Reflections from the Mindful Living and Sleep Shows – and a special trip to the House of Commons!

Last weekend saw talkhealth return to the Business Design Centre in north London for the Mindful Living and Sleep Shows.

The two-day well-being extravaganza was busy and our stall, in particular, had a lot of interest from pre-existing members, new people with chronic health conditions and sleep issues, looking to sign up, as well as HCPs and medical experts. 

We were able to hand out all of the 250 goody bags we brought with us, in return for signing up to talkhealth and at the same time collected a lot of sign ups to our support programmes. As expected, the feedback we received from them was overwhelmingly positive thanks to the range of brilliant products on offer. As such, we’ve got to give a massive thanks to our sponsors: Chuckling Goat, Sylk, Nutri-Link, the Sleep Council and Almirall. As well as the stall, talkhealth also sponsored the show’s Health and Science theatre.

Talking to our visitors, it was interesting to hear how engaged people were in the idea of our mysleep support programme. Most of those we spoke to told us that they’d tried lots of different ways to improve their sleeping habits and that our programme acted as a gentle reminder of previous techniques that they had tried and new ones they had yet to master. The general consensus was that we as a society still don’t realise the importance of sleep until we stop getting it – and how insomnia and sleep disruption can impact you emotionally and physically. 

There still isn’t enough information or noise about how troublesome sleep deprivation can be and how it disrupts everyday life. It’s events like the MLS and Sleep Show that make people realise they aren’t alone and that sleeping problems are a much more common issue than most people think.

As always with these sorts of events, we’re too busy to get around the entire show ourselves – something of a mixed blessing as it goes to show how many people are interested in the services that talkhealth has to offer! Saying that, plenty of the visitors we had to the stall enthused to us about what a great event it was so we’ve no doubt that the show offered invaluable insights on how to improve sleep and well-being. 

Alex Joicey, founder of PepFarley and the two shows says: ‘The Mindful Living and Sleep Show were happy to partner with talkhealth once again this year.  We always find their organisation to be professional and proactive and receive excellent results on the marketing campaigns they deliver. ‘The talkhealth members are valued parts of our event community and we look forward to working together again in 2021.’

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Prior to our 48 hours in Angel, talkhealth was invited to the launch of ‘The Wake Up Call’ Sleep Manifesto at Westminster.

Hosted by Clive Betts MP and The Sleep Council, the event addressed the manifesto’s pledge to provide the nation with a ‘Wake Up Call’ – urging the government to recognise and act upon the importance of sleep as part of a healthy balanced lifestyle.

This is the council’s ‘biggest ever call’ on the government to move sleep up the Public Health Agenda. The manifesto calls on schools to teach sleep education, for workplaces to provide support for sleeping problems and for parenting courses to include more sleep-related content.

The manifesto includes shocking statistics on obesity, road traffic safety and sleep-related medication – things that we already know about thanks to the research that talkhealth has been able to do with our own members. We know the scale of the problem; it’s no wonder that our sleep programme is one of the most popular we offer.

You can download the Wake Up Call manifesto here.

Here’s another year of better health and great collaborations!