I know, 'lifestyle maintenance' sounds a little boring and you might be sat there thinking 'what the heck is that' but let me explain.

Until you take a step back and take inventory of your health, you might not realise that it's determined by a combination of really important factors that keep us ticking over and functioning as we should be. You are most likely more aware of lifestyle illnesses and diseases such as diabetes (type 2), obesity and heart diseases and I truly believe that as important as it is to look into the cure, care and medicine behind these illnesses it's also incredibly important to look at how we can prevent them.

One way we can begin to prevent lifestyle diseases is by looking after ourselves a little better and that's where 'lifestyle maintenance' comes into it. If our houses get messy, we tidy and clean them. If our car breaks down, we get it serviced and fixed. Why don't we treat our bodies and minds with the same respect?

There are many factors that contribute to our overall health but I thought I'd share with you over the course of four different posts, the factors that I think are crucial in maintaining our health - this is based on knowledge I've gained through my studies into health & nutrition and also gathered from a wide range of experts who have looked closely into what helps us live our lives to the fullest.

Today's post focuses on sleep.

Sleep

It's strange how maybe 3 or 4 years ago I wouldn't have even considered sleep to be crucial in my day-to-day health and simply functioning as a human being but it doesn't take much investigating to realise it's actually probably one of the most important things we can do for our mental and physical well-being.

So how much sleep do we need? 

It's advised that adults need between 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night in order to function well during the day. It's a bit of a myth that as we age we need less sleep as even adults 65 years old or older need 7 as a minimum. Children need a little more, sometimes 10-11 hours a night.

What type of 'sleep' is there?

This might seem like an odd question to answer but there are actually four stages of sleep we go through during our visit to the land of nod;

Non Rapid Eye Movement- or NREM - sleep is divided into three parts; 1, 2 and 3 with each part becoming gradually 'deeper' into sleep. Parts 1 and 2 are the stages where we're most easily woken (unless you're my boyfriend who could most likely sleep through World War III if it came about).
Part 3 of NREM is the deeper stage of sleep which we're more difficult to rouse from and if we are awoken from this stage of sleep we might feel quite dazed and disorientated.

Why is NREM sleep important?

We need to go through each stage of NREM sleep to wake up feeling well rested the next morning & each stage usually lasts for around an hour/hour and a half. If you wake up one morning feeling tired and not with it then it's most likely because on of your NREm

The final stage of sleep is Rapid Eye Movement - or REM- sleep. This is the closest stage to being awake and it's called 'Rapid Eye Movement' sleep because your eyes do literally that, they move rapidly under your eyelids, darting from side to side. During this stage of sleep is also when you have dreams as your pulse quickens and your brain activity increases.

Why is REM sleep important?

REM sleep is the stage of sleep where our brains are most stimulated especially in areas of the brain that work on making and retaining memories and learning new things.

How can I sleep better?

You might assume that it's what you do right before bed that means you have a well-rested night's sleep but actually there's lots you can do even from the moment you wake up that can lead to a better night's sleep.

Morning: 
Keep a regular schedule - Keep the peace with your body and try to stick to regular hours of sleeping/waking. It might seem a bit like you've reverted back to childhood by setting a 'bedtime' but going to sleep and waking up at the same time most days will really help.

Get some natural light - Getting some daylight as soon as possible in the morning can really help reset our internal body clocks (or circadian rhythm as it's sometimes called)

Daytime:
Quit The Caffeine:  The Sleep Council advises that you should try to avoid caffeine 8 hours before bed but personally I try to not have any caffeine (so that's a matcha latte for me) before 2pm. If it's gone 2pm then no matcha for me!

Get Moving: Try to indulge in some gentle exercise during the day, exercise promotes the quality and quantity of your sleep and even if it's just walking around your office block or taking the dog for a walk it can help us sleep better.

Evening:
Put down the phone: Evidence has shown that using our phones and other electronic devices before bedtime can keep us awake due to the blue light they emit. They also stimulate our brains a little too much during the time when we should be trying to wind them down before we sleep so have a break from your phone an hour or two before bed. Have a bath, read a book, stay away from Instagram!

Avoid the temptation of a night cap: If we can't sleep there are times we might turn to a cheeky alcoholic beverage to send us off to sleep but despite being a sedative this can do us more bad than good. It might get us off to sleep okay but our sleep will be disrupted and we can end up feeling unrefreshed in the morning.

Night:
Give your bedroom a calm-makeover: Basically, ensure the room you sleep is set to a cool temperature, make sure it's dark and keep it a quiet space. If you don't have them then try to invest is some blackout blinds to help keep the light out, these are especially handy in the summer months when it can come flooding through curtains uninvited!

Get rid of rude alarm clocks: I searched high and low through the alarm clock settings on my iPhone before resorting to downloading a new tune from the iTunes store for my alarm and now I don't dread the noise so much in the morning. Keep phone and alarm clock lights off and turn off the television before you sleep. Before we moved in together, my boyfriend would fall asleep to the television and I have no idea how he did it!

Top Tip: Something that has changed my attitude to sleep is keeping the bedroom peaceful and calm. When I worked from home I'd be tempted to have breakfast in bed and log onto my laptop, have conference calls etc but keeping the room strictly for relaxing and sleeping has really helped me to associate the bedroom with unwinding and calm. 

Credits: The Sleep Council

My Counselling Journey So Far...

It's a strange one is counselling. It's a place where you go and completely spill the contents of your head to a complete stranger who you can only hope is not going to stare at you like you've got three eyes and a wooden leg by the time you're finished talking.

Good news, counselling isn't anything like that. Four days ago I completed my sixth session with my therapist and now I have a two week break as she's on holiday and I won't lie, I feel a little nervous but also really keen to see how I get on going it completely solo for a couple of weeks.

Counselling for me was a no-brainer after Christmas and New Year when I felt like my anxiety was controlling me and I wasn't controlling it anymore, so I decided to do something about it and found a lovely therapist jusy five minutes down the road who can see me after work.

The first thing I'll say about my journey is that it's a slow one. I've had years of 'managing' my anxiety myself without any professional  help and in that time I've probably developed a ton of unhealthy habits and routines that I continued to use for managing my mental illness so I always knew it was going to take a long time to unpick and unravel the knot that had formed in my mind - but we're getting there.

The first few sessions my therapist spent getting to know me, we spoke in particular about an event last year that I feel brought my anxiety back to the surface again. We spent three sessions on that event and worked our way through it piece by piece and as each week went by I felt a little lighter. By the time we'd worked our way through that issue we mutually agreed that we had spent enough time and energy on it and I finally felt as though I had closure to a situation that had caused me lot of pain and heartache for months.

The problem was that my anxiety didn't dissipate instantly following that closure, it's so deep-rooted that I can't switch it on or off as anyone with a mental illness will know. It's there and sometimes it's quiet and shuts up and let's me live my life and other times it doesn't.

Counselling has helped me to manage those difficult days. It provides me with a validation and reassurance that I so desperately needed and that only a professional can provide. It made me realise my thoughts and feelings are valid and even though they're not pleasant and I want to work towards banishing them as much as I can I felt as though someone finally got me.

Don't get me wrong, there have been the odd day where I've left counselling feeling exhausted because you know, trawling through the inner workings of your mind can be knackering but I've never left a session feeling heavier or more negatively than I did when I walked in.

The one mistake I made before when I had counselling a few years ago was giving up when I felt 'better' - even if I'm having a good day now I still take myself off to my session as there's always something to work through and to improve upon and I know that realistically I'll probably continue attending for quite a long time. Even if i reduce my sessions to once fortnightly or even once a month, it's 50 minutes where I'm grounded and can focus on myself.

Counselling is something we should all do for ourselves if we feel we need it - a lot of us spend so much time focusing on other people; on work, on kids etc but sometimes we need to physically allocate time in our diaries for ourselves and counselling is just that.

OLAPLEX REVIEW: HAIR'S HOLY GRAIL

Well, Olaplex. Where do i begin?! If you've got color-damaged, dried hair then you're going to want to stick around for this one so grab yourself a cuppa and get comfy. I was heading to Leo Bancroft's Weybridge salon for a cut last weekend and knew I was in dire need of a treatment beforehand. Following a lot of salons and stylists on Instagram I was sure I'd heard of Olaplex before so when an Olaplex treatment cropped up on Leo's list of services I immediately asked my stylist Holly to book me in for a treatment before my cut.

If you haven't heard of Olaplex, let me give you the 101 on the sciencey-stuff. Most conditioners, even the expensive leave-in ones, usually just sit on top of your hair, temporarily treating damaged hair which can leave you with a silky smooth finish at first but after a few washes you're back to square one. This is wear Olaplex is different because it actually repairs and fixes the hair shaft while it colours and treats it. To give you some context, Olaplex is how Kim Kardashian went platinum from her natural dark locks in one day without going bald.

My Olaplex treatment was a two-part process and the whole process took half a hour from start to finish. The sensation was an odd one, the product is obviously a liquid but didn't feel super wet or thick like some conditioners so until I reached up and patted my hair it didnt' feel like there was any product on at all as it wasnt trickling down my neck or the side of my face which is always a bonus!

When it was rinsed out I reserved all judgement until my hair had been cut and blow-dried. When I finally ran my fingers through my previously thick, dry, damaged brittle hair I could have cried with happiness. That sounds dramatic but I've been through a few ordeals with my hair over the years and the last time I felt that silky-smooth, lightweight, freshly-cut hair feeling was probably about six or seven years ago. Since then, every blowdry has been a nightmare with hair breaking, brushes struggling to pull through the ends and stylists unable to run their fingers through my hair. It used to fall heavy, full of frizz and the ends looked frazzled.

Not now. The damage has literally been reversed and it's like I've rewound the last few years of bleach and dye, leaving my hair feeling so light and soft and genuinely healthy. I'm so excited that Olaplex is a thing and it doesn't cost a fortune either, my treatment was £30 and worth every single penny.

Olaplex can also be added to colour and bleach to minimise damage and if you YouTube Olaplex you'll find an abundance of videos showing girls with damaged hair going even lighter with little to no damage at all. It's incredible and a revolutionary product which hopefully will be rolled out to more and more salons around the UK - and the world - very soon!

Let me know either in the comments below or over on Twitter @laurenfell if you're thinking of giving Olaplex a try, I'm also happy to answer any questions you might have!

NEW HAIRCARE HAUL

So I've reached that point with my current hair care products where I'll sit pressing down the pump on my Aussie leave-in conditioner bottle for about 20 minutes before accepting that I've 100% run out and definitely need to replace it.

Of course, when I get to Boots they're completely out of the leave-in conditioner that I usually use so I had to stand there in the aisle talking myself - yes, out loud - through the pros and cons of the two conditioners they had instead. As you can see from the picture above, arguing with myself never gets me very far so I resulted in throwing both in my basket along with a couple of other bits.

I'm in love with Aussie's leave in conditioners and although I do really like a hair mask, I appreciate being able to spritz my  hair with moisturising goodness and leaving it in because I'm a very impatient human being. I usually use the Miracle Recharge Moisture conditioner but as I said they were out of it in Boots, leaving me to decide between Take The Heat and Shine before giving up and opting for both.

I haven't given either of these a go yet but if they're anything like their Moisture counterpart then these conditioners will be lightweight, non-sticky leave-in sprays which I feel just give my hair a little more of a silky soft finish after washing. Although I use a heat-defence product alongside the Aussie conditioner, I quite liked that the Take The Heat spray also does this so I can double up on the heat defence!

The Shine leave-in conditioner just sounded really nice, I've always had quite damaged hair until recently thanks to the incredible Olaplex treatment I had recently, post on that coming this week - so it will be nice to put a shine back into my much healthier looking hair.

Another product that I've ran out of recently was my heat-defence spray, usually I use a Toni & Guy product but once again, they were sold out. I'm really not selling my local Boots right now, am I? Although, this did give me a chance to look for something new. I'm a big fan of Lee Stafford products and thought that the Poker Straight Flat Iron Protection Mist sounded like it would do the trick. You can use this product before you blow-dry and also afterwards, on dry hair, before you use straighteners.

I also picked up a large can of the DeHumidifer Liquid Umbrella, also from Lee Stafford. I used to swear by this product when I was at school/college and when I discovered serum I stopped using it, however, I'm gradually running out of Bleach London's Split Fix Serum which I am obsessed with and was going to replace until I saw this! This is a lightweight spray which controls frizz and keeps your hair looking smooth, sleek and silky. I've already given it a go this afternoon and forgot how much I loved it. This product also comes in a smaller, handbag-sized can for frizz-control on the go!

Have you tried any of these products? I'd love to know what you think of them so let me know!