Tune In: Well-Being Habits That Can Improve Your Skin & Bring More Joy To Your Life

Everything is skin care. And on today's episode of Clean Beauty School, we get into all of the ways that focusing on well-being can not only impact your skin but vastly improve your life. To do so, I'm having on a guest you probably know pretty well: mindbodygreen's co-founder and co-CEO Colleen Wachob, co-author of the new book The Joy of Well-Being: A Practical Guide to a Happy, Healthy & Long Life (she wrote it with mbg's other co-founder, her husband, Jason). 

They wrote the book to not only shed light on all the simple, effective ways you can improve longevity—but to find joy while doing it. "We wanted to bring more airtime and more focus to [well-being] tools that are time tested that so many of us can agree on—and also integrate the possibility of joy," she says. "I worry that we've become so disconnected from what joy truly is. I think we all need to ask ourselves, 'What is it about our lives that brings us joy?'"

"If you don't eat well for a couple of weeks, you'll probably be OK. If you miss some days at the gym or working out, you're going to be OK. If you don't sleep for three days, well, you're not gonna be the same human," says Wachob, who's had her own journey with sleep throughout her life that you can read about here. 

There are many things to consider when discussing nutrition: making sure you're eating real, whole foods as much as possible, getting your fill of antioxidant-rich plants, not following any plan that's too restrictive. And one area that Wachob says she's now prioritizing is eating enough protein. 

"In the 2010s it wasn't really about building muscle and building armor. But fast-forward to 2023, people are talking about nutrition in a new way. Now I am super thoughtful about my protein intake and getting 30 grams of protein every day," she says. "It's about envisioning the type of life I want 30, 40 years from now and what type of body I want."

Ensuring you have a healthy, well-functioning body long term means fortifying the infrastructure—your muscles. 

Mental health and the skin are deeply connected. On a physiological level, this can be explained through the skin-brain axis. Skin is both a stress perceiver (meaning it picks up on stress and sends signals to the brain) and a target of stress responses (meaning it signals stress happening in the body). 

One of the best ways to reduce stress is through relationships and connection. "There's an interesting study that shows that nutrition has about a 20% impact on your mortality rate. Exercise and movement have about 30% influence on your longevity. But connection—being in a good relationship, having friends, having a partner—can actually impact your mortality rate by over 45%1," she says. "We found that hugely inspiring, but you know, we don't really learn how to build or maintain connections as we go on life's journey."