Health and Wellbeing Calendar

"Fresh Start, Clear Mind"

Dry January is a great month to focus on physical and mental clarity, renewed focus, and the health benefits of reducing or stopping alcohol consumption.

Key Objectives

• Raise awareness about the benefits of taking a break from alcohol.
• Provide support through resources and encouragement.
• Promote long-term healthy habits around alcohol use.

Developing healthy habits around alcohol isn’t always easy, especially when alcohol is so readily available and relatively low cost.

As we move into Dry January, this is a great time to build awareness and learn to manage your alcohol habits around your lifestyle.  Here is our 5 step starting guide:

1. Reflect on Your Relationship with Alcohol

• Self-Assessment: consider why, when, and how much you drink. Is it social, emotional, or habitual?
• Identify Triggers: recognize situations, emotions, or environments that prompt drinking.

2. Think about where you want to make change

• Decide whether you want to: moderate, reduce, or eliminate alcohol.
• Make this realistic: you may want to swap out some of your alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic options or you may want to create a dry day – where you schedule a day where you completely avoid alcohol.  Some people find it helpful to also do this during the working week.

3. Managing the habit

There is a whole psychology around having a drink – that Friday night feeling of opening a bottle of wine.  So its good to think about different ways to manage our drinking habits.  This could be things like:

• Non-Alcoholic Alternatives: experiment with mocktails, sparkling water, or non-alcoholic beers and wines.
• Healthy Rituals: replace the habit of pouring a drink with a calming activity like herbal tea, journaling, or an evening walk.

4. Spread the word, embrace Dry January and learn more

• Involve Friends and Family: share your goals and ask for support.
• Learn the Facts: understand the effects of alcohol on your physical and mental health.

5. Practice Mindful Drinking

• Pause Before Drinking: ask yourself, "Do I really want this drink?"
• Sip Slowly: enjoy your drink, savour the flavour, and pace yourself.
• Alternate Drinks: between alcoholic beverages, have water or a non-alcoholic option.

Please note that if you struggle with dependency or find it hard to moderate your alcohol intake, consult a healthcare professional for support.

How to take charge of alcohol video

Alcohol and your sleep

Alcohol has a significant impact on sleep, often disrupting its quality and patterns. While it may initially seem to help you fall asleep, the long-term effects can undermine restful and restorative sleep. See our easy leaflet to show how and why alcohol affects your sleep cycle.  Alcohol & Sleep Factsheet

The Sleep School platform and programme is available for all colleagues to access. This includes:

• Sleep School platform includes all previous webinar recordings of various topics related to sleep
• Wide range of useful guides available about sleep on specific topics including menopause, mental health, children’s sleep etc.
• Free app which includes courses on various topics relating to sleep issues
• Webinar programme e.g. sleeping better in Winter (22^ND January 2025) - BOOKING LINK
• Link to Sleep School platform – password is sy123

Try our Mocktail recipes!

If you are trying to reduce your intake of alcohol, it’s good to try some mocktails.  Try some of these recipes which are easy to make and will hopefully inspire you!

Non Alcoholic Mojito

Winter Warmer

How much are you actually drinking?

People don’t always understand what a unit is so we have put together a really easy visual so that you can track your drinking, during Dry January and beyond!

Unit Measures

Your Mindful Drinking Guide

We know that drinking too much alcohol can be bad for us.   Regularly drinking too much alcohol is linked to:

• an increased risk of heart disease
• an increased risk of certain cancers
• a higher chance of being overweight
• issues with sleeping
• a worsening of mental health issues such as depression

Aim for staying within 14 Units of alcohol per week.

Mindful drinking may help you to stay within these limits so see our easy guide to support you with how to drink in a mindful way.

Mindful Drinking

Alcohol Awareness

World Cancer Day – United by Unique!”

Let’s share our stories about cancer this World Cancer Day, 4^th February to break down stigma and understand the impact cancer has on all of us and find ways of coming together to share the journeys.

Key Objectives:

• Breakdown stigma, encourage story-telling and sharing of perspectives – how has cancer touched you?
• Look at techniques for managing wellbeing for those impacted by cancer and their support networks
• How can we support people impacted by cancer in the workplace?

Cancer and mental health:

Cancer is more than a diagnosis, it is an all-encompassing journey impacting all aspects of the individual. Cancer is personal to each person impacted by it and this World Cancer Day the theme is “United by Unique”.

Did you know a Cancer diagnosis has a significantly negative impact on a person’s mental health?

• 20% of cancer patients experience depression compared to 5% in the general population
• 10% of cancer patients suffer from anxiety disorders compared to 7% in the general population
• 58% of cancer patients surveyed said they found the emotional challenges of a cancer diagnosis harder than the physical treatment
• A significantly higher proportion of cancer patients develop post-traumatic stress disorder than in the general population

(Statistics from the BMJ and Maggie’s).

Cancer impacts us all – let’s create compassionate workplaces:  

Here’s some ideas of how you can help break down the stigma surrounding cancer, particularly in the workplace:

• Share your stories: there’s nothing more empowering than hearing stories – every voice counts, and every experience is unique. Could you create a team story-telling session to breakdown some of the stigma surrounding cancer and share those stories of courage, pain, determination and resilience? 
• Educate yourself: how much do you know about prevention and early detection? Find out via reputable sites. Click here for links to useful support and information Signposting/ Signposting
• Can you share this with your colleagues or make a poster for the office or toilet doors? You can also find out more about living with cancer on our webinar taking place on 26^th February: 12.30-1pm. Link to book.
• Contribute: consider making a charitable donation. There are so many great charities out there you could choose to support – every penny counts in the fight against cancer! We’ve put together some information on some of the leading charities in the UK in the supporting resources document above.

Compassionately supporting our colleagues:

• It is important to take a compassionate and kind approach when we are at work towards our colleagues whether they are experiencing a life changing diagnosis, having a difficult time or having a bad day.
• One simple thing you can try is to genuinely connect with your colleagues. Can you sit down for a cup of tea and ask how they are doing in an authentic way?
• Remember most people just want to be heard when they are struggling and aren’t looking for advice or solutions. You don’t need to be an expert on the topic the person is going through to provide support – sometimes just being there and validating the person’s experience can go a long way to making that person feel heard and supported. Have a look at this infographic for some tips to nurture compassionate listening Compassionate Listening
• Here is a useful resource from MacMillan called Managing Cancer in the Workplace which includes advice about supporting colleagues, adjustments and financial support available.
• You can also find out more about living with cancer on our webinar taking place on 26^th February: 12.30-1pm. Link to book.

"Sleep Smarter!”

Celebrate World Sleep Day by finding ways to optimise your sleep using evidence-based approaches.

Key Objectives

• Understand some key statistics and facts about poor sleep
• Build self-awareness around sleep habits  
• Suggest tools and techniques for optimising sleep

• ---

How sleepy are you?  

Matthew walker Quote  / Sleep Smarter Quiz

Have a think about your own sleep habits and consider what changes you could implement to sleep smarter. We know intuitively that when we’ve had a good nights’ sleep everything feels better, life is easier and we have more energy and creativity.

Sleep is integral to all aspects of our health and wellbeing. Sleep expert Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep says:

 “Sleep is the single most effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body health each and every day”.

Did you know…

• Poor sleep is linked to increased levels of anxiety, depression and stress (and it’s a vicious cycle as sleep is more likely to be impacted negatively by these conditions)
• 75% of adults with depression experience insomnia
• Only 28% of adults in the UK achieve the recommended hours of sleep a night*
• 24 hours without sleep is equivalent to being above the legal limit for drinking alcohol in terms of cognitive impairment
• Consistently sleeping for 6 hours of less can double the chances of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease

[stats from Matthew Walker’s research, Aviva and Direct Line insurance research]

*Note: we often hear that we need 7-9 hours a night but in actual fact this varies according to our age, and is, of course completely individual. Research shows that those between the ages of 19-45 generally need 7 hours and those over 46 generally need between 5-7 hours.

The good news is that we can all do something to sleep smarter! The first step in this process is to build some self-awareness about around your own sleep habits. We’d like to invite you to think about the questions in the sleep quiz Sleep smarter quiz We’ll then look at tools and techniques for how we can help you to sleep smarter in 2025 and beyond.

Top tips for sleeping smarter!

Sleep smarter visual

Once you have completed your sleep assessment and identified some areas to work on (we all have them!), here are some top tips for sleeping smarter – pick one of these and see if it makes a difference over the next week or two:

1. Cut the caffeine after noon! Caffeine stays in our system a long time after consuming it – so if you have a coffee at midday, you’ll still have caffeine in your system at 6pm.
2. Ban the blue light: give yourself at least 1 hour of device free time before bed. Screens suppress the release of the sleep hormone melatonin.
3. Embrace the morning light – research shows that 30 minutes of exposure to natural light helps to aid natural sleep.
4. Stick to a sleep routine: as much as you can try to go to bed and get up at the same time every day – the more routine we are the more aligned our circadian rhythms will be.
5. Get out of bed if you can’t sleep – if you can’t sleep for more than 20 minutes get out of bed and read, listen to music or do something else (not on a screen) and then try to sleep again once you feel tired – repeat until you eventually fall asleep.

Did you sleep smarter?

How did your sleep smarter tips work? Did you manage to implement one of our five recommendations?

See our visual for a reminder of our detailed sleep smart tips which includes some additional tips Sleep Tips / Sleep resources We’ve also included a bonus sleep aid resources document with lots of great meditations you can try to aid your relaxation and sleep.

Continue to think about what the main interruptions are for you and how you can make small tweaks to optimise your sleep.

Happy sleeping!

Further support & resources:

• Join our webinar on Wednesday 12^th March 12.30-1pm ‘Stop fighting with your pillow’ to learn practical tips about healthy sleep habits and bring on a state of relaxation easily to aid restorative sleep. Booking link

• Visit the Sleep Wellbeing webpage for useful resources about sleep.
• SY ICB colleagues can access the Sleep school platform which includes a wide range of webinar recordings of various topics related to sleep, as well as useful guides on specific topics relating to sleep e.g. menopause, mental health, children’s sleep etc. There is also a free app which includes courses on various topics relating to sleep issues. Link to Sleep School platform – password is sy123.

Introduction to Trauma Informed Care 8th January:

Slides Q & A

Winter wellbeing webinars:

You can find the links for the slides & resources from the webinars which took place in January on the topics of winter hydration and immune system support on our Winter Wellbeing webpage. On the same page, you can find details about how to access the video recording from the 'Sleeping better in Winter and Q&A with Dr Guy' webinar.