"My breathing patterns are like a rabbit running for her life."
In Vivo: July edition with Delia Cai, Gray Broderick, and me.
In this send:
Buccal facial massage, TMJ, physical therapy, MOCEAN, fight or flight, radiofrequency, Morpheus8, Thermage, DENSITY, UV damage, Shafer Clinic, Dr. Macrene Alexiades, collagen production, osteopathy, Porsche, Yinova Center, TCM, acupuncture…
Can you believe it? It’s In Vivo time again. In case you need reminding, IV is our monthly franchise about what the High Touch community are getting up to across the worlds of aesthetics and longevity—i.e. what my group chats are actually doing.
In today’s send, a lot of journeys are launching. Most of what’s worth doing in this space isn’t one-and-done, it takes reps. Delia Cai begins a months-long physical therapy process to rediscover her parasympathetic state, I recap a deeply restorative introductory acupuncture session and share initial findings from my adventure with the device that Dr. Macrene says “prevents the need for surgery”, and Gray Broderick shares the Parisian lymphatic masseuse who “finely tunes the body like a vintage Porsche”—the one she tells me is THE lymphatic guy everyone in the know goes to.
But first, a few conversation starters from the High Touch universe.
A touch of High Touch
I just stumbled on a new (May 2026) study that suggests Minoxidil, the hair-growth prescription drug, can be made twice as effective for hair growth by pairing it with Methylene Blue. Alexis Page and Maggie Jones have shared their MB use for cognitive benefits in HT previously, and I’ve taken it a couple of times myself since then to nice success. I also take oral-form Minoxidil, so I’m watching this space closely and expect to see a combined form hit the market as soon as regulatory bodies allow.
Home wellness tech brand Burtran (maker of air purifiers) launches the Recharge AI eye mask. Let’s unpack: Responding to built-in EEG sensors, the mask’s Bluetooth audio issues binaural beats and warming therapy with the goal of improving sleep. New for an air purifier brand, but not a new technology altogether—Therabody makes one with three vibration settings, Bia’s includes an internal sunrise that gently wakes you on a timer, and Elemind’s acts as tracker and adjuster with a complementary app. I’ve reported on a handful of sleep-modulating wearables in this section in the past few weeks (Apollo, Dusq), but smart sleep masks feel like an intuitive category leader.
The mostly-prescription-skincare brand Musely is expanding its OTC product lineup with its first active in the form of a vitamin C serum. It’s a nod to the fact that vit C is as effective, powerful, and on-the-level as other dermatologist-gatekept ingredients like tretinoin and azeleic acid, the powerhouses of its personalized prescriptions.
Journeys
Holistic physical therapy with MOCEAN
I’ve been an anxious person all my life, but once I hit my 30s, the physical consequences have officially started to announce themselves. The worst part is having this persistent clenched jaw. It’s messing up my teeth; it’s leaving me with constant neck pain and headaches. I’ve tried everything from acupuncture to buccal facial massages to TMJ treatments to regular physical therapy to a completely souped up exercise regimen. Everyone eventually tells me that, at the end of the day, I just need to “stop stressing out” lol.
Finally, on the recommendation of Chris Gayomali, I made an introductory appointment with MOCEAN (which they comped, courtesy of being a FOC—friend of Chris), and I’m feeling hopeful. As part of my initial evaluation, they did all these tests and scans that showed how my posture is making everything 1,000% worse (see scan above). Okay, fair! But there was also a lot of “data” from these tests showing that my nervous system is out of whack, that I’m spending far too much time in “fight or flight” mode versus “rest and digest” mode, which checks out. It felt validating, somehow, to see my inner chaos bear out on all those charts and tests. (For example, it turns out that, even laying down on a Thursday afternoon, my breathing patterns more so resemble that of a rabbit running for her life.)
I’m going to try out a couple of months of membership to access MOCEAN’s physical therapy in addition to their various recovery/optimization protocols, hopefully to enact some kind of factory reset to my nervous system. Even typing that sentence out makes me pretttttty skeptical enough of myself. I’m not usually one to get some crazy machines and equipment get involved, and honestly, I simply can’t afford anything longterm with them. But after that first session, I can’t deny that I left feeling wildly gooey and relaxed. It’s been a week since, and I can tell I’ve been sleeping better (and deeper), and at least seem to have a greater awareness for how I’m holding myself. Cross your fingers for me?