Last month, we were ready to double down on any quarantine fitness challenges and streamable workouts we could get our hands on. We felt pressured to come out of this period of downtime with something to show for: a personal best, some extra muscle tone, a fully-tackled marathon training program. We thrive on pushing ourselves,…
Read More
How we’re staying healthy and staying happy It goes without saying: with all that’s going on in the world, it’s become harder to stay healthy and happy. For many of us, our lives have been upended, our livelihoods put on the line, and any semblance of normalcy so far out in the future that it’s…
Read More
A few ways you can stay healthy in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. Hospitals are severely understaffed, entire countries are on lockdown, and everything from Disneyland to March Madness has been shut down while the world gets a handle on the spread of coronavirus. Here are three simple ways you can protect your health…
Read More
You know how they say the devil only wears the finest clothes, so as to trick you into thinking he is upstanding and wholesome, the type your mother would label as “good for you”? Well, we’re well acquainted with our own personal devil, and that sugar-dusted, freshly-baked goatboy is gluten. We’ll be the first to…
Read More
At Intake, we like to start each morning by scrolling through the news and freaking ourselves out. For instance, listen to this timely piece of winter news: The CDC has estimated that this flu season (from October 2019 until the date of this post in January), there have already been between 9 and 14 million…
Read More
Happy New DECADE, Nose Breathers! Maybe it’s no surprise that the simplest New Years resolution we’ll be making in 2020 is to focus on our breath. Of course, we’re already in the business of focusing on our breath, but we see it this way: as much as each new year is an opportunity to incorporate…
Read More
At the Intake Office, we’ve been trying to practice our zen a little more. There are so many ways to do this–taking a walk on the beach, hitting up your Mindfulness app, Kondo-ing your living space–but our favorite (of course) is breathwork. If you practice yoga, you’ve probably dabbled in Pranayama, the formal practice of…
Read More
Many studies, such as this one, that compare nasal to oral breathing deduce that, during exercise, oral breathing tends to be favorable because not enough air can be inhaled through the nose. Even for those of us with physiologically “perfect” noses, nasal breathing during exercise (especially without a nasal dilator) has to be practiced in…
Read More
Vasodilation is the widening of the blood vessels and occurs naturally in the body when an increase in blood flow to muscles and issues is needed. During exercise, vasodilation has several benefits: it helps your body cool itself down, it allows oxygen to travel more quickly to your muscles and organs, and it increases blood…
Read More
The immune system is one of the body’s most complex systems, second only to the nervous system, and acts as a guardian against harmful agents in order to keep us healthy. One of the body’s first defenses against airborne pathogens and bacteria exists in the paranasal sinuses: when we breathe in and out through our…
Read More