Press Samples / Unpaid AD - Sleep With Ease With Pukka Herbs*

It's really hard, especially at the moment to overestimate the importance of sleep. We're all feeling a little bit frazzled, stressed out, and a little bit under the weather at the moment, and more often than not life's upsets are reflected in our quality of sleep.

Good sleep plays a huge role in both our physical and mental wellbeing, it's essential for cell regeneration, to recharge our cardiovascular system, and to support our immune system, as well as improving mental clarity, helping with decision making and helping us to cope with stress.

I probably struggle more than most with my sleep. Thanks to my struggles with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / CFS / ME and Fibromyalgia, I alternate between utter exhaustion, I can go without sleep for more than 24 hours, or I can sleep for 18 hours solid and still feel exhausted, there really isn't a lot of middle ground. 

Alongside medical advice and intervention, I'm always looking for new ways to improve my sleep health. I've tried a lot of things from acupuncture, to cognitive behavioural therapy, and various other little things that I'll mention later in this post, but I am always on the look out for new ways to help me sleep.

I was recently contacted by the lovely people at Pukka, and I was invited to take part in their "Sleep With Ease" campaign. If you haven't heard of Pukka, they are a substantial, ethical and organic herbal company that produce a wide range of herbal infusions that aim to benefit the health of people, plants and the planet and they very kindly sent three boxes of caffeine free, herbal blends from their range to help me on my quest for better sleep.

Pukka recognise the importance of sleep for our mental and physical health, and in an attempt to help us improve both our sleep health and our wider health, they have introduced their 7 day Sleep With Ease programme, which is specifically designed to help us create a space, pattern and routine to help us sleep better.

Designed to be used alongside their herbal blends, their website contains a whole load of information and downloads to help you eliminate bad sleeping habits, establish routine, and train both your body and brain to help you sleep better.As I say, I'm up for anything that can send me into the land of nod, so I decided to give the 7 day Sleep With Ease programme a try.  

The website features a downloadable sleep diary that you can fill in, as well as a list of changes that you can can make across the course of a the week to help you improve your sleep.

Source

The idea is that you introduce one new element everyday until all of the tips become a part of your daily sleep routine. Some of the tips as you can see are actually quite simple, and in theory they are, it's just about putting them into practise. 

My biggest issue sleep wise has always been with routine, going to bed late, sleeping late, and then wondering why I can't sleep at night. It makes total sense, go to sleep at roughly the same time of night, and wake up at similar team each morning. It takes a little bit of effort and I'm not going to lie dragging myself out of bed when I'm exhausted is difficult but after a few days it begins to feel normal, and now I can pretty much wake up without having to set an alarm.

Another thing that I have an issue with is technology, I have a tv and a dvd player in my bedroom and whilst I don't usually have my MacBook in my bedroom at night, I do have my phone, and my iPad plugged in, in my room, but the key is to have cut off times, plug things into charge by all means but don't check your phone, or start flicking through Instagram when you're trying to get ready for sleep.

We are all guilty of it, if it's not watching one more episode of a tv show, flicking through Facebook, or getting annoyed with someone on twitter, it's watching the late night news and depressing yourself. Sleep is all about de-stressing, and concentrating on something, or getting stressed and upset just sends your brain into overdrive when you really should be preparing for sleep, so switch off the tv, your computer, and phone for an hour or so before you go to bed and you really will notice a difference in your sleep health.

One of the other tips, that the team from Pukka recommend is to cut down on your caffeine consumption. I'm not a huge tea and coffee drinker compared to lot of people, but my nightly cuppa is definitely a thing, and even though tea usually contains less caffeine than coffee, it is still a stimulant and it could be disrupting your sleep without you realising.

The Pukka Sleep With Ease programme advises that you should try to avoid caffeine after 12pm, so instead of caffeine filled soft drinks, the odd latte, and iced coffees, I've switched to some of Pukka's caffeine free herbal blends including their Elderberry & Echinacea, which has lovely some fresh hedgerow berry, ginger, and liquorice flavours, their Lemon, Ginger and Manuka Honey blend, and their chamomile, fennel, and ginger flavoured Relax blend.

As part of their sleep programme Pukka recommend that you drink a mug of their 'Night Time' tea every night. So instead of my caffeine laden cuppa, at around 8pm, I've been drinking this blend of lime flower, chamomile and lavender flowers, oat flower tops, liquorice root and valerian root instead

Designed to help you unwind before bed, this particular tea is caffeine free and contains 28% fair wild ingredients, and 33% fair trade ingredients, the bags themselves are plastic free, are fully recyclable and compostable, and they also feature organic cotton strings.

All you do is pop your bag into a mug of boiling water, and then let it infuse for around 15 minutes before drinking. Given then floral ingredients such as lavender and chamomile I was expecting the Night Time blend to have more of a floral taste but instead it had a surprisingly sweet, pleasant, herbal liquorice / aniseed type flavour.

Drinking the tea at night immediately sent me into wind down mode. After drinking it I switched off my blue screen electronics, and usually had a warm (but not too hot) shower with a calming lavender based shower gel before settling into bed, and reading a non stressful book for an hour before using some pillow spray, and settling down with either a guided meditation (there is a nice short one on the Pukka website) or some nature sounds on a timer until I fall asleep.

These are things that work for me but you could also add other things to help you sleep including ear plugs, eye masks, a fan, a white noise machine, or a story app. Everyone is different, there are basic things that should help most people fall asleep but you just need to find out what works for you. 

I've now actually been doing the Pukka Sleep With Ease campaign for more than 7 days now and I can safely say that following some of the suggestions in the plan, keeping a sleep diary, and drinking in particular the Night Time tea has made a difference.

I've managed to establish a proper sleep / wake routine and I've tried to eradicate some of my bad sleep habits. As I say drinking the Night Time tea became a real signal to me that the day was coming to an end and that I should start winding down and preparing myself for rest and sleep.

Unfortunately due to medical reasons I potentially am always going to have issues with my sleep but thanks to Pukka I've been reminded that making small differences and creating a workable routine can really help me to get a better and more restful nights sleep.

If you're struggling with your sleep at the moment I would thoroughly recommend that you try Pukka's 7 day Sleep With Ease programme. You can find out more on their website and of course I would really recommend that you try some of Pukka's herbal blends to help you improve your own sleep, mental, and physical health at this stressful time. Pukka Relax, Pukka Night Time, and the Pukka Herbal Collection retail at around £2.79 - £3 for a box of 20 teabags from various retailers including Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Waitrose and Holland & Barrett.

 *Press Samples / Unpaid Advertisement / Promotion / Non Affiliate Links 

Press Sample / AD - Upping Your Water Intake With Zero Water*

Now I might not be very good at a lot of things health and well being wise, but something that I am pretty good at is drinking water. Up until recently I didn't realise just how many people struggle to drink the recommend 6 - 8 glasses of water a day - if anything I probably drink more than that, I usually drink around 2 litres of water during the day, and another glass or two during the night!

I have a confession to make though, I might be drinking enough water, but up until recently 99% of the water that I drank came in a bottle, from the supermarket, and no I don't mean the stuff in the fancy glass bottles, I mean the regular stuff, in a nasty plastic bottle!

Even though I always put my bottles into the recycling, it doesn't stop me feeling guilty about using so much plastic. I know what you're saying, why don't you just drink tap water? Well despite being perfectly safe to drink, my tap water often has a very chlorine like, chemically taste and smell, that only disappears when the water has been boiled. Over the years, we've tried all sorts of different filters from the plumbed in kind, to various water bottles and jugs, and nothing has really made too much of a difference, until now.

A few months ago I was given the opportunity to try the Zero Water system, having tried a few different filter jugs in the past, I was pretty sceptical at first but I have to say that I'm now a total convert.

Unlike the majority of filter jugs on the market Zero Water, removes virtually all of the dissolved solids that are present in normal tap water, compared to some of the other market leaders that only remove around half that.

What is special about Zero Water is its special 5 stage filtration system that removes around 99.6% of total dissolved solids that are present in our drinking water. Stage 1 is the Coarse Filter Screen that removes things like dust, and rust that can make the water cloudy, Stage 2 is a Foam Distributor layer that removes any additional suspended solids. Your water then goes through the Stage 3 layer which is the Multi Layer Activated Carbon & Oxidation Reduction Allow, that removes organic contaminants for example, pesticides, mercury and chrome, and it also stops the formation of bacteria in your water. Next Stage 4 the Dual Comprehensive Ion Exchange Resin layer, that removes inorganic metals, non metals and radiological contaminates. The final filtering stage is in Stage 5 and the Ultra Fine Screen & Non Woven Membrane layer that removes any remaining suspended solids.

Once your water has passed through these layers the result is cleaner, purer, fresher tasting water. In fact the Zero Water filtration system is so good it can even turn wine into water! If you don't believe me then check out this demonstration featuring This Morning presenter Philip Schofield .



Now I'm not the type of person to waste a good bottle of wine so I've purely been testing my Zero Water filter with tap water.  There are a few different models but I was kindly sent the Zero Water 12 Cup / 2.8 Litre Jug which retails at around £39.99.

The box contained the water jug itself, the 5 stage filter, a TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) metre, and full instructions.

Before I started I gave the jug a good rinse through just to remove any dust etc. then attached the filter. The filter itself it really easy to fit, you just remove it from the packet, remove the cap and then you screw securely into the jug. Now how long the filter lasts depends very much on how much water you're filtering, and on how many dissolved solids are in your tap water. Based on the readings for my tap water, my filter should easily filter between 95 and 150 litres of water before it needs replacing.

Before I started testing and drinking my water I filtered a full jugful, again just to make sure everything was as clean as it should be. The jug is really easy to fill you just remove the lid and start pouring in the water, letting all of the water pass through the filter before adding more for the best results.

This particular jug and most of the larger jugs in the Zero Water range comes complete with your very own TDS metre, so you can check the purity of your own water and see just how many total dissolved solids in are in both your ordinary tap water, and your filtered water.

The metre comes with batteries already installed and operates with just two buttons, a simple on/off button and a hold button.




Now this might not be 100% scientific but I decided to do a couple of tests of my own. The first test I was on an unopened bottle of still mineral water. I not going to share the brand with you but you probably will have heard of the brand. All you take the lid off the metre turn it on and pop it into a glass of water. You can just about see a reading of 218 parts per million of total dissolved solids in the water, which as actually classed as high. I was actually pretty surprised by that reading - you buy bottled water something because you think it's cleaner and better for you but it doesn't seem to be the case especially when you compare it to my own tap water...

Despite tasting and often smelling less than appetising, and according to Zero Water having a higher TDS rating than tap water generally does in my area, my unfiltered tap water came in at 109 parts per million which is less than half the measurement of the bottled water.

The bottled water certainly tasted better than my tap water so I decided to fill up the jug with tap water and test some of the filtered water so you can see the difference.

Well Zero Water certainly lived up to its name, after filtration my tap water fell from 109 to zero, so whatever was in my water, isn't there anymore, and not only that but the chlorine like taste and smell had completely disappeared. All I could taste was clean, fresh water, with no burning and no aftertaste, and that's been the same with every glass that I've filtered since. My bottled water consumption has fell, and I'm still drinking the same amount of water - I honestly can't recommend this product enough.

My one tiny little complaint is that this 12 cup jug is a little bit too big from my small, under counter fridge, and it is quite bulky, and quite heavy to lift especially when its full, although there is a little button tap dispenser at the the base of the handle, which you can use to fill your glass by putting the jug on the edge of the bench or on a table if it's too heavy. If this jug looks as though it's too big for you though don't worry, there a whole range of different products available from Zero Water ranging from a travel bottle that retails at around £14.99, to a 7 cup jug that retails at £24.99, and even a large 23 cup dispenser, that would be ideal for a small office that retails at £44.99.

Although this probably isn't one of the most exciting gifts out there, I can't think of a single person that wouldn't find a Zero Water jug useful. Whether it's for yourself to encourage you to drink more water, or whether it's a gift for someone with a bottled water habit, Zero Water is both a healthy and environmentally conscious must have. To find our more about Zero Water, and the science behind it, pleased check out their website. Various Zero Water products including jugs and replacement filters are available to buy direct from Zero Water and from various other retailers including Argos, Amazon, Robert Dyas, Ocado, QVC UK, and Ryman x

*Press Sample /AD