetic rituals are as uncomfortable as banishing unwanted hair, which may be why they say “beauty is pain.” Breakthroughs in epilation seem to occur every decade or so, but L.A.’s latest fixation is a practice that dates back thousands of years to ancient Egypt and Persia: sugaring.

The ingredients are simple — sugar, water, lemon juice — and the benefit is that sugaring paste can isolate hairs and remove them from their follicles without adhering to, pulling and irritating the skin. But only those who’ve mastered proper technique can avoid making a sticky mess.

“It’s an art. It’s a little difficult to learn, and finding someone to teach you well is not easy either,” says Danielle Correia, founder of Sugaring LA. Now the area’s largest group of sugaring salons, Sugaring LA started from just a single Santa Monica location in 2010.

For Correia, who became interested in sugaring because of her own sensitive skin, technique is everything.

“It takes a good month to learn the basics,” she says. “In the first week of learning, your whole hand is sore because you’re using muscles you’re not used to using. There’s more attention to detail.”

It had been over a decade since my last sugaring experience — an aunt taking care of what she declared “an emergency upper lip situation” — so I booked an appointment with sugarist Alecia Smith.

Smith first discovered sugaring on her own eight years ago after a terribly botched wax job left her skin damaged for two weeks. Like Correia, she had heard learned about sugaring in beauty school and decided to give it a shot.

“It changed everything,” says Smith. “I’m an AfricanAmerican woman … [and] when you’re black, your hairs have a tiny bit more curl … so that propensity makes them coil back on themselves and give you ingrowns that are thicker and bigger, and they hurt. Being able to fix something like that for other girls that look like me is a huge deal.”

Convinced I was in good hands, I decided to go for the largest, most painful area of my body in my most sensitive region — and, even for a lifelong shaver with coarse hair, it went much smoother than I anticipated.

Smith started out with a super light dusting of organic cornstarch just to make sure my body stayed dry — it’s common to sweat while going through any hair removal process. Then came the caramel-colored sugaring ball, which felt like rubber as she rolled it out along my skin. It didn’t burn, and was soft enough that she could manipulate and reform it as my body heat caused the ball to melt. Her quick and constant pulls eliminated a lot of the nervous anticipation that comes with waxing.

“It’s all in the wrist,” says Smith. “It gives me so much power because I can literally glide this wherever I want. It’s like finger painting. … I don’t cause any irritation to the skin, and I can go over this spot 100 times if I needed to until we got all the hair out.”

Aftercare included a warm compress to wipe away any residue, a drizzling of some witch hazel, and a goody bag that contained a slightly ribbed cloth for weekly exfoliation and a small bottle of essential oils to prevent future ingrown hairs. The whole thing only took about 20 minutes.

Thanks largely to the success of Sugaring LA, dozens of local salons have begun offering a service once largely written off as archaic or passé. But as natural remedies of all kinds continue to dominate the local imagination, it’s no wonder that those who sugar are looking to the past for better ways forward.

Sugaring LA founder Danielle Correia

Fit ne s s H e a lt h & B e a u t y G u id e 2 01 8 • 17

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