Here’s what the research says about the potential benefits of using hemp oil for steamy sex, and how to get started. “Several studies have shown that when taken orally, CBD can help reduce the stress hormone cortisol1. It can also act in the brain, working on the serotonin system and the GABA system, which are both related to anxiousness and stress levels2,” explains Julie Moltke, M.D., a medical doctor with a focus on mental health and the author of A Quick Guide to CBD....

At the time, I thought that people would judge us and stare, or even worse, someone might mistake him for my son. In reality, strangers hardly know there is much of an age difference between us, and they’re almost certainly unaware that the difference is about 12.5 years — an age gap that is taboo in our culture. Sometimes, I’d actually pick fights out of insecurity, just so I could utter the lines, “Maybe you’d be happier with someone who for certain has all of her eggs,” or, “Perhaps, you want someone who isn’t on a timeline of starting a family....

“You know, when you stand up straight, it makes you look confident,” my mom would suggest in my insecure teen years, to which she received the biggest eye roll of all. I had the confidence thing down, thank you very much. But when I picked up a roll of film from a disposable camera a week after my senior prom, I sat in the CVS parking lot in a pool of 18-year-old devastation: Despite the careful thought with which I had picked out my perfect fuchsia dress, I didn’t like any of these pictures....

The long hours of my job, the late night pizza runs, the company cafeteria, and the constant barrage of baked goods in the office (not to mention solo midnight trips to the corner market for my favorite indulgences) had me quickly outgrowing my clothes and feeling increasingly moody and tired. For the first time in my life, I was truly overweight. Then one day, it dawned on me: the reason I couldn’t lose weight —or keep off the weight I did lose—stemmed from using programs that weren’t right for me....

Alcohol always seemed to be my ally, something to get me through the good times and the bad. I associated it with champagne in restaurants, red wine with meals, a cold beer on a hot day with friends in the garden. Today I inhabit a different world, a sober one, and I see the whole business of alcohol consumption differently. Here’s what I think of my erstwhile friend, booze, after almost two years of shunning it in favor of a healthy and happy existence: alcohol erodes your body’s natural ability to cope with difficulties in life, thus causing anxiety....

Since we can’t rely on food to get our vitamin D to where it needs to be, and trying to score enough of the sunshine vitamin from the actual sun is—ironically—a complicated, caveat-riddled can of worms in and of itself (and a topic for another day), that leaves us with one tried-and-true route to healthy vitamin D status: supplements.* Vitamin D also plays a crucial role in thyroid function and supports a healthy pregnancy....

There’s the 5:2 model (eat normal calories five days a week and only 500 calories the other two days); alternate-day fasting (one day you eat normally, the next you eat very little); OMAD (as in “one meal a day”); and then there’s 16:8 fasting, which limits food to an eight-hour eating window each day. This eating schedule comes with all the benefits of other fasting schedules (plus, recent research finds that it may lower blood pressure)....