HEALTH & BEAUTY HEALTH
ter (3.1-mile) race in only three months with just a half-hour a day, three days a week. The app customizes your own training plan and lets you log your progress, providing an easy way for you to find out how much your distance has increased, see how your pace has improved, and compare your current workout with ones you undertook previously. STRONGLIFTS: An app that’s ideal for strength trainers, StrongLifts takes all the guess work out of creating your routine. It gives you the sets, reps, weights, and rest times you need to gain strength and build muscle, and it even provides you with video instructions so that you know you’re doing your lifts properly. All you have to do is enter your current best lifts, and the app takes it from there. With the app’s guidance, you can figure out how to target specific body parts, such as your biceps or your chest, and how to strive for goals like muscle building, fat loss, or weight gain. The app is also great for tracking what you did each day and measuring your progress. SWORKIT: Sworkit is the fitness app for people who like to cross-train and try out a variety of exercises. All you have to do is let the app know your personal goal— whether it’s fat loss, muscle gain, improved flexibility, increased endurance, maintained weight, or some combination thereof—and how much time you have on
a particular day, and the app will recommend the exercises you should do. The app has about 300 unique workout routines using about 400 different exercises, so there are plenty of options to choose from. You can either create your own custom workout or let the app provide you with one. If you need further advice, trainers are available to answer your questions, and the app even has nutrition recommendations so you can best fuel yourself through each of the different workouts. CALORIE COUNTER–MYNETDIARY: Tracking your diet can be overwhelming, particularly because fueling your body is about more than counting calories—it’s about making sure those calories come from the right sources and that you’re getting the nutrients you need to function properly. Ranked highest among diet apps by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, Calorie Counter–MyNetDiary lets you log what you ate to track how many calories you’ve consumed, what percentage of your calories come from fat, carbohydrates and protein, and how much you’ve consumed of vital vitamins and minerals. You can either select from the 900,000-plus foods in the app’s database or scan the barcode on food packaging. You can even connect with an online community with advice from registered dietitians, online recipes and healthy tips.
Lather Up WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT SUNSCREEN By Dylan Roche
After a long winter, the first 70-degree sunny day can make you feel like you’re waking up from hibernation—and it’s tough to resist being outside. But before you leave the house, take a moment to remember your need for sunscreen. Caring for your skin isn’t a practice you should limit to days on the beach or at the pool; it’s important any time you’re going to be out in the sun for a long period of time. But not all sunscreen is the same, and all the lingo on the labels make it difficult to differentiate between all the options. More importantly, there’s been some talk lately that some of the chemicals in sunscreen aren’t so good for your skin after all.
WHY SUNSCREEN? Sunscreen, sun lotion, sunblock… this topical product goes by many different names (there’s a slight difference between sunscreen and sunblock, but more on that later— for now, just assume we’re using them interchangeably). It protects from sunburn, skin cancer, premature aging of the skin, and other risks of overexposure, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Sunscreen varies in its effectiveness because some products are made for broad spectrum protection while others are not, and each product has its own sun protection factor, better known as an SPF, expressed as a numeral. Broad spectrum protection is important because it screens your skin against both types of ultraviolent light: ultraviolet A (UVA) and ultraviolet B (UVB).
The Skin Cancer Foundation explains that both types of UV rays are harmful but in slightly different ways. UVB rays are the ones that cause skin burning whereas UVA rays tend to cause aging. Both can wreak damage on the DNA in skin cells, leading to skin cancer. When you see the SPF number on a bottle of sunscreen, you’re seeing how much ultraviolent radiation exposure is needed to get a sunburn when you’re wearing that product. Basically, the higher the SPF, the more protected you are and the more sunshine it takes to damage your skin. Everyone should use a product with an SPF of at least 15, but people with fair skin who are prone to burning should go higher and choose between 30 and 50. Remember that there’s no such thing as waterproof sunscreen, only water-resistant sunscreen. Read the label to see how long after swimming or excessive sweating the sunscreen will remain effective and reapply as necessary.
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