More people are making wellness and taking care of themselves a priority. As people make – and break – New Year’s resolutions, we checked in with wellness experts and others, who share ways to stay well in 2025.
Books about self-care are popular
At Riverbend, a bookshop in Glastonbury, a rather unlikely protagonist sat on the cover of a book.
“Little Frog looks in the mirror and tells herself positive things, drinks tea, says sternly, ‘I'm going to be nicer to myself,’ this is just like a hug of a book,” said Amy Hetherington-Coy, bookseller and a seventh-grade teacher.
The frog, it seems, will lead the trend in 2025 with more people buying books that make them feel good about themselves and the world.
Self-help books have been popular in recent years, experts say.
The “Little Frog’s Guide to Self-Care” is top on the list, Heatherington-Coy said.
Books about anxiety among children and teens will also likely be in demand in 2025, she said. She hopes people will consider “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt.
“In our school district, we're really going to be trying to push people to take a look at this book and think about how it could affect their parenting and their teaching,” Heatherington-Coy said. “So I'm imagining other districts are going to be taking similar initiatives.”
Book recommendations for 2025
Here are some books that Amy Heatherington-Coy recommends:
- The Book of (More) Delights, Ross Gay
- How to Keep House While Drowning, K.C. Davis
- The Little Frog’s Guide to Self-Care, Maybell Eequay
- The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt
- Upworthy – Good People, Gabriel Reilich, Lucia Knell
- Life in the Present, Liz Climo
- We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, Syou Ishida (Author), E. Madison Shimoda (Translator)
- Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
- 888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers, Abraham Chang
Pausing, breathing, being still
Also trending in 2025: People hitting the pause button.
Dr. Akhilesh Jain, chief of vascular surgery at Hartford Hospital, took three months off in the fall of 2024 to spend time with family and to learn and practice meditation.
Jain enrolled in an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction(MBSR) online course from the University of Massachusetts during his time off and also developed a daily meditation practice of vipassana, a breath-based mindfulness technique.
Seated with him on the mat, we turn our attention to a guided meditation session on an app – a gentle invitation to simply observe one’s in and out breath.
As we opened our eyes, Jain said the sessions have helped his mind get sharper, more still and more aware.
“This was actually an immensely therapeutic experience for me, spending time with the family, just focusing and meditating,” he said. “It has been a very awakening experience for me.”
With the caveat that he was not offering advice as a clinician, Jain said data shows there’s more to meditation than feeling good. Regular mindfulness practice can help reduce inflammation and therefore the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Community connection and mental health
At the corner table of Shish Kebab House of Afghanistan in West Hartford on Friday nights, Marc Hussey gathers with a regular group of men to eat, talk about life and the world. From there, the group of eight to 10 men walk to nearby Harvest for beer and more. Hussey, chuckling, described it as “bromance.”
“It's very much a ‘Cheers’ atmosphere,” said Hussey, a culinary educational consultant with the Connecticut technical high school system. “We have ongoing conversations on WhatsApp. We get together for birthdays, celebrate life events – an engagement.”
The group even has an investing group and travels the globe together. They’ve been to Amsterdam, Edinburgh and Dublin, with plans to fly to Belize this year.
Locally, there have been trips by train to catch a Broadway show in New York City or savor some pizza in New Haven.
The men met at bars in Connecticut and from there it “organically evolved,” Hussey said.
“We all have families, have similar interests, love to travel, [there’s] always engaging conversation,” he said. “We share family stuff, we support each other. It started as casual friendships at the bar and went beyond that.”
Hussey said it’s a guy group, but they don’t exclude women. Every once in a while, somebody will bring their spouse or a friend.
Alternative wellness therapies
Doctors are increasingly referring patients to alternate healing therapies and the trend is here to stay.
“More doctors are referring patients for acupuncture,” said Tina Nicastro, acupuncturist and Chinese medicine specialist at Connecticut Family Acupuncture in Glastonbury and South Windsor. “The ‘old guard’ of docs would often write us off, especially in orthopedics, pain management, oncology and fertility circles.”
Nearly a quarter of new patients were referred by a physician, physical therapist or chiropractor, she said, and more insurance plans are offering acupuncture coverage.
She said patients come in for treatment while they’re waiting for well over a month to see a specialist, as well as a supplement to the medical care they’re currently receiving.
“We’re starting to see more meaningful integration of acupuncture, which means we get to help more people,” she said.
Health trends
A Connecticut physician with a different sort of medical practice said patients can expect a few new health trends in 2025.
“There's a big interest in longevity medicine like biohacking – VO2 max, exercise potential, and so on and so forth,” said Dr. Vasanth Kainkaryam, who founded the 4 Elements, Direct Primary Care & Wellness Space in South Windsor. “So I think that is going to be a big one for 2025 where people want more data when they're looking at their lifespan and their health span.”
VO2 max is the amount of oxygen one’s body uses during exercise, with high VO2 max tied to lower cardiac risk and a longer life span.
Kainkaryam’s primary care and aesthetics clinic is expanding this year to include a community garden and demo kitchen showcasing healthy food. There are outdoor spaces for tai chi and yoga, as well as consultations in the garden where you take a walk as you talk with your doctor.
Kainkaryam also said more people would turn to lab testing to look for molecular markers predicting Alzheimer’s and cancer risk.
He anticipates more patients will want to meet with their doctors in person to build a relationship, but added that a hybrid model of telemedicine and in-person medical care is here to stay.
