Fortune Editors

Change The World

Impact Segment

Sector

Company Info

Industry

Employees (worldwide)

Headquarters

Countries where the company was recognized on a GPTW national list

Number of countries

World's Best list history

Web address

Great Place to Work profile

legacy

Natura

natura

Natura | Fortune

Brett Haensel

What the World’s 25 Best Workplaces have in common

/2020/10/19/best-workplaces-2020-great-place-to-work/

Susie Gharib

Brazil beauty company Natura wants to give Avon a makeover

/2020/01/10/natura-avon-roberto-marques-on-leading/

Alan Murray

Katherine Dunn

This Beauty Company Doesn’t Do Business in China

/2020/01/08/natura-china-beauty-environment/

E. Freya Williams

9 green giants: Billion-dollar businesses that are sustainable

/2015/08/27/green-giants-freya-williams/

How do you unlock the secrets of a long and healthy life? With their SuperAgers Family Study, researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine hope to identify the natural and inherited factors that allow humans to fight aging and related diseases.

Here’s how scientists at the cutting edge of aging research are working to extend ‘health span’

Health

How do you unlock the secrets of a long and healthy life? With their SuperAgers Family Study, researchers hope to identify the natural and inherited factors that allow humans to fight aging.

We scientists have found that we can actually intervene with aging. What we understand about the biology and the ability to target it has increased tremendously. This has led to investment and creation of longevity, biotech to develop drugs that target aging. What is aging? I think it's a million dollar question. I think we all recognize that as we age, uh certain processes in our bodies break down or don't work as well. Scientists have recognized there's something happening on the cellular level that's causing the body to deteriorate, right and move in that direction, which is what we call aging. So we found a mutation in a gene that's called 36. And we know already from animals that if you express this 36 in animals, they live 20% longer and healthier. So once we identify the genes that contribute to healthy aging, longevity, we don't stop there. Our goal is then to use that information to develop medications that will mimic the action of those genes. With the ultimate goal of giving, you know, general population the benefit of healthy longevity that right now is only accessible to people who won the genetic lottery. We are doing this Super Asure initiative. We have 750 centenarians in their families and we're studying in variety of ways, but we're really interested in their genetics. You could say maybe there's one gene, that's all one gene that provides longevity for everyone. But that's not the case. There are actually several ways to get to age 100. So we want to find everything the CDC have looked at the medical cost in the last two years of life of somebody who dies after the age of 100. And it's third of the cost of those who die at their 70. There is an economical value, not only for the fact that you're not in the hospital, but if you're not in the hospital, what do you do? You travel, you shop, you buy things for your grandkids. So the economical value of extending health spend is just amazing. It's actually something like $380 trillion by the year 2030 even even if we extend health by two years. So it's really not about living to 100 and 20 or you know, or beyond that, it's really about living healthy maybe for 80 years or 90 years, but being able to maintain one's independence, good health, to be able to do the things that one enjoys.

You missed out on some sleep during the workweek and are looking forward to sleep in and pay off that "sleep debt" once the weekend rolls around. But is that actually good for you? Sleep scientist Dr. Rebecca Robbins breaks down our sleep cycle and everything you should know about our natural circadian rhythms.

Fact or Fiction: Is it possible to pay off your sleep debt?

Dr. Rebecca Robbins of Harvard Medical School breaks down sleep cycles, circadian rhythm, and "sleep debt".

Is it possible to pay off your sleep debt?

Dr. Rebecca Robbins of Harvard Medical School explains.

One of the most common trends in our population is curtailing the amount of sleep that we get during the work week and thinking that we can repay our sleep on the weekend, doing things that we often view as luxurious like sleeping in. But believe it or not, sleeping in is one of the worst things that we can do for our sleep spending enough time sleeping is of course one of the most important and central parts of what we're increasingly referring in the field to sleep health. It is a myth to think that we simply crawl into the sheets and enter the state of sleep and then we wake up and haven't moved an inch to the contrary. Sleep is actually a very rich and very variegated process. The gold standard of sleep measurement is something called policy sonography and that is largely done in the context of a laboratory setting. Policy. Sonography simply refers to multiple modes of measurement. We're gonna be monitoring your brainwaves, your respiratory effort, your heart rate, a host of different things that allow us to understand which stage of sleep you're in at which time Over the course of your sleep. When we crawl into the sheets at night we enter some of the lighter stages of sleep and we're entering sleep slowly and it's a stage stage one and two that are marked by slightly slower brain waves in the wake state. But as we're entering sleep, this is a period of time in the lighter stages of our sleep at night. They were very able to be awoken by noises or things that are going on around us. Then we enter stage three deep sleep, which is the closest thing we get to hibernation as human beings in a 24 hour day and then something fascinating happens after about 20 minutes in a healthy sleeper, we enter our first rapid eye movement period of the the dreaming period of our night actually plays a really vital role for our brain to bring up events that happened from the day. The rapid eye movement sleep is where we believe. We got a lot of the benefits cognitively of our sleep and our ability to retain and remember information. What's so fascinating is that the structure of sleep is actually intact almost remarkably no matter the amount of sleep that you get. So what's so fascinating is that the human body and the brain adapt to that maybe shorter period of sleep. But then in the nights following those nights of curtailed and shortened sleep, our body and our brains actually spend a little bit more time in rapid eye movement sleep, we call this rem rebound because such a vital stage for our cognitive performance and excellence. Our sleep is governed by two processes. The first is called our home a static sleep drive and what that refers to is our overall sense of sleepiness. That homo static drive simply builds with the amount of hours that we've been awake over the course of the day and then that declines it's repaid with our sleep over the course of our nighttime. The other process that has a really significant role in our sleep is something called our circadian rhythm. Now that rhythm as it sounds eggs and flows over the 24 hour day in a very rhythmic, beautiful and predictable fashion and our circadian drive determines the times that we're optimally alert and times that work optimally sleepy over the course of a 24 hour day. The circadian system is most influenced by our environment and the pattern of light and darkness in the world around us. The on switch to the sleep phase of our circadian rhythm is darkness going into an envoy is free of light when we're ideally able to align our wake up time with sunlight exposure. That flips the off switch, stops the floodgates of melatonin and allows us to be alert and go about our days without the presence of those time cues. Our circadian rhythm becomes very confused and unsure when it should be awake and when it should be sleepy. Now when we change our sleep time, believe it or not even one hour makes a big difference. So if you've ever slept in late on a saturday morning and wake woken up 234 hours beyond your normal work week, Wake up time and felt really groggy. The circadian system is why, because what you've done is you've actually done the same thing as popped in an airplane and fly into a new time zone so your brain is starting to play catch up. We often think that sleep is just relegated to the nighttime hours or just the time that you plan to start sleeping. But believe it or not, a good night's sleep really starts as soon as we wake up. So things to keep in mind over the course of the day are getting natural light exposure. That helps us think our circadian rhythm to the pattern of light and darkness around us exposure to natural sunlight also can boost our energy. So ideally what we want to do, not only get enough sleep, but one of the core tenants of sleep is keeping a consistent sleep schedule. We're all so unique and different and diverse that we each have a different sleep need now do your best to protect that night in and night out.

Artificial intelligence—including techniques from machine learning to deep learning and natural language processing—continues to disrupt the health sector with the goal of delivering more precise, effective and timely interventions for people. In this conversation hosted by Merative, we will explore how AI is evolving and where people are using it effectively in health industries today. How do we overcome the hurdles of making AI systems easy to work with and solving real problems to get wider industry uptake? We’ll hear from leaders across the health sector on AI’s evolution – from big promises to practical progress and real outcomes. 

The Evolution of A.I in Health: Where Humans Meet Machines

Leadership

We’ll hear from leaders across the health sector on AI’s evolution – from big promises to practical progress and real outcomes. 

You're having trouble falling asleep and reach for the tried-and-true trick — melatonin. But is melatonin healthy because it's natural? Sleep scientist Dr. Rebecca Robbins explains the potential risks and benefits of melatonin, and offers alternatives for people struggling with sleep.

Fact or Fiction: Is melatonin safe because it's natural?

Is melatonin healthy because it's natural? Sleep scientist Dr. Rebecca Robbins explains the potential risks and benefits of melatonin.

Is melatonin safe because it's natural?

is melatonin safe because it's natural melatonin tablets are increasingly widely used in our society research published in the journal of the American Medical Association this year showed that melatonin use increased more than fourfold in the past decade. One of the things with melatonin is that the patter and the prevalence of use of melatonin, our society has outpaced our ability scientifically to understand its implications. Melatonin is a hormone that's secreted in the brain in a tiny region called the super aqui asthmatic nucleus and simply the presence of darkness around us or absence of light allows for the secretion of melatonin. We also refer to the substance in the brain as the dracula hormone as it is associated with our sense of sleepiness and ability to fall asleep. This is what we call an endogenous process where melatonin is secreted within the brain. Melatonin is also available widely in tablet form and this form of melatonin is something called exogenous melatonin. It's a form of melatonin that is exterior to the brain and to the body. What we're seeing is shelves are ripe with products that have higher levels of melatonin doses 15 20 mg gummies tablets, et cetera. The problem is we really don't know the consequences of these higher levels of melatonin in humans. So we strongly recommend keeping an eye on dosage and keeping the levels as low as possible. One of the other things about melatonin tablets is it's an industry that's widely unregulated. And so unfortunately in laboratory studies when we compare the melatonin that's on the label of a tablet with the actual components of those tablets, we see that those two things are very different. The amount of milligrams that are shown on the label and the amount of melatonin that's present in the tablet. The risks when it comes to melatonin are still relatively unknown. But generally what we do recommend is to always talk to your health care provider. They will be the best source of information as to whether or not melatonin is a good fit for you. Now, melatonin is a substance that does have antioxidant and anti inflammatory properties. Those have been demonstrated in the scientific literature and shed light on the importance of this vital hormone. What we do know that in small doses and we're talking 12, maybe five mg. These smaller do have been shown to be effective in helping aid our transition to a new time zone, which is fundamentally a question about our circadian rhythms. The use of melatonin has been shown to be effective in treating circadian rhythm sleep disorders. These are individuals who struggle to fall asleep because there's a mismatch between their desired sleep wake times and their internal biological clock times. Now, small doses have been shown in the short term to help those individuals better match those external and internal times. It's important to realize that our sleep is really influenced by things that happened over the course of our day and amidst our COVID-19 pandemic and all of the crazy events over the past few years, we've seen an increase in sleep difficulties and those difficulties could be broadly to Find as difficulty falling asleep or difficulty falling back asleep after you wake up interrupting sleep interestingly it takes even the well rested person about 15 or 20 minutes to fall asleep. Now it's completely normal for all of us to experience a little difficulty falling asleep from time to time. So if you find yourself tossing and turning before bedtime taking longer than 30 or 40 minutes to fall asleep, get out of bed ideally keep a notepad in your bedroom, slip out of bed and write down on that note pad, anything that's going on in your mind, other strategies that can help us fall asleep faster are reserving the time before bed for relaxing and soothing activities and really cultivating a different mindset before bed of you know this is time for me to rest and repair and ease into sleep. There are other natural homeopathic remedies when it comes to sleep. The first are herbal teas. There's also evidence that magnesium salt baths are soothing and relaxing and can be part of a healthy sleep routine. Melatonin importantly is not a sleep drug, it is not going to put you right to sleep. Whereas the pharmacological sleep intervention has a very different set of outcomes and use cases the next time someone tells you the melatonin is safe because it's natural. Remember that that is fiction

Natura

Company Information

Change The World

Company Info