Offerings from the wellness company include anything but your garden-variety CBD
Words by KELSEY McKINNON and MARIE LOOK
With the CBD craze verging on the edge of cliche, the space is primed for a serious, sophisticated player. Enter Prima, the brainchild of Christopher Gavigan, co-founder of The Honest Company, Laurel Angelica Myers, a former Honest Company brand and product developer, and Jessica Assaf, the Harvard MBA founder of Cannabis Feminist, which positions the hero ingredient as the cornerstone of wellness. “We’re not the sprinkle-on-top brand,” Assaf says from the brand’s Santa Monica office. “This is about the next phase of health.”
Prima launched last spring with a content-laden website demystifying the ancient botanical and soon after, rolled out a range of CBD wellness products. “The word prima in other languages means primary, excellent, top-quality and first. In Spanish it also means female cousin. And hemp is the sober, botanical, cooler female cousin of [cannabis],” says Gavigan, who wrote the bestseller Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home before launching The Honest Company with actor Jessica Alba in 2011.
Armed with compelling science showing that CBD mitigates anxiety, chronic pain, insomnia, arthritis and acne, the Prima team believes that daily exposure to high-quality CBD extract can critically support the body’s native endocannabinoid system (ECS), which regulates overall balance. Prima’s broad-spectrum hemp extracts are sourced from a farm in Oregon where their “girls” (highly productive female plants) are organically nurtured by natural sunlight, wind, moonlight and other seasonal biorhythms.
This fall, the team introduces three new water-soluble botanical elixirs with hemp CBD and continues to pioneer ways of harnessing the power of different cannabinoids. Gavigan is first to admit that much of the scientific research around CBD is ongoing, but what they know for sure is that “75 to 90 percent of doctor visits are stress-related. We are fighting a war against the epidemic of stress,” Assaf says. “There is so much excitement around CBD right now because it’s hitting on this universal problem that we haven’t been able to solve for, until now.”
GOOD LIBATIONS
For Stress or Recovery: Mix the Go-To elixir into water or your favorite hot or cold beverage to reap the benefits of 10 milligrams of naturally occurring CBD, activating and aligning the natural body systems that impact stress, mood and immunity. $48/20 single-dose packets.
For Sleep: Add the Rest Easy elixir, made using whole plant hemp extract with 10 milligrams of CBD and other sleep-promoting botanicals, to your nighttime routine to ease gently into slumber mode. $55/20 single-dose packets.
For Focus: The Brain Fuel elixir leverages adaptogenics like ashwagandha, rhodiola, lion’s mane and ginkgo along with 10 milligrams of CBD to support brain function, boosting clarity, concentration and overall cognition. $55/20 single-dose packets.
Shop Prima at C Magazine’s new concept store, Studio C, at Fashion Island, 401 Newport Center Dr., Suite A206, Newport Beach, 949-705-3130.
Feature image: Night Magic face oil, $88, The Daily supplements, $45, and Skin Therapy cream, $38. Photo by Daniel Dorsa.
This story originally appeared in the November 2019 issue of C Magazine and has been updated as of July. 1, 2020.
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