Forget SAD Lamps—Bella Hadid Boosts Serotonin Through Her Gut

By nature, Bella Hadid is an empath (she is a Libra, after all). On a recent Zoom call, she remarked that the world feels like a particularly anxious place right now. “I’m super sensitive, so everything hits me,” she said. “I can feel it.”

If you’d asked her last year how she dealt with anxiety, she might have said she turned to familiar comforts: Dominos, Seventh Street Burger in the East Village, milkshakes, pizza, and a drink or two to take the edge off. Oh, and she wasn’t drinking water, and she was working like crazy, and she felt like shit all the time, in her own words. 

“It’s like, oh, I want to just have fun. And then all of a sudden, you want to just have fun every day and you realize you wanting to have fun is you finding fun in something else instead of inside,” Hadid said. “[These] past two years during quarantine, I’m pretty sure all of us self-medicated to be able to find happiness, instead of actually doing what we’re supposed to do and [finding] the happiness within.”

Fast forward to this September, when Hadid stepped into the role of Co-Founder of Kin Euphorics, along with her counterpart, Co-Founder and CEO Jen Batchelor. Kin is a drink brand, but no, there’s no alcohol in the beverages (and I know what you’re thinking—there’s no CBD in the products). Instead, Kin is an adaptogenic beverage that contains GABA, a nootropic that helps increase serotonin, L-theanine, an amino acid that aids anxiety, and more good-for-your-brain ingredients like tyrosine and rhodeola rosea.

When Hadid and Batchelor told me that 80% of your body’s serotonin (the brain hormone that makes you happy) is built in your gut, I thought I must have misheard them. But it’s true—some sources even say that gut bacteria produce up to 95% of the body's serotonin.  “Every single drink that we make helps the body and the mind produce serotonin from the gut to the brain,” said Batchelor.

Kin’s first beverage was High Rhode, and you can now drink Kin Spritz, Lightwave, and Dream Light, which are all meant to serve different functions. High Rhode is meant to help give you energy in social situations. Kin Spritzes can be sipped all day (though no more than four in 24 hours). Dream Light is best consumed an hour or two before bed. Hadid uses Lightwave as a substitute for a glass of wine at the end of a long day, which she attributes to better sleep patterns and an overall healthier lifestyle.

Drinking more Kin is one of the many things that Hadid is doing to improve her wellness this year. It’s evident that for Hadid, 2022 is all about feeling better in every aspect of her life, though choosing Kin instead of alcohol certainly helps her achieve her wellness goals (plus, she’s considering buying one of those motivational water bottles with hourly reminders to encourage herself to drink more water). 

“This is my first dry January,” Hadid said. “This year, I’ve actually cut down on alcohol by 80% or 90% just because I realized that all of our bodies are a temple. I don’t even mean to speak as a preacher or anything. These are things that have been said to me hundreds of times. Until I was in the position where I did want to change my lifestyle, I basically said a big F you to those people.” 

Drinking less is huge, but Hadid is also working on herself in other ways. She’s staying off social media as much as possible, for one. If you’ve ever experienced doom-scrolling, Hadid is right there with you. “I realize from just watching myself, I get into these holes of doom. That’s when the comparisons start, that’s when my mental health essentially just starts going downhill.” 

Instead, she wants to focus on her family, her friends, and her wellness routine. Hadid realized that the things that truly make her feel better are having a morning routine, using a hyperbaric chamber, doing cryotherapy, and going to the gym—but to center herself, not to lose weight.

Batchelor noted that too often, the gym is viewed as a punishment to shrink our bodies. “Let’s go to the gym to make our body better,” Batchelor said. “Bella’s mindset is ‘I’m going to make my mind better, I’m going to make myself stronger, more resilient.’”

At the end of the day, making people stronger and more resilient is at the core of Kin’s philosophy. It’s a beverage that aims to help you feel better and doesn’t give you a raging hangover. “It is about the lifestyle choice that you have to make for yourself to say, I’m going to take these steps every day to eventually help my brain to make me feel better, and be able to overcome the bad times quicker,” Hadid said. For Hadid, A serotonin boost is just what the doctor ordered—and Kin helps her get there.