Knowledge centre

Sleep is a chemical process and our bodies require particular hormones, minerals and vitamins to make process happen. The act of eating, in itself, can help bring on sleep... particularly after a blood-sugar spike! But which foods have the ingredients we need? Here, our experts explain which nutrients are most important to sleep, why, and what you could eat more of to bring about fewer restless nights. We also look at herbal remedies and ancient medicines that are thought to improve sleep. Eat Well, Sleep Well Magnesium  This helps you sleep better in several ways. First, if your magnesium levels are...

Considering it’s something we do every night, we probably don’t give much thought to the act of sleeping – though if you’re an insomniac you may not think about much else, especially when you’re still wide awake at 3am.  We spend about a third of our entire lifetime sleeping. But while we still don’t have all the facts on why we need to sleep, here are some of the things we do know: Sleep helps your brain function more effectively while you’re awake. It helps your brain process emotions, since parts of the brain that regulate emotion are more active while...

For obvious reasons, everyone’s talking about them these days. But have you given much thought as to how vaccines actually work? Vaccines make you immune or resistant to infectious diseases and are incredibly important for human health. It was, after all, a vaccine that eradicated smallpox – one of the deadliest diseases ever. Even now around two or three million deaths are prevented globally every year thanks to vaccines protecting us against polio, tetanus, measles, meningitis, pneumonia and the flu, to name just a few. How do vaccinations work? Vaccines work by ‘teaching’ the immune system to recognise when your body’s been...

‘Eating a healthy, balanced diet is an important part of maintaining good health.’ True, but simple as it sounds, does this actually help us on an individual basis? After all, what defines a healthy, balanced diet? And is it realistic to expect everybody to have the time, resource & know-how to find the perfect balance? The difficulty is that what works for one person, may not work for another. We all have different genetics, diets, conditions, & lifestyles. However, by improving our overall understanding of how nutrition works we can make better decisions. So here is a quick introduction to...

There’s no doubt about it, we’re all living longer. According to the latest figures life expectancy at birth for men in the UK is 79 years, and for women 83 years (compared with 71 for men and 77 for women in the early 1980s).Healthier lifestyles can take some of the credit. Even if you have several health conditions, a healthy lifestyle could increase your life expectancy by more than six years, say Leicester University researchers. Regular exercise and a nutritious diet are only part of the picture, however. Good relationships and a solid social support network are strongly linked with staying...