ASK THE EXPERT
PRUDENCE WADE is on a mission to cut plastic from her beauty routine – starting with her hair
QSINCE I had my baby six months ago my bladder’s been very weak and I wet myself, even though I do pelvic floor exercises. Could I be doing the exercises wrong, and is this likely to be a permanent weakness?
ASPECIALIST pelvic health physiotherapist Emma Brockwell, aka Physiomum (physiomum.co.uk) and author of Why Did No One Tell Me?, says: “Leaking urine is unfortunately very common postnatally – it’s reported that one in three women leak urine after having a baby.
“There are various reasons why postnatally women leak urine. Often it’s because the pelvic floor muscles (essential to maintaining continence) need strengthening. During pregnancy and childbirth, the pelvic floor is lengthened and weakened and sometimes injured during a vaginal delivery.
After childbirth, these muscles need to be rehabilitated and pelvic floor exercises are a great start.
Often, women I see who are not seeing improvements are doing their exercises incorrectly.
“Pelvic floor exercises are best done in an upright position, for example sitting. They have to contract and relax (this is the part that’s often forgotten) and they need to be exercised regularly.
“To carry out pelvic floor exercises I recommend sitting upright, but make sure you feel comfortable. Gently squeeze your back passage (as if trying to stop yourself passing wind) and hold up to a count of 12 seconds. Relax for a count of three seconds. Repeat eight to 10 times. Then do some quick squeezes, squeeze your back passage quickly and slowly release, and again repeat eight to 10 times.
“Keep breathing throughout. If you feel you’re holding your breath, squeezing your bottom muscles, or gripping your tummy or inner thigh muscles rather than your perineum (the bridge between your front and back passage) it’s likely you’re doing your exercises incorrectly.
“Research shows a chronic cough, constipation and being overweight can lead to urinary incontinence. Certain drinks, particularly alcohol and fizzy drink, may also aggravate symptoms.
■ Why Did No One Tell Me? How to Protect, Heal and Nurture Your Body Through Motherhood by Emma Brockwell is published by Ebury, £14.99. Available now.
EYES ON THE PIES
ICELAND is launching a range of Americaninspired pies, which are bound to be love at first bite.
Starting from £1.75, the new products include a classic Cookies and Cream Cheesecake, Banoffee Pie and Sticky Rib Pies.
PRETZEL LOGIC
READY to flip February on its head? Flipz has launched new Cookies & Cream flavour sweet and salty pretzels, ideal for movie night snacking. The £1.50 bags are available in stores nationwide.
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ENJOY peanut butter with a twist with Whole Earth Smooth Peanut Butter with Honey.
Available in Asda stores (RRP: £3.99,) it marries the wholesome nutty flavours of smooth peanut butter with real honey to create a unique flavour sensation. Ideal for stirring into porridge and Greek yoghurt or a great ingredient for baking.
Faith In Nature Dragon
Fruit Shampoo Bar, £5.79
AS SOMEONE with a multi-step skin and hair routine, I often feel uncomfortable at the amount of waste involved. I try to cut down as much as possible – opting for eco-friendly brands and choosing glass over plastic when I can – but it’s not always that easy. Hair is a particularly tricky area to be sustainable, as so many products are in plastic bottles.
That’s why I was keen to try shampoo bars. These replace your normal liquid shampoo, and look just like a bar of soap.
Shampoo bars are slowly but surely growing in popularity – Lush has sold 38 million of its naked shampoo bars globally since 2007, which the company says has eliminated over 90 million plastic bottles. Previously more of an underground product, bars are now hitting the mainstream, with big brands like Garnier bringing out their own.
So, how do shampoo bars actually work, and can they give your hair the same shine with less of an environmental footprint?
How do they work?
ACCORDING to Anabel Kingsley, brand president and consultant trichologist at Philip Kingsley (philipkingsley.co.uk), there’s “not a great deal” of difference between solid and liquid shampoos. “The job of a shampoo is to cleanse the scalp, and both will do so effectively,” she says. “The type of product would not necessarily impact its effectiveness,
it would be dependent on its ingredients,” she explains.
“A well formulated liquid shampoo is going to be better than a terribly formulated shampoo bar, and vice versa.”
So, what do you need to know about shampoo bars?
IF YOU’RE thinking of making the switch, it’s worth doing a bit of research. “You should definitely consider the ingredients and whether they are suitable for your hair type and texture,” says Anabel.
“For example, someone with fine or oily hair would want to avoid a bar with oils, whereas someone with coiled curls or very dry hair would want to avoid a bar that was drying.”
For fine hair, Anabel says look out for shampoos with thickening proteins, like cellulose or keratin, and for coarse, curly hair, she says: “Go for formulas with moisturising agents, like cocoa butter.”
Why should you switch?
THE environmental arguments for swapping out plastic bottles for sustainable bars are pretty compelling. Some 13 billion plastic bottles (including drinks and toiletries) are used every year in the UK, with only 57% recycled.
“The rest pollute our oceans or lead to a rise in CO2 emissions when incinerated or dumped in landfills,” suggests Joy Parkinson, managing director of beauty brand Faith In Nature (faithinnature.co.uk).
She calls shampoo bars – particularly ones with recyclable packaging – “a more sustainable way of reducing waste in our beauty care regime”.
All this, and they are ideal for travelling, Joy says – meaning no more unwanted shampoo explosions in our carry-on, next time we’re actually able to jet off somewhere.
Was it any good?
I WAS initially sceptical of how well a shampoo bar would work. I’ve got quite a lot of hair and always end up using a fair amount of product to make sure it’s all clean – not to mention I’ve been washing it a whole lot less in lockdown, so when I do finally get around to using shampoo, my hair is in need of a good clean.
I tried the Nuddy Daily Shine Treatment Shampoo Bar in Mint, Lime and Grapefruit, which has a delightfully tropical scent. I was surprised at how well it lathered – I was expecting something like a bar of soap, but rubbing it in between your hands gets you more product.
Other than lathering, it’s exactly like washing my hair with liquid shampoo, and I’m pleased with the shine it gave my locks. However, I have found my hair getting greasier more quickly than normal, but I’m chalking this up to over-enthusiastic lathering. It’s quite hard to know how much of the product you’re actually using with a bar.
In the longer term, it will be interesting to see how well it protects the colour in my hair, and I’m curious how many washes I’ll be able to get out of one bar.
For now, I’m delighted with the results. Maybe it’s time I started looking into solid conditioner, too?
ST VALENTINE’S Day, last weekend, was a timely reminder for gardeners that there are about six weeks left in the bare root planting season if you want to introduce roses into your garden.
Bare root is the most economical way to buy roses – these are plants that have been grown in a field, lifted from October onwards and sold with the soil removed.
It’s a good idea to soak the roots in water for a couple of hours before planting to rehydrate them.
But with the current temperatures don’t try planting in frozen or waterlogged soil. Keep roots damp and cool until the winter weather is less severe.
The oldest rose in the world is thought to be more than 1,000 years old. Climbing the walls at Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany, this dog rose, Rosa canina, survived even bombings during the Second World War. Roses are good value and with a bit of care will last for many years in your garden.
Here are my top tips to help you grow healthy plants...
They flower best in the sunshine but there are varieties that will perform in north-facing situations – and a little bit of shade from hot summer sun is helpful too.
Don’t plant in the same place as a previous rose as this can lead to replant disease. Climbers like to be at least a foot away from the wall to avoid dryness around the root system.
Prepare the ground well by incorporating a generous quantity of well rotted organic matter before planting. Sprinkle mycorrhizal fungi over the roots when planting – this helps roots establish much quicker and enhances nutrient and water uptake. You’ll find this in your local garden centre – ask for Rootgrow.
When roses are positioned among other plants – especially those that attract beneficial insects – they tend to stay much healthier and look very beautiful too.
Pests find it more difficult to find a suitable host for laying their eggs and the spores of diseases are less likely to fall on another rose.
However, be careful not to allow perennials to grow too much right round the base of the rose, they will take the lion’s share of water and nutrients and leave little for the rose.
Apply fertiliser around April and again in June – this can be well rotted manure or garden compost – but try to keep it a clean distance from stems.
If you choose a healthy variety of rose then diseases shouldn’t be a huge problem, but you can help boost their resistance by applying a foliar feed like Maxicrop or SB Plant Invigorator.
Roses love plenty of water at the roots, so an occasional good soaking in summer will help encourage strong growth and quicker repeat flowering – especially significant for roses near to walls or hedges.
If you do water then try to avoid getting the leaves wet, or water early in the day so the leaves can dry out quickly otherwise you may well be encouraging blackspot.
Inspect the leaves during summer – are they covered in greenfly? I tend to just squash them between my fingers and otherwise rely on the general insect eating population to do their bit.
It’s been my experience that a garden that encourages wildlife and doesn’t use pesticides tends to keep a healthy balance between predators and pests.
Lots of us get nervous when confronted with secateurs and a rose bush – what to do? There are many complicated theories about
pruning, but you’re best keeping it simple.
With shrub roses, cut them down to around half their size in late winter/early spring – ideally before they spring into fresh growth. If they’re well established, choose one or two old stems – these will be brown or a dull green – and cut them out completely at base level which will encourage healthier new stems.
And with climbers, cut back last year’s flowering shoots to between 4 and 6 inches.
Finally, I’d like to share a good tip I received from gardening guru Helen Dillon about choosing varieties.
She told me breeders save their best varieties to name after family members. For example in the David Austin catalogue, you won’t do better than the likes of ‘Olivia Rose Austin’, a beautiful pink English shrub rose that flowers early with a delicious fragrance. Or try the climber ‘Claire Austin’ which has creamy-white highly fragrant double flowers that open from pale lemon buds – just gorgeous.