I read and write around beauty all day long and consider myself somewhat skilled at creating a glowy, fresh makeup look, but I still have my weaknesses. For starters? Achieving crisp, precise top insert has always been struggle city for me and I should maybe log in a few hours practicing eyeshadow blending... for the sake of my attempts at wearing smoky eyes. 

So when an invite popped into my inbox for a masterclass with Charlotte Tilbury, makeup artist to superstars and models like Kim K.W and brow queen Cara Delevingne, not to mention the maker of a badass and hugely successful namesake collection, I knew I had to be there. This woman is a legend in the beauty industry, a woman who says her husband has never smooth seen her without her sexy, smudgy eye makeup. She’s THAT known for it. I was 100 percent going to learn appreciated information. 

Here are a few tricks (and interesting tidbits) I’m tucking away for good. Oh, and I left with some pretty bomb eye makeup by yours actually (plus some help from a pro MUA), if I do say so for myself. 

1. The easiest way to contour is to suck in your cheeks (think about making a fish face) and then "track the hollow," as Charlotte says. Apply the contour powder in her the Filmstar Bronze & Radiance compact along the shadow you'll see on your face after sucking in your cheeks. Life. Changing. Oh, and the contour is suuuuuper subtle. 

2. Wanna look like you just left a relaxing, rejuvenating vacay? Charlotte says to dip a brush into the "Sculpt" shade and place it on your temples or anywhere the sun would naturally kiss you, like across your face and nose. Voila, healthy glow!

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3. Ever heard of brow planning? That's how you figure out where to start and stop your eyebrows. According to Charlotte, you home the pencil vertically near your nose so it's slightly touching. Where it hits near the eye, you make a dot and that's where you start the eyebrow. Then, you take the pencil and lay it diagonally across your iris, and that's where Charlotte says the arch should be. Finally, you should finish by placing the pencil obliquely across to the end of your eye (though one side of the pencil should still be touching the side of your nose), and that's where Charlotte notes the brow must end. 

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4. Continuously comb up your brows. Charlotte explained doing so will reveal your natural shape, and then you can appropriately fill them in. You'll also want to save the beginning of the brow a bit lighter than the arch. 

5. Charlotte said the shimmery, sparkly eyeshadow shade in her palette "Uptown Girl" is one of the most expensive eye glooms in the world because it's apparently packed with emollients and oils to horizontal out your skin.

6. So I've never, ever been good at blending out darker eyeshadow that's meant for the crease, but Charlotte really really helped. Charlotte told us to take the Enhance shade and find your socket and then "nestle it" and flippantly brush the pigment onto your skin backwards and forwards with a blending brush. 

7. When doing eye makeup, Charlotte always "drags the eye out" to elongate the eye and "cheat a little bit of measurement." That means she takes the eyeshadow out further than objective on the eyelid. 

8. If you have a dear affair with Charlotte's Magic Cream, and I do, you can actually use it as a makeup remover when you make tiny faults in your eye makeup. Dip a cotton swab in the teeniest bit and use it to remove product or shape your cat eye.

9. To actually increase the elongation of your eyelashes, you should first press the mascara wand into the base of the lashes and then attraction the wand and formula outwards through your lashes. 

10. I'm partial to Charlotte Tilbury's Miranda May Lipstick, but apparently, Promise Girl  is the top-selling product. Charlotte said that Amal Clooney wore it on her marriage day, too.

Have you ever noticed how some foods taste fully different when you’re on an airplane? If you have, it's not in your head.

There’s some self-same interesting science behind why certain things—like tomato juice—taste differently at 35,000 feet. In fact, for some, they even taste better. As mentioned in a fresh article in the Los Angeles Times, studies have established that those who usually try their nose up at the idea of drinking tomato juice tend to like it when it’s served sky-high.

ASSOCIATED: The Real Reason Why Food Tastes Different on an Airplane

Numerous things factor in to what causes this taste change to happen. Once you step onto a plane, minds like taste and smell begin to dull payable to the low humidity, and once you’re thousands of feet in the air, those senses change completely—the sensation is similar to stressed to taste or smell when you have a cold.

Sweetened and salty flavors become mainly difficult to detect in the air. You need a functioning sense of smell to properly taste flavor, but when you’re on an airplane, the dry cabin air inhibits our odor receptors causing food to discrimination a bit blander than what we’re used to. It’s about 30 percent more difficult to detect those sweet and salty tastes, according to a 2010 revision from the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics in Germany.

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So, because of tomato juice’s simple flavor at a normal pressure, with cabin pressure it becomes sweet-smelling—fruity, even.

Additionally, tomatoes are rich in flavor known as umami—a taste that is thought of by most as very savory and pleasant. Because umami is unaffected by altitude (and perhaps even improved by loud background noise, like a plane engine), this savory flavor becomes more noticeable in tomato juice, thus making it appealing to someone who may not enjoy it on the earth.

Now find out why your ears pop when you’re on an airplane.

 

 

 

Holiday weight gain is real, says new investigation from Cornell University, and it’s not just Americans who are affected. What’s more, the study showed that the extra pounds you put on amid Halloween and Christmas can take more than five months to lose.

The new research, led by Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab as well as experts in Finland and France, looked at year-round weight patterns of nearly 3,000 people in the United States, Germany, and Japan. Their data came from regular weigh-ins of consumers who’d purchased wireless Withings scales and had agreed to have their measurements composed and analyzed.

In the United States, the academics found that the participants’ weight began to rise throughout October and November, and sickly-looking 10 days after Christmas. The change wasn’t large, but it was significant: On average, people’s weight increased around 1.3 pounds during the Christmas-New Year’s season.

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About half of that weight originated off quickly after the holiday season ended, but the other half wasn’t lost until about five months later, after Easter.

Similar trends were noted in the other countries, as well. People in Germany inclined to weight the most everywhere New Year’s and Easter, and those in Japan packed on pounds around New Year’s as well as Golden Week—the country’s other major holiday—in April.

The findings were published last week as a research letter in the New England Journal of Medicine. “Altered countries celebrate different holidays, but many such celebration periods have one thing in public: an increased intake of favorite foods,” the authors wrote.

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Although the topic of holiday weight gain comes up every year, some research has start that the phenomenon is more a myth than a reality—or at least that it’s importantly exaggerated in the media and pop culture. In a 2013 study from Texas Tech, for example, participants increased only about a pound and a half between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

Brian Wansink, PhD, co-author of the new education, says that collecting weight measurements over a full year helped the researchers gain accurate, real-life results—and, in doing so, helped show that holiday weight gain may be subtle, but that it really does happen.

“In past studies, consequences have been self-reported, or people would come into a facility to be weighed,” says Wansink, who is director of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab and author of Slim by Design. “That means people could fib or change their behavior since they know they’re being monitored.”

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The participants in this study also distinguished they were being monitored, but they didn’t know over what period of time or for what reasons—and measurements were taken when they weighed themselves everyday, which they would have been doing anyway. “In that sense, we were getting behavior that was much more natural,” Wansink says.

Wansink says that, for people in the northern hemisphere, weight gain in the fall and winter is likely a mixture of holiday foods and colder temperatures, which can lead to less outdoor activity.

“The weather may explain the gradual proliferation, but we also see these spikes that start about a week before the holiday and peak a few days after,” he says. “To me, that proposes that the holidays themselves aren’t the problem—it’s more the ramping up beforehand and all the Halloween candy or Thanksgiving leftovers or Christmas cookies you're intake afterward.”

Interrelated: 15 Small Changes for a Leaner, Healthier You

The authors admit that the study participants were probably more engaged in weight-loss efforts than the over-all population—they’d purchased this scale and used it every day, after all—but they say the findings still provide insight that everyone can take to heart.

Wansink’s advice? “In its place of a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, have an October determination not to gain too much weight in the first place. Then you won’t have to worry about five months of struggling,” he says.

That doesn’t mean you can’t party special occasions or indulge in your favorite treats, either. "There’s nothing wrong with the holiday the situation, but the key is to keep your eating to the holiday—not to the holiday season," he says. "You’re going to be in a lot better shape if you keep what happens on Thanksgiving to one day, rather than bounce it out for a week before and a week after."

Completed the last 20 years, there has been a major problem in breast cancer prevention, diagnosis, and care: While inclusive mortality rates have improved by more than 30%, the bad news is that black women are still more likely to die from the disease than white women—and the disparity is mounting in some cities more than others.

My generations at the Sinai Urban Health Institute and I have consumed the last decade studying this trend, and have continued to sound the alarm with each report. Our newest study, printed in Cancer Epidemiology, analyzed breast cancer mortality rates by race for the 50 most packed U.S. cities between 2010 and 2014, and built on our prior city-level examination from 1990-2009. 

In 1990, black women were 17% more likely to die than bleached women; and 9 cities displayed statistically significant differences in humanity amounts for black women and white women. By 2000, the disparity had risen to 35%; and 19 cities displayed statistically significant differences. Among 2010 and 2014, black women were 43% more likely to die than white women; and 24 towns displayed statistically significant differences. Seventeen more cities showed the same disheartening development.

The graph lower reveals the widening disparity in mortality rates across the country. To see graphs of the mortality rates in different cities, check out the Breast Cancer Investigation Foundation's interactive map.

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When we intensive on what occurred between the previous homework period (2005-2009) and the most current study period (2010-2014), we discovered an alarming rise of the disparity in Atlanta and San Antonio, and across the country as a whole. In Boston, the breast cancer death rates for blacks and whites became even; while in Philadelphia and Memphis, the disparity fell, but continued significant.

Cultural disparities in breast cancer mortality are now acknowledged at the national and state level. This study makes an essential contribution by providing data at the city level, demonstrating geographic difference in the disparity, and changes in the disparity over a 25-year time period. 

Together, these data suggest that alterations in access to public health systems, and hence, differences in admission to—and quality of—mammography and treatment are likely contributing to the difficult. Earlier studies showed low median household incomes and a measure of separation correlated with the disparity. Some cities, including New York and Memphis, have done improved than others at addressing the disparity.

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Access to attention is not the only factor that may be involved. It has been well documented that the biology of the tumor can play a role in both incidence and outcome of breast cancer. For sample, black women in the U.S. have been shown to be diagnosed with breast cancer at previous ages, and a higher percentage is diagnosed through an aggressive form of the disease called triple-negative breast cancer. However, biology alone cannot explicate the rapid growth of the disparity in 10 years, and the geographic difference.

We conducted these studies to spur local city officials and health departments to take notice and take achievement, to address the needs of their communities. Past intelligences resulted in city-wide efforts to address the disparity in Chicago, Memphis, Boston, Houston, and Washington, DC.

Notably, Chicago, Memphis, and Boston have displayed either a reduction in the disparity or an improvement in mortality rates among black females.

The good news is that fewer women of any race are being diagnosed and dying of breast cancer for a number of details—mostly likely due to a drop in the use of hormone therapy and better treatments. However, our findings underscore that anywhere a patient may live should not determine if she lives, no matter her race.

This research was backed by the Avon Substance for Women and a grant to my co-author Bijou Hunt, an epidemiologist at the Sinai Urban Health Institution.