The Adulting Handbook, Part 3: Head-to-Toe Wellness Routines

Not a doctor, not in the health industry, just a person who’s spent a lot of time learning things about her body that she wished she’d known sooner. Take what’s useful, leave what doesn’t apply, and always loop in a professional when you need one.

This part of the series is the most personal one for me. Routines are intimate. The ones I have now didn’t come together overnight. They were built slowly, sometimes reluctantly, and often after something went wrong that I could have prevented.

Sound familiar? Let’s go from the top.

---

Skincare: This IS Health, Not Vanity

Let’s establish something upfront: skincare is not a luxury hobby. Your skin is your body’s largest organ and your first line of defense against the environment. Taking care of it (sunscreen especially) is genuinely preventive health.

I suffered from acne for years. For a long time, I refused to go to a dermatologist because it felt expensive. So I did what a lot of us do: I researched ingredients - niacinamide, salicylic acid, BPO, centella asiatica - tried product after product, let my skin “purge,” waited for things to improve. And some things helped, a little, temporarily. But years of that cycle left me with acne marks. PIH, PIE, and eventually pitted scars.

When I finally went to a dermatologist, she prescribed Accutane. And it worked. My skin changed in a way that none of my careful ingredient research had ever achieved. But here’s the kicker: I paid more in the end. The years of products, the eventual dermatologist visits, the fractional laser sessions for the scarring. If I had gone to a dermatologist at the start, I would have saved time, money, and a lot of unnecessary skin damage.

Prevention is better than cure. That shirt really knew what it was talking about.

My contact dermatitis story is the same lesson, different format. I had an itchy patch on my lower right leg since high school. I just lived with it. Tried different creams on my own. And over time, the hyperpigmentation and irritation spread to cover a large portion of my leg. When I finally saw a dermatologist, it took two weeks of the right prescription treatment before I saw a significant difference. Two weeks. After years of just dealing with it.

The moral is the same every time: advocate for yourself, and get professional help sooner than you think you need it.

On SPF - Non-Negotiable

Sunscreen is not optional. Most especially in a tropical country like the Philippines where UV exposure is intense year-round. A common misconception is that people with higher melanin don’t burn or don’t need sun protection, that’s simply not true. Filipinos burn, and UV damage accumulates over time regardless of skin tone, contributing to premature aging, hyperpigmentation, and skin cancer risk.

SPF 30 minimum, daily, even on cloudy days, even if you’re indoors near a window. And if you want an easy entry point: tinted SPF adds light coverage and sun protection in one step, which makes consistency easier.

My Skincare Routine

For specific product recommendations, I’ll write a dedicated post. This is the structure and the ingredients that work for me.

---

Haircare, More Than Just Aesthetics

Your hair and scalp health can reveal a lot about what’s happening internally. Excessive shedding and thinning are often signs of iron deficiency, nutritional gaps, hormonal imbalance, or thyroid issues. For me personally, it’s likely a combination. I’ve had anemia for years, I’m chronically on the lower end of weight, and I no longer have a thyroid. All of those can contribute to hair loss.

I’ve been using topical minoxidil spray for a few years, and it has genuinely helped with regrowth. I can see new hair coming in. But my hair is still overall thin, because minoxidil helps hair grow but doesn’t address the root cause. I recently consulted a dermatologist specifically for this, and she prescribed a range of supplements including folic acid, which, interestingly, recently went viral on TikTok for hair growth. The point: if you’re experiencing significant hair loss or thinning, see a dermatologist rather than just throwing products at it. There’s usually something upstream causing it.

My Hair Routine

• Pre-shampoo: Coconut oil applied before washing
• Wash frequency: Every 1-2 days depending on activity. Overwashing strips natural oils from the scalp
• Shampoo: Hair growth formula
• Conditioner: Bonding conditioner every wash day to repair and strengthen
• Mask: Bonding hair mask weekly
• Drying: Always blow dry on wash days with heat protectant applied first
• Finishing: Hair serum after drying
• Non-wash days: Leave as-is if not oily, or dry shampoo at the roots. Heat styling is rare for me, but heat protectant is non-negotiable when I do style.

---

Dental Health - Advocate for Your Teeth

I could write a whole separate post about my dental journey, and honestly, maybe I will. The short version: I had braces for seven years. Seven. I was diligent at first, then lost faith in my orthodontist, became inconsistent with appointments, and, long story short, some teeth deteriorated without my knowledge. I only found out when a different dentist accidentally broke one during a procedure nearby.

I now have five fake teeth, all bridges; three on the right molar, two on the left. When I finally got serious about dental health during the pandemic, I started going for routine cleanings every six months. The real turning point was switching to a new clinic that did a full teeth-mapping on my first visit and recommended a panoramic X-ray. That single X-ray revealed problems hiding underneath that a visual exam alone would never have caught.

Every six months isn’t just about cleaning. It’s about catching things before they become expensive, painful, and irreversible.

• 🪥

  Routine Cleaning & Check-up

  Every 6 months. Includes professional scaling, polishing, and a visual exam for cavities, gum health, and early signs of oral cancer.

• 📸

  Panoramic X-Ray

  Annually or as recommended. Shows all your teeth, roots, jaw, and bone — catches decay, impacted wisdom teeth, cysts, and bone loss that are invisible to the naked eye. Around ₱1,000 at most Metro Manila clinics; prices vary by area. Important: always ask for a thyroid guard before the X-ray is taken. The thyroid is radiation-sensitive and isn't automatically shielded — you have to request it.

• 🦷

  Periapical X-Ray

  Targeted X-ray of one or a few specific teeth. Usually ordered when your dentist suspects a problem in a particular spot. Often done alongside routine cleaning.

• 🔬

  Oral Cancer Screening

  Typically part of your regular check-up — your dentist will examine the soft tissues in your mouth for unusual lesions or patches. Mention any sore that hasn't healed in two weeks.

• 🩺

  Periodontal (Gum) Check

  Gum disease is common and often painless in its early stages. Your dentist checks pocket depth around each tooth — deeper pockets mean more advanced disease. If flagged, you may be referred for scaling and root planing (a deeper clean).

---

Sleep - The One Everyone Underestimates

I used to operate on two hours of sleep and think I was fine. I wasn’t.

I also spent years working night shifts, and the thing nobody fully tells you about night shift work is that it’s not just the sleep deprivation, it’s the misalignment. When you sleep during the day, everything else runs on a different clock: banks, government offices, social events, family. You’re constantly swimming against the current of a world designed for daytime people. It’s exhausting in a way that goes beyond hours of sleep.

Sleep isn’t just about getting 8 hours. Research consistently shows that sleeping at actual nighttime, in alignment with your circadian rhythm, produces different quality sleep than sleeping the same number of hours during the day. Your body performs repair work during sleep that it genuinely cannot do any other time.

I want to share something that worked really well for me when my schedule allowed it. I’m not always consistent with this now: studies, projects that run late, and a boyfriend on the other side of the world whose time zone I have to accommodate, that’s just life. But when I had a regular rhythm, this was it:

The bigger principle is that good sleep is built before you get into bed. What you do in the two hours before you sleep matters as much as when you actually lie down. Winding down is a process, not a switch.

A few things that help most people regardless of schedule: consistent wake and sleep times (yes, even on weekends), a cool and dark room, no heavy meals within two hours of bed, and reducing blue light exposure before sleeping. You don’t need all of these at once. Start with one.

---

Mental Wellness (Coming in a Future Post)

This one deserves its own full post and I mean that. It’s not a footnote to physical health. Mental wellness, grounding practices, emotional regulation, and what it actually looks like to take care of your mind with the same intentionality as your body. I have a lot to share here and want to give it the space it deserves.

For now: it counts. It’s part of health. Don’t let anyone, including yourself, tell you otherwise.

---

Health and wellness is a continuous, lifelong process. Sometimes you roll back. Sometimes life changes force you to adjust - travel, a new schedule, a hard season. That’s not failure, that’s just living. The goal isn’t a perfect routine that never wavers. The goal is to keep coming back to it.

Living well is genuinely its own job, on top of everything we studied and worked for. That’s the biggest adulting realization: nobody handed us the manual. But we can build it as we go.

---

Next up: Part 4: Fitness. Finding movement that actually sticks, body composition, TDEE, and my actual gym split.