Must-Reads from the Wellness World (Week of April 8, 2019)

Human Contact Is Now a Luxury Good – The New York Times, March 23, 2019 As more screens appear in the lives of the poor, screens are disappearing from the lives of the rich. The richer you are, the more you spend to be off-screen, and the more afraid of screens you are. They want their children to play with blocks, and tech-free private schools…

Trend to Watch: Less Conspicuous, Expensive Wellness

MONTHLY BAROMETER – WELLNESS EDITION For the second winter in a row, the success of a basic coat has gone viral. The Orolay puffer jacket, produced in China and sold (mainly) on Amazon for about $130, competed with premium brands, such as Canada Goose, Moncler and Fusalp, priced at exponentially more than that amount. So what? (1) It reveals the growing disruptive power of the…

A “Well Death” Becomes Part of a “Well Life”

In our modern age, death has become over-medicalized, and the “human” has been removed from the process. Enter a new kind of wellness practitioner: the death doula, caregivers who give the dying full physical, emotional and spiritual support and fill that serious gap in care between medicine and hospice. Read a new conversation with Henry Fersko-Weiss, a true pioneer of the death doula movement and…

Wellness Evidence Study: With Exercise, Midlife Is Not Too Late to Begin

A large, new study from the National Cancer Institute, analyzing data from the N.I.H.-AARP Diet and Health Study, indicates that with exercise, it’s never too late to begin. People who started exercising in midlife had the same protection against mortality as people who had always worked out. The bad news? The reverse is true: If you stop exercising in midlife, all the longevity benefits you accrued…

GWI Brief Top Trends Hydrothermal Spa and Wellness

The Hydrothermal Initiative—one of 23 GWI Initiatives—just released their “Top Six Trends in Hydrothermal Spa and Wellness Experiences.” They range from salt therapy getting “real” to coed thermal bathing heating up to a resurgence for flotation therapy and a renaissance for the centuries-old Kneipp therapy. ACCESS THE TRENDS

GWI Aggregates the Global Happiness & Wellbeing Rankings

There are an ever-growing number of research reports from global economists that go far beyond the limited metric of GDP to gauge nations’ overall happiness and wellbeing. These studies all use somewhat different measurements, so rankings can vary. And because this research is giving us a clearer, deeper picture of the true health and wellness of people in countries worldwide, the GWI has created a…