Mamahood, Mamazine Moment, Self-Care, Uncategorized, Wellness

This Mama Co-Founder is Elevating The CBD Game with ‘PRIMA’

Daphne Thompson | January 6, 2020

It’s safe to say that, by the end of 2019, “CBD” had become a major buzzword and industry leader in the health and wellness space. Many brands sprouted up with all kinds of products featuring CBD and touting it’s benefits, while it was great to have improved commercial access to the cannabinoid and its potential benefits (decreased inflammation, reduced stress, anxiety, and improved sleep – just to name a few), it also became overwhelming for people unfamiliar with hemp and CBD to find a brand they could trust in this loosely regulated industry.

We were introduced to Prima in 2019 – and we’re taking this brand with us into this next decade. Prima is a lifestyle brand offering luxe products that many of us already use every day, elevated by one key ingredient, CBD. Prima’s Skin Therapy nourishes dry skin, Night Magic oil rejuvenates your face while you dream, R+R Cream massages life back into sore muscles, and their elixir powders turn drinking a glass of water into a two-minute act of self-love that will leave you feeling at ease for hours to come.

While we’ve loved incorporating Prima into every aspect of our daily routines and introducing it to our nearest and dearest (Prima hosted a Golden Hour botanical cocktail hour at The Continuum Conference last year!), our favorite part is that it was co-founded by Laurel Angelica Myers, former head of brand strategy and product development for The Honest Company and mother of two.

We had a chance to catch up with Laurel to discuss her new baby, Prima, the effects of stress on motherhood, and how quality and effective CBD products can help you improve presence in your daily life. And for those of you still trying to figure out what CBD even is, we’ve got you those answers too:

MAMA GLOW: What brought you to Prima?

Laurel Angelica Myers: “The short answer is everything in life, right? I think it’s all a journey and I don’t think any one thing attributed to it – it’s all the little things that make up the pieces in your life. But for me, the long answer is I’ve always been really motivated to help others… Through life’s fortuitous events, I ended up meeting some of the folks at the Honest company right around the time that the business was launching with the founding group. That’s when I first met Christopher, my business partner and co-founder of Prima. And it seemed like such a no-brainer. You know, all of a sudden you’re giving people an easy choice. Through these things that you need day to day, you can make choices that are better for you, better for the planet… So I joined Honest company and helped strategize the entire brand and product portfolio strategy…

“At the same time, four years ago I was pregnant with my first child and I was reading all these books on brain development and neurological development and read this really amazing book called Brain Rules for Baby and it changed my entire point of view on what it means to interact with your child and the stress and anxiety that you bring, how that very literally impacts their neurological development for life in the first few years. And then, I looked around and I looked at what was happening in our culture, in our society, to so many people I love and the level of toxic stress that we have right now and then I looked around at all of my friends having babies and children and then thinking to myself ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen to this generation 30 years from now? We have to do something. We have to create a change.’

“And so it was sort of this interesting combination of revelations I was having in my personal life because of my personal transformation I was going through becoming a parent, and my exposure in the health and wellness natural products space hearing about and learning about the endocannabinoid system and CBD and cannabis and I was like ‘What’s going on here, what is this? Everyone seems to be talking about it.’ And then when I started to do the research and understand more about physically what happens to our bodies when we’re stressed out and how these molecules interact with the systems that help us manage those stress responses, I thought ‘Wait a second, this could really be so dramatically impactful in changing how people live. Changing their day to day.’ … And I obviously had a very close, great working relationship with Christopher and we just said “Hey, let’s do this.” And we met Jess over the years in the clean living space and the three of us came together and we said “If we’re gonna do something, let’s do something really meaningful.”

Laurel Angelica Myers, mother of two and co-founder of PRIMA

MG: What is your favorite Prima product to use on a regular basis and why?

“That’s like asking a parent to pick their favorite child! It really depends on what I’m looking for. I feel like recently The Go-To has been a favorite of mine because it allows me to have a ritual for myself that feels like I’m really taking an intentional moment to really ground myself and bring myself back to center. I think one of my challenges is spending a day at the office where things are really busy and really demanding, and then I come home and it’s immediately like ‘Okay. It’s bedtime, it’s bath time, we gotta get ready.’ I want to be able to turn off my work brain and be present with my kids because I don’t get to see them that much during the week, which is really hard. So I want to make sure that when I’m with them, I’m really with them. And for me it’s been such a wonderful ritual. I come home, I have a glass of water with The Go-To, and then I spend that hour of bedtime and reading and being really present. “

 

MG: There are a lot of CBD brands and products on the market these days. What do you think makes Prima stand out for consumers?

‘I think it’s a few things. I mean, yes there are a lot of products out on the market, but I think what we really care about is what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. And that’s through really building trust, transparency, efficacy. Not all products are created equal, and a lot of people tell the quality story, which is super critical. Like, baseline, you absolutely have to have the quality and safety… Quality is the drumbeat, but efficacy is another really big one that I think people aren’t paying attention to. Just because you have CBD in a product, doesn’t mean it’s actually gonna work. How you take it, how it’s encapsulated, what the delivery system is, and how it’s being incorporated into the body is really important. One of the challenges I’m seeing right now with so many different products and brands is that people are really excited to try CBD. They’ve heard of it, they’re leaning in, but then they try a brand and they say ‘It doesn’t work for me. CBD doesn’t work. It’s snake oil.’ … So for Prima, it’s not just about the quality piece, it’s about the efficacy piece. And then it’s also about the experience of the product itself. Just because it’s CBD doesn’t mean it should be stinky and greasy. It should be beautiful and lux and high-performance. So for us, it’s about hitting the surround sound of the best consumer-product experience and ultimately giving people something they want to come back and try again and again.”

PRIMA’s R+R Cream is a wonderful topical for achey muscles.

MG: For people who are not already familiar with CBD or are apprehensive about it, are you able to briefly encapsulate how CBD is produced, why it’s legal, and why it won’t get you high?

“Hemp and marijuana are two different species but are all part of the same cannabis family. And the main difference between hemp and marijuana is essentially the level of THC… And the way that the US federal government has created that distinction is they said ‘Okay, industrial hemp is any cannabis plant with THC levels below .3%.’ That’s it. That’s the difference between hemp and marijuana. You could have two plants, one that’s at .3%, that’s hemp, one that’s at .4%, marijuana. In many ways, it’s a regulatory distinction, not necessarily an actual scientific classification… You can get CBD from either one, but if you’re really going for CBD, hemp is better because it’s got a higher concentration of it. So, the Farm Bill back in 2014 legalized the cultivation and growth of industrial hemp. Prior to that, it was also considered illegal, which is interesting because a hundred years ago it was actually a crop that everybody was encouraged to farm and some states actually had mandatory farming around hemp…

“Essentially, what you do then, is you take the hemp plant and you take that biomass, plant matter, and you create and extract from that. There’s many different ways to do extraction. We’ve opted for CO2 extraction for a few reasons. It’s not going to use any chemical solvents that would leave residuals in the product… We can have lower temperatures which means we’re leaving the other ingredients intact. And it also evaporates at room temperature so it naturally evaporates out of the extract. We then take our hemp extract, which is very high in CBD but also has levels of THC, and then we fraction out the THC below levels of detection. We’ve done that because we wanted to give people an option that are concerned or intimidated or don’t want THC in their product. Because there are a lot of people who don’t want that. And that’s the difference between a full-spectrum extract and a broad spectrum extract… And then isolate is the third component, and that is when you’ve just isolated CBD as a molecule and that is the only thing in there.

“We have broad spectrum, which means we have CBD, we have other minor cannabinoids, we have polyphenol flavonoids, alkaloids, that are also creating what’s called the ‘entourage effect.’ Which is what scientists are looking at – they don’t totally understand how to quantify it, but essentially it’s that, when all of these things are together, it’s more impactful than a single one by itself.”

PRIMA’s trifecta of CBD botanical powders are the perfect boost!

MG: What are some benefits that moms, in particular, could expect to enjoy from using Prima products, and who would you most recommend Prima to?

“I think for me as a mom, the things that I have challenges with are multitasking and high levels of stress in just dealing with the everyday. Making sure we’ve got groceries and food is prepped and meals are ready and school drop off and homework – all those things, plus a fulltime job. For me, CBD is really helpful in managing that everyday stress. Helping me feel a little bit more grounded, a little bit more balanced, a little bit more centered. And it gives me the ability to be more present with my kids and more focused on them, which I love. And I don’t know a single mom who doesn’t struggle with that same stress and the everyday juggle of life. Sleep is another big one. I think a lot of people have sleep challenges, and a hard time sleeping at night, whether it’s constantly running through the to-dos in your head and the task list for the next day, or whatever it might be. But it can be really helpful to kind of quiet the mind. We have a product called Rest Easy, which is one of our elixirs that has our hemp extract with other herbs to help encourage that calmness, that quietude for the end of the day right before bed… Also, for me, dry skin is a really big issue. I’m constantly working with my hands, and our Skin Therapy is amazing for dry hands and dry spots… The other piece, too, is my kids are at an age where I’m still constantly picking them up and moving them… just the day to day of running around and getting older. I get uncomfortable. My body doesn’t feel as good as it used to, and the R+R Cream is really helpful for that as well.”

 

MG: You talked about this a little bit already in terms of Prima, but do you have any self-care rituals that you make sure you’re consistent about practicing?

“To me this is one of those areas of improvement in my life. I want to be better at this. That glass of water with The Go-To, for me, is my little ritual. It’s two minutes where I just have a little bit of quiet and I’m able to ground myself. And that is really helpful, as small as that is. But I would say there are a lot of things I want to be better at. I want to find ways to incorporate more self care rituals into my life.  The other one though that I think for me is really helpful is a bath. It doesn’t happen that often, but when I get to do it, it’s pretty awesome because it is a total mind-body situation. It’s not physical, it’s not mental, it’s both… Also, for me, taking care of myself is spending time with my kids. Reading with them, making sure that I really get those moments fills me up.”

30 Days on BINTO & The Pain-free Period I Never Knew Existed
Upgrade Your 2020 Self-Care Routine with These Mama Glow Approved Products

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30 Days on BINTO & The Pain-free Period I Never Knew Existed
Upgrade Your 2020 Self-Care Routine with These Mama Glow Approved Products