Virginians are leading the charge in health consciousness, boasting an increasingly robust population that’s wellness- and fitness-focused. As we move through 2025, health professionals, fitness trainers, nutrition experts, and aestheticians have identified key trends emphasizing both body and mind. Here’s what’s gaining momentum in Virginia’s wellness landscape.
FITNESS
Power Training—The Missing Link in Aging Well: While many focus on basic strength or cardio, power training—combining strength and speed—is emerging as crucial for healthy aging. This often-overlooked fitness component affects everything from sports performance to everyday activities like rising from a chair, balance, or crossing streets safely.
Start with manageable exercises: quick chair stands, short-duration sprints, or medicine ball throws. The key is progressive challenge that meets you where you are while building movement capacity.
AI-Powered Fitness in 2025—Beyond ChatGPT: We’ve previously reported on the genius of personalized AI fitness coaching, but now we’re adding a caveat: skip those generic chatbots. The best AI fitness solutions come from established health platforms with specialized frameworks and vetted content.
Whoop, Apple, and Life Time are building sophisticated systems that customize workouts to your goals, fitness level, equipment, and schedule—plus accountability tools and form correction.
Remember: Technology can’t replace your body knowledge. AI workout plans offer structure, but they work best combined with your intuition.
Your Resting Heart Rate—The Simplest Health Metric: In a sea of biometric data, 2025 spotlights one crucial measurement: resting heart rate (RHR). This simple indicator reveals cardiac fitness—the stronger your heart, the fewer beats needed. The Mayo Clinic, one of the top medical institutions in the world, notes an average adult RHR ranges from 60–100 beats per minute, while elite athletes may dip to 40.
Lower typically means better cardiovascular efficiency. Warning: RHR outside normal ranges—on the low or high end—warrants medical consultation, and elevation can indicate short-term issues like illness or dehydration, or long-term mortality risks.
The Vagus Nerve—Your Body’s Hidden Relaxation Switch: The vagus nerve—connecting brain to gut—is gaining attention for its powerful health benefits. This key nerve controls inflammation and our parasympathetic nervous system.
Simple vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) techniques include diaphragmatic breathing, humming, and gargling, with some enthusiasts using handheld devices. Beyond promoting calm, (VNS) shows promise for improved cognition, gut health, depression, migraines, and brain injuries.
Jose Chacon of Omni Wellness & Performance in Fairfax describes it as “a powerful tool for optimizing the body’s recovery and stress response. By stimulating the vagus nerve, we help clients shift from a constant ‘fight or flight’ state into a ‘rest and recover,’ where the body can heal and function more efficiently.”
NUTRITION
Electrolytes—Beyond Basic Hydration: Proper hydration requires more than water—it demands electrolyte balance. Stress, pregnancy, heat exposure, and low-carb diets increase electrolyte needs. Quality blends without added sugars support optimal hydration, which affects everything from appetite regulation to workout performance and detoxification.
Healthy Foods: The food landscape of 2025 is witnessing several significant shifts, with seaweed emerging as a nutritional powerhouse. This environmentally friendly crop is appearing in everything from beverages to home-cooked meals, offering superior vitamins, minerals, protein, and fiber through varieties like wakame, kelp, and nori. Meanwhile, the anti-inflammatory diet (AID) is gaining traction, alongside the wildly wise Mediterranean diet as gold standards. Eating Well reports new studies showing the AID’s potential to reduce cognitive decline through fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, omega-3 fish, and tea.
And about tea: it’s experiencing a renaissance beyond mere comfort, now recognized for its immune support potential, as well as cancer risk reduction and hydration benefits. The data on dates looks promising, too, with ProduceBusiness reporting that they’re nutrition’s new darling. As a refined sugar alternative, these sweet fruits are finally receiving the attention they deserve, with date syrup sales soaring among health-conscious consumers drawn to their caramel-like taste.
Protein trends are updating, too, with plant-based options becoming mainstream among the epicurious. Nuts, seeds, and beans have gained prominence alongside dairy choices like Greek yogurt and cottage cheese. While tofu used to be relegated to the barely edible corner, Maya Leinenbach, a chef and food blogger from Saarland, Germany, has made it darn right delicious. At just 20, her “Fit Green Mind” Instagram channel has millions of followers.
Fermentation continues its strong momentum, with yogurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, miso, and kombucha becoming kitchen staples for their microbiome-supporting properties. Custom Culinary reports that “precision fermentation” is driving innovation in plant-based alternatives, while fermentation practices extend into the spirits world, particularly with mezcal—tequila’s smoky cousin produced when yeast and bacteria transform crushed agave.
SKINCARE
Exosomes—Cellular Messengers for Youthful Skin: Exosomes are the latest buzzword throughout the industry—with promises of combatting hair loss and improving the health of your skin. But what are they and more importantly, why is everyone claiming they’re revolutionizing skincare?
Exosomes are tiny vesicles that cells use to transport important cargo. Rich in growth factors, proteins, and genetic material, “exosomes help with cell to cell communication transporting a variety of vital chemicals,” says Dr. Shervin Naderi, a board certified facial plastic surgeon at Naderi Center in Reston. “In the plastic surgery and dermatology world, exosomes help rejuvenate the skin by delivering growth factors and proteins that stimulate collagen and elastin production, reducing wrinkles, and improving elasticity.”
Dr. Naderi explains that their anti-inflammatory properties calm redness and irritation, heal acne scars, promote skin regeneration, and support healing—particularly helpful after skin resurfacing with lasers or chemical peels. “Additionally, exosomes enhance hydration and repair the skin barrier, leading to a smoother, more radiant complexion. They can also help hair quality by improving scalp health,” he says, adding that for those considering exosome therapy, it is important to thoroughly vet your provider.
Skin Solutions—Rose hip oil continues gaining popularity for its essential fatty acids and vitamin C content, improving texture and reducing scarring. The Ordinary, the no-nonsense skincare brand, sells both a fermented rose hip seed oil and a cold pressed rose hip seed oil brand. Both are budget-friendly.
Meanwhile, probiotic-infused skincare creates balanced bacterial communities on skin surfaces, strengthening barriers against environmental damage while reducing inflammation and resulting in clearer, more radiant skin. Brands—from Tom’s of Maine to La Prairie—sell probiotic skincare serums and lotions and masques that promise to feed your system’s good bacteria and help your skin thrive. Korres, for example, offers a Greek yoghurt probiotic skin-supplement serum and Eminence Organic Skin Care sells a kombucha microbiome balancing essence.
While faces get premium products and dedicated routines, the neck and décolleté are skincare blind spots—despite being equally delicate and exposed. These areas face the same environmental damage but receive far less attention, leading to more visible aging signs like lines and uneven tone. In 2025, holistic skincare means extending your routine downward with targeted treatments and SPF for these neglected zones.
Body skincare is finally evolving beyond basic lotions. Brands now offer serums and treatments with facial-grade active ingredients, delivering targeted solutions with a luxury experience. Finally, the skin that makes up 90 percent of our surface area is getting the attention it deserves—providing consumers the tools for head-to-toe radiance. Source Vital Apothecary’s Custom Body Cocktail is a skin-specific create-your-own body oil. After completing a short quiz that addresses your skin’s needs and wants, you can also create a custom label.
MIND BODY-CONNECTION
The recognition that “our bodies keep the score” is transforming mental wellness approaches. Pure mind-focused techniques or strictly physical regimes are giving way to integrative strategies addressing how emotions manifest physically. Wellness practitioners increasingly embrace the “yes, and .… ” mentality—acknowledging that seemingly opposite energies, like work-rest, discipline-play, logic-emotion, can coexist to create balance.
Ancient Wisdom For Modern Minds
From ashwagandha to affirmations, nature offers pathways to wellness.
Practices that offer guidance in meditation, affirmations, and achieving balance have noticed an uptick in interest and popularity. They include ashwagandha, manifestation, ayurveda, journaling, breathwork, yoga, and more. Here, we explore several.
The Living Balance of Ayurveda: Born in India five millennia ago, Ayurveda stands as humanity’s timeless healing art—its very name translates to “science of life.” This sophisticated system operates on a profound premise: everything exists in relationship, and wellness flourishes only at the intersection of harmony. Unlike modern medicine’s compartmentalized approach, Ayurveda recognizes imbalance as disease’s true source. Its genius lies in personalized lifestyle medicine—blending nutrition, restorative sleep, movement, and stress management to realign one’s internal ecosystem with the external world. When these foundations need reinforcement, Ayurveda deploys botanical allies and mindfulness practices as bridges back to equilibrium that believes healing requires treating the whole person, not just isolated symptoms.
Manifestation’s Ancient Appeal: In our chaotic world, manifestation beckons with a tantalizing promise—your thoughts alone can reshape reality. This blend of magical thinking and psychological self-persuasion surged during pandemic isolation, offering control amid uncertainty. The concept dances on the boundary between science and mysticism and the undeniable power of focused intention and optimistic mindset. But the truth lies somewhere between skepticism and blind faith. When manifestation works, it’s usually through backdoor psychological mechanisms—visualizing success primes motivation, positive thinking builds resilience. But its more extravagant claims falter under scrutiny. This centuries-old practice endures precisely because it contains kernels of truth wrapped in comforting cosmic packaging.
The Quiet Magic of Daily Affirmations: Remember Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live and his endearing daily affirmations in the ‘90s sketch, “Daily Affirmations with Stuart Smalley?” “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” Turns out he was on to something. Verywell Mind defines daily affirmations as short statements that can help boost your self-esteem that you might use to give yourself a little extra boost of confidence when facing a challenge or feeling down on yourself. So the simple sentences you repeat to yourself are more than just words—they’re mental armor for your toughest battles. Daily affirmations work like psychological reinforcements, strategically deployed when your confidence wavers or challenges loom large.
This article originally appeared in the June 2025 issue.
