An Appetite for Adaptogens
Like setting up your bike properly each time you ride, or ensuring your alignment is correct in yoga, maintaining a balanced diet and protecting yourself from unnecessary stress — internal or external — is incredibly important to keeping your mind and body fit.
We know life simply can’t be made 100% stress free (please tell us if you’ve found a cure!), so how can we adapt? Adaptogens!
Does it stress you out just trying to figure out what the heck those are? It does for me too. So, let’s make it simple:
By definition an adaptogen is “a non-toxic substance and especially a plant extract that is held to increase the body's ability to resist the damaging effects of stress and promote or restore normal physiological functioning.”
So why might you ask would you want to adapt adaptogens into your life?
Well, they protect the body from adverse effects of stress — really anything that runs you down — illness, work woes or even working out (i.e. 5 days of Ride in a row got you a bit sore? Sven’s burpee challenge wearing you down?).
As it turns out, finding a source of these A+ supplements in a form that pursues a holistic approach to body and mind, while meeting the highest quality standards and being easily integratabtle into one’s everyday life, wasn’t that easy to find in Berlin. Well not until last year when Amely Kuchenbacker and her brother Benjamin founded YLUMI, that is.
Their products, which come in capsule and powder form can be easily sprinkled into a smoothie or swigged down with a simple glass of H2O, are made of ancient adaptogens, vitamins and essential minerals.
© Ylumi
Vital mushrooms provide compounds (polysaccharides) that help restore healthy immune balance and have the ability to increase the body’s resistance to physical, chemical (toxins and heavy metals) and biological stressors. Thus, they can help regulate the body’s stress response and boost the systems with energy!
The stimulating and anti-fatigue effect of adaptogens has been documented in many clinical studies, so you don’t have to take our word for it! Try it for a month as part of your regimen and see how you feel. Six months is the optimum length of time to truly feel the effects.
YLUMI’s co-founder Amely is often seen enjoying a tea or smoothie at My Goodness Cafe, but we’re incredibly excited that her product has a permanent presence on our shelves in the studio.
Ask Gundula, founder of BECYCLE, for her recommendation next time you’re in the studio. "I love adding Ylumi to my smoothie or my daily breakfast pot at My Goodness,” she says.
Article written by Sarah Findle