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Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
This podcast is sponsored by OneSkin, which is something that I’ve been getting to try for about a year now and I’ve been really impressed with. And here’s why. This is a skincare product and most skincare products are just surface level results. But OneSkin is different. They are founded and led by an all-woman team of skin longevity scientists, and they are working at a cellular level for deeper results. So they tested more than 900 peptides and developed one called OS01, which is the first scientifically proven one to interrupt a core aging process called cellular senescence. So this is basically when our cells stop functioning normally, stop rejuvenating themselves and producing collagen and elastin, and they can release inflammatory chemicals at this point. And this also is linked to our skin aging faster, deeper wrinkles, thinner skin, etc.
And OSO1 switches off these senescent cells, so it addresses the root cause of skin aging versus just a topical that doesn’t do as much. And since skin is our body’s largest organ, this is something I’ve been focused on, especially as I get a little bit older, and especially this time of year with cooler weather, drier skin. And when I noticed my skin gets drier this time of year, it’s because our skin barrier, which keeps moisture in and environmental stressors out, can be disrupted due to the change in weather. And so I found OneSkin is really helpful for that as well.
They have multiple products that were proven to increase barrier function and improve skin hydration. And I’ve noticed a big difference in my skin since starting it. I also love a simple natural skincare routine, and they have made it so easy. You can check it out by visiting oneskin.co/wellnessmama and use the code wellnessmama15 to save 15% off your first order.
This episode is sponsored by Our Place, and this company is awesome. They believe in the power of home cooking to bring people together, which I’m also a huge proponent of. And they have created products that make cooking and sharing a meal together, easier and more joyful and free of all the harmful things I don’t like in my kitchen. They have a wide array of things now. I always find myself using their Always Pan and also their Wonder Oven, which is a toaster oven and air fryer in one. And I get a lot of requests for an air fryer recommendation, especially one that’s free of things like forever chemicals and nonstick chemicals. And my family has been using their Wonder Oven for a while now. And absolutely, we love it. I love that even my little kids can cook in it really well now. So I will often find them either heating or cooking from scratch their own food in the Wonder Oven. The tray they use in the Wonder Oven is toxin-free, and it’s made without PFAS, PFOAS, PTFEs, lead, cadmium, and other potentially toxic materials. The inside of the air fryer is stainless steel and not coated. And it’s compact enough that it fits easily on the corner of my kitchen countertop for quick use. And it comes in a lot of fun colors.
Their Always Pan has 10 uses so that you can use the one pan to seamlessly saute, fry, bake, roast, sear, boil, braise, strain, and serve. And I try to make several one pan meals a week. And this one is great for that. Especially, I use it often for breakfast stir fries.
Another thing I like about Our Place is they have a 100-day trial with free returns, so they make it even easier to give their cookware a try without the risk. You can check out all of their products by going to wellnessmama.com/go/ourplace. and use the code wellnessmama for a discount. And that link is also in the show notes if it’s easier to click on it there.
Katie: Hello and welcome to The Wellness Mama Podcast. I am Katie from wellnessmama.com and this is one of the new solo episodes where I cover a variety of topics that you guys either bring up questions that you guys have or things that I feel are relevant topics.
And so with that being said, in today’s episode, I’m going to delve into what I predict might be some of the wellness trends that we will see in 2025. And I don’t say these to say that we need to follow these trends. Certainly, I’ve always tended to buck the system and not follow trends. However, I’m really actually encouraged and excited with some shifts I’m seeing even in the mainstream and a deeper understanding of health and wellness. And more importantly, I feel like seeing people make friends a lot more with their bodies and go on this beautiful journey of really supporting our bodies and building them in a way that’s sustainable. So I think that there could be some really cool things that emerge in social media popularity and in the mainstream media, even when it comes to health and wellness in 2025.
Now, for a lot of you listening, these things may not seem very new and novel because I know a lot of you have already been into various health and wellness things for many, many years and are incredibly well-researched. I just thought it would be fun to kind of recap what I’m seeing, what I’m hearing from readers and listeners, and what I predict where that might go within the next year.
I’d also love to hear what you’re seeing, what you’re experimenting with, what you think might become part of the trends this next year as well. If you would like to leave a comment on the blog post for this episode or on social media, I would love to hear your perspective as well. I’m sure there are some that I missed.
So from my perspective, these are a few of the things I think we might see more of in 2025. And I’m going to try, just go through these quickly in a fun way and also maybe give one or two key takeaways that you can implement or experiment with in your life to see if it is beneficial for you if you’re not already doing a lot of these things, which I bet a lot of you are.
But the first one, I feel like we are going to see a bigger understanding and focus on minerals. And I have had podcast guests talk about this and mention this for almost a decade now. And I think we’re going to see this really start to hit more of kind of collective mainstream as people start to understand the importance.
And this is, of course, including minerals like magnesium, which I’ve talked a lot about on my blog and on this podcast and many guests have as well. But I feel like we’re also getting a broader understanding of minerals that our body needs, including I’ve talked a lot about things like just purely salt, sodium chloride, and our body as an electrical organism needing a certain amount of that and how my own experimentation with salt. I’ll actually do another episode on that specifically soon. But I feel like we’re seeing a trend finally shift away from demonizing salt and defining salt as problematic into embracing and experimenting with proper healthy levels of salt and what that means for each of us individually.
And of course, even those are both just semi-service level when it comes to minerals. It is unfortunately no secret now that our food supply contains a lot less minerals than it used to. And for this reason, it can be very difficult to get everything we need from food alone. And I have firsthand experienced how even minor deficiencies in minerals can make a drastic difference in how we feel. So I have been on a multi-year experiment of really trying to dial in my mineral consumption through food, through supplements if needed. Just really kind of track and see what made the biggest difference.
And this has led me to experiment with trace minerals, with minerals like silica, of course, with magnesium and with salt, but also others as well in smaller amounts from potassium to boron to sulfur, all kinds of, there’s so many options when it comes to this, to like various multi-mineral blends.
I will link in the show notes if any of you guys would like to see it to the ones that I take. I take several from several different sources. Actually, I usually take some or all of a lot of different minerals daily, including salt water that I drink, including Beam minerals, which are fulvic and humid minerals. And I absolutely crave these now. My body loves them. And then various mineral blends and silica from a company called Eidon. And I will put all of those links in the show notes.
But I would say the key takeaway here when it comes to minerals, which all of us are still likely not getting enough of in today’s world, unless we are incredibly intentional about this, is to just simply pay attention, maybe do an audit of the sources of minerals you are interacting with in your daily life. And one at a time, experiment with tweaking those slightly and see if it makes a difference in how you feel.
What made a difference for me, a little action step experiment you can try, is to put a teaspoon of high-quality salt in water, in a quart-sized mason jar of water, leave that on your nightstand, and it will dissolve overnight. And then in the morning, drink that first thing, ideally while you’re getting morning sunlight, and see if you notice a difference in your energy levels. It definitely made a difference for me.
I also personally take magnesium in the morning, only because it keeps me up if I take it at night. Most people need to do the opposite and take magnesium at night. And then I take various mineral blends throughout the day and add Beam minerals to my water most of the time as well.
So again, this has been a focus for me for a couple of years. Not everybody may need or want to do as much experimentation and supplementation as I do, but this has made a big difference in how I feel. So I love to talk about it a lot now.
I also think in 2025, and this could be my own perception because I’m certainly focusing on this, but we’re going to see a trend toward more functional movements. And this could be things like walking, climbing. Things like even kin stretch, which is one of the ones I’m doing, but using our bodies functionally. I know that thankfully now there’s much more of an understanding and a trend toward exercise being important for mental health, for physical health, of course, as well. Even basic human movements like walking. I know we’re seeing trends of people trying to make sure they get enough steps per day, even with the weighted vest. And I think more movement, especially that kind of low-level movement is really, really beneficial.
We also are seeing a trend statistically of more women working out regularly and lifting weights, which I absolutely love to see as well. You can check out past episodes with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon about the importance of muscle. She has something called muscle centric medicine but talks about how muscle is our organ of longevity and how sort of, especially for women, as we get older, the more muscle, the better. And she gives some practical tips for really building muscle. And I’ve been so encouraged to see so many women talking about and posting about and sharing their journeys with working to build muscle, going to the gym, or just simply finding activities that we love and being able to stick to those.
However, I also see a lot of these trends, especially the ones geared toward women. There’s a lot of movement in a single plane of motion, usually forward and backwards in a straight line, which is great. And I am excited to now start to see more voices speaking to functional movement and making sure that we have muscle, yes, but also mobility. So strength in full range of motion if possible.
I don’t fully understand the connection here, but I have noticed a strong correlation with the people in my life who are most intentional and make time for mobility tend to have very high heart rate variability. I don’t understand why that is, but this trend has been a hundred percent in people I personally know. And I’ve noticed in my own life when I am consistent with functional movement and mobility, which admittedly I have not been for very long amounts of time in the past. But when I am, I also notice an improvement in my heart rate variability. And so this is something I’m going to personally be experimenting with this year.
And I also think, based on what I was seeing on the internet, that we’re going to see more of a trend in this direction toward functional movement. So for me, I’m going to be doing things like kinstretch, classes from my friend Hunter, which I will link to in the show notes, as well as things like calisthenics with my daughter, and just working in lots of functional movements like climbing, slacklining, whatever it may be, hanging, monkey bars, but things we might not just normally encounter in day-to-day life.
So one tip here, semi-related, but if you want something that helps both your metabolism and your sleep and your muscle tone, consider making time for, after every meal if possible, just 10 minutes of either 10 minutes of going for a walk or 30 to 40 air squats. There’s actually surprising data that either of these two activities can help everything from what you just ate get sort of used optimally in your body with studies showing improvements in muscle protein synthesis, so helping support muscle growth when we do something like this, and also with sort of the glycogen cycle in the body and how carbs are utilized.
So doing that small low-level activity can help glycogen get into the muscles where it needs to go, can help the muscle protein synthesis process happen more effectively in the body. And they actually started recommending this for metabolic health, even for people who had metabolic issues. And I would say since the majority, I believe actually upwards of 90% of people have some form of metabolic dysfunction, I feel like this is an easy and free thing that we can all experiment with that can help support the metabolism, even if we already have a healthy metabolism.
Another trend I think and hope we’re going to see in 2025 is a movement toward more single ingredient, whole food based eating over processed foods and over complicated meals or, you know, like food based bars, food based substitutes. Things I would categorize as almost not really totally food, but like food like substances, even if they meet the macros that we might want.
It might just be the circles that I am involved in, but I’m seeing this movement toward more just whole natural foods. And this lines up with my personal experimentation of trying to maximize the nutrient quality of everything we eat throughout a given day, rather than the calories or the macros. I also actually be doing a whole episode about my personal theory related to this soon. I think this might be a missing piece for a lot of people, and it’s one that I’ve been experimenting with.
But what I really have found and noticed around this is that we’re seeing people trend toward higher nutrient density, single ingredient foods. I do think as a quick tip here, if we just make that small mindset shift toward how can I maximally nourish my body versus how do I restrict my calories to fit certain macros, that mindset shift is extremely helpful because we’re coming from a positive position versus a negative one and we’re relating to our bodies in a healthier manner.
But I also have, as part of this theory, quick overview that when we do not get enough basic things like, of course, our macros like protein, especially, or healthy fats that are needed for hormones, and when we are not getting enough micronutrients, which our body also needs, that our bodies will, in their wisdom, continue to crave food in an attempt to get those nutrients. So when we instead focus on nutrient density and how can I, in the food I’m going to eat today, maximally nourish myself, we’re sending that safety signal of availability of nutrients to the body.
And I actually think this is sort of the antidote to the kind of standard American diet, which is calorie dense and very nutrient devoid, kind of flipping the script and going nutrient dense and not being as worried about calories. I think this is also the kind of missing piece of the equation when we hear about is being a calorie deficit or fasting or time-restricted eating stressful for women’s bodies. I believe it can be when we are not getting enough nutrients because our body is getting a signal of stress.
So again, I think we’ll see this as a trend, hopefully reflected in very simple, just kind of frameworks and recipes that people can follow. And I think the beauty of this approach is that it is, to me, feels very much more free and limiting than a lot of diets. And that encourages naturally more nutrient dense eating.
I also am seeing glimmers of a trend of more of a focus on light, being aware of our light environment and circadian health. Now, again, admittedly, I have a bias here, so I may be noticing this because I’m looking for it, much like if we’re going to get a new car, we happen to notice that car everywhere when it was likely in those same number of places before. However, I do hear and see a lot more people talking about this.
I have said before many times that I’ll link to some of my past episodes on this, but that light might be the single most important signaling factor for circadian rhythm. Also with our feeding times being a big factor there as well. But I feel like light is one of the things we can easily kind of mess up in the modern world because the modern world makes it so easy to get our light environment out of sync. Whether it is with artificial bright light all the time, when it used to be much less light, but it used to be incandescent light, lower light spectrums. We now have screens. We have ultra bright LED lights. We have all these cues of midday light that we are exposed to at all hours of the day.
And there are a lot of data that show how this can really impact our circadian rhythm. So when it comes to health, I actually now personally put light before even food as one of the most important factors when it comes to health. And this can be simple things like main key takeaway here, I’ve said it before, I’ve done a whole episode on it, but getting morning sunlight to start the circadian cascade of our body, knowing when it’s daylight, getting that natural light, not through a window, but outdoors as soon as possible after waking up for at least 10 minutes or so starts a beneficial hormone cascade that is beneficial for our cortisol patterns, our melatonin patterns, our hunger cues, our hormones across the board, and so much more. And it’s free.
I like how Dr. Courtney Hunt says, you know, sunrise, sunlight, sunset, repeat. And I’ll link to my episodes with her. She was absolutely phenomenal. But she explains in great detail how light, kind of the symphony of light that we get from being outdoors is so in harmony with our body and sends so many cues. And that when we are removed from that, that’s when we start to see a lot of problems.
So one thing I have focused on a lot in 2024 was really curating and improving my light environment, getting as much natural light as possible. And the flip side of this being to avoid those bright lights and those signals in the evening.
So one thing that’s made a huge difference for me is to, whenever possible, stop eating when the sun goes down. So I try to only eat when it’s daylight. And after the sun goes down to switch to lower lights. So I have amber bulbs in lamps in my house. And when the sun goes down, those lights go on and the bright overhead lights go off to reinforce to our bodies that it is now the sun has gone down. It’s time to begin getting ready for sleep. This is not the midday. We can start to begin the melatonin production. We can start to begin downshifting into the calmer states that happen before sleep.
And I actually, I know this one can get discounted. There’s no fancy biohacks here. There’s no fancy supplements to take. It’s not sexy, but I really do feel like those small changes can make such a drastic difference when you do them consistently and regularly. And I will put some blog posts in the show notes if you are interested with resources on sort of how to support those various things. But also it truly is as simple as get more natural light when the sun is out, avoid artificial light when the sun is not, and eat when the sun is shining.
So that would be my key takeaway for this pillar, is to pay attention to your light exposure, get more nature, more natural light, reduce your artificial light exposure, especially at night. Try that for 30 days and see how drastically different you will feel.
Another one that I’m seeing, and I think this one’s going to come on big in 2025, is having more direct control over our health and our health journey than we have in the past with the availability of data in ways that we haven’t had before. And I say a lot on here that we are each our own primary healthcare provider. And I feel like this is very important. It’s something I say a lot. And that while we can work with practitioners to help us on that journey, we are the ones in the driver’s seat. We are the ones responsible for our daily choices and actions that make the difference in our health. And we are the ones that have to really be in the driver’s seat if we want to see change.
And I’ll put a link in the show notes to this, but I’m seeing this trend across the board. Companies like Function Health that are putting direct control of that in our hands. They have the most affordable lab testing I’ve seen that you can get twice a year. And it’s less than I’ve ever been able to get it before, even through doctors. And this lets us keep a pulse on our own health data. And they’ve even built a whole network with functional medicine doctors and now AI analytics to be able to give feedback on those lab results within their portal.
But they test more metrics than I have seen from any other company. They give a biological age, which has been fun to track over time for me. And also track all of the hormones I would normally test, including thyroid-related hormones. They really give a deep dive insight into your health. I think having an affordable option for something like that that we can go to yearly really helps kind of put the control of our health back in our own hands.
We also now, of course, have wearable data on everything from Oura rings to Apple watches and so much more. And I think we’re going to see a continued movement toward things that help us integrate and can collectively analyze all of these things in one place. For instance, I know my Oura Ring is now synced with cycle tracking, and I can do a lot of that all within one app. And there’s so much in one place. I think we’re going to continue to see that happen, especially as AI is now so adept at analyzing data. And we now have access to so much data. I think this is one potentially very beneficial use of AI, that we’re going to see it sort of help us be able to analyze in a way that’s very personalized and specific our own health data in a way that creates actionable change.
This one is not really a trend so much as an age-old thing we’re returning to, but I think we’re going to see, hopefully, more of a focus on in-person proximal community in 2025. I’ve also done whole episodes on this. I’ve had guests mention it. I personally believe this is one of the big factors that make blue zones popular and why people live longer there is actually the intense focus on community.
Like I said, this is not a trend. This is actually vital for human survival, but I think we’re going to see a more intentional return to non-digital and in-person community and time spent together in this next year. Certainly, we saw times when that was difficult in the last five years, and I think this is the year when people are going to really focus on that.
I think also when it comes to anything wellness-related, anything we can do in a group is extra beneficial. So sauna is amazing. Sauna with friends is even more amazing, and I think we’re going to see that show up. We’re seeing wellness centers open up everywhere. I’m actually opening one in my local area. And I think we’re going to continue to see this pop up.
And I think even in sort of grassroots ways, we will hopefully see people create community. I know I had to do this for many years when we don’t, we live in a world where we don’t just naturally have built-in community in ways that we did in past generations. We have to sort of sometimes become the creators of the community. And I think we’re going to see more of that, encourage anybody listening to be the one to step out and create the community. If you don’t have strong community where you are. I had to do this multiple times in various places I’ve lived and ended up with some lifelong friends as a result. So I would encourage you to initiate a community if you don’t already have one. And I think we’re going to really see that show up more and more.
I also think last trend, actually last two, that we are going to see an even more of a focus on sleep hygiene and sleep. Again, with almost a thousand episodes of my podcast, I’ve never had anyone claim that sleep was not important. This is one factor everyone seems to agree on is that we need enough sleep. It has to be quality sleep. And there are a lot of factors that go into this. I will also do some solo episodes only on this this year because I do think this is such a vital factor.
But this also kind of ties into the light piece that I mentioned a few minutes ago and getting our light environment optimized is one of the best things we can do for our sleep. And there are now some amazing resources for this as well.
And this is two parts. This is getting enough natural light during the day and avoiding artificial light at night, which can be easier said than done. Because yes, we can turn off our screens and use lamps with natural amber hues and avoid bright blue lights over our head. But ideally, when we are sleeping, we want it to be so dark that we cannot see our hand right in front of our face. And for many of us, this is difficult to achieve if there’s outdoor lighting that is affecting our sleep environment.
In fact, I only recently actually got this step entirely dialed in using something called uBlockout shades. And I’ll put a link to these in the show notes as well. If you haven’t heard of them, they are phenomenal. This is one of those very high ROI things. I have just recently implemented and absolutely love. But these blackout shades go so far beyond blackout curtains, and they guarantee 100% blackout. There’s literally can be absolute bright, sunny daylight outside. And I can close those in my room is completely pitch black, can’t see my hand right here dark. So it makes a huge difference. So if you live in an area where you have outdoor lighting that is affecting your sleep environment, I will put a link in the show notes for you to check that out.
But the key takeaway here is, if you really want amazing sleep, you have got to dial in your light environment, which means get enough natural light as much as possible safely during the day all the time. And avoid artificial light at night, both in the forms of avoiding screens and curating the light you have in your home. And then during sleep, getting it as absolutely close to pitch black as possible. And like I said, my solution for that is something called UBlockout shades. And you can find a link to those, I’m a huge fan of those. But any way that you can to get the artificial light out of your sleep environment will make a huge difference.
And then lastly, I don’t want this podcast to get too long. I think we’re going to see a trend around natural fibers for clothing. We’ve already started seeing this a little bit in 2024 with more even active wear brands popping up using things like wool or organic cotton. And I’m hopeful that we’re going to continue to see this because we’ve now seen studies and reports come out about how the majority of clothing is actually made of plastic. And it turns out it’s not actually great for us to have plastic in close proximity to our skin all the time, especially when we’re sweating and working out.
And this is a tough one because I will admit a lot of those plastic workout clothes are very comfortable and trendy, and I like them too. And one thing I’m focused on in 2025, is cleaning up my clothing and the things that come in contact with my skin. And so I’ll be doing episodes about this as well. But really, it’s as simple as I’m trying to move toward as much as possible fibers like wool, even like alpaca wool, organic cotton. Linen is phenomenal, or silk, which is a lot more expensive.
But I find even some simple switches, like I sleep now in linen pajamas. So only linen is touching my skin at night. And I have linen sheets that actually ends up, you know, kind of changing about a third of my exposure to different clothing, because that’s a third of my day is when I’m sleeping. So I feel like starting there was an easy change by pajamas and sheets. And now I’m done on that. And then I’m working on my daytime clothing as well. But I will include some resources related to that as well.
And there are probably a lot more trends coming in 2025, but those were the some of the ones that were top of mind for me and that I’m really seeing. And I would love to hear from you and what you are, A, what you’re focused on in 2025, any trends that you are seeing. And if you agree or disagree actually with any of the things that I talked about, what you would do differently, I’d love to hear your opinion. So please leave comments or DM me on Instagram.
And I would love to hear your perspective and what you’re focused on in 2025. But for today, thank you so much for sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with me today. I’m so grateful you’re here, so grateful to you for listening and for you being part of this community. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of Wellness Mama Podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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