☆ Your LED mask cheat sheet for glowy skin, the new snail mucin, designer babies

Hey lovely,

Jasmine here, Editor of Daily Rituals, back with your Wellness Dose.

Big shout out to those of you who have been sharing The Wellness Dose this week - Alix, Elizabeth, Megan and Georgia all have some dreamy referral goodies en route to say thank you. For those of you who'd like to get the easiest £10 Sephora gift card (maybe ever?), your referral link is at the bottom of this email.

PS, fellow introverts - if people ask you why you’re a lil quiet at work today, just show them this and they’ll understand.

As always, thank you for being here. I'm so grateful for you.

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The best stories & updates that caught our eye this week → 

• 🐌 The new snails: One COSRX Snail Mucin sells every 20 seconds (crazy), but there's a shinier new hero ingredient sliding into our routines - jellyfish mucin. If you've ever tried the viral K-beauty favourite and found it a bit too... well, slimy for your liking, or it didn't deliver the hydration promised, then it might be time to give this ocean-infused alternative a go. Consider this your insider heads up before TikTok catches wind and creates another beauty supply shortage.

• 📊 Sex ed failed us: According to this new Hertility report, over 27k women couldn't tell you how long their cycle actually is, and nearly half of those actively trying to conceive don't know when their fertile window happens. It also found that some women think their cycles are "regular" when they're actually outside the healthy 21-35 day range. Your menstrual cycle is your fifth vital sign (right up there with heart rate and blood pressure), yet somehow most of us are just winging it. The good news? Things are way easier now with a decent health tracker or an app like this.

• 🧬 Designer baby drama: Want a tall, smart baby, with low Alzheimer's risk? That's embryo number three. This startup just launched an embryo ranking service across 900 traits for $5,999. Whilst scanning embryos for serious hereditary diseases is essential, paying five grand to cherry pick your "perfect" baby feels a little icky and slightly Theranos (as the science is still catching up). The issue? Parents could make irreversible decisions based on pretty shaky data, and you know, there's something to be said for letting nature do its thing.

• 💸 Rhode's latest drop: The ink has barley dried on their e.l.f acquisition and Rhode have already dropped the waitlist for their new product - the glazing mist. A skin-soothing, barrier-boosting mist version of their cult glazing milk - it’s basically a dewy-girls-dream. Remember their viral lip case? Hailey’s going for round 2 with a mirror mist holder, but it’s not quite got the selfie-factor like the case (and well, looks strangely umm familiar..). 

• 🔬 L'Oréal's billion-dollar bet: The beauty giant just dropped $1.1bil on science-based skincare darling Medik8, and TikTok is not happy about it. Current customers are spiralling about their beloved retinals getting the corporate treatment (aka the formulas being made cheaper & less effective for higher profit). Either way, expect more mega-acquisitions to follow since the beauty giants are clearly in a bidding war this year. Hot take for anyone building a skincare brand right now? This valuation suggests that having clinical data isn't going to be a nice-to-have in future, customers want proof and will put their money behind it too. 

• 📱 Your AI doc: Created to support the Mexican healthcare system, this AI platform can now diagnose 20 conditions from just a 70-second selfie video. We’re talking serious stuff too - think diabetes, hypertension, even early signs of heart disease before you’ve even noticed them yourself. Honestly beats sitting in a germ-infested waiting room while someone coughs directly on you, plus getting a heads-up when your body has a better chance of course-correcting? It’s the health-care glow up we’ve been waiting for.

• 🍹 It's Aperol season: We have to give kudos to the Aperol team - they sent the UK wild with their ready-to-serve multipack launch and last week had NYC in a chokehold with their 100-person viral waiter campaign. But if you’re looking to skip the hangover without saying adios to that orangey goodness, these zero-calorie cans are your heat wave essential. Tried and tested by yours truly (for research purposes, obviously), they’re free from artificial sweeteners and less than £1 per can.

Editors List: My Top 10 LED Masks Right Now

^{THERE’S A SURPRISING WINNER..}

Something I always get asked about is my favourite LED mask on the market. Many of you know that me and my skin have a complicated relationship at best, so when at-home LED masks started popping up everywhere a while back, I did what any self-respecting (& slightly obsessive) wellness girly does - fell into a research spiral about what actually makes them worth splashing the cash on. Because dropping £400+ on a device that makes you look like Optimus Prime's long lost sister, only for it to do absolutely nothing? No thank you.

★ The appeal = being a multi-tasking queen

IMO, the main appeal? Getting professional-grade light therapy all whilst binge-watching the latest series of You. The issue though, is not all devices are created equal, and worse still - just because it's pricier doesn't mean it's using half decent tech. 

Full disclosure - I haven't used all of these masks (who on earth is buying more than one?!), but what I have done is gathered all their specs, compared them ruthlessly & scored them based on a system I'll explain below.

★ LED 101

You probably know this already, but LED therapy delivers specific wavelengths of light to your skin cells. Basically, different wavelengths do different things, making it perfect for those of us juggling multiple skin issues (where are my sensitive, acne-prone but also aging skin girlies at?!).

★ What they do:

• Red light ➔ The glow-giver: Stimulates collagen for plumper, radiant skin 

• Near Infrared (NIR) ➔ The invisible healer: Penetrates deepest into the skin (& muscles) to repair, regenerate and reduce inflammation. 

• Blue ➔ The acne assassin: A shorter wavelength going only 0.5mm deep, targeting acne-causing bacteria to help with oil regulation and clarity.

★ What actually matters?

Brands love shouting about the number of LEDs they've managed to cram into a mask, but as with most things in life (except maybe days off the 9-5?) - it's about quality over quantity.

Here’s what to look out for:

• Irradiance - How strong the lights actually are (measured in mW/cm²), and it's where most brands try to pull a fast one. You want something between 35-150 mW/cm². Too low = won't penetrate your skin properly. Too high = unnecessarily spicy.

• Wavelength - We're looking for the scientific gold standard wavelengths known for their efficacy. For red light, that's 630nm, for NIR it's 830nm and for blue it's 415nm. 

• Treatment Time - This one's personal preference, but since you're all busy women, my feeling is that less treatment time = better.

★ The scoring system

The system looked at both science (power, clinical wavelengths, extra features) and real-life practicality (price, treatment time) to score each out of 100. And plot twist, my own favourite came out third.

★ The DR Verdict

I’ve shared the Top 10 list here - consider this your cheat sheet for cutting through the marketing BS & spending wisely. 

Some intel on the top 3:

• The app that helps you customise the Qure LED settings gets less than favourable reviews. Do with that what you will.

• Whilst having cryo eye pads is great, it’s worth remembering their inclusion means you’re missing the LED benefits there. 

• The Dr Dennis Gross mask is currently on sale in select online stores (linked in the doc).

Not every mask deserves a spot in your routine (as you'll see from the rankings). But when you find one with decent specs that you'll actually use consistently? That’s when you’ll go forth and glow.

PS. hit reply let me know what you’d like me to rate & score next! Sauna blankets? Fitness trackers? Protein powders?

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