The wellness trends to look out for in 2021

Brighten up

She’s treated the who’s who of Hollywood, from Kim Kardashian to Gwyneth Paltrow, and now the queen of aesthetics, Dr Barbara Sturm, is set to put the bounce back into Londoners’ skin. Her much-anticipated third global flagship skin clinic and spa is coming to London, opening in Mayfair’s Mount Street later this year. In the meantime, Sturm’s The Good C Vitamin C Serum, £110, is available from this week and is the skin brightener we could all do with this dreary January. (drsturm.com)

Kansa combing  

Ayurveda’s answer to gua sha massage, but for the scalp. Made from kansa, an ancient metal alloy prescribed in Ayurvedic medicine to detoxify and balance pH levels, this weighty comb boosts micro-circulation and stimulates Ayurvedic energy points on the scalp called marma, which connect the body, bringing balance. Launching in February, £82 (maulirituals.com) 

Plant-powered purity

The hashtag #houseplant on Instagram grew by 40 per cent last year as we sought to bring the outside in and benefit from nature’s air purifiers. However, if parenting a variegated plant is too much commitment go for Briiv’s plant-inspired air purifier. As powerful as more than 3,000 medium house plants, Briiv uses biodegradable moss, coconut, carbon and wool to filter air instead of the usual non-recyclable plastic filters (15 million of which are disposed of each year). It tackles a 6 sq m room within an hour, no watering required. From £249 (briiv.co.uk) 

Print your vitamins 

Fed up with rattling around with multiple bottles of vitamins? Using the latest 3D nutritional printing method, Nourished vitamin stacks combine seven active ingredients (from a choice of 28) tailored to your lifestyle into  one vegan chew. From £14.99 

The happy pill  

An extract of saffron, the mood-balancing, mood-stabilising, anti-anxiety super ingredient affron is what we all need right now. Find it in LYMA’s already high-performing supplements, which have been boosted to incorporate the happy extract.  £298 for a 90-day supply (lyma.life)

Test, track... and eat

The Food Marble has made the gold standard food intolerance test both mini and mobile. Doctors use hydrogen breath tests to diagnose lactose and fructose intolerance as undigested food ferments and produces more of the gas. The Food Marble delivers the same test in a small device, tracking your results via an app so that you can narrow down and identify dietary triggers in real time. £149 (foodmarble.com)

Sachet set  

Professor Green’s latest venture,  Aguulp supplements are absorbed in mere minutes to boost gut health, while Curapella’s Pellamex contains superstar ingredient filaggrin to supercharge skin’s own hydration abilities. Aguulp Liquid Supplements, £40 for 20 sachets (aguulp.com); Curapella Pellamex, £49.99 for 30 sachets (curapella.com)  

Netflix and Chill  — even more

The Headspace app took meditation mainstream with 65 million downloads to date. Now it’s balancing our brains via streaming, collaborating with Netflix to produce a three-part Headspace Guide to Meditation this month (perfect timing) as well a Headspace Guide to Sleep, an experiential workshop series coming out later in the year. (netflix.com/headspace)

Keep the  blues away

Working, socialising and streaming from home means we’re exposed to the blue light emitted from our screens like never before and it is thought to be as damaging to skin as UV. As a result, the NPD Group reported that sales of blue light protective skin care increased by 170 per cent in the first half of 2020 and it won’t stop there, with the latest mists and lotions helping to protect and hydrate skin with SPF, hyaluronic acid and more.

Beyond airplane mode  

When dinner parties resume, bring up electrosmog to spark debate. There is real disagreement and many theories as to whether electrosmog (aka EMF, electromagnetic fields created by wi-fi, electricity and mobile phone masts and devices) can harm our health. However, the well-being world isn’t taking any risks, from kitting out rooms with wi-fi-killing switches to wellness resorts such as Villa Stéphanie in Baden Baden going further with copper grids embedded in the walls to block both electricity and wireless signals. For those looking for spa treatment at home, infrared sauna blankets are the latest well-being kit and Mihigh is launching an EMF-free version, from £399 this month. The heat from infrared waves penetrates skin seven times more effectively than a traditional sauna and is said to flush toxins, boost collagen and endorphins and help burn up to 600 calories.

Training day

As with any sort of training you need to keep changing your routine in order to up your game. Serum training involves tweaking the active ingredients in your serum so that you keep seeing results for your skin. So far, Skinceuticals’ Custom DOSE is one of the most advanced takes on this trend. Once you’ve received your personal DOSE as prescribed by your clinician, you’ll be booked in for further serum adjustments every three months. Skinceuticals has added new boosters to its menu of options at the same time as preparing to launch its first treatment room in Selfridges as soon as doors reopen.  

Make that WOFH

Working from home also means working out from home for the foreseeable. Launching this month and founded by four ex-Barry’s Bootcamp trainers, Grndhouse is the first online fitness studio dedicated solely to strength-based training, offering structured resistance-based workouts wherever you are.

Music as medicine

Amid everything else, 2020 was the year virtual sound  baths went mainstream. Apps such as Spotify, Myndstream (from the founders of the entertainment group that made emotional music for shows including Game of Thrones and House of Cards) and a:live are focusing on creating music to specifically drive daily well-being goals, with tracks for focus, meditation and movement. If this all sounds a little too Goop for you, neuroscientists might change your tune. In the United States the National Institutes of Health is funding ongoing research to the tune of $20 million (£14.75m) combining neuroscience and music therapy to uncover how beats affect our brains and health. Hack your headphones for health with one of our favourite downloads, Soul Medicine, £20, a collection of music and meditation tracks composed around a 432MHz frequency, which has been shown to boost the parasympathetic nervous system, balance both sides of the brain and decrease heart rate and blood pressure — a soundtrack for your soul. 

In the tread

Peloton had many of us pedalling our way through the current pandemic, but now it’s the company’s Tread that’s trending. This interactive take on the traditional treadmill combines full-body work outs with floor-based exercises and the guidance (and healthy competition) provided by interactive classes. The 23.8-inch HD touchscreen tilts up and down by 50 degrees allowing you to seamlessly transition between tread and floor-work. And it’s smaller than your average sofa — though a little more conspicuous. Peloton Tread, from £2,295 (onepeloton.co.uk)

Don’t stress  over this test  

Tech and finance companies have normalised stress testing, monitoring their workforces to future proof their health, and the newest wearable tech takes stress tracking to the masses with ever more sophisticated means. The much talked about Apple Watch Series 6 (from £379; apple.com) furthers the tech giant’s existing stress-monitoring with an in-built blood oxygen monitor to sense quick and shallow breathing — a sign of anxiety — as well as overexertion particularly at altitude. Fitbit’s Sense (£299.99; fitbit.com) is the first wearable gadget to track stress by measuring how well the skin conducts energy (known as electrodermal activity), monitoring small electrical changes in the sweat on your skin when placing your palm over the face of the device. Excitingly, Amazon’s Halo, access to which is currently invite-only in the US, has a ‘tone’ monitor that can assess changes in your voice that indicate stress or anxiety.  

Let’s CBD  

It seems we haven’t got CBD fatigue yet with the market outpacing that of vitamin C and D supplements combined. CBD is being used in ever-more inventive ways from calming drinks to oral strips that dissolve when placed under your tongue and CBD-laced tampons. However, expect to hear more about other cannabinoids, which are compounds found in the hemp plant, such as CBC (cannabichromene) and CBG (cannabigerol). In the meantime, boost the effects of CBD with oils that combine it with terpenes, plant compounds found in high concentrations in hemp. It is thought that combining terpenes with CBD creates what is called as an entourage effect, increasing the overall impact of CBD. 

Ice, ice, baby

Cryotherapy has gained traction with extreme athlete turned well-being guru Wim Hof instilling the benefits of shocking ice-cold temperatures — and, hey, cold showers are free. Now ice rolling is the latest skin-massaging technique to try. A cooler version of face rolling, it de-puffs skin while the cryo, or ‘ice’, element boosts microcirculation to wake up you and your skin, fast.

Turn on the tapping

Meet the woman taking over tapping — the therapy not the dance. Leading London tapper and coach, Poppy Delbridge, has a dynamic take on traditional tapping. The emotional freedom technique, or EFT, is aimed at quickly relieving the emotional blockages holding us back by, er, tapping into the amygdala, the almond-shaped part of the brain responsible for triggering the ‘fight-or-flight’ mode. ‘Rapid tapping is effective because it doesn’t require lengthy sessions and it has an on-the-move approach for those who want quick and tangible results with a neuroscience backing,’ says Delbridge. Traditionally fingers are used to tap energy points throughout the body, but soon we’ll be tapping  with crystals, sticks and lasers when Delbridge launches her tapping tool collection later this year. Sessions start at £220 (poppydelbridge.com)

Lullabies for grown-ups  

Half of Britons say their sleep has worsened since the Covid-19 outbreak. Thankfully, adult bedtime stories, sleepscapes and sleeping tutorials are here to help us rest.  

For Lasting Change: The Sleep School, £29.99 annually

Guy Meadows Sleep School’s first app launches this month bringing in-depth tutorials, guidance and on-line one-to-ones to the bleary-eyed at all points on the sleeplessness spectrum.  

To Create The Mood: Loona, £64.99 annually

With a stellar tech team and model Natalia Vodianova as an  angel investor, this app contains whimsical sleepscapes including guided colouring activities designed to help you disengage from the day.  

To Fall Asleep: Calm, £28.99 annually 

Voices don’t get any more soothing than  Matthew McConaughey’s Southern drawl. Adult stories are delivered at a pace and timbre that encourages you to switch, and drift, off.  

Therapy transformed

Taking therapy outside of drab clinical settings, The Soke private health and wellness centre’s interiors are more member’s club than clinic, while seven of the 10 consulting rooms also have relaxation pods, allowing clients to unwind after each session. ‘There is a changing rhetoric around mental health,’ says The Soke founder, Maryam Meddin. ‘Yet the sector has been slow to modernise at the same pace to ensure that those accessing their services are made to feel like clients rather than patients, which helps efforts to turn the talk of destigmatisation into practice.’ Top-notch psychiatrists and psychologists work alongside specialists in couples and family therapy as well as leadership coaching for a holistic approach to mental health. It’s strange to think that this isn’t the norm.