In this send:
TCM, Muay Thai, birth control, hypothyroid, collagen maxxing, intermittent hypoxia, Papa John’s, NAD+, mogging, Aajonus Vonderplanitz, Ray Peat, red Coke, Clavicular, Blue Zones, Carnivore MD, creatine, sauerkraut, EMF exposure, EVOO, Zaid Dahhaj, raw dairy, sleep, non-anabolic steroids, ruminant meat…
Welcome to High Touch! On day four of our launch week takeover, we’re hearing from Substack’s health and wellness new guard—lots to learn there, a million rabbit holes in which to dip an ancestral carrot—but before we get into that, a few things we spotted, tested, heard this week.
A touch of High Touch
Oura previews the new Ring 5, 40% smaller than the 4th gen model and claimed to be the “world’s smallest smart ring.” It also claims higher tracking accuracy (99% HRV, 95% sleep staging compared to clinical-setting trackers) and a week-long battery life, directly addressing the most frequent complaint of the current newest option. It ships June 4. Today’s pre-sale announcement comes just one week after the company submitted a draft registration statement for IPO and three weeks after introducing its Hormonal Birth Control and Menopause Insights feature, its most significant expansion into hormonal health to date.
Luxury wellness retreat group Chenot, with destinations in Montenegro, Azerbaijan, and Morocco (among others), announced its first “wellness at sea” experience aboard the Ulyssia. Coming in 2029, the 320 meter superyacht offers 122 private residences, 22 suites, a 600-meter jogging track, padel and pickleball courts, and access Chenot’s complete medical, performance, and aesthetic programs (everything from health assessments to hormesis-based protocols to…I mean it’s a whole thing, you can probably imagine some of the rest).
A new-to-market wellness drink: ARMRA’s colostrum soda, which transforms the brand’s hero ingredient—a bovine-derived super-product that’s found in cow milk immediately after birth and found to affect immune health, gut health, metabolism, muscle recovery, performance, hair and skin—into a 15-cal fizzy drink.
Laura Reilly
Hi Lily, Sami, and Chris,
Thank you all so much for agreeing to participate in this roundtable for High Touch, Magasin’s coming-soon newsletter about aesthetics and longevity.
I’ve said this to each of you individually, but your respective publications represent, to me, the new wave of health and wellness media and are some of the few voices adequately reflecting the real conversations being had on the matter out in the wild. I’m (maybe selfishly) excited to learn more about how you navigate that, and to see some of these topics through your eyes.
So—to start us off...Can everyone introduce themselves and their respective platforms, with some context as to how you arrived at doing what you do?
Chris Gayomali
Hey! I'm Chris. I'm a longtime magazine editor (spent a decade-ish at GQ) and now I'm the EIC of SSENSE, Canada's no. 1 ecommerce platform for buying Lemaire and such. I also host the podcast SuperHuman.
I started my Substack HEAVIES because, like everyone in their mid thirties, I got addicted to working out (Muay Thai) and wanted an excuse to talk to other people about their wellness practices, and maybe even launder a lifelong interest in TCM into the zeitgeist. The name HEAVIES is what someone at my gym called the big kettlebells, and I thought it was a funny name for a newsletter, so here we are.
Lily Sperry
Fantastic—thank you for hosting us, Laura!
I initially launched Health Gossip as a way to make sense of the ever-evolving world of Health Twitter and related forums. It felt like there were so many insights that simply weren’t being translated for the audiences that could really benefit from them (ie, girls in their 20s who were wanting to get off birth control but unsure how; or people demonizing carbs and generally undereating while also experiencing hypothyroid symptoms1). As I was putting together the pieces in my own healing journey, I felt the urge to share—creating a space for honest explorations of underrepresented / ”alternative health” approaches, along with an open forum for conversation. The name came to me in a dream.
Outside of the newsletter, I work as a copywriter + creative consultant for brands / founders in the health and wellness space. I currently live in Chicago, after 5+ years in NYC.
Sami Reiss
Hey all, hey Lily, hey Chris, thanks Laura for doing this.
I’m Sami Reiss, I’ve been writing SNAKE SUPER HEALTH on Substack for three years after a stint of another newsletter, freelance magazine work and working in sports leagues. It began as a feature in my other newsletter a decade ago then a series of columns on Inverse and GQ. It evolved from pure lifting into wellness into something else now… no hard mission but letters now focus on edge of health protocols—raw dairy2, red milk3, collagen maxxing, intermittent hypoxia4, real sicko shit—but framed to an analog tilt: in context of maxxing out the subtle big rocks of groceries and sleep and light environment and movement / lifting / cardio first. The genesis is I started lifting hard in high school because of hardcore music (spec. the back photo of the Age of Quarrel), and got quickly into shakes, PPL splits and macros; I got into the demon obscure shit after an assignment a few years ago and began n=1ing hard on basically everything I cover now years ago. I’ve simplified a bunch since then but do the odd / regular demon intervention / experiment. The name super health… because health isn’t enough…. I am from Ottawa Ontario and live in NYC.
Laura
Yayy we’re all here! Thank you for clocking in and being here everyone.
Jumping in—