Tempur highlights the importance of sleep for our wellbeing and donates £10 for every mattress sold in May to the Mental Health Foundation to mark Mental Health Awareness Week later this month.
Tempur is delighted to announce a partnership with the Mental Health Foundation ahead of Mental Health Awareness Week, running this year from 14-20 May.
The premium mattress brand will be donating £10 to the Foundation for every mattress sold in a Tempur store or via the Tempur UK website throughout the month of May*, and offers the following sleep tips to help people on the path to ensuring more restorative sleep in order to improve mental wellbeing.
“We spend about a third of our lives asleep,” says Tobin James, Tempur UK Managing Director. “Good quality sleep is essential to maintaining good mental and physical health. It’s as important to our bodies as eating, drinking and breathing and can affect our performance, concentration, energy levels, relationships, moods and interpretation of the world.
“Up to one third of the population suffers from insomnia, with common mental health problems such as stress, anxiety and depression often underpinning sleep problems, and likewise, poor sleep often leading to poor mental health.
“We can all benefit from improving the quality of our sleep. For many of us, it may simply be a case of making small lifestyle or attitude adjustments to help us sleep better.
“Together with the Mental Health Foundation, we have put together the following guide to help those struggling with sleep to form better habits in order to work towards improving or maintaining good mental health.”
- Environment
Dedicate your bedroom to sleep (mainly)
Make your bedroom a temple for sleep. That means a good bed that suits you, curtains or blinds that keep out the light, and a comfortable temperature – ideally a little cooler than the rest of the house.
Ban screens in the bedroom
Checking your phone last thing at night or browsing social media when we can’t sleep… We’ve all done it. It’s a problem because the films we watch or the emails or feeds we check stimulate our minds and the light from a phone or TV screen can fool our minds into believing it’s daytime. Buy an old-fashioned alarm clock or try putting your phone on flight mode when you go to bed.
- Attitude
Follow a wind down routine
Our bodies release a hormone called melatonin that makes us feel naturally tired at around 10-11pm. If you go with it and head to bed as you feel tired, you’ll sleep better. Try establishing a bedtime routine that can help you recognise and promote that wave. Turning off the TV and listening to music, having a milky drink or enjoying a warm bath are good ways to rest the mind, and open ourselves up to sleepiness.
If you can’t sleep, get up
Don’t lie in bed awake tossing and turning. If you can’t get off to sleep or get back to sleep, get up. Try a warm caffeine/sugar free drink or listen to some calm music for a while. Don’t be tempted to check your phone!
Know your sleep
You need to know how much sleep you need to feel good. It’s likely to be seven to eight hours, but it could be as little as four. Try keeping a sleep diary or tracking your sleep with a wearable device (ideally not your phone). If you have a good idea of how much sleep you need to feel good and what affects your sleep, you can make sure you establish good habits, or pinpoint issues.
- Lifestyle
Watch what and when you eat and drink
As a rule, eating less than two hours before bed means that food hasn’t had time to digest before we try and sleep. This can lead to discomfort and indigestion. Fatty or spicy foods can take longer to process and stimulants like caffeine or sugar can give us a boost of energy when we want to be winding down. Rice, oats and dairy products can encourage us to feel sleepy.
We like to think that alcohol makes us sleep better. It may help us nod off, but the quality of the sleep you get may be poor, and dehydration or a late-night takeaway can further impair our sleep.
Exercise – but not in the evening
Exercise is great for mental health and regular light exercise is a good way to improve sleep. Exercise floods the body with feel-good hormones that stimulate our minds and bodies, so beware of exercising late at night as it can actually keep us awake.
Don’t grab a nap on the way home
Sometimes it’s easy to give in to sleep on the train or bus home after a busy day. If you nod off, even for a short time, you can short circuit the natural hormone surges that set us up for our main sleep. So if you are tired early in the evening, try and get an early night.
- Health
Don’t let a health issue stop you sleeping
Do what you can to treat colds and flu at home and make sure that you speak to your doctor if an ongoing health problem or treatment affects your sleep.
Find ways to address anxiety and worry
Health is one of our biggest worries. If you lie awake mulling over concerns about your health, or the health of a loved one, you could try a relaxation exercise or mindfulness practice to help settle your internal worries.
- Don’t put up with poor sleep
Basic techniques can often improve your sleep. If tips like these don’t work, speak to your GP. It may be that you have an underlying health issue.
If you have insomnia for more than a couple of weeks, or often feel so sleepy you could drop off during the day, it’s worth speaking to the doctor as sleep disorders can increase our risk of developing depression, heart disease or stroke.
A Tempur Sleep Guide, developed in association with the Mental Health Foundation, and including tips such as the above, will be available for customers at all Tempur branded stores and outlets throughout May. Customers will also be able to purchase a Mental Health Foundation Ribbon pin in stores to help raise awareness of Mental Health issues.
“We’re delighted to be working with Tempur to highlight the importance of good sleep in preventing mental health problems” says Chris O’Sullivan, sleep expert at the Mental Health Foundation. “Improving the quality of our sleep is one of the easiest ways to improve our mental health; when we sleep well, we are able to meet challenge head on, focus on work, and have the time and energy to devote to our relationships and our interests.
“Problems with our sleep can be one of the first signs of stress. Poor sleep increases our risk of mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, and sleep problems can make it harder to recover when we are unwell.
“Modern lives place our sleep hygiene at risk – Netflix has even listed sleep as its greatest competitor – so we all need to take action to ensure that good sleep is the first thing we plan in our day, rather than the thing we squeeze in when everything else is done.
“Through this partnership, we’re delighted to be able to reach customers in store. The financial support Tempur is offering through donations from mattress sales and the sale of our green ribbons will help us reach more people to offer evidence based tools for improving their mental health.”
*£10 from the sale of every TEMPUR® mattress throughout May 2018 purchased through a TEMPUR® official store or the TEMPUR® UK website will be donated to The Mental Health Foundation.
For more information on Tempur, visit www.tempur.com
For more information on the Mental Health Foundation, Mental Health Awareness Week and for tips, guides and resources, visit https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk
-Ends-
Notes to editors:
- Tempur UK Managing Director, Tobin James, is available for interview or comment
For further press information:
Jo Kendall/Julie Aguilera
Rooster PR
T: +44 (0)20 3440 8930
E: [email protected]
About Tempur
Tempur researches, develops, engineers, manufactures and distributes mattresses, pillows and other sleep products to improve the sleep experience worldwide.
Tempur mattresses and pillows are made from a formulation of the brand’s proprietary pressure absorbing TEMPUR material, originally developed by NASA scientists in the 1970s to support and cushion astronauts during lift-off.
Tempur mattresses offer maximum quality, comfort, support, durability, value for money and aid a restorative night’s sleep.
Tempur is the no.1 mattress brand in Europe for customer satisfaction, with 9 out of 10 customers claiming they would buy Tempur again.
Tempur products can be purchased direct via the Tempur UK website, from any of eleven Tempur brand stores and outlets, or from leading retailers including Dreams, John Lewis, Bensons for Beds, Furniture Village and Land of Beds.
Trusted and promoted by medical practitioners around the world, Tempur is the only mattress product recognised by NASA and certified by the Space Foundation. Tempur’s Contour mattress is Good Housekeeping Institute Approved.
Tempur is a subsidiary of Tempur Sealy International Inc.
Follow Tempur:
- Twitter: @TempurUK
- Facebook: @TempurUK
- Instagram: @tempur_uk
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TempurUKonTV
