Amazon Finds for Self-Care

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I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout. Sorry, mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I'm a Certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness hall of Famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. Hey jj, Virgin here. Okay, real talk. So often the holidays sneak up on me. Travel, gifts, hosting, you know, all the things and suddenly it's like, wait, who spent what and where? And I know I'm not the only one who's looked at a bill in January and thought, wow, that escalated quickly. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface. On your laptop or on your phone. Monarch lets you link everything and gives you real time visibility so you're not shocked later. Right now, I've been checking the holiday spending category so I don't accidentally start the new year with that dreaded debt hangover. And honestly, just seeing everything laid out is already helping me stay more aware. This season, Monarch does the heavy lifting. It links your accounts in minutes, gives you smart categorization and super clear visuals. Yes, that end of year reset could be a real goal. This time. Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virginonarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code Virgin.

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Let's get real. It's all too common for us women to put our self care on the back burner, right? I mean, we're always on the go. We're always taking care of everyone else taking care of them, except for us. Now, here's the thing. Self care is selfless, not selfish. So we gotta make our self care number one on the list, not the last priority. All right, so what I've done to make this easy for you is I've got some of my favorite Amazon finds that can make you have a little bit of calm in the chaos. So I'm going to start out with my favorite thing of all. And I will tell you that I have created an entire, like, bathtub sanctuary. Like, I love, love, love baths. And what I love to do with my bath is throw in Epsom salts. So this is just some great old Amazon Epsom salts. I did get the lavender ones because that can be great at night, right? But why do I love Epsom salts so much? Well, first of all, your skin's a sip. So Epsom salts are a rich source of magnesium. They're detoxifying. Magnesium is really relaxing and soothing to the muscles. Plus, you got the lavender in there. But here's another thing you can do. Dump in your bath, save a little bit, and then scrub your skin with it, too. So I will get in there, do a super hot bath. This is great, too. If you don't have a sauna at home, do some heat therapy, get in a super hot bath. Bonus points if you do the hot bath, cold shower. Hot bath, cold shower. I know, but it's really helpful. Okay, so that's the first one. Epsom salts easy enough to do. And if you're traveling, you can just have some shipped over to your hotel room if you get a bathtub in there. Now the next one. And speaking of traveling, I have two of these. This is my manta sleep sleep mask. And I have one in my travel bag because this goes everywhere with me. And also I have one in my nightstand table at home. I don't use it for sleep. I use it for meditation. But when I travel quite often, I cannot get the room dark enough. And what I Love about this one is has these little pads on it so it will not mess up your eyelashes and it will completely black things out. This is important because I've been using eye masks for years and one summer I had to use one and I ended up with like eyelashes going sideways right from not having these little cups. So these are great. They also pop off so that you can wash them. And I also have for you my best rest sleep sheet. So I've got. This is one of my hacks for great sleep. I've got more@jjvirgin.com BestRest but this is also, again, what I use every morning. Wake up, go to the bathroom, get on my scale, come back, and I do meditation using this mask. The other thing that I travel with, I don't normally need these at home unless the next door neighbors are having a party is these little earplugs. Now, I'll tell you what, these ones are called. Buen swino. I have tried a lot of earplugs. I do not like things in my ears probably. No one probably does. But I especially. I don't know if I have little ears or what have you, but these things work amazing. They actually have multiple little heads on them so you can find the one that fits best for you. So I've been super happy with these. And man, you know, maybe you're on a long flight and you want to sleep or again, the neighbor decided to have an impromptu party or you are at a hotel. That's noisy. Earplugs for the win. So these are the ones that I love that don't bug me. Now, this next thing I think is possibly one of the coolest things ever. And there's two of different choices here. So at home, this is a Philips hue light bulb. I know this just doesn't. You're like, really? This is super exciting. Yes, this is that exciting. Here's why. This is like 60 bucks. It's not crazy expensive, but what this Philips hue light bulbs let you do is change the lighting based on the time of day. So at night we turn this to red and the whole room is now just a soft red. And in the morning, you can mimic natural sunlight, which is what you want. So this is the super coolest thing that I found because what we were doing prior to this is unscrewing the light bulbs at night and putting in the red light bulbs. I mean, that's just a hassle. So this just allows you to do this with an app. Now here's what's super cool when you travel, they have a little travel light that you can take with you and you can do the same thing with it. You can make it go red at night, you can have it go in the morning, do natural sunlight. And this is important because sometimes you're traveling and changing time zones and you need to shift the lighting a little bit and this allows you to do that. Finally, I had a couple years ago, was about 10 years ago I had some thyroid issues. And the one of the first things that I noticed was that my hair was falling out, but I didn't notice it fast enough. And so all of a sudden I'm having my hair fall out coupled with like, you know, a couple issues with hair color and bam. My hair was not what I was used to and I had to bring it back. And what I found to help with this hormonal hair loss was this product, Xenogen. Now you know, what do we know? We know that thyroid can impair hair function, cortisol, estrogen, testosterone. But there's specifically an issue with something called dht, which is dihydrotestosterone. And so dihydrotestosterone is a natural hormone that's present in hair follicles. And what happens is, you know, we all have a little bit. But if you have too much DHT cuts off the vital blood flow to the follicle, which then makes it weaken and then it stops producing hair. And it's this buildup of DHT that's the most common cause of men's and women's hair loss. So this xenogen has this proprietary blend of plant based nutraceutical ingredients that removes the existing DHT from the hair follicle and blocks further production of it. Now it takes time. When I first started using it, first I went, oh, my hair's not falling out like it used to. It took about three months to really start to notice difference and then really took a good nine months. So it takes time to get totally back. But wow, what a difference. So this xenogen for the win. This is the big at home. It's pricey, I'm going to tell you, but you know, it's your hair, it's worth it. And I have a little travel one for on the road as well because you don't want to be using those hotel crappy shampoos, right? So these are like simple, easy tools. Again, I travel with these as well because when I have my routine, I just make sure my routine goes with me everywhere I go. And most importantly, there of course, is that sleep mask and the earplugs because you want to be making sure you're getting a great night's sleep now. If you're still having trouble getting going in the morning, watch this next video on three things you can do for peak energy all day long.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and more importantly, that you're built to last. And check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and my website, JJ virgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast so you don't miss a single episode@subscribetoj.com See you next time.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and Reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment where whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.