The Top Wellness Trends Report with Health Expert Faye McCray [Episode #845]
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This weekâs topic is: The Top Wellness Trends Report with Health Expert Faye McCray
I am so excited to have my very special guest, Faye McCray, who is Head of Content at health and wellness website Well and Good, and sheâs here today to talk through their annual Wellness Trends report. Listen in as Faye and I discuss the 2024 Wellness Trend report, from artificial intelligence in personalized fitness, to strength training your skin, and so much more!
TOPICS COVERED
- Next-Generation postpartum care Is bornâŚ
- Red-hot sauna industry and new ways to optimize your sweat sessionâŚ
- Eating for wellness is a lot simpler and celebratory in 2024âŚ
- Artificial intelligence in personalized fitness gets smarterâŚ
- âStrength Trainingâ your skinâŚ
- âHair Longevityâ products to keep hair healthy as you ageâŚ
- How the Real Estate Industry is bringing wellness to your doorstepâŚ
- Our everyday gear performing medical tests from homeâŚ

About Faye McCray
Faye McCray is Head of Content, Well+Good. McCray joined the company most recently from RVO Health, where she was Vice President and Head of Health Equity & Social Impact across the companyâs brands including Healthline, Psych Central, Greatist, and more. There, she worked in partnership with all teams from editorial to product to brand strategy in order to champion and advance health equity for diverse and underserved communities, addressing social determinants of health and barriers to care that perpetuate health inequality.
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- Additional resources in transcript
- Faye McCray Interview
- Wellness Trend Report for 2024
Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:
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- Back to Basics: Four Cornerstone Tips to Support Your Overall Health and Wellness
- 5 Effective Ways to Stay on Track and Thrive with your Health, Wellness and Energy
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Transcript:
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
Kimberly: 00:02 Hello, love and welcome back to our Monday interview show where today I am so excited to share a fascinating conversation that I had with Faye McCray, who is the head of content at Health and Wellness website well and good, where today we talk through their annual wellness trends report. Now, if youâve been a longer term listener of our feelgood podcast, you might remember that we have covered this Wellness Trends report for the last several years, and itâs always fascinating. Itâs always different, it never disappoints well and good. Puts a lot of thought and research behind their trends report, and it really spans the gamut of different aspects of health and wellness from our physical wellbeing. It covers beauty, it covers mental health, it covers healthcare changes and coverage. So Iâm very excited to get into this upcoming yearâs report, and as Fay and I talk about, itâs nice to talk about this, I think this time of year with the new year ahead of us because it gives us a chance to consider some of these trends and how we might incorporate them in our own lives, how we might benefit.
01:19 And with winter solstice coming up, it just feels like a really reflective time to me. This is a time to consider whatâs best for us, whatâs best for our lives, how we can continue to progress on our individual journeys, and also just keep growing and evolving as humans, which is really, I believe, what weâre here to do. So thank you so much for tuning in, and just a little quick reminder before we get into our show today, that over on our website, my sauna.com, you can submit questions for our Thursday q and a show where I take time to answer a question around our four cornerstones, food body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth and more depth. Youâll also find articles, other podcasts, meditations, thousands of delicious recipes and more. So please check it out. Itâs all over there as our central hub. Alright, all that being said, letâs get right into our show today with Faye McCray.
Interview with Faye McCray
Kimberly: 05:08 Faye, itâs so great to be in touch with you. Weâve just been chatting about traveling and living a natural lifestyle and weâre so in tune, and Iâm so happy to spend time with you today. Thank you so much.
Faye: 05:32 Oh, thank you for having me. Itâs great to be here.
Kimberly: 05:35 Itâs really interesting when we think about trends, right? The trends for the next year, the trends that have happened, thereâs always this shift and so well and good has been so amazing at compiling all this data, all this information. Iâve been reading the trends, reports from Well and Good for years, and I always learn so much about it. First of all, it seems like you guys put so much effort into it and it takes months of research. Is that right?
Faye: 06:05 Absolutely. Yeah. It takes months. So Iâm the new kid. I started in July, but Iâve been a fan of trends for a really long time, and I think I underestimated how much work the team pours into it, but we really want to get it right. And I think also we want there to be real takeaways. We donât want anyone to feel like when youâre reading the trans, oh, what can I do with this? But really say, Hey, look out for these things. This is where you can find them. This is where you can be a part of this, and we want to make sure that thatâs expert backed and we want to make sure that we have the right information behind it. So we pour a lot of intention, purpose research, just all of the things into this report.
Kimberly: 06:41 Itâs made with a lot of love,
Faye: 06:43 A lot of love
Kimberly: 06:44 And a lot of research,
Faye: 06:46 Love and research.
Kimberly: 06:48 And one thing Iâve noticed over the years that I love about Well and Good is really starting to, you can see how much more holistic itâs become. I remember last year, one of the trends was the telehealth and the mental health, and just seeing that wasnât something that any of us really talked about or you might not have seen on the trends report a decade ago, obviously. So weâre just starting to come into this space of being really honoring our wholism, I think, and our wholistic wellness, which is something that Iâm so passionate about. So I love that. Well and Good is really supporting that.
Faye: 07:19 Yeah, I think thereâs been really a shift sort of in the cultural zeitgeist too, of coming out of the pandemic. I think folks wanted more autonomy of their health. They want it to be able to really think about their health at all different levels. So I think in some ways itâs not as much driven by us as itâs driven by people and the way that weâre thinking about things and the way that weâre thinking about ourselves. And it is a really beautiful thing to see that the landscape is responding to that.
Kimberly: 07:45 Beautiful. So letâs talk about some of these top trends here, and we will link in the show notes, of course, to the trends report brand new. I love that you guys publish it before the beginning of the year. People talk about New Year. So much Faye. For me, thereâs this natural time right now coming towards winter solstice. I feel like Iâm already preparing for the new year. Iâm thinking about my goals for next year. Do you feel that too?
Faye: 08:14 Yeah, absolutely. And I think that youâre right. I donât know that we intentionally thought about that and did it that way, but even in just the preparation of this and reading the articles that we created, it has caused me to kind of go deep and think, what are those things that I want to take ownership of in the new year? And then how do these things help me get there? So it really is a great time of reflection, and we hope that this can add to that too.
Kimberly: 08:38 Yeah, I think itâs really powerful because New Yearâs is a manmade holiday, and of course this is still relevant, and many people will be reading the report all through first quarter, but now winter solstice means the outer light is going down, and so the inner light grows. So our awareness, our intentionality, our connection. So I think our connection to wellness is really strong right now. So I love that weâre talking about the report now versus in a month or two. Yeah,
Faye: 09:11 Absolutely.
Kimberly: 09:12 So Iâm going to talk about some of these topics. Iâm going to dive right in. And again, this is just a smattering of the very incredible in-depth report that we, again, weâll link to. But one of the things that resonated so much with me, Faye as a mom, Iâve got a three-year-old and seven-year-old. Iâm a boy mama. Iâve got two sons. Iâm a
Faye: 09:32 Boy mama.
Kimberly: 09:34 How old are your sons?
Faye: 09:36 I have, my littlest is seven, and then I have a thirteen-year-old and a sixteen-year-old. Have
Kimberly: 09:40 Three boys
Faye: 09:41 Have three boys.
Kimberly: 09:43 Oh my gosh, thatâs so fun. So we both have seven-year-olds. What a fun age.
Faye: 09:47 Itâs the best age. I love this age so much.
Kimberly: 09:51 Theyâre so innocent still, but you can have a conversation. Itâs fun. Itâs a really,
Faye: 09:57 Yeah, funny
Kimberly: 10:00 That sixteen-year-old day,
Faye: 10:03 Itâs been tough. Yeah, also a really exciting time. I feel like now Iâm getting to know him as a person, and I am like, youâre a really cool human. I like you. Which is really nice.
Kimberly: 10:18 I love that every phase, right?
Faye: 10:19 Yeah, for sure.
Kimberly: 10:22 So speaking of phases, the first trend was talking about this new generation of postpartum care, which I donât think has been in the media very much or hasnât been in the culture very much. Itâs sort of like, okay, pregnancy, how we take care of ourselves. Thereâs been a lot around birth. Thereâs been documentaries about birth birthing different ways, but then itâs like we miss this fourth trimester, and a lot of women, Arya Veda talks about this, how women became very susceptible in their calcium levels, in their bones, in their depression levels. Can you talk a little bit about this new trend, which sounds really positive and amazing?
Next-Generation postpartum care Is born
Faye: 11:03 Yeah. Itâs one of, there are trends that we did that you get excited about and you want to be a part of, and then there are trends that just hit you like, yes, this is what we should have been doing. We all heard the stats about the state of maternal health in this country. I mean, itâs dire, especially for women of color. We know that that fourth trimester is actually the time when youâre most at risk, when the mortality rates are the highest. So when you hear about companies kind of coming out now and figuring out ways to be there for women during this period, itâs just one of those things thatâs fantastic. There are these centers popping up now. These programs that offer so much support during this time, prenatal care drop offs, three to seven night postnatal stays for moms for support. Thereâs this fantastic place in New York that I know Iâve seen all over my Instagram recently.
11:55 So Iâm like, okay, weâve done this right in time called Boram in New York, where itâs modeled after the South Korean customary postnatal care where you just go and stay and yourâre catered to, and your health is monitored. I mean, just all of these things that we need are now being addressed, and there are these great organizations and companies doing it. Thereâs also this kind of rise of virtual postpartum care, which is great because as we know as moms, sometimes you need the most support in the middle of the night, and thatâs probably when youâre at your most alone. So now there are these fantastic places like Ola that offers virtual drop-in postpartum office hours when you have a question or you have a need. So itâs just a really fantastic way to respond to whatâs a real crisis right now, but in a way that really thinks about how can we be there and in a way thatâs practical and that allows women and folks with uteruses to be able to get the right support.
Kimberly: 13:01 As youâre speaking Fay, I can remember feeling real loneliness at times in those periods because people donât really know what youâre going through. You may have a partner, you may not. I have two friends here that are neighbors that have decided to have kids on their own. So thereâs this vulnerability in that stage that wasnât always talked about. Like you said, itâs crucial. Now, you said something that I donât think a lot of people still know, which is that in the fourth trimester, thereâs higher mortality than at birth. Is that true?
Higher mortality than at birth in the fourth trimester and if thatâs true
Faye: 13:34 Yeah. And that captures not just the complications that sometimes can arise as a result of childbirth, but also the mental health concerns. We know that postpartum depression is real, postpartum anxiety is real, and those things also impact maternal mortality. So yeah. Yeah, itâs absolutely a fact. The CDC released that report in 2022. I mean, itâs one of those, again, those stats that just kind of stop you, like, okay, we need to figure this out.
Kimberly: 14:03 So when you say that, just to get really real for a moment, suicide level, is that what you mean?
Faye: 14:09 Yeah,
Kimberly: 14:10 Absolutely. Wow. Iâll just get goosebumps. So thank goodness this is an incredible trend centers and virtual and ways,
Faye: 14:20 And then also there are things like postpartum preeclampsia, which just transparently is something I suffered from with my last child. I was privileged in a lot of ways that I was surrounded by care and folks took me seriously and took me to the hospital right away. But youâre hearing these awful stories about women who donât have that support and are coming to these preventable and treatable illnesses. So I think whatâs wonderful about this trend or this movement is itâs a real saying of we acknowledge you just went through this huge massive life body health changing event, and weâre going to acknowledge that and weâre going to be there and weâre going to figure out a way to support you through it.
Kimberly: 15:01 Amazing. I love this. I love talking about this first,
15:05 Weâll jump around because thereâs real all across the board. The trends are, so one of the things that is really interesting is the sauna industry. So as someone thatâs, we talked about traveling to Asia, itâs a big part of the culture in Korea. Weâve seen different trends, Faye from infrared saunas, dry saunas. Iâm starting to see the dry saunas coming back a little bit more paired with the cold plunges. Youâre seeing this huge emphasis on it. Places in Europe have always been big sauna people. So whatâs going on here? Whatâs new and whatâs different? Yeah.
Red-hot sauna industry and new ways to optimize your sweat session
Faye: 15:43 Whatâs so funny is when this first came up, I was like, saunas to me it rings, I donât know, nineties. Thereâs just a certain vibe that I think about. So saunas themselves arenât new as we know, but in 2024, sauna tech innovations are going to increase with the potential for benefits that you can really get from a sweat session. So to your point, this is something thatâs been taking place in other cultures and other places for a really long time, but weâre seeing like thermotherapy getting smarter with ways to maximize sweat and give you better results. To your point, again, itâs rooted in Turkey and Russia. Weâve seen Native American customs that have captured this for a really long time, but now in spa and at-home saunas have now theyâre featuring red light therapy that reduce inflammation. I mean, all sorts of new ways to reap the benefits of saunas that really mimic the Earthâs like natural magnetic energy to improve your health. So there are just all these fun ways and all these new benefits that are coming from this therapy, this tried and true and old thing that weâve seen for so long.
Kimberly: 16:51 And are you seeing Faye sort of this kind of reversal, yes, new technology, but kind of going back to that dry sauna again? Right. I felt like there was a time a few years ago where everything went to infrared. Now itâs sort of shifting back, or at least partly Iâve seen that too. Isnât that interesting?
Faye: 17:11 Yeah, yeah. I think so too. And I think whatâs innovative about this space that weâre in now is too thinking of ways to bring it in home. There are so many things that are popping up to, and weâll talk more about this too, I think this is a thread through a lot of the trends, is how do we make your home in an oasis and how do we make your home a place of healing? So a lot of these technologies are finding ways into your home. Also, thereâs different studios popping up, wellness clubs where you can go and reap the benefits of these things in a social setting. Iâve seen places with halo therapy and salt therapy, and weâre in the cold and flu season right now, so we think about improving our lung health and inflammation. So there are so many ways that these things can sort of benefit and be supplements to your health journey.
Kimberly: 17:59 Do you think that was one of the after effects of Covid was that people really got used to being home and they like having stuff at home more than before? Like you said, thereâs centers, people like to go to classes. Sometimes fitness, Iâm such a home body, so it even intensified that more for me where I want to have everything here.
Faye: 18:21 I think itâs a combination of the two, right? Because there are these advances now in technology that allow us to bring these things in home, but at the same time, yes, I mean, we all created these little oases and bungalows in our space when we couldnât go out and do the things that we wanted to do outside of the house. Absolutely. And again, that is a thread when you look at the trends. So much of it is like, how do I bring these things into my space? How do I own this piece and this sense of tranquility or overall health, but within the confines of my safe space, my home,
Kimberly: 18:56 And I donât know if thereâs any research on this, just kind of going off topic a little bit, but people were forced to cook at home, which I think is such a way to increase healthy eating, what oils are being used? And I wonder if a lot of people kept up with it or they just went back to their restaurant. Yeah, I dunno. But itâs
Faye: 19:15 Interesting. I dunno, personally, I probably am eating out way more than I was during the pandemic.
Kimberly: 19:21 Yeah,
Faye: 19:22 Thatâs a good one for us to dig into.
Kimberly: 19:25 Yeah, itâs interesting. And back to that is this trend about healthy eating where it says itâs more flavor forward and legitimately functional. And I like how that word was part of the trends because sometimes thereâs the marketing speak and you donât really know whatâs legitimately functional. Can you talk a little bit about what you discovered there? Well, and good found? Yeah.
Eating for wellness is a lot simpler and celebratory in 2024
Faye: 19:50 Itâs definitely a supplement to this food as medicine culture that weâre used to seeing develop and rise. People want the comfort of food, but they also want the functionality of food. You want to eat something and kind of know what itâs doing. It doesnât just taste good, but whatâs the nutritional value and how does this help my overall journey to wellness? So weâre seeing breakfast foods where newer players are focused on offering products that contain plant-based protein or less added sugar or fewer ingredients overall compared to a number of popular name brand cereals and other things. So thereâs a real intentionality to this. I love the phrase I think that we used in the article, joyful Nourishment. How does this impact my mood? How does it impact my health? We were looking at the functionality of what we put in our bodies.
Kimberly: 20:41 I love the joyful. It sort of goes along with what my friend Dan Butner talks about, whoâs come on this podcast a lot as well. Heâs the one who discovered the Blue Zones. When you look at these really healthy cultures, and you and I were talking about how I love traveling, especially in Asia and Africa, thereâs this naturalness, itâs not so manufactured, itâs just nutritious, itâs happy. The relax meals, theyâre smiling more naturally. Itâs part of health, the dieting culture from the eighties. And even now, these restricted that. Thereâs still so many different iterations, low carb, no carb. Now thereâs the carnivore diet and paleo crack. All these weight,
Faye: 21:25 I
Kimberly: 21:26 Think just very restrictive to be followed. So I love that itâs coming back to this, food is medicine, food is natural, food can be joyful, and thatâs how we stay on things.
Faye: 21:40 Yeah, and you see the brands following. So purely Elizabeth, you kind of think of like Oprilâs granola, but now thereâs oatmeal and value, size, packaging options. I mean, thereâs really a trend, for lack of a better word, of these brands kind of tacking onto again, what we are needing and what weâre demanding
Kimberly: 21:59 And still tasting Delicious.
Faye: 22:02 Still delicious.
Kimberly: 22:04 I love Pure Elizabeth. And Elizabeth has actually been on the podcast as well. Yeah.
Faye: 22:07 Oh, Iâm a granola. I love granola.
Kimberly: 22:10 Me too. Me Too. So delicious. And Iâm a granola with coconut yogurt. Banana my favorite.
Faye: 22:17 Yeah, thatâs a list.
Kimberly: 22:19 Okay, so letâs talk about artificial intelligence and personal fitness. So this is an interesting one because my husband also works in wellness. Heâs on the agency side. He gets a lot of biohacking stuff sent here. So Iâve seen Fade the mirrors with trainers. So youâre not getting trainers anymore. Thereâs all kinds of tracking devices. I think people can really go down the rabbit hole if theyâre into the quantitative data and the technology. This is one place where huge explosion in technology, right?
Faye: 22:52 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is one of those things I think, I donât know if itâs just this field and editorial, but where weâre always, thereâs a healthy side eye for AI in tech, right? Because weâre always like, whatâs happening here? Can we trust this?
Artificial intelligence in personalized fitness gets smarter
Kimberly: 23:09 Weâre calling more and more and more, right?
Faye: 23:11 Yeah, I know. Yes. But I mean, one of the awesome things I think about this particular trend and how itâs impacting fitness is itâs getting so smart about the
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