Why Are You Feeling So Tired?

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{This is a collaborative Post}

It’s normal to feel tired some of the time, and when you do feel a little sleepy, there’s usually a good reason for it. You might not have gone to bed early enough, or perhaps you had a particularly strenuous day. No matter what, a good night’s sleep and you’ll generally feel better. 

What if you don’t, though? What if you wake up feeling just as tired as when you went to sleep? The danger is that this can become something we get used to, so we just think of it as the usual thing without wondering if there’s an underlying cause, but the fact is that constant tiredness isn’t right and shouldn’t be normalised. There will be a reason behind it, and working out what that reason is means you can fix the issue. Read on to find out more. 

 

You Don’t Get Enough Sleep

Let’s start with the most obvious reason for being tired all the time and the one that’s easiest to fix - you don’t get enough sleep. Although everyone is different, most people will need between seven and nine hours of sleep each night, and if you’re getting significantly less than that, it’s sure to account for your constant lethargy, especially if you’ve got a busy life during your waking hours. 

The issue is that lack of sleep isn’t just something that makes you feel tired; there are other consequences too. Some of the most serious include obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart problems, and stress. 

The best way to solve the issue is to know what time you have to get up in the morning and work backwards from there so you know what time you have to go to bed. If you’re having trouble getting to sleep (or staying asleep) then it’s worth discussing it with your doctor as they might have some helpful advice. 

You’re Lacking Vitamin B12

We’ve gone from a fairly vague idea of how much sleep you need to something a lot more specific; your potential lack of vitamin B12. When you have enough B12 in your diet, you’ll feel energised and awake, so a lack of it means the opposite; you’ll constantly feel tired. 

As with many things, eating a better diet can solve the issue, and ensuring that there’s plenty of vitamin B12 included in that healthy diet is a wise move. You can get this vitamin from fruit, vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains, so it should be easy to get enough of it. If not, however, you can use supplements to help boost your intake. 

You Don’t Drink Enough Water

Water is such a great thing for the human body and it’s so easy to get into your daily routine - your body literally tells you when it needs more - that it shouldn’t be a surprise to know that without enough water, things start to go wrong, and among the many things that can go wrong is the fact that you won’t have any energy and you’ll feel tired. 

The best thing to do is to have a reusable water bottle with you at all times, and make sure you sip from it regularly - that’s better than chugging a load of water in one go and then forgetting to drink for another few hours. Try to make it your mission to drink a certain amount each day and gradually increase your intake, and you should feel a lot more awake.

4 Essential Solutions for a Better Night’s Sleep

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{This is a collaborative post}

Getting a good night’s sleep is one of the best ways to improve our overall well-being. Sleep can have enormous positive effects on our life, aiding in everything from the reduction of stress and anxiety to improving our ability to concentrate and boosting our mood.

Of course, getting a good night’s sleep can be easier said than done, and many of us find ourselves lying awake at night waiting for sleep to come.

Luckily there are things that you can do to improve your sleep. So, if you’re looking for a better night’s sleep, then here are just four fantastic tips to help you get started.

1) Master Your Routine

When we talk about bedtime routines, we often think of our little ones. However, it’s not just our kids that benefit from routine and structure.

When you give yourself a bedtime that you stick to each night, you might find it easier to get to sleep in the evening.

Structure and routine will help your body to develop patterns, so having a regular bedtime can help set your body’s natural clock.

2) Create a Calming Environment

Your bedroom should be a calming retreat away from the bustle of the rest of your home – particularly if you have little ones running riot and causing chaos.

There are certain scents, such as lavender, that can help us sleep better each night.

However, many of us don’t like the idea of scented candles in the bedroom in case we fall asleep while they’re still lit.

A good alternative to the scented candle is the fragrance diffuser, with products such as those offered by Neom, you can enjoy all of your favourite sleepy scents without worrying about having an open flame.

3) Invest in a Quality Mattress

Our mattresses aren’t designed to last forever, and over time they can become so uncomfortable that they start to disrupt our sleep.

By investing in a quality mattress, you’ll find that not only will you look forward to going to bed, but you’ll wake up feeling more rested.

Experts such as Archers Sleep Centre offer a wide selection of mattresses and they can advise you on the best option to suit your sleeping patterns and positions, helping to ensure you get the best night’s sleep possible.

4) Limit Light Pollution

As the days get longer, you’ll notice that it gets lighter much earlier in the morning.

This means that you’ll often get woken up much earlier than you want to.

By investing in blackout curtains or blinds, you’ll help to ensure that you get enough sleep. Experts such as Blinds Direct offer a wide selection of made-to-measure black-out blinds to perfectly fit your bedroom windows.

By blocking out the light from entering your room in the mornings and evenings, you’ll be able to fall asleep earlier and stay asleep longer.

How have you ensured that you get a better night’s sleep? Share your tips in the comments below!

6 Ways You Can Lead a Healthier Life

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It is no secret that a healthy lifestyle can lead to a longer and happier life. However, it can be challenging for many people to make the necessary changes to achieve this goal. If you are looking for ways to improve your health, this blog post is for you! In today's post, we will discuss six ways that you can lead a healthier life. Follow these tips, and you will be on your way to better health in no time!

1. Commit to leading a healthy lifestyle.

The first step in leading a healthier life is committing to do so. This means setting goals and sticking to them, no matter what obstacles you face. It also means being honest with yourself about your current health and fitness level and accepting that there is always room for improvement.

If you are not sure where to start, try creating a list of reasons why you want to lead a healthier life. Some common causes include wanting to feel better mentally and physically, having more energy, or setting an excellent example for your children. Once you have identified your motivation, focus on keeping it in mind as you make changes in your lifestyle. It won't always be easy but it will be worth it.

2. Eat healthy foods.

One of the most critical aspects of leading a healthier life is eating healthy foods. This means filling your diet with nutrient-rich fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein, and healthy fats. It also means limiting processed foods, sugary drinks, and unhealthy snacks.

If you are not used to eating healthy foods, adjusting your diet may take some time. Start by slowly incorporating more nutritious items into your diet and cutting back on unhealthy choices. For example, if you typically eat fast food for lunch every day, try packing a healthier lunch from home one or two days per week. Over time, you can continue to increase the number of meals you eat at home and reduce the number of unhealthy choices you make. Even small changes will start to add up and you'll see the difference.

Tips for Helping with the Back to School Sleep Routine

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{Collaborative Post}

My kids went back to school yesterday and I know I was supposed to have got them back in a routine of going to bed earlier and being ready to wake for the early mornings and I had good intentions, honestly, I did! But it just didn't seem to fall into place this year. I blame where we live, there is just too many fun things going on and the girls, in particular, want to be involved in everything.

Thankfully they all got up fine for their first morning back and I am determined to help them get back on track over the weekend. I assume there are other parents like me who didn't manage to get their kids back on track this last week so I thought it might be useful to share my tips for helping your child have a good nights sleep -

1.  Check out your child's bed and mattress. I spent a night on Miss M's bed recently as she was poorly and had fallen asleep in my bed. I thought I'd be kind and leave her there for the night but boy did I regret it as her mattress is horrible, even though it is fairly new. You really are worth investing in a good mattress, so why not take a look at the beds from Bed Guru.

2.  Keep sleep and wake times constant, even on the weekend. I've had to lay down the law with my 12-year-olds and tell them there is no more sitting quietly on the sofa and hoping to be forgotten, they need to be in bed by 9.30pm at the latest.

Getting a Better Nights Sleep to Help your Mental Health

Image Credit: Photo by Alexander Possingham on Unsplash

{This post has been commissioned by TEMPUR®}

The average British adult gets 6 hours and 42 minutes sleep per night (1), making me very much average. I had to chuckle when I looked at my FitBit and saw that lasts weeks average was 6 hours and 46 minutes, and yet I still feel tired many days. I’m not alone though, as we Brits are trying all sorts to help us improve our sleep quality – meditation, exercise or seeking professional help for our mental health or sleep issues.  In fact, there is no shortage of products to help aid a restful nights sleep with people trying everything from CBD oil to specially designed skincare products.

Mental health is an area of keen interest now, and I am so pleased to find that some of the stigma and secrecy is being shed. It is of course OK to admit you have depression, anxiety or any other number of mental health disorders, and to seek help for them. As someone who had late-onset postnatal depression after having my twins and occasionally suffers from bouts of anxiety, I know that I feel much better and more in control I feel when I am sleeping well. The benefits of good quality sleep really can’t be under-estimated, and it’s easy to recognise when I am deficient in sleep as I am irritable, lack concentration and the simplest things can phase me.

This week is the UK’s Mental Health Awareness week (13 – 19^th May 2019) and this year they have chosen to focus on mental health and body image. Another hot topic, and in this image-driven society, one that can be challenging. I was interested to read the findings of the mental health survey commissioned by TEMPUR®, which found that only 38% of Brits say the quality of their sleep is good or excellent (1) and 30% recognise that poor quality sleep impacts their mental health.

I love My Bed: It's the Heart of Our Home

Our current bedroom

We love to sleep in this house and I am so grateful that I now have children who can (and will) sleep the night through, and even better they lie in sometimes too. It's taken a while to get here but the value of a really good bed contributing to a great nights sleep can't be underestimated.

In those early days when I was trying to feed baby twins in the middle of the night and deal with a toddler having night terrors or maybe a little accident, I wasn't getting much sleep and therefore the small amount I did, really had to count.

I've always been an advocate of investing in a super comfortable bed and great bedding, and our fabric bed is a really good example. I choose to view buying a bed as an investment that is going to last us around ten years and as such I don't mind spending a good amount of money on it.

I think I've passed my love of my bed on to all my kids though, and this isn't necessarily a good thing as they are always on it, or in it! It really has become the heart of our home. I was thinking back to how it became this way and to my horror, I realised I created it. When JJ was a pre-schooler I used to encourage him to go to our bed on a Saturday night with my husband and watch Doctor Who with him. Inevitably he'd fall asleep and we'd lift him out later.

6 Things Every Woman in Her 40's Should Do

40 year old woman image from Shutterstock

{This is a collaborative post}

We’ve all heard that 40 is the new 30 and I think it is true that as a nation we are staying younger for longer. People are working for more years, having babies later in life and today's woman is expected to have it all but truly, we can only function well if we are looking after ourselves.

As a woman who really enjoyed her twenties and thirties but didn’t make enough time to look after herself, now is the last-ditch attempt to ensure that I go into middle-aged feeling well. I want to share with you five things that every 40-year-old woman should be doing (me included!).

1.   Get enough sleep

This one seems so simple and of course, we all know that we function and look our best when we have had enough sleep but did you know that getting enough sleep will also boost your memory, reduce inflammation and avoid accidents?

Amazing isn’t it? Sleep can make such a difference, it can even increase our performance, as shown by a 2011 study from the Stanford University School of Medicine. The study discovered that elite athletes were able to improve their best times when they had more sleep each night over a lengthened period.

Not only is it important to get enough sleep though, more recent studies show that you should adopt a regular pattern of sleep. Your bed and wake times need to be pretty consistent to ensure that your circadian rhythm operates at its peak. The circadian clock ensures that hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are released about an hour before you need to wake up and your body will have moved into the less deep REM sleep so that when you make you feel good and ready to go.

A great nights sleep.....

On Friday I felt rubbish all day, it was one of those days when nothing appeared to go right. I felt completely bleur and I was pondering why I felt like that - time of the month? depressed at being so overweight? change of life and house move? no real friends anymore? no job to go to? Who knows, I didn't!

I just knew that what I should do was go to bed.  So that was what I did and the next morning, viola the world is a different place and I feel fresh and ready to tackle what will come...

As I awoke this occurred to me and as I keep hearing about Canva and how great it is, I thought I'd have  ago at making a silly graphic.

This week is my fresh slate and I need to make some changes. They won't be easy but they will be fulfilling and they certainly are necessary. Wish me luck.  Mich x

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A great nights sleep is so important

I find that I can cope with just about anything as long as I've had a great nights sleep, even when the twins were tiny as long as I got 4 straight hours I could manage. Nowadays I like it to be a minimum of 6 or 7 hours and if I can squeeze in even more then perfect!

I don't want to tempt fate but I have to say that I'm a good sleeper. I don't have much trouble getting off to sleep and I tend to stay there for the whole night through unless a child is waking me but I have heard that it gets more tricky as you get older and particularly as a women, with changing hormone levels and such.

I do have a few simple rules that I follow to ensure a good nights sleep -

1. If I have stuff on my mind I do a brain dump, either on my computer or in a notebook, that way it does not have to go round and round my head as I try to drop off to sleep
2. I keep a notebook by the side of my bed and then if I wake in the night with an urgent thought, I can just jot it down and happily forget it
3. I make sure I go to the loo before I drop off as I find that with age (and babies I suspect) my bladder if not what it used to be
4. I like to leave one of my windows a little open. Sleeping in a slightly cool room really works for me
5. Probably my favourite way to drop off is to read a chapter of a good book as soon as I lay down. It helps my eyes start to feel really heavy and then I drop off within minutes

You can also check out some posts with tips for a great nights sleep on Pinterest too.

The right bedding
Of course, having the right bed and bedding makes a real difference to how you sleep as well. In January dh and I bought a new bed and it is too hard for me really but he loves it and my body is learning to live with it. I keep considering what I can do to help improve this bedding situation for me, so it was with a whoop of delight that I said yes to reviewing one of the new Breathe duvets from The Fine Bedding Company. I wondered if having a good duvet might take my mind off the too hard mattress and I was right, it does. I'll tell you more about my duvet below but let me just start by saying, I love it, like really love it, it is so silky soft.

Super zipped packaging bag, which can be used again for storage

We have never been able to afford a natural down duvet and I have always been led to believe they are the best on the market. We stayed in a very exclusive hotel a couple of weekends ago and both enjoyed the down duvet there but our new 10.5 tog superking Breathe duvet is just as good. Genuinely there is no way this duvet feels man-made, firstly it is really light. When I lay down with it over me I can hardly feel it as it just drapes and changing the duvet cover is a dream too as it is lighter than my kingsize duvet that we used to have. Secondly, it keeps us super warm, for something so light I can hardly understand how it can keep me so snuggly as the nights are getting colder but the goods news is that I can use this duvet all year round as it is designed for those who love to sleep in perfect temperature-controlled comfort.

The science bit!

• The duvet is filled with Smartfil synthetic (clever sleep technology) micro-fine fibres so they settle evenly. 
• It traps in about 30% more air than ordinary fibres and allows you to feel warm and snug.
• The Smartfil filling is as soft as down but can be washed regularly at 60 degrees and will retain its shape time and time again.
• The Smartfil is mixed with naturally derived modal to actively transfer moisture from the skin and help to reduce the build-up of excessive body heat & perspiration bought on by night sweats and overheating. Any moisture is absorbed and dispersed.
• It has a textured microfibre cover, which is highly breathable and wicks away moisture faster and more effectively than cotton.
• It's non-allergenic

My duvet arrived by courier on an evening when my husband was working, I had a friend over and we were watching a movie with the kids. Not thinking much of it I unpacked all my post and parcels from that day and that included my new duvet. Within minutes my friend was stroking it and I had an offer that she would come and babysit for a weekend (if you could use our new duvet) and this is how Miss E ended up once she had grabbed it off my friend -

Overall verdict for The Fine Bedding Company exclusive Breathe duvet
We are super happy with our duvet, it is lightweight yet warm and very comfortable. It does not slip or move in the night and my husband and I have been enjoying a good nights sleep under it. If you are looking to buy a new duvet or other bedding then I would definitely say that the Fine Bedding Company are worth looking at. I even had a sleep consultant advise me what might be the best duvet for my husband and I, you can ask them too.

I've also reviewed the Spundown double all-season duvet for my teenagers bedroom in 2021,

Thanks to the Fine Bedding Company for choosing us to try out one of their new Breathe duvets!

Disclosure: I received this duvet free of charge for the purpose of this review. I have not been instructed what to write and I remain honest. 

It's just a bed, right?

I have slowly been realising that my bed has had it!  It needs to go, it's ready for the dump sadly. And I do mean sadly, I know it is just an inanimate object and I should probably just get over it and let it go but I do not want to.......I love my bed.

Dh and I bought our king-size bed in February 1997 when we first moved in together.  It cost us a bomb, about £1000 and considering that was 15 years ago  it tells you it was a good one, but everyone knows that 15 years is too long for a mattress, especially when every night it has housed two rather large adults.

As I have been pondering recently about buying a new bed I have come to realise that for me it is far more than just a piece of furniture, it holds so many memories for me.  Loads has happened in that bed and no I do not mean that!  Well yes of course that, but sex is not what I am referring to.

No, my bed makes me think about -

• the early days when dh and I were together and we used to lie in bed and listen to an old soul album and we would talk and cuddle for hours, getting to know each other.
• falling in love with my husband and finding joy with him.
• all the times I snuggled up with my babes when they were small and the closeness of breastfeeding them in the middle of the night.








• being pregnant with the twins and hardly being able to move but loving the refuge of my cosy bed.
• being let out of hospital each day for a couple of hours over the 2 week period before the girls were born. Going  to bed in the afternoon with JJ and watching a DVD with my small man, so he still felt he had his mum.
• napping in the afternoon with my toddler twins when they thought they were too old to nap but would still do so in Mummy's bed.
• the times like today when my kindly dh moves out of our bed as one of the kids is ill and all they want is their Mum.



• spending time alone with myself and with God, just being or reading in the quietness of a school day - perfect!

But I need to be honest with myself, even when I have a new bed I'll still have those wonderful memories and a new bed will be perfect for making new memories in, so no looking back Mich.  Dh and I need to bit the bullet and get out there and do some shopping.  Summer sales and all that!

It will be really important for me that I get a functional storage bed, as currently my 5ft bed has 4 drawers underneath and these house my book collection, gym clothes, spare blankets and cushions and wrapping paper and to be honest there won't be anywhere else for all these things to go.  Then when I asked dh he said his most important consideration is a high-quality mattress and of course this makes sense, that will be the thing that actually improves our quality of sleep afterall.

So we need to get the holidays out the way and have a little more money in our pocket and do some bed trailiing!